The Net Is DEAD

That's right. D-E-A to the D.

I have no idea what happened. Months ago, our Multilinks modem just went boop. Gone, kaput. 0.00 kbps. And ever since then we've scoured Nigeria, looking for a good internet connection. I'm not writing this in my house right now. I'm sitting in a parent's friend's office, using his connection to write this post. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to make this pretty short, so please it's not me. It's the crappy internet services. I've been doing fine, enjoying the dryness of Dry Season. And a lot of people are cheery right now, cuz of the Christmas season and stuff. But this is Dry Season though. Like hardcore people. It's super hot in the day, super cold in the night like a desert. Like a desert with a lot of people in it.

G2G,
The Traveller

P.S. I'm going to do whatever I can to post more. Don't worry, I'm back. :)

No Country for Young Kids

Yep, you heard right.

Nigeria isn’t exactly the most child-friendly place in the world. We drove past a preschool once. Most buildings have walls around their perimeters, this one wasn’t any different. But to make them look more festive, the preschool walls are painted with children things like the alphabet. So we drove past the wall, and I was looking at their rendition of the alphabet. A for apple, C for cow…G for gun. Yeah. Gun. They even had a picture of a handgun under G. If you can believe it this happens a lot. I’ve seen so many G for guns here it’s crazy. I’ve even heard sample sentences in 2^nd grade English books like, “the man stole from the woman and pointed his gun at her.” You might be saying, “but Nigeria even has it’s own version of Sesame Street! Doesn’t that count?” Sorta…nah. Not really. For one, Sesame Street Nigeria is on a channel hiding in a desolate corner of the satellite TV services. It only comes on at awkward times on awkward days. My Mother finally got the time right and my little sister was able to watch an episode. That was the first and last time she’s ever watched Sesame Street Nigeria. Sesame Street Nigeria is just a bunch of clips with Sesame Street America with Nigerian voice overs. It's super, super weird looking. Imagine Ernie speaking pidgin English! On the other hand Nigeria can be extremely children friendly. Here, Children's Day is a national holiday with parties and games at public venues, and every family can join! So Nigeria can be friendly and unfriendly to children.

Signing off,

The Traveller

DEAD ZONE

Error e233: THE REMOTE COMPUTER DID NOT RESPOND

Error e344: SERVER CONNECTION WAS RESET

These are some of the excuses we've been getting for the past month. I'm sorry. I truly am. But hear me out first; I haven't been trying to avoid posting here. Our internet access has been nonexistent for the longest now. Something happened to our network! We haven't been able to load Google, let alone Blogger, for weeks. I've finally got through but I don't know how long it'll last. Someone came over today to help us out. He thought that maybe it was our modem that was malfunctioning. Turns out it's our area. :( There's really nothing we can do about that. You'd think we live in some remote forest in the middle of nowhere! If you can believe it, we don't. We live right next to a big community. But for some reason nothing works here. The worst part is that it doesn't make any sense. Here's why: in Nigeria almost every modem is a mobile one. It's plug and play. And there are different networks that make different modems. We use Multilinks. To put it simply, Multilinks is dead. At least here, anyway. So today we tried another called Glo. Now, Glo is also a phone network. We actually have a Glo phone and we get five bars in certain areas in the house. It's pretty reliable. The same SIM that's in our Glo phone is in a Glo modem. Theoretically you should be accessing the same network. Therefore, if the phone works then we should get decent internet access through Glo. It doesn't work that way. I don't know why. We took our Glo phone. We took our Glo modem. Glo phone: five bars. Glo modem: ... I'm at my wits end here. I don't know what we're supposed to do. The only other option we have is this internet thingy on the university campus up the street. It's called VSAT and the minimum download speeds are like 250 kbps or something like that. Around here that's like legendary speeds. All we have to do is get a dish so we can send the internet data stuff to the house. I really hope we get this worked out!

Signing off,
The Traveler

Babysitting

We're babysitting a friend's dog.

Her name is Bones and they got her really recently. Because she isn't used to them yet she's pretty skittish. But she warmed up to Shep really quick! She gets really happy when she comes over to our house and sees him here. We've been watching her for about a week now since our friends had to go to Lagos. They're back now and they'll be taking Bones back to their house today. I think she's ready to go back to her home. So am I! I have to walk both of the dogs with my Dad and that's some super hard work. They are always pulling us around trying to chase each other and run around. And I thought walking Shep was hard! Speaking of Shep, we've been wondering how we will take him with us back to America. We don't know how hard it'll be. What if the airport security don't let us take him or something like that? We don't know for sure. I've done some research but I'm still a little bit unsure. It's alright though, we'll figure something out! I just wish that we could meet somebody who brought a dog from Nigeria to America. Then they could explain to us what they went through.

Signing off,
The Traveler

Fake Titles!

You heard right!

My parents were talking with some of their friends and hour ago. One of them said that they know some people who'll assign themselves the title "Dr." when they're not really even close to being a doctor! Freaky stuff right? Why lie? Well it's this exotic idea that most of you might not understand...it's called showing off. They wanna be the coolest kids on the block so they make themselves the coolest kids on the block by calling themselves the coolest kids on the block. It's pretty low, like real bad. My Mother got pretty angry when she heard that. She was ranting about how those people don't know how much work it takes to earn the "Dr." title legitimately. I agree. Those sort of people get on my last nerve. They just don't care. So because being called "Dr." is the cool new thing they try to jump the bandwagon in the laziest way possible. Honestly it's too easy to earn a title here in Nigeria. Pretty much anyone can do it. You can even go to illegal places and they'll print out an awesome looking certificate with your signature on it. Don't get me wrong! Not everyone's a crook. A lot of the students and professors earn their titles the correct hard way. I think that most of these students earn even more what with all of the strikes they have to sit through. A four year course could be doubled because of a full university shutdown! But I still thought the fake title stuff was interesting so I just wanted to tell you all. :)

Signing off,
The Traveler

Ew

We were on the OAU campus the other day.

I'm participating in a workshop about National Instruments LabVIEW. It's a graphical proggraming language and environment. For all of you non-geeks out there it means that it computer stuff. Anyway while we were walking to the lesson there was this HORRIBLE smell. It was really really really bad. Super bad. I had no idea where it was coming from. Can you guess what it was? It was sewage. It had rained recently and the rainwater sloshed up all of the sewage below our feet. There are sewage vents throughout the building channeling the stench above ground! EPIC FAIL ARCHITECTS. EPIC. FAIL. Fail to the nth power. Yeah. That bad. The class itself was pretty good though. I'm going again at 2. It's really long, today it's from 2 to about 7! I'll be there for like half of the day, so I better bring my power cord for my laptop. Some of the poor students had nowhere to plug their computers in just like me. Unfortunately for them their laptops' batteries were really weak. They died within the first 20 minutes. :( At least it's getting me closer to my goal. Soon I'll be a coding extraordinaire!

Signing off,
The Traveler

How to Not Look Like a Jerk in Nigeria 2

I said I'd make another one and I wasn't lying. Here we go, we're starting with Rule #6!

Rule #6 - Pure Water is NOT Pure Water!!!

A Nigerian you've been talking with talks about how it's really hot today. You agree, and ask if you could get something to drink. The Nigerian brings back a small plastic sack. Inside is water. Whatever you do DON'T DRINK IT. UNLESS if you're from here! It's very important! This water is called Pure Water and it's anything but pure. The hundreds of companies that make this so called Pure Water suck dirty water out of a borehole and use a rudimentary filtration system. Most of the bacteria stays in there. Every time we've been forced to drink Pure Water since we've been here we've gotten sick. Now the reason I say it's okay for Nigerians to drink is because their bodies are used to it and they won't start puking. My Dad's Nigerian too but he can't drink it because he's lived in America for a while. Besides Pure Water didn't exist in Nigeria back in the 70s and 80s. Seriously this is something you should remember, unless you're planning on staying here for a long while and you're gonna have to drink Pure Water frequently. It's better just to get your body used to it if this is the case.

Rule #7 - Don't Buy Anything

This is a little bit of an exaggeration. What I mean to say is don't buy anything if you don't have a lot of money in your pocket. The thing is this: you're a foreigner. Nigerians can spot foreigners from five hundred miles away with their eyes blindfolded while hanging upside-down in a rapidly flowing river. If you hear somebody shout "oyibo!" at you then you know you've been spotted. Any minute now you're gonna be sniped down by horrible prices. In Nigeria a lot of products don't have any price tags on them. Because of this haggling is the benevolent overlord. People haggle everywhere; sometimes when Nigerians come to America and places like that they even miss it. I personally am not a huge fan of it but it's all about personal preference really. Anyway, because you're a foreigner, if you ask the owner for a shop for an item that should be 100 Naira, the price will skyrocket to 500 Naira. They think you have a lot of money. For example:

YOU: (points at a 50 centiliter bottle of Coke) How much is this?

OWNER: (smiles) 750 Naira!

YOU: (ignorant to the real price so you smile back) Thanks! (you slap the money down and you take your Coke)

NIGERIAN: (turns to owner after staring at this strange foreigner) Hey, my brother! (turns to you) Oyibo!

YOU: (confused so you just nod as you sip your coke)

NIGERIAN: (turns back to owner) Big Coca-Cola.

OWNER: 500 Naira.

YOU: (mouth drops)

You see what I mean? This sort of scene has happened to us a billion times. Of course in this example a 250 Naira price difference isn't much in currencies like the USD or the Euro (do a conversion in Wolfram|Alpha) but it's all about the principle. What if you're buying something much more expensive than a Coke? Like a lawnmower? So you gotta stick up for what you know is the right price!

Rule #8 - There are Code Words...

You go to a restaurant. You ask for the choice of food (nobody has menus). The Nigerian waiter says: "Egba, Amala, Rice." You know that Egba is not a dish, it's what you use to eat soups. You don't wanna eat egba plain so you go for the rice:

YOU: Um...(taps thigh) I guess I'll have rice.

WAITER: (turns away without another word)

After waiting for 300 hours your food arrives. You're surprised; you got a reddish colored rice which is extremely spicy!

YOU: Uh, I asked for rice.

WAITER: Yes.

YOU: (hesitates) You know...just regular rice.

WAITER: (glares) Yes.

YOU: I just wanted white rice.

WAITER: I got you rice! What else do you want me to do, now?!

YOU: (not wanting the waiter to scream again, you ask for some meat) What type of meat do you have?

WAITER: We have Meat.

YOU: Yes...but what types?

WAITER: Meat.

YOU: Yes, but--

WAITER: We have Meat, Meat!

YOU: (breaks down crying)

Guess what? It's not the waiter's fault; it's yours. You don't know the Nigerian code words! So therefore you were confusing yourself and the waiter. The first mistake you made was thinking that "Egba" meant "Egba by itself". "Egba" actually means "Egba with any soup we have ready at the moment." The second mistake you made was that you believed that "rice" meant "white rice". If you say to a Nigerian that you're going to have plain white rice for lunch they'll take you to an asylum. "Rice" has pretty much the same meaning as "Egba" which means that they'll give you whatever rice they have. The third mistake you made was misunderstanding "Meat" to mean "meat". You see where I'm going here? No you don't. "Meat" means "beef". Threw a curveball on that one, didn't I? There are a lot of different code words in Nigeria, I don't know them all and I've been here for two years! You'll learn them the more you talk to people.

Rule #9 - Cellphone Etiquette

When Nigerians talk to other Nigerians on the cellphone (nobody owns traditional phones) they have a unique way of doing it. In the future it might be named the "Are You There?" technique. When Nigerians believe that their phone signal is weak they will scream at the top of their lungs "ARE YOU THERE?!?!" to anybody on the other line. This isn't the peculiar part. What's interesting is that they take the cellphone away from their ear and bring the lower half to their mouth so they can scream with maximum loudness. So it's so ingrained in the culture even when their phone signal is good they scream into the phone and do the mouth tilt thing. So they'll go back and forth; when the person on the other line's talking, they put the cellphone back to their ear, but when it's their turn to talk, they put the phone up to their mouth and start hollering. This is considered the proper thing to do when you think that the phone signal is weak.

Something else that is very important in the Nigerian phone culture is what is called "flashing". Flashing is when you call the person and then hang up in less than a second, not giving the other person anytime to receive the call. Before I explain why they do this (it's not a prank call), let me explain what "credit" is. Credit it what everyone calls the minutes you put on your cell phone. You for example if you put 1,000 Naira credit on your cellphone your account has 1,000 Naira in it. Every minute you spend on the phone might suck like--I don't know--1 Naira? So that's how it works. Now here's why Flashing happens--the person who flashes is tight and they want you to spend your money on the conversation instead of them. Because some people don't want to spend up their credit they flash. You see whoever calls the other is the one who's credit is getting depleted. They started the conversation. So you flash someone else to tell them "hey, call me!". It's kinda selfish but that's how it works! It's also considered rude if you pick up lightning quick when someone's trying to flash. Cellphone culture...fascinating stuff.

Rule #10 - Don't Drive a Rusted Car From 20 Years Ago

If you do the police'll bully you so bad...Every checkpoint you pass they'll bother you asking you for money. All the police really want is money but the thing is that they pick on people who drive broken down cars because they're too afraid to harass the people driving those big bad SUVs. The reason why is because what if the person in that SUV is a governor? And that governor is their half-brother's mother's father's sister's brother's uncle's aunt's friend of a friend's acquaintance? Then because of that the governor will bully their family and their family will bully the police. They don't want that. So drive SUVs! Also it helps to look angry with the window rolled up--that really scares them! >:-D

Thanks for reading these 10 rules. This definitely won't be the end of them! But these ones are just as important as the last ones so READ BOTH.

Signing off,
The Traveler

P.S. It's my sister's birthday today! She's turning 10.

The Internet

Since being here because of us lacking in internet connectivity I have been able to realize how much we depend on the internet.
In America I did not think about internet connections. It was the last thing that I would have ever thought about. But amazingly I was accessing the internet all of the time. The connection part became almost invisible. Now though I notice our internet a lot because it usually doesn't work anyway. We're happy when we get 45 kilobytes per second! For those of you who don't know what that means, it means that Facebook can take ages to load. Fortunately the speeds have been improving over the months yet I still remember when we first came here and we could barely ever access the internet. And now Microsoft has released a public beta for their next version of Windows: Windows 8. I'm using it right now. And now that I'm using the new features I can see that in a few years from now the difference between the internet and real-life will blur until there will be no separation. Almost all of the features in this new Windows uses internet to retrieve information. Even the replacer of Windows Media Player, the Music App, uses the internet so you can buy songs right in your music library! What next?! And what's next for countries like Nigeria where getting access to a high speed internet connection is a very hard feat? Will they be left in the dust, not able to access information as quickly and easily as the rest of the world? Hopefully the internet connection will keep on getting faster or else...it won't be good.

Signing off,
The Traveler

How to Not Look Like a Jerk in Nigeria

From my 2 years of living here I've compiled a few DOs and DON'Ts of Nigerian culture and stuff like that. Let the information commence!

Rule 1-Whatever you do don't bring Fido

This rule is extremely important-if you're trying to meet a Nigerian don't bring a dog along with you! All that you'll see of him/her is the dust he/she kicked up after running away from you like a maniac. It's a very big fear! I bet that if you put a dog in your trunk and there was a police checkpoint up ahead of you the minute they hear that dog bark they'll keep five miles away from you. This is one of the most important rules. Not the most important but way up there.

Rule 2-Do Not Trash Talk Nigeria

This is a weird one. What you're probably saying is "why would I ever dream of insulting a Nigerian's country?" But lemme warn you: Nigerians are complainers. THEY can complain about their country but not you. They are a very prideful people and they will not take any Mr./Ms. Foreigner complaining crap. Here's an example. Let's say that you had just arrived in Ibadan from an airport in Lagos. A Nigerian was asking how your trip from Lagos was and you say politely that the road was a little bumpy but other than that it was fine:

NIGERIAN: You know! The roads--Ah, they are so bad--My God!

YOU: *Nods quietly in agreement*

NIGERIAN: Honestly. It is the government's fault; nothing gets done here! Our politicians are so corrupt.

YOU: Well my country (insert home country here)'s politics isn't so nice either.

NIGERIAN: No no no no--you do not know Nigeria yet! Nigeria-AH!-it's so corrupt--did you know that (Nigerian Politician) just took (Large sum) of Naira only (Recent date)?! Oh God...I don't know what will happen to this country...

YOU: Yeah, there is a lot more corruptness here than I'm used to I guess.

NIGERIAN: *Pauses* Do not insult my country in front of me. This is Nigeria, you're not in (your home country) anymore! This is Nigeria! Are you a Nigerian? You are not! I mean...

And so on. So Rule #2 is a huge one. DO NOT FORGET IT.

Rule 3-You Gotta Like Soccer

Actually not only do you have to like soccer you gotta like either Manchester Utd. or Arsenal or Chelsea. That's the end of it. Nigerians are crazy about those three teams. I have no idea why but yeah. You HAVE to like soccer. In America when things get dull you ask "so how about them Yankees?" In Nigeria you ask "so how about them Chelsea?" Got it? Good. I believe that if you wanted to you could scientifically prove that no matter what topic of conversation you start out with when talking with a Nigerian, you are going to end up talking about soccer. That's it. Oh one more thing-if you're from America you can't call soccer soccer. You have to say football okay? It's what the rest of the Earth says when talking about the sport. So what do they call Superbowl football then? They call it American football. After all of this information has sunk in go on to the next rule.

Rule 4-Exaggeration is Key

Okay here's a situation: you're watching TV after you just landed in Nigeria and you're in the Oriental Hotel. Suddenly with shock you remember that you're late for a very important meeting! You get dressed hurriedly and you're rushing out the door. Your cellphone starts ringing so you answer it. It's the person you're meeting on the line: "Hello? Where are you?" What do you do?

A: You say with an apologetic tone, "Sorry I'm going to be a little late!"

B: You hang up. Then you take the battery out of your cellphone.

C: You say as you put your underwear on: "I'm already here! Can't you see me waving at you?" Then you hang up and continue watching Mythbusters.

D: You ask the person if they could wait for just a smidge longer and if they can't then you'd just have to reschedule.

If you picked A then you haven't been in Nigeria long enough. If you picked D then you just need to go back to wherever you came from. If you picked B that's an okay move--but the best is C. C is your greatest choice because Nigerians love doing this. If somebody asks you where you are you just say "I'm coming" then continue your 8 hour nap. No harm done because the thing is, is that the Nigerian that your supposed to be meeting up with would do the same thing to you so they kind of don't mind. Speaking of being late that brings us to the last rule for now, rule number 5:

Rule 5-Set Your Mind to Nigerian Time

If you don't set your mind on Nigerian Time you will not be able to survive. It is impossible to do anything productive in Nigeria without being on Nigerian time. I made a simple formula so you know what Nigerian time is: an event (variable e) is multiplied by how important it is (variable i) to give you the excess time (variable t). So add t to the real time (variable r) and you get the Nigerian Time (variable n). So:

t + r = n

(e + i) = t

Here's a for the base values that e can be:

Birthday Party = e = 30 minutes
Wedding = e = 1 hour
Presentation = e = 1 hour and 30 minutes

Here's an example of the formula in action. You know that your friend's Nigerian Time birthday is going to start at around 12:00 PM. She's a rather popular person and a lot of people are coming. Her importance is high. Therefore:

(30 + 30) = 1 hour

1 hour + 12:00 PM = 1:00 PM

You should set out for your friend's birthday party at around 12:55. Now this is extremely timely for Nigerian standards. Sometimes you need to tweak the values of i and e but usually the result time is at least r + 1 hour. In normal English though what I mean is that no matter what you do come to a Nigerian Time event one hour late because you'll be early. Paradoxical Paradox!!!

That's all I have for now but this was really fun for me to write up. Who knows; maybe I'll make another soon!

Signing off,
The Traveler

Rock Cakes are Rocky

My birthday's coming up soon.

It's on April 28th. My sister's is April 27th. She's four years younger than me...paradoxical paradox. But anyway we're having a joint birthday party. We're having it at this restaurant in Osogbo called Ostrich Bakery with breads muffins and all of that sort of stuff. But what I really want from them is a birthday cake. Problem is though is that we're afraid. You see, most of the cakes that we've had here in Nigeria are so crappy it's unbelievable. I must have made a post about that somewhere. Seriously though they are bad. About two years ago my Dad had gotten somebody to bake a chocolate cake for my Mom's birthday. He would've done it himself but we didn't and still don't have a working oven. So the place he went to get it done was on OAU, in the department that deals with baking and chemistry and all that stuff. The woman that was making it for us promised us that the chocolate cake would be moist and delicious. She said she knew baking like the back of her hand! So we were super happy when we took the cake back home and saw how great the icing looked and all that junk. So we were gonna let my Mom cut the cake. At first we thought she was playing; she kept trying to push the knife through the cake. My Dad had to go and push as hard as he could for it finally to give way. That was when we knew something was wrong. I didn't have any of it but my family said it tasted something like hard rock earth. Yeah. So we're not taking chances anymore. Before we agreed to anything this time we asked for a sample of one of their cakes at the Ostrich Bakery. The man who we were talking to assured us that this cake is a lot softer than the normal Nigerian ones. We tried it and we wondered if Nigerians had a sense of taste. :( Luckily we found another type which is somewhat better, so we're telling the Ostrich Bakery people to make that. What's with the rock cakes?!

Signing off,
The Traveler

MIE BLAK KADZ R IVYLLL

Translation: My black cat are evil.

WAIT! DON'T SPAM ME W/ HATE STUFF YET! What I mean to say is that every Nigerian says that my black kittens are evil. I just changed the "your" part so I could catch you guys' attention. :) But seriously, I'm pretty much sick of this. All they do is complain about how black cats the Devil and all that. One of them even said we should have gotten white cats instead. I call that stupidness. They think that all of these fears of black cats are just a part of their ancient culture and tradition. IT'S NOT. I did some background research and discovered that actually, in their Origin stories about the world, the Yoruba main God's son came down to the Earth. He brought a chicken to make land, sand for the land, and a BLACK CAT for FRIENDLY COMPANY. In the Yoruba religion animals can talk, and the black cat was completely nice. I think it's really sad that they have their own stories twisted. All of this black cat junk came from Europeans. It started with some Pope and then it skyrocketed since that. Even here. I see it as kind of racial self-hatred as well. Look at it this way: the Nigerian who said we should have gotten another type of cat had at first just said she was afraid of our black cat. That's not as bad, but why was that she said that we should have gotten specifically a white cat instead? To them, white is right. I seriously don't believe in that. White is not right. Neither is any other ethnicity. We are all Homo Sapiens. This is a problem not only in Nigeria but all over the world. We seriously need to deal with this. If we don't, we'll all be thinking somebody is better than another. That's not cool AT ALL. D:

Signing off,
The Traveler

Maybe I'm Just Outta the Loop But...

...am I the only person who didn't know that plantains are giant leaves?

My parents own a plantain farm in the BACKYARD backyard, and I went back there today with my Dad to go and prune the plants or whatever it's called when you chop off the dead parts. Plantains look weak to me, IMO. They're just tall stalks with a lot of brown dead skins covering them. A lot of their leaves shrivel up and die and just hang off of them. And even the healthy leaves look sorta wither-ishy. My Dad says they're really really hardy. He just says we gotta do all this chopping off all the dead parts stuff because we want the biggest fruit we can get from them. I'm pretty excited but already I'm a bit disappointed. About a year ago when we had the chicken farm (I posted about that, search for chicken farm) I thought we would have so much chicken on the dinner table I wouldn't know what to do with myself. This was such an untrue moment, it was absolutely unbelievable. Instead of getting chicken galore we had to watch all of it get sold to the customers. We probably ate maybe seven out of the hundreds of darn chickens that we were selling to everyone else! I think it's gonna be another one of those situations when the plantains start bearing fruit. I love plantain. I love fried plantain (dodo), I love plantains made into chips (ibekere). I love it ALL. But unfortunately for me the rest of the country does as well. :0 So what am I supposed to do? I'm just gonna have to be tortured and watch all of the plump fruits be sold to a whole bunch of people I don't even know. Or maybe I'll wait until the minute the plantains are ripe, snatch them all up, fry in them in the middle of the night, and eat them all selfishly. And then the next day I'll probably throw up for three hours straight from grease overload. I might have to reboot myself after that. NOT COOL.


Signing off,
The Traveler

Years

It's been a very long time since we left for Nigeria.

I remember back when I was 11 and I was so excited about coming. For some reason back then when I googled to my heart's content about Nigeria I could never get any good information about the country. Right now though, if I google "Nigeria" I get way more stuff than I could ever want. That's strange. I seriously can't believe that it's been...over two years?...since we came here. It's felt like forever. Not in a bad way, but not in a good way either. But at the same time, it seems like time is speeding up too fast, that it's just rocketing away. I might be confusing a few people, but I don't mean to; that's the best way for me to describe it. Look at how much stuff I've done here, and it such a short span of time! I traveled to Abu Dhabi, met new people, did all sorts of stuff. I sort of wonder where I would be in my life if I hadn't come here either. What would have happened if I had spent the last two years back in Durham, in North Carolina? Would I have seen and done so many new things? I bet not. This might sound extremely weird: I kind of miss the sort of things that I wouldn't have even noticed if I were in America. Like having a nice high-pressure shower for a change. Or being able to just walk down the street to the nearest electronics store and buy whatever I need. And socializing with friends who were raised in the same culture that I've been. Don't get me wrong, I'm super glad I came here because I've seen a lot of awesome stuff. I also believe that if I had never come here, then I don't think that I would've ever gotten the idea for L I N E S, the webcomic which I'm about to start publishing soon. I think a lot of things wouldn't have happened. Like I would have never gotten Shep, Night, or Harry Potter of course. And we would have never even have thought of the possibility of acquiring a few pet goats if we were in the USA. It's weird. It's like I like it here and I'm grateful for all the amazing experiences I had, but I wanna go home and experience the boring stuff at the same time. That doesn't make any sense to me. I want to experience going to the grocery store, and laughing with my friends, and just goofing off. I'm confusing myself.

Signing off,
The Traveler

The Dog. He's Big.

Ok, the title's not accurate.

It's more like: "AH! YOUR DOG IS TOO FRIGGIN BIG! HE COULD CHOP MY HEAD OFF!!!" Yeah, that's more like it. The exclamations in capital letters are what Nigerians usually say when they stroll into the yard and see Shep. I posted a few pics of him about...forever ago. He's grown. A lot. When I mean a lot, I mean "people who are afraid of dogs, don't try to imagine what he looks like" a lot. Like bigger than big itself. Bigger than...I can't tell you how big. Ok. I've exaggerated. But on a serious note here, Nigerians are really afraid of dogs for reasons that I can not understand. It's like they have some sort of repulsion to them. And they'll be all like "HAHA YOU CAN'T GET ME" but for example if Shep was let loose in the yard then they'd be screaming their butts off. My Dad claims humorously that if the police tried to search your car and you had a    German Shepherd (or Alsatian if you're British) in the trunk then they'd just let you go right on your way. Even with all of their machine guns and all that. I don't know what happened. It's not that every Nigerian doesn't own a dog. There are quite a few who do. There's actually this breed of local dog which we have named the Local Dog breed. Yes, I know, we put a lot of effort into our names for things. The problem is though is that most Nigerians beat their dogs all the time :(. Positive reinforcement hasn't come to Nigeria yet! There was actually this one girl who I met who said she wanted a dog so I was all like "Ok" and then she looked all confused when I said that I'd be back after I walked my dog and she asked me "Why do you do that?" This is the girl who wants a dog. Go figure that one out. Then tell me. It'll save me the trouble.

Signing off,
The Traveler

Seasons are Confused

Yeah. The Earth's finally lost it, after all these decades of trying.

It can't decide if it wants it to be Rainy season or Dry season. Every few days it'll rain. But then, between those times, it's super dry and hot. So what is it? When it rains, it rains like a hurricane. A roof that we had built which was pinned down by NAILS splintered off of the wooden columns and flew into the yard like nothing! That's how strong these rains can get. Almost immediately I thought that it was Rainy Season after this. My Dad said no, though; "There's always a mid-Dry Season rain." But then, only two days ago, it was raining again!!! It doesn't make any sense. I don't know what to think. Maybe it's global warming? True. But perhaps it's just that Rainy Season's come early. But wouldn't that be global warming as well? I say that the seasons are getting all messed up. Because I know it's not just here that it's like this. In America, the winter wasn't so cold. If it's like this now, what'll happen a few years from now? What sort of conditions, what sort of world would we be residing in? Those are the questions that I'm beginning to ask. That, and how Terraria is so addicting. :P

Signing off,
The Traveler

Lagos in a Day Again

Yeah it's sooo late right now,

But we came back from going to Lagos at six in the afternoon. We left at six in the morning. We did it take so long? Why were we even going in the FIRST DARN PLACE? Well...we need car parts. One thing about Nigeria is that it isn't a very modern-car friendly type of place. So even though all these rich people are buying Lambourghinis and McLarens and Porsches, the problem is is that nobody knows how to fix those type of cars here. Why you would bring one of them over in the first place boggles me; you should see the conditions of the roads. A sports car's worst nightmare. So we had a Porsche come over to get fixed so we had to go all the way to Lagos and back in one DAY. And even with all of that work, guess what? The parts that we got were the wrong ones!!! See, that's the other problem; nothing is standardized here so you never know what you're gonna get. It's a pretty big problem. So we're always dealing with "OH-NO THIS IS THE WRONG FRIGGIN' PART WHAT THE HECK ARE WE GONNA DO" type of situations. Seriously, it's not the funny. At all. We lose money and we really are powerless to stop losing money. :( Well, no use in complaining, right? Even with all of that I still had a fun time in Lagos. We went and ate at an Indian restaurant! Might not sound like much but that's probably the only Indian restaurant in the whole country. :D So, longer post tomorrow,

Signing off,
The Traveler

Strike Ended

The strike ended like a week ago,

I've been super busy trying to code my new video game and making some new comic strips and STOPPING A THIEF (more on this later), but here's the thing: the strike came and went. And NOTHING changed. At all. The fuel subsidy wasn't brought back, and people didn't really get what they wanted. Everyone thought that this was it: the end of corruption in Nigeria as the rebels overthrew the Government. But then like only a few days after the whole thing started suddenly, the strikers, the noble rebels, say "okay. That's it. We're done. Everyone, we're gonna give in so go and work for the Government that we were so against a few days ago." I know, makes no sense, right? Well, my Dad believes that the rebels who were so against the corruption, the gas, everything actually got paid off by the Government to shut up and be subservient. It was pretty sad, and honestly I really can't take the public Nigerian force very seriously anymore. When I tell this to other Nigerians who were so charged up a couple of seconds ago they just laugh and shrug and say, "oh well! We'll survive!" No, I think it's a more serious issue than just shrugging the whole thing off. I'm really beginning to think that now there will be even more corruption and stealing from the public because now the Government knows that Nigerians aren't going to do anything to stop them! So in other words, Nigerians might have lost the little power that they had once had just because they decided to give in. Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's going to come a day when Nigeria is once again for the hundredth time forced under new government (this has happened a lot in the past 50 years of the country). My Dad said things didn't used to be like this, that the people had a lot more power, that the places were cleaner, that even Naira had twice more value than United States Dollars. I think that these "golden years" was actually the country coasting off of the wealth and scraps that the British nation left behind when Nigeria became an independent country. I really don't wanna think that, I kinda want to believe that old Nigeria would be like how my Dad describes it even if Britain hadn't colonized it. I don't know. I really don't. But, there's still (hopefully) a long, loong way to go for this country. It's only been around for 50 years! A lot of empires started badly, and then steadied out. Worse case scenario, there's going to come a time when this country is so absolutely horrible that the people will not take it anymore, and they will revolt angrily. They're already angry, but not angry enough, even though their politicians steal money from their pockets, become multibillionaires (in Naira), go overseas to the US and stay there while their homeland is crumbling. It's gotten to a point when if you're talking about a governor, you don't say, "so what have they done for the country?" You say, "so how much have they stolen?" Here's the really sad part: most Nigerians complain complain complain about this, but I'll tell you something; if they were in the same position as the stealing politicians they would do the EXACT. SAME. THING. Because everyone wants to be like that, everyone wants to have power and money like this crazy billionaires have. To tell you how bad it gets, some politicians get so rich they honestly don't know what to do with the money. I've heard of one who sent their kids or something in the USA and let them take private jet rides. And then they'll be taking pictures of themselves waving bundles full of hundred dollar bills in the camera. They even do their weekend shopping in Dubai, more than 3 countries away! And they barely invest it in research organizations or anything like that. They don't do anything worthwhile with it! I mean, you can only buy so many Lamborghinis. It's absolutely ridiculous, and the most maddening part is that nobody does anything to stop it.

Signing off,
The Traveler

The Strike

The whole nation's on strike,

And we are completely fine. Thanks for asking. The whole of Nigeria is completely shut down! Every shop, restaurant, everything is closed indefinitely until the strike is over. The problem is that the President decided to take away fuel subsidies. Lemme explain. For a while Nigeria's gas prices have stayed around a steady-ish 65 Naira. The original price of the gas is much higher, so the government pays for most of it so that the people can afford it. But the problem now is that Nigeria's broke like every other country in the world so they can't afford to pay for part of the gas. So now, the gas price has risen to 156 Naira. Riots and everything are running crazy in the streets of Lagos and Ibadan, but not in Ife! We're safe. But it's getting really bad. People are beginning to get violent, and mobs and thieves are coming out and taking advantage of the few people on the street. Shops are getting robbed all over the place, and the police are trying to handle the situation but are pretty much failing. It's getting so bad, that a senator's wife was driving to Abuja with an armed entourage and everything and the rioters and thugs completely ripped apart the car and stopped her from going anywhere. The reason why people are fighting used to be because of the fuel subsidy removal, but now it's become more of a "we're tired of the corruption in the government" sorta thing. The President can't back down with his decision anymore either. The reason is because if he does then nobody will listen to him anymore. Everybody will just say if he tries to pass anything else, "you're too weak! If we just riot again, you'll fold and we'll do whatever we want." So the situations is just bad. We have to stay in the house in the daytime and then go about after 5:00 because the riots and stuff happen between 8:00 and 5:00. They're getting really violent in Lagos and Ibadan. Don't worry, we're fine.

Signing off,
The Traveler

Monkeys!

You heard right,

We saw tons of them at this sacred forest in Osogbo. You don't see monkeys anywhere else in Nigeria. I've been here for two years now and this is the first time that I've ever seen any in Nigeria. They were all eating and relaxing everywhere, and the people that worked there were just walking by them like nothing. Unlike in zoos, these monkeys are allowed to go wherever they want! Crazy, right? Some are just lounging around, eating fruits from a bag and nobody blinks an eye. Except us. Of course. The reason why there were so many of them everywhere is because they're considered sacred in that forest so you better not kill them, or you might find yourself in your own funeral too soon. And there were so many shrines there. We went on a trail, and on it were all of these beautiful clay statues, and they twisted and turned and melded with each other. There are a few cottages, too that were like the statues except house version. And there was this super creepy suspension bridge that looked like it was about to fall at any second. We went over it, cuz it was the only way to cross a river. The river is actually the centerpiece of the whole place, as it's the sacred river that one of the Yoruba Goddesses is the spirit of. So there were a lot of offerings of food in front of the statues near the river, to the goddess. I can't remember her name right now, but I'll edit this post when I figure it out. Like I was saying, we went on a small forest trail, but it was a pretty short one. The reason is because even though there's a lot of space dedicated to the forest, it's around the river, not in the forests themselves. And we took a trail that went a little into the forest and ended there. We almost walked into somebody's farmland before we realized!

Signing off,
The Traveler