More Excellent Woodwork

Well I have not posted anything in a while, but it is really because I have been extremely busy. Things have been very hectic at work, a few weeks ago I asked one of my colleagues if they knew what the beginning of a nervous breakdown felt like! I wanted to make sure I could identify it when it happened.

Putting all that aside, today we managed to take a break and go out to the market. Our intent was just to go out an pick up a few final things for Christmas presents before we come back to the states for vacation, but we happened to find something for us as well. It just so happens our favorite wood carver had a treat for us. He very often manages to have things that are different than everyone else and today was no exception.



Segun said that his father carved this. It is made of one solid piece of king ebony (very solid, this thing is heavy!) and it is a really nice piece. I think the detail is really nice and it was something that really stood out.



I love the wonderful things that we find here. Josie is not sure how some of our African things are going to be used when we move from Nigeria, but I really like them. One day I hope to have a study where I can have neat things like this that I have collected from all over the world.

CREEPY

OK this is just weird! Julia usually hangs around our flat on the weekends, and since I have to stay late at the church they ride with another person to and from church. When I got back to the flat on Sunday they had both changed into lounging clothes.



Now this would not be out of the ordinary at all, but when I looked closer I realized that the shirts they were wearing went together a bit too well.




Now this was completely unplanned, they both came out after changing and realized what they had done. It is bad enough that Josie and Julia act like sisters, but this is really just creepy!

The Tough Hike

I want to share some pictures from the toughest day of hiking in the Pyrenees. Out of the five days of hiking this one was by far the hardest for me. It was also the most fun. I don’t remember the name of the place, but the ridge you see in the back of all the pictures is part of the border between France and Spain.


This is the view from where we got out of the mini-bus to start our walk. You can see the beautiful waterfall in the distance. What you don’t realize right away is that those tiny little dots you can just barely see on the trail are people! I kept taking pictures as we got closer and the waterfall just kept getting bigger and bigger, the distance was very deceiving.


This picture gives you a little bit of an idea as far as scale, if you compare the people in the foreground with the tiny dots on the trail near the waterfall. This is also a good view of the seasonal waterfall locations: see the black streaks on the rock off to the right of the main falls, during spring thaw each one of those marks is the location of a waterfall.


There’s Josie, with a hiking pole in each hand working her way up the trail. I took this picture from the top of a boulder that was probably about 9 feet high, 20 feet long, and 15 feet wide. I love this kind of terrain; boulder strewn fields are some of my favorite places to play around. I love scaling the boulders and jumping from rock to rock. When I was growing up Mom always told me I acted like I was part mountain goat, I guess with that and her assertions that I was part monkey I’m wondering what that says about my Mother….LOL I know I will pay for that one.


As you get closer to the waterfall the trail gets harder. The path seems to get steeper with every step. Again in this picture you have a couple people in the foreground and if you look hard you can see tiny people on the trail. At least at this point they actually looked like people and not just little dots.


The closer I got to the waterfall, the more I started feeling like I was in one of those endless hallways, where you can walk and walk but you don’t seem to get anywhere. The sheer size of the waterfall was really amazing.


This picture really does not do the waterfall justice since there is no sense of scale, but it was just such a beautiful sight.


Here is a picture of me in front of the waterfall. See that look on my face, if that looks like pain it’s because IT IS!!! The last part of the climb was incredibly steep, only our guide, Rob and I went all the way to the waterfall. It hurt to do it, but I could not hike all that way and then not go to the waterfall.


This is not the best picture, but it does give an idea of how steep the final part of the trail is. You can also see that the trail disappears on this final climb. Instead you just have one huge scree pile, so your footing is always fairly tenuous. If you look really hard in this picture you will see a small white dot down where the trail turns, that is Josie.


I zoomed in as much as my little camera would and if you look in the middle of the picture on the right hand side you can see Josie standing there in a white t-shirt. Also if you look at the way people are going back down toward the trail it shows you how hard this terrain was. Instead of gingerly walking down picking each step and still sliding I decided to go down differently. I RAN! I just zigzagged down the hill angling toward large rocks that I knew I could used to stop myself if I had to. I think the other people thought I was nuts, and I know Josie did not appreciate it, but I knew what I was doing. Nobody ever believes me when I tell them that, I have no idea why!

This was not the prettiest hike we went on, but it was definitely the most fun for me, I really enjoyed it!

Soaring with the birds

While we were in Bareges, France we took one day off from hiking and went paragliding. It was something I had been looking forward to for several months. Since Josie and I had never done it before we decided to try a tandem jump with the instructor. The “instructors” picked us up in Bareges and drove us up to the top of the Bareges Tourmalet at the end of the valley. The drive up the side of the valley was much more dangerous than the flight could possibly be, it was easy to tell why these guys were paragliders and not professional drivers! Josie was white-knuckled!

Just a note: the first two pictures are not either one of us, just someone else that was out that day. Unfortunately I did not get my camera out before we took off and could not get to it while in the air.


Once we got to the top we checked the wind, it was no good on the Bareges side of the peak so we got back in the van and drove across the ridge to the other side. Once we got over there we loaded up with gear and hiked a little further up. The instructors prepped the parachutes and then we got strapped in. I will let Josie tell you what happened to her if she wants, although I’ll give you a big hint later on! Once we were strapped in and the wind was right Patrick (the instructor I flew with) kited the chute and we started walking down the hill. Once the chute caught the air it pulled us back hard, at this point it was time to run off the side of the mountain.



Once we were airborne it was absolutely phenomenal. Josie and the other instructor had taken off at the same time, and I could see them as they circled off to try and gain some height. The day was beautiful and the air was clear, I think there were 2 clouds in the sky. The only unfortunate part of the whole thing was that we were not able to find any major thermals, so the flights did not last as long as I had hoped they would, but it was still very much worth it. During the flight we descended about 800 meters. When we got to the landing area the only thing left to do was to quite literally “hit the ground running”. As you can see from the picture below Josie evidently runs different than other people….LOL

Good Friends

I have been promising pictures for quite some time, so now I have decided to deliver on that promise. I want to show you some of my good friends from Nigeria. Many of the people in the pictures are people I met at work, I don't have a lot of pictures of people from church; I will try for those in the future. About two months ago several of us met up at a restaurant here called Barcellos. We had a great time and just sat around and talked.



OK so Josie kind of stands out in the picture! Across the table from Josie is Ayo. Next to him is Duala, and the tall guy on the end is Gbenga (and trust me the guy is tall, if we stand around and talk for too long my neck hurts from looking up!). The dapper looking fellow in the suit is Fawaz. We were really having a great time, I'm sure the other people in the restaurant thought we were crazy, we were loud and laughing and just generally enjoying ourselves. We need to do it again, soon!

Unfortunately not everyone that was invited that night was able to make it.

This is Titi, and I love this picture because I think it really captures her personality. Titi is just over 4 feet (in heels!) worth of attitude! I love her to death, and we tease each other incessantly. Her favorite phrase when she talks to me is "You know, I really don't like you". Titi and most of the others in the pictures, work for contract companies that have come in to do work on our project. Titi had the misfortune of getting stuck in a desk by me for several months (and she may never fully recover!).

This is Eyiuche, she works for the same company as Titi. For the most part she worked upstairs, but she would come down and chat regularly. They have finished their projects, and so they are not around the office anymore; it has gotten a lot less fun since they left though. Eyiuche ,another Titi (their boss), and I had a long discussion one day as they were telling me about how much it would cost me to pay the "dowry" for my second wife. Not that I'm planning on having one, I can barely handle the one I have, but the discussion was quite hilarious. I will have to tell that whole story some other time.

Two other people that were not at our little gathering were Okechi and Femi, they definitely qualify as good friends and I would not want to leave them out of this post, I just don't have pictures of them.

This is our friend Victoria, we met her at church. Victoria was a student in Lagos at the Nigerian Law School. She was never very fond of Lagos though, she is originally from Abuja and she always tells us how much better Abuja is. She finished her schooling and I think has now gone off to BYU for a while. We love Victoria and we miss her.



OK I just wanted to share some of my friends here with everyone back home. As always I will keep trying to get more pictures to post.

Irony

OK so here is an ironic situation. I started this blog because I thought that I would keep it up-to-date better than Josie was doing on hers, well I think we have now proven that I am just as bad (or worse) at not updating my blog. I could give all sorts of excuses, but then someone would just make fun of those, so I will solemnly shoulder the responsibility.

Now on to the update:

Things have been pretty busy around here. Josie and I left Nigeria for an interim leave in France during the first part of September. We spent a week in the small village of Bareges. It was absolutely beautiful. We spent several of the days hiking in the mountains, we averaged about 10km per day. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. I will have to get pictures from Josie so I can post them, we loaded all of them on her laptop while we were in France.

After Bareges we went to Paris for three days. Originally we were supposed to fly directly back to Lagos after we were done in Bareges, but when we were making the plans we could not get a flight back to Nigeria for three days. (Begin sarcasm) So we bit the bullet and struggled through three full days in Paris....it was awful (end sarcasm). The weather was really nice and we got to see a lot of the sights in Paris, we did the standard touristy things just so we could say we had. We went to the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa, which is quite a small painting to have such a big deal made out of it! We toured the Egyptian artifacts and also an exhibit from Mesopotamia, it was really cool.

Every since we got back I have been trying to catch up. A week and a half ago I was called as the First Councilor in the Bishopric at church, for those that are LDS that are reading this try to control your shock and laughter! It came as a bit of a surprise, but we have a really neat Bishop and I am really enjoying working with him.

I think I am going to leave it at that for right now, I do have some photos to get posted, and if I don't forget I will put them on tomorrow.

Signing off
Binky the Slacker

Sorry, I'm a slacker

OK I will just start by saying sorry I haven't posted in a while. Josie got back to Lagos on August 2nd (she was supposed to be in on the 1st, but I'll tell you about that in a minute) and since she got back things have been a little busier. Josie was scheduled to fly in to Lagos on Aug 1st, but she hit a bit of a snag at the start of her trip back. She was flying from Tulsa to Memphis and the flight was delayed, causing her to miss her connection to Amsterdam. After she missed her connection she found out that the flights for the next several days were booked up, but they were nice enough to put her up in a hotel for the night and then switch her to a different airline routing her through Paris instead. I was just happy she finally made it back. I decided that five weeks without her here was about 4 1/2 weeks too long!

She had a great time while she was gone, which is evidenced by her blog. I will try and get some pictures posted in the next few days of several of the things that have happened since she got back. That is all for now, but I will try to get something else on here in the next couple days.

The Simplicity of Water

I don't have any new pictures to show today, but I just want to write about a few experiences I have had recently.

The first actually happened a few weeks back, but since I have not yet written it, I thought it would be good to do so. Here in Nigeria potable water is one of the major focuses of everyday life. That statement may seem pretty obvious; of course drinkable water is something we all need to have. The interesting thing in Nigeria is what people have to go through to get it. Due to the generally poor infrastructure available in Lagos, water is not something that people here can take for granted. Drinking water is purchased at every level of Nigerian society. One of the most common delivery methods you is 1 liter plastic pouches of water. These are just a sealed plastic bag filled with drinkable water, and the standard cost for a bag is 5 Naira about 4 cents, but when you consider that people on the street tend to live on less than a dollar a day this is a fairly significant cost. I will try to get me driver to buy a couple of these so I can take a picture later. There is no spout on the bag, you just chew of a corner and drink.

Since clean water is such a problem, people will do some interesting things to provide water for their needs. Many companies have their own water treatment facilities, in this environment it is a necessity. If a facility does not have the room for the treatment equipment, they can have water delivered. One of the companies here that has several locations has a main water treatment facility and they truck water to their other offices. They use tanker trucks for this purpose, and since they are just hauling water, most of them don't worry too much about leaks. One day several weeks ago I saw a young boy who could not have been more than 6 years old, crawling under one of these tankers to fill up a bucket of water from the leaking tank. I found this to be a very hard thing to digest. Just to watch what people here have to do to get the basics is pretty staggering.

I had another incident this week that fit into this same category and I honestly found myself choking back tears. There is a bridge that I pass under everyday on my way to work and on my way home; there are always people who live under or near the bridge begging from the cars that pass. Normally you just look away (I know this sounds heartless, but it is necessary) but sometimes you see things that are very difficult to ignore. While we were stuck in traffic near the bridge a young girl, no older than 10, with a baby strapped to her back was begging at my window. It was raining and I was doing my best to focus my attention elsewhere. As she walked away she swiped her hand down the hood of my car and then drank the water from her hand. This was one of the hardest moments that I have had related to beggars since I came to Lagos. The hardest moment is a story I will save for another time. When I see what people here, especially children, have to go through just to get through a day it is very eye opening. This is life in a developing country.

Bachelor Chow

Okay, this post is specifically for my wife and my mother. I want you both to know that even when I am left alone, I’m still eating well and I’ve only gone to restaurants a few times. Tonight I made meatballs! Yes Josie, that means I had to stick my hands in the ground beef to do it! (I have a minor issue when it comes to ground beef, don't know what it is, I can deal with other meat with no problem but ground beef just gets to me)



I looked at the recipe in the cookbook, but then I made it up myself! I didn’t measure anything and put whatever I thought would taste good in them that should make my dad proud! The only thing that I did by the recipe was the actual cooking time and temperature. Then I cooked up some rice and a sauce that I also made up on the fly. Here is the final result!



It turned out pretty well too! I think it will taste even better tomorrow as left-overs!

New Purchase

I went to Lekki market this morning with my boss and his wife. They wanted to go today because they are leaving Lagos this coming Friday, so they were shopping for various items to take with them. They invited me and since my social schedule just happened to have an opening I decided I would go along.

First let me just describe the experience: Lekki market is an open air market, basically what we would call a flea market back in the US. Driving to Lekki market you go over some pretty awful roads, today the road was a huge muddy mess! As you get close to the market boys of all ages will start running next to your car. They do this because they want you to choose them as your "porter" while you are at the market. It is common practice to choose one of these boys right after getting out of your car, if you don't choose one a whole group will follow you around until you do. So when you get out of your car there are usually anywhere from 15 to 30 boys all yelling out their names "You remember me, I'm your fist boy, choose (Insert name here)" and various other phrases to get your attention. When Josie and I go we usually use Simon and most of the boys know this, but Simon is not always around early when Josie and I go. So we will always have someone offer to go get him for us, just so they can come back and tell us he is not around in the hope we will use them instead. This is a normal game. Today Simon was not around so I chose one of the boys that was keeping his distance and was not swarming around me, his name was David.

After you get through the "porter selection process" it is time to move on into the market. The market has everything from foodstuffs to Ivory, paintings, carvings, bronze, and jewelry. You can find many things, but for me the hard part is finding the things that are unique. Many of the stalls sell very similar things and you can see the same "different" or "one of a kind" item several times along the way.

Today I happened across a couple of the more unique items, I passed up one of them because I was not sure if Josie would like it, but the other was a very nicely made box, and I was very impressed by it.



Segun is the name of the person who made this, and I looked at pictures of some of his other work, it was very nice. We have several items made by a different artist and we like them, but I have also promised Segun that I would check back with him as well.



I just really felt that the box had a very good level of detail, and it was a style I have not seen a lot of here. Most of the carvings here are people and animals, and I thought the very simple flower motif was very nice.



It has very clean lines and seems to be constructed very well. Segun also had some pictures of things that were a lot less ornamental that the items we have typically bought from our other artist. I think Josie would really like some of his things, and I promised I would bring Josie back when she returned so she could see his pictures.



It was not very expensive, so I did not even worry too much about bargaining much on the price. I am willing to pay a little more when I feel that the work is good quality.

This was the only item I purchased today, much to the disappointment of many shopkeepers who are all evidently "My friend". I have one rule when I go to various markets like this in Lagos, anyone who grabs me automatically loses my business. People will walk over and grab your arm and lead you to their shop. Since this was my only purchase my "porter" had it pretty easy, but he was willing to go get me a cold drink or a beer anytime I wanted. The rest of the time I just walked around, I found some things that I like, but I'm going to wait until Josie gets back. If I buy something she doesn't like it will just end up in a closet! She has already explained to me that I arranged some of the furniture incorrectly in the pictures I posted a few days ago. Anyway, just wanted to share some of my day today and now I think I'll head to the squash court for some more punishment.

The New Flat

Although I don't have a permanent internet link installed yet in the new flat (I'm using a wireless broadband router that one of the guys at the office had) I wanted to give everyone a chance to see the new flat. This includes Josie; she went on vacation a few days before I moved over here.



This is the living room with all the furniture that Josie picked out. The facilities folks here made Josie's list the standard, so I think most of the flats got the same (or close to the same) items.


Here is the sitting room, and I just realized from looking at the picture that the painting is crooked.

Next is the dining room



Here is a shot across the sitting room. You can see the chests that we had made here.



And to go with the chests here is a picture of the entertainment cabinet made by the same person we had build the chests. The company contracted him to make 5 of these.




Lastly, just a couple pictures from the balcony. This is the view out to the east.



And the pool

Sorry for the delay

Alright, first I have to apologize, I moved into the new flat two weeks ago and as of yet still don't have Internet access at home so I haven't posted much this month. With Josie gone on vacation things have been relatively slow here. I am learning to play squash and have tried out our pool at the new complex (which is very nice). I walk down to the office every evening and call Josie to check on her, other than that there is not a lot going on. I am waiting to get my new little camera that Josie will be bringing back with her in two weeks so that I can take more pictures. I want to start showing everyone how the "go slow store" works.

In the meantime our Steward is taking good care of me, making sure my laundry is done and ironed so I don't walk out of the house looking like a slob. She had a bit of a crisis one day and called me, she wanted to change the sheets on the bed but I had not bought an iron! Now this may make sense to some, but it took me a minute, I laughed when I realized that Grace would not put sheets on the bed unless she had ironed them first.

Anyway I just wanted to give you all an update. Hopefully the Internet will be working at the flat this week, then I will take some pictures around the flat so everyone, including Josie, can see the new place.

Church Adventure

A couple of weeks ago I sent an email out to my family documenting a very exciting Sunday at church. I now have pictures to go with the story, and so I will repeat the story this time with visual aids!

The building we go to church in here is actually just an old house and so we make the best of the spaces available. Three weeks ago when I ended my class I came out of the room to find two men trying to open the door to the Primary (children 11 and under) classroom. One of the men was holding the door handle in his hand; it had broken off when they tried to open the door. This particular door is a security door and as you can see from the picture, it is about three inches thick.



It is also important to note that there is not another exit from this particular room. It is on the second floor so you can’t just crawl out a window either. After seeing the situation I realized that there were about 20-25 young children and several adult women trapped in this room. I quickly joined in the efforts to open the door. The door was not locked, but the handle would not turn, and since this is a security door the mechanism is all enclosed. After working on the outside of the door for a while I decided to see if there was any way to get into the room from the outside. I went downstairs and walked around the building looking for a way to get up to the second floor.

This was my only option:



The ladder you see in the picture was not there at the time, and even if it was it would only get me about halfway to the balcony. Instead I climbed up the fence! From there I was just able to grab the bottom ledge of the balcony; from there I swung a leg up and was able to climb onto the balcony.



I went into the Primary Room to find Chinedu (one of the councilors in the Bishopric) working on the door while the Primary teachers were keeping the children occupied. I have to give the Nigerian children a great deal of credit, they were not crying or panicking, in fact they all seemed to be having a pretty good time. We worked on the door for a while from the inside, we unscrewed the handle and tried to get into the mechanism, but as I said before this is all enclosed. We found out that the latch would not retract into the door, and you could not get to it to force it to move; it was completely seized. I started to look for other options; I thought about taking out the hinge pins.


Nope that won’t work!

You may not be able to tell this from the picture, but the hinges are like the ones on my gun-safe, they are not coming off! After a while of working on the door more men started coming in from the balcony; I went outside to discover that they had found a ladder (also not the one in the earlier picture) that would reach high enough for an adult to get to the balcony. After seeing that we were having no success with the door; we decided to start sending the children down the ladder. We formed a sort of “bucket brigade” and passed the children from one adult to another off the balcony and down the ladder. The kids loved this part! Once all the kids were down that left us with a new problem, we had several adult women stuck up there, and one of them was 8 months pregnant!

At this point one of the men working on the inside of the door suggested that we should just break the door down. Knowing how big this door was this seemed to be a formidable task, but the kid in me decided it sounded like fun!!! (Sound about right Mom?) I climbed down the ladder and went back into the building and up the stairs (Josie had been standing outside the door the whole time, she missed all the fun while we evacuated the children down the ladder) I think Josie was pretty worried when she realized I was going to try to kick the door in. After about 4 or 5 kicks I started to be a little concerned as well, the door had not moved a millimeter! I backed up and gave it one more good kick and it flew open, it was hilarious (and I must admit I was a bit relieved) everyone around started cheering and laughing. I think I made quite an impression on the people that Sunday!

Anyway, that is my funny Sunday story, hope you enjoyed it!

I feel I have been bested

After a comparison of Josie’s pictures of Oklahoma I feel I have been outdone. Well rainy season isn’t over in Nigeria, and it won’t be for several months, so I thought I would share some more pictures.

The building we go to church in is on a road that is very susceptible to flooding. Even when it is dry the potholes are so deep that you can easily scrape the bottom of your car as you drive into them. When it rains these convert from potholes to pond-holes!



To get to church on Sunday I had to request one of the Land Rovers that we have for trips to and from the airport, not one of the armored ones, but the ones the police ride in while they provide our escort. I had gone to the church for an activity on Saturday and we barely made it down the road, so Sunday I took no chances. I’m not sure exactly what had happened to this car, but it was clear it was not going anywhere!



Here is a good view down one of the side roads into a housing area. People here are pretty used to this, they just fold up their pants or hitch up their skirt and wade right through.



It was actually very beneficial to have the Land Rover, especially since it rained quite a bit while we were in the church. Even if we had taken the car and actually made it to the church, getting out would have been another story.



This bus had bottomed out on the edge of one of the pond-holes. I felt cruel for snapping this picture and not helping the guy, but I would be scared to wade in this water, I’m sure the locals have some natural immunities and tolerances that I don’t posses. I would only go into this water if I had a pair of hip waders on, which wouldn’t be a bad thing to have here this time of year!



A lot of the areas around the church are prone to flooding. Here is a picture I snapped on the way back to the flat, as you can see the rain causes some serious issues here.



Now before I close this out I want to show you some pictures of the grassy field that is across from the church……







You can see the field can’t you?!?

It looks like our property value should have gone up, we now have church on Lakefront property!

The Nature of Okada

Okay in the last two days I have learned something about okada. As I have mentioned before okada are motorcycle taxis. They move around Lagos like swarms of bees. If you run afoul of an okada driver you had best beware, where you see one, there are five others right around the corner just out of sight. They weave through traffic ignoring both law and common sense. They are also the quickest way to get around if there is traffic.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to ride not one, but three different okada, and I learned some interesting things in the process. Until yesterday I viewed okada just like we would view a taxi in the USA or in the UK. You flag one down you tell them where you are going and you hop on and go. Well yesterday I learned a bit more about how the okada system works. First off, and yes this one is obvious, okada do not have a meter. When you flag down an okada you tell them where you want to go to (there are some guidelines here which I will cover shortly) and they tell you their price. Rule number 1: Never agree to their first price, rule number 2: be prepared to walk away and head toward another okada when they will not budge from their price. Now the guidelines on location: certain okada operate in certain areas, again referencing the bee analogy from above, okada are territorial. There are actual companies that employ okada, and some companies only operate in certain areas. If you don’t know the boundaries of the particular okada it can be difficult to know where to catch one for the next leg of your journey. This is the main reason that I rode three different okada yesterday. My driver had dropped me at the church for an activity and we were going to be traveling to a “motherless baby’s home” for our activity. I had expected more youth to show up, but it ended up being just one of the young women leaders and I left at the church. The road to the church was in really bad shape so we did not want to walk down to the bus through shin deep water. We flagged down two okada and each rode one down to the end of the road, though the shin deep water of course, I actually heard water sizzle on the exhaust pipe a couple times. It cost us 50 Naira each (39 cents) for the ride down to the main road. Here we began the negotiations for the long distance portion of our journey. We would share one okada for this leg of the trip (yes that means three adults on one 125cc motorcycle, which happens all the time here. The most I have seen is 5 people total including children on one okada, if I am lucky I will catch this on film at some point. ) This portion of the trip cost us 400 Naira (about $3.13) and I have to say it was an interesting trip riding as the third person, definitely a new experience for me. Once we got to the first Lekki roundabout we found two more okada to finish off our journey, it cost 70 Naira (55 cents) each for these.

Overall it was a very interesting trip, but most of all it made me realize something……I MISS MY MOTORCYCLE!!!!!!

Rainy Season in Full Swing

Today it has been raining almost all day. When it rains here you see some very interesting things. Here you can see a wonderful little pond that developed in one lane of the road, causing everyone to drive around it and slowing down traffic.




Here you see the same concept. This is a picture taken from the balcony of our new flat. Unfortunately the street in front of it is pretty busy.



Okay this next picture is something I love, an Okada (Motorcycle Taxi) with the passenger holding an umbrella. Some part of this just makes me chuckle, it is just not something I have seen anywhere else.



When the rains start the traffic stops; that is a constant here. If it starts to rain you might as well plan to spend around 2 hours trying to get somewhere that should take 15 minutes. Here is a picture from our current flat of the intersection down below. You can see several umbrella covered Okada in the picture, if you look close.



The next step in the traffic mess is that one side of the road fills up, but that doesn't stop people here. They solve the problem by driving down the other side!



But eventually this is what you end up with.



As you can tell from the orderly way that cars are making their way through the intersection this particular "go slow" will clear very soon.......soon is such a wonderfully relative term!