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!

Favorite Cruise Pictures

For those members of my family that are reading this, I know I have told you all a good bit about the cruise we took in May. I thought I would post some of my favorite pictures that we took while on the cruise.

Athens:

This first picture was taken at this beautiful little monetary up on the mountainside. Our guide and taxi driver Cosmas took us up here, I don't remember the name of the monetary, but it was really worth the drive. This picture was taken in front of the little church on the monetary grounds. The weather was absolutely wonderful this day, it was just a little bit hot in some of the places we were, but not here, all the shade kept it at a wonderful temperature.




This next picture was taken from the Acropolis, looking out over Athens and highlighting the temple of Zeus. I really thought it was amazing how Athens surrounds the temple ruins.




Kusadasi:

In Turkey we went to the ruins of Ephesus. I was amazed by the sheer size of the city and the level of technology they achieved. They even had public toilets and hot and cold running water! This is a picture of the Amphitheater, it was really impressive.



Santorini:

Santorini was my favorite stop on the cruise. It was so incredible. I tried to imagine living in a place with that kind of beauty surrounding you all the time. When the ship neared the islands it almost looked like the island was capped with snow as the white buildings shone in the sunlight. This is my favorite picture. You can see the donkey trail that leads from the dock up to capitol city zigzagging up the cliff-side.



Mykonos:

Even though it rained on us the whole time we were in Mykonos it was still a very beautiful place. Again you can just see the white buildings spread across the island. We found the best shopping of any of our stops here as well. I could definitely go back to Mykonos.



Finally one last picture: for those of you that have seen the 'Ironic' picture posted on my wife's blog I wanted to show the other aspect. This picture was taken on the way down (hence the smile) the volcanic island in the middle of the islands that make up Santorini. The caption on the shirt is a bit closer in this picture. You also get a pretty good shot of the cruise ship in the background.

The End is Near

Just a quick entry tonight - According to news reports coming out tonight the Labor Unions in Nigeria have ended a four day long National strike. What this means to us is that after 3 full days of house arrest conditions we should soon be free to get out and around again. What we don't know at this point is how long it will take for fuel trucks to start running again and for gas to be flowing from filling stations. This likely means a few more days of limited movement, but things should start to clear within a few days.

We had already made plans to stay home from church tomorrow, and we only went places we could walk to today. We were at least able to walk over to the mall today and watch a movie, that really helped break up the monotony somewhat. I will try to post again soon with further updates, but tonight is a time of happiness and celebration. The strike is over and I will actually be able to go to work on Monday! Some of you may find that statement strange, but it is actually the work that keeps me sane.

House Arrest

The nationwide strike is now in day 2, which means today was “house arrest” day 1. We don’t have a lot of fuel in the car we are using, so at this point if we don’t have to go somewhere, we don’t. Luckily we stocked up on groceries before this began.

It is amazing to look out today and see how empty the streets are. Even on a Sunday morning this amount of traffic would be light.



To be able to look out and see empty or nearly empty roads on a Thursday morning is very strange. I sat here all day and most of the very normal sounds just were not heard today. There were no horns blowing, and no sirens, just a quiet day. You would think I would find that refreshing, Instead it just seems a little creepy.



If this were a bad B-Movie the silence would be followed by swarms of zombies streaming out of an alley.

Nope, no zombies just a very quiet day.

It was very difficult to work today. The nature of my job is such that if I am not in the office I don’t accomplish very much. There is just not a lot I can do when I am disconnected; this is also one reason that I don’t travel very much. Part of my job is to process invoices and coordinate bill payments, with nothing moving that becomes a bit difficult.



I expect tomorrow to be very similar. From all the news we have seen, no real progress is being made to end the strike. There were some minor classes today between strikers and police. Strikers are manning roadblocks and barricades all around main areas of Lagos to “enforce” strike conditions. Police used tear gas today to try and disperse one such roadblock. I really don’t know if this is going to get worse, but I can guess it won’t get a lot better in the next few days.

And so it starts

OK, after getting after my wife constantly to update her blog I have decided to skip any additional problems and just begin my own blog. Now if I go for days or weeks without updating it she can gripe at me.

Right now Nigeria is in the grip of a nationwide labor strike. Fuel trucks stopped delivering last Friday, and ever since then there have been fuel shortages, hording, and black market fuel for sale. The fuel plays a major part in the current strike. In the last 48 hours of the former president’s administration he initiated several very unpopular policies. One of them reduces the current government subsidy on gasoline. The price per liter went from 65 Naira to 75 Naira, this has caused widespread problems. The fuel haulers and the labor unions are demanding that this policy and others be overturned before they will return to work. This is causing trouble for everyone in the large cities in Nigeria.

I went to work this morning after finding out that the strike had commenced at midnight. The roads are eerily quite right now, because many people are already out of fuel for their cars. One of our technicians at work was not able to come in because his car was on empty. Our company doubled people up last Saturday so that we would only be using one car for every two expats. This morning was likely the last time I will ride in my car until the fuel begins flowing again, it was almost on empty. At lunchtime my driver showed up in a different car because it still had gas. Many of the staff, Nigerians and expats, did not show up for work due to the strike. I'm not sure if it would have mattered if they had; we lost our main internet link at the office at about 9am. When we were finally able to get in touch with the provider we found out that their diesel tanks were empty and they could no longer run the generators. After a few hours I decided to leave work and see if there was something useful I could be doing.

Josie and I went over to the new flat and continued the job of unpacking boxes and putting the kitchen together. Josie started the process yesterday, so much of it was already done, but we spent about 3 hours working on it before returning to our current flat. Finally at about 3:45pm I got a call letting me know that our service provider had managed to get diesel delivered and had their systems back up and working.

I'm not sure how long this strike is going to go on, but for now it looks like I will be working from home for a few days, at least until our generator at the flat run out of fuel! Every time the power drops we wonder if the generators are going to kick in or not. It should prove to be a fun week!