Dahomey now called Benin to Nigeria

I spent a few days along the coast of Togo watching the fishermen working and the ships coming into port. I have always loved the ocean and I can sit for long periods of time just staring out at it watching the world go by. I left and crossed the border into Dahomey. The border crossing was slow and had many different checkpoints to go through. When I finally emerged I just found a little place to stay along the beach and spent the night.

The next morning I caught a ride into the city. All the big cities in Africa so far have had large areas of serious poverty where the housing is a mismatch of hand built shacks. This one was no different. There were also some parts of town that could have been right out of Southern France. I had to do some embassy crawling to get some visas so I did that for about a week. When I wasn't working on my visas I was sitting in the cafes and bars watching the people. I found some great French foods. The French eat so much better than the English. I found some students that I hung around with. One of them was a beautiful local girl that I hooked up with. I was just friends with her and she did not understand why that was all I was interested in but I have to admit she challenged my promise to myself to stay away from the locals.

I hitched up North but the country just did not interest me so much. Geographically, it was very similar to Togo was with some rain forest near the coast and progressively more arid as you went North. The Saharan desert is slowly moving South and taking over large areas of central Africa that previously were able to support agriculture. There were a lot of military checkpoints which intimidated me a bit. My French was poor, rides were harder to find, and I was not having a very good time so I decided to cut the trip short and went back to Cotonou for a few days of good eating and a bit more time with my girlfriend. Then I looked for a ride to Nigeria.

The border crossing into Nigeria was insane. There must have been around forty checkpoints to go through. There was the official checkpoint to get your passport stamped but then there were military checkpoints, police checkpoints, agricultural checkpoints, customs checkpoints and on and on. Each one broke your balls and wanted money. Each one also took as long as a half hour. Needless to say it took us all day to navigate through the maze of corrupt officials. I saw a few physical fights. At one point we were required to stop what we were doing so that everybody could watch TV. There was an execution being televised and the law required everybody to watch the execution. I found that law a bit strange but the more I learned about it over the next couple of months the more I liked the law. If a country is going to execute its citizens it should not be done privately like it is in most places. The citizens need to know what the reality of executing someone is actually like so that they know the enormity of the act itself and its consequences. If you can't watch the execution then you should not support executions. Nigeria takes it to the extreme requiring people to watch. This has some intent to intimidate the people as well as demonstrate their resolve against crime. It did not work very well. Smuggling had a death penalty and it was common to just pay a bribe to smuggle things into the country. There was about a four hundred percent import duty so there was a lot of incentive to smuggle goods into the country. Nigerians are world famous for their drive and ingenuity in business matters. They all seemed to be trying to con somebody out of something relentlessly. They were the ultimate husslers. They were also extremely friendly and fun loving. Over the next few months I had more laughs with them than I did in the entire rest of the continent.

When the day was finally over and I was in Nigeria I just got a room and went to sleep for the night. I was excited to be in Nigeria. I could hear music and lots of partying from my room. The Biafran war had just recently ended and I had no idea what to expect. The county is a very densely populated region with multiple tribes and a ton of history. Nigeria was part of the slave coast just like Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Dahomey had been part of it. Conrad's Heart of Darkness took place in this general area. All my movies about Africa were rolling through my mind as I sat in my room getting ready to travel through Nigeria. I studied my Michelin map of Africa. The map was my main information source for my planning routes and what to see and do as I traveled. The details on the maps were amazingly minute and accurate. All the little trails were on the map right down to gates along fences. The temperatures were there for the year, precipitation amounts and seasons were there. I loved just staring at it and looking back on my route so far just remembering all the fantastic experiences I had along the way.

The next morning I planned on going into downtown Lagos. I tried to hitch hike and a taxi picked me up. He negociated a ten dollar fare to take me all the way into downtown. I figured it would take about an hour and a half because it was not a long distance. I was wrong.

In Nigeria when someone dies they have a block party every year for ten years to celebrate your life. Then after ten years they forget you. I like the concept. The population is in the millions. A lot of people die. There are a million block parties going on constantly. Each one blocks the road no matter what road it is and they have their block party. Traffic has to detour around each party. Then the detours have detours that have detours that have detours making getting around the country almost impossible. The hour and a half ride into Lagos took us two days. Along the way we just stopped and joined the parties anytime we were hungry or thirsty. We partied hardy. I was having a blast with my driver. We just slept in the car when we got too tired. He was taking his time getting me there that was obvious and I was sure he had some type of con going on with me but so far I had not figured out what his con game was. He was a very good guide and told me all about the fancy caskets that were at all the block parties. They were hand made out of wood, painted brightly and were shaped like anything from cars to giraffes. When we finally got to downtown he started circling the area showing me different famous buildings or interesting sights. I finally told him I just wanted to get out. He was almost crying when I insisted. He was just having fun and did not want it to end. He never did con me. I gave him an extra ten bucks for a tip and he was very pleased. Maybe that was his con, the non con.

Lagos was a mess. I was getting sick. My stomach was starting to hurt big time. I ended up going to a hospital that the American Embassy told me about. It took a full day to get a taxi ride to it. I walked into the emergency room in obvious sharp pain. The nurse that met me at the door was a smiling Irish nun dressed in her full white habit including the big hat. She talked to me for a few minutes about my symptoms and then left and came back with two other nuns working as nurses and the doctor who was a North Vietnamese man.

The doctor took me into an exam room and did a quick exam then yelled out at he nuns to prep me for immediate surgery. I was caught off guard. He had not talked to me at all about what he thought was going on with me. As the nuns came into the room I talked to them to find out what was going on. She told me that the doctor had decided I had an ulcer and he thought it was going to get worse very rapidly so he was going to go in and cut it out. I did not want surgery. I started to ask a million questions to try to figure out if this was the right thing to do. I decided it was not and refused to allow him to cut me open. Instead we agreed to admit me to the hospital and go on antibiotics for ten days while they monitored me for any signs of rupture with the supposed ulcer. I did not feel like I had an ulcer. There were no long term symptoms and the sudden onset did not seem like an ulcer to me. The doctor agreed.

As I was in bed with the I.V. n my arm and the antibiotics and painkillers dripping in my arm the nun/nurse came in my room. She casually asked me if I knew how to play bridge. When I told her yes I love to play bridge she almost popped my eardrums with her scream of delight. She yelled out and the other two nuns came running into my room with a bed table and cards. They pulled up chairs and dealt the cards before I knew what was happening. We proceeded to play bridge for most of every day for the next three weeks. The hospital essentially was closed while we played on and on. I finally called them on it when it started rolling on to my third week since they had told me ten days of therapy when I started. They admitted that they were delaying my release so that they could continue to play bridge with me. We did have a blast playing all day. I even was attracted to the cute young Irish nuns which embarrased me a bit in my flimsy hospital gown. I was getting too horny to stay in the hospital when I dream of doing nuns at night in a hospital bed. They finally released me, healthy and happy without any surgery. They refused to take any money from me.

I decided to head North East in Nigeria when I got out of the hospital. I planned on going all the way up to Kano. It took me almost a week to make it to Ibadan. On the last day, I got a ride with a professor from the University of Ibadan and he put me up in his quarters. He was very interested in my experiences. He quized me relentlessly. I spoke in front of his students a few times. They offered me a teaching position right away. I thought about it but again I turned them down. I wanted to travel on not settle down. They understood and my friendly professor offered to be my tour guide up to Kano and back. He told me that I needed to be careful because it was so dangerous but that he could keep me safe. We took off and traveled all the way up to Kano and back over the next couple of weeks. I saw some evidence of the recent war here and there but mostly nobody was talking about it and it seemed to have never happened. The two main tribes involved in the war, the Igbos and Yorubas, seemed to me anyways, to be getting along without any sign of animosity. The fighting was mostly in the South and Eastern areas of the county where they tried to establish the country of Biafra. I planned on going to that area next.