Furniture - to be continued - it seems

Well - good news, some of the furniture has arrived! Sofie has received a pretty desk in dark wood, made from scratch. Good work, nice drawers and absolutely perfect size for her. And she has received a shelf for her bathrooms items. And again - good work, nice shelf.

But - where is our bathroom shelf? And the furniture for the veranda? Wonder how many "two - weeks we need to go through before they eventually turn up.

The shelf to organise the closet has arrived, and was totally wrong for the purpose - you have to stack the items sideways into it! Really hard work to get anything in or out! It will need to be re-done.

i was told that it is not allowed to import furnitures into Nigeria. And first i thought it made sense with an internal marked of 148 million people. But after the experience of getting furniture - these guys needs some competition! Someone who can deliver on time and cost and quality.

Fishing net

In Nigeria and other African countries they have a special fishing net, that we do not use in Norway. It is circalur, and thrown out from a small boat. At the end of the circle- the bottom -lead is attached to make it sink quickly. When they pull the net, it shapes itself like a big bag - holding onto the fish.

from our veranda we have the view of small boats with 1 - 3 fishermen onboard going into the Lekki Lagoon fishing. I often run for my camera - but changing temperatures from the airconditioned flat to the warm veranda leads to dew on the lense. Sso I have not got a good fishing picture myself yet. By searching google Photo I found one that can illustrate the fishing method.

And why am I suddenly writing about fishing nets? I grew up partly on Danish farmland and partly along the coas¨tal line of western Norway, so fishing was one of my childhood activities - and still something I enjoy today.Here in Lagos I am not allowed by security officers in my company to ask the local fishermen to take me out fishing - so I will not do that - but it would be great fun.

I have been trying to get a fishing net like this for my father, who also loves fishing. But I have not been able to get hold on one on the markeds or in the shops. So I ended up asking Big John, a local chief, if he knew how to buy a fishing net. He said he would fix it all for me.

The procurement and production of this net tells a stor of developmental level and economic development of Nigeria. Step one - ask someone he knew if they could make it and get a price.
This misson was carried out and he reported back to me that this could be done and ad estimated price. Then a couple of weeks later there was a need to by the lead - so he needed advanced payment for that. Then this friday - the net was ready and presented. We got to see how to throw the net, and it landet in a nice circle in the sand on the beach.

And I have advanced one more item on my list of christmas gifts.

Nigerian Culture Day at the school

Sofie has been looking forward to the Nigerian Culturday all week. So today, she dressed in the Nigerian outfit her nanny Joy has made her for the occation. Joy arrived a bit early this morning and made sure that Sofie was properly dressed and fixed her headband. There were a slight issue with Sofie demanding to wear sock and shoes instead of sandals, but you don't mess with a tired Sofie - we let her wear black dress shoes and white socks.

The whole school was colourful wearing clothing today, staff, students and parents. In the picture you see grade 2 sitting and watching a horseshow on the soccerfields. Some of the parents had even taken the traditional Nigerian head wraps on, and that made a difference for sure. So many colourful hat-like head wraps I have never seen in one place before.

When we arrived at school it was decorated beyond recognition. Leafs from the Coconut palm tree made a new entrance. When we came to the school court female musicians where sitting there whith their rythmic instruments playing.

The tenniscourts were turned into a marked place today, and the student got to practice their negotiations skills - making good bargains with the traders.

Here we are

I have been asked a couple of times now, to be more specific on where we live, people can't find it on maps. Well, that is probably because there are few maps over the area available on web tools. The beach you see on the satelite photo is the coast line. The right hand side of the beach is Victoria Island where the financial activities, shops, and schools are. Where you see the little blue baloon with an A on, is Ikoyi. That is the island where the Nigerian oil company and Statoil has their offices. From Ikoyi an artificial island is build, shaped as a banana? and given the name Banana Island. We live in the western part of Banana Island, with a great view over the lagoon and to mainland Lagos.



Our neighbourhood consists of apartment blocks and churches. Some big, well funded chirches sponsored by European or American churches, other more locally funded. One of the later is found quite close to where we live. Music and singing heard early in the mornings. Plastic chairs and plastic church in use with an enthusiastic user group. Very loud music from such a small church.

Situated close to a roundabout with heavy trafic is another church which has caught my attention - based on the cool name. The Church of the Assumption. To me that is summing up perfectly what churches and religion is all about.

Well back to our neighbourhood. From the veranda we can see the local fishermen taking their small boats out in the lagoon chasing after fish and shrimps so they can feed their normally large families. Some morning I am wondering why I am not out there fishing instead of fighting trafic, going to the office. But given the numbers of fishers out there and the price of fish - I would guess that there already is a shortage of fish compared to fishers. So I better stay in the office and buy fish from them.