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.

We do live in the tropical rainforest. It is just a bit hard to nitice when it has been turned into hauses and roads. Yesterday we went to Lekki Conservation Centre where a tiny bit of the tropical rainforest is preserved. We were looking at mangrove trees and strangler figs.

When animals eat the fruit from the strangler figs, seeds are passed out in the droppings and ends up on a branch in a tree. When the seeds germinates and sends roots downwards they establish themselves in the existing tree, and will eventually strangle and kill the tree, and win the race for light.

Sofie was very fascinated by gekkos and lizards of every kind. She stopped at each and everyone we passed on our way. It did not matter that we have the same lizards and gekkos at Banana Island close to our home.

We did hear the monkeys and feel their presence several time, but there were only one spot were we could see several of them clearly. They kept their distance. One of the monkeys were curious of Sofie and came closer and closer to watch her when we moved a bit away. But when she took out the camera it went back to the top of the tree. We did get a few pictures, but not any good ones. When we stopped to watch some young monkeys in a tree, the mother hid and startet to make a lot of noices so we should turn the focus towards her. Even if we were aware of this old trick, it worked. We just had to see where she were - and the kids hid.

Lekki Conservation Centre had well developed trails above the ground so we could walk safely in the swamp areas. But half of the area had thei walk way flooded so we need to come back another time, after the end of the rainy season to see the rest.

Procurement of furniture

We moved here in august to a ready furnitured flat. There are always little things lacking like a desk for the childs room, some shelfes for the bathroom and some furniture to relax in on our veranda.
Our company set up a meeting with a lady from a furniture shop the have a frame agreement with. She came to our flat and took measurements and notes and promised that she could deliver this within 2 weeks. This is 6 weeks ago - and I was done waiting. So yesterday i visited procurement, to get to know when something would happen. They called the lady, and the answer was - she could deliver in two weeks time! Procurement seemed very happy with the answer - but I had to ask how we would know that 2 weeks were 2 weeks and not some vague date in a distant future. They got a bit upset with me for asking this from our vendor. I guess it is awfully Norwegian of me to believe and demand that people keep their promises when it comes to deadlines?

A trip to the beach

The company has rented a place on a beach for us, where we can go and relax on the sundays. Yesterday we joined the others for a trip to the beach. Sofie was a bit sceptical to spending the whole day there, but she enjoyed every minute of it as far as I could see.

There were local craftsmen there selling their tablecloths, skirt, paintings, sword and knives, wooden boxes and elephants etc and Sofie ended up with a rather big wooden elephant. And she has learned to bargain, and got it for a fair price. Its now in our living room.

We also bought a big tablecloth in nice colours with houses and trees on. We liked it because it reminded us both of the drawings of Dr. Seuss. Sofie wanted it on the table when we got back to the flat.

But I had some learning point before the next beach outing:
- buy plastic plates
- buy plastic cups and glass

and do remember
- your coffee
- and sausages for Sofie.

We are greatful than more experienced beach people saved us with coffe and plates. A great thank you to Randi.

Otherwise - being the only child at the beach with no one to play with could become boring. Sofie were so lucky that some of my collegues took her down and into the big waves (To big for her to play in alone) and that she could swim in a swimmingpool owned by a Norwegian couple who had their beach house not far from us.