Logistics Problem

When I explain the situation in which we live here in Nigeria, the responses I get tend to border on patronizing. For example when you tell people you have a driver, you usually get responses such as "Must be tough!" or "that would be nice". Now don't get me wrong, there are many aspects of being driven everywhere I go that I quite like. For me it is especially advantageous since I do not enjoy driving cars, I have never really liked cars! I can ride for hours on a motorcycle and be completely content, but driving an hour in the car needs to have a good justification to entice me to do it. This dislike of cars in general also partially carries over to riding in them, so you can imagine my profound joy of dealing with the Lagos traffic. Tuesday night was a prime example. I was at a meeting out at our church building, which is about 11 kilometers from my flat. To go from the church to the flat took two hours and five minutes, and most of that time was spent on about a two kilometer stretch.

There are other problems as well, which brings me to the events of last night. After I left work I decided I was going to go watch a movie before going home. The traffic was terrible, as it has been almost every night lately, and so to get to the theatre on time was already going to be a challenge. I also wanted to go by the flat first to drop off my laptop. It took 40 minutes to travel most of the three kilometers to the flat, when we were within a reasonable distance I hopped out and walked the rest of the way (which, based on recent events, did make me a bit nervous). I was able to get up to my flat and back to the car before my driver had been able to move more than five car lengths. At least this allowed us to head straight for the theatre instead of getting out of traffic and having to fight to get back in. We hit more traffic every direction we tried! Finally I had to jump out again and walk the last little bit to the movie theatre. At this point it seemed all was going well, but I need to add some background before I continue.

Aside: Last week my driver had a problem with his personal car while he was on his way home, it stalled and had to be pushed out of the roadway, a couple of guys helped him push it over to the side of the road, after receiving this "help" he realized that his phone was missing. The phone is provided by my company, and they have not yet managed to replace it.

When I entered the theatre I found that the movie I wanted to see had already sold out, I immediately went back outside to locate my driver, and of course he was nowhere in sight. Expecting me to be in a movie for the next two hours he had gone to get some food, well obviously I could not call him since he has no phone. I tried calling our central radio room to get them to contact the radio installed in the car, he was not in the car. I stood just outside the mall while I waited for them to track him down. After about twenty minutes I received a call from the radio room, they were not able to get in touch with him, but another driver was in the area and would come by and pick me up. After another twenty minutes, because of the traffic, the driver arrived and took me to the flat. Once I was back home, I called the radio room back and asked that they continue to try and contact my driver until they managed to reach him. I expected that this would be the end of the story, but alas, no. Just after 10 o'clock I received a call from the drivers supervisor asking if I still needed my driver to hold at the mall. I explained the situation and told him he could tell my driver he was done for the day. Ten minutes later my driver called to verify that I was actually at home and not still in the mall. Apparently he was waiting around in one of the other residences with several other drivers, none of whom had been involved in the earlier attempts to find him or transport me, and all the drivers were quite concerned that something had happened to me.

Sometimes it is easier just to drive yourself!