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!