How do you spell BLESSED?

maybe L-a-g-o-s! ? (Warning: this is a long blog!)
Hi! The pace is just not slowing down for us yet! So, today, we've decided to stay home for the entire day and try to rest, catch up on some unpacking, plant some plants in pots, ... and catch up on communications!

So, here I am, sitting at my desk in our "office." Jim and I each have desks in a spare bedroom that has large windows -- but it's nothing like the patio in which we worked in our camp. It's the only place we have internet in the house, otherwise we'd work in the living room where we have HUGE sliding windows, basically along the whole outside walls of the living and dining areas, that look out into a large courtyard that is filled with lovely trees, manicured grass, trimmed hedges, a lovely pool and BBQ area, and a gym. We've been too busy to even walk out into that area yet but we hope to do so today -- if it doesn't rain!

We are feeling so blessed that it is hard to express. If the political/criminal issues against expats don't escalate, we could see ourselves staying here a long time. It's amazing what you can take if you have a peaceful and lovely home to regroup in every evening! Our place is so very lovely. Even if we were in Denver and had this place we'd feel very blessed (well, the pool would be a bit out of place, I suppose!) It's a large 3 bed, 2 1/1 bath apartment in a unit with 8 apartments -- two per floor and four bldgs in all. The toilets all flush and ... this is the shocking part ... don't leak! The tilework is lovely and the grout is welldone -- very different from Port Harcourt and all of the cracked pieces of tiles with sloppy grout/silicone used to try to cover up the mistakes! There's trim on the doors and it's done very well with mitered corners and all. You can get the picture, I think.

I've been viewing potential apartments for the past four weeks and I've seen a lot of junk ... really bad workmanship, pathetic floor plans, ... It's as though they took 3 toilets, 3 sinks, 3 showers, a few beds and closets, threw them all up in the air and when everything landed they drew random lines around them and called them rooms! There is, of course, no bldg codes so the stairs are random and uneven with some being very steep and others being very short and long -- all in the same staircase. Supervision, or the lack thereof, is the big problem. The laborers live on dirt floors in little shanties about a 2 hour bus ride away from this area. They don't value what the expats value and they don't have any pride in their work so they do as little as possible as poorly as possible, just thankful that they know they'll be paid for showing up for the day.

The costs are going up as fast as I can type this. Due to the influx of expats leaving the Niger Delta area there are no available properties. Some companies are buying leases on things that have yet to be built. Because of the poor finished quality that is all-too-common, I'm hesitant to suggest that our company do this. So, we risk having very little options. But, we've found a few decent places. You'd be shocked at the costs -- for a three bedroom flat with no yard, a small pool and small gym, adequate workmanship -- with a three year lease and with service charges and legal and agent fees, it's upwords of $90,ooo - $100,000/year per flat. Ugh! But we've got 60ish folks in hotels and guest houses at the moment and the cost there is around $250 per night with food and laundry charges added on top of that (and often with a 2-hour wait for food and a $35/load laundry charge and leaking toilets, cockroaches in bed with you, no hot water, etc.) so ... the apartments start looking affordable!

So, now you see why, in addition to the contrast from our living style in the Niger Delta, we are feeling even more blessed because we have one of the better places to live here in Lagos, even!

Here are a few more blessings -- we have a great car and driver. Our driver's name is Jide (pronounce Jih-dee). He's born and raised in Lagos. His father and family live out in the same area as the beach hut that we have leased. (Yes, if you look back through old blogs to photos of our first visits to the beach in Lagos -- some of those are from the very same hut that is now ours. We just took over the lease from the people who's apartment we have.) Jide lives with his wife and 4 sons about a 2 hour bus ride from here in a one room "house." But he's a great guy and they live a lot better than many. We've learned to not fully trust anyone who works for us but all in all ... he's going to be great.

Our cook,Michel, ... what can I say? Well, this should sum it up well -- I told Jim this week that I don't need to visit any restaurants (and I LOVE going out to eat anywhere in the world, even in Port Harcourt!) because we have our own personal chef and private reastaurant at home! Michel is from Togo and trained at the British High Commission. He can whip up about anything from any international style desired!

Picture this ... we leave the office rather frustrated because most of the day the internet was down or the printers didn't work or the cell phone or land lines were down or all of the above. We've sat in noisy, dirty, hot rooms with people talking WAY TOO loudly all day all around us (most expats use ipods and headsets so they can focus -- we might do the same!). We climb into the car around 7 p.m. and face the traffic. (We have to leave the office before 5 or after 7 to avoid the worst of the traffic.) For an actual 10 minute drive, we sit in "go slows" for at least one hour, often more ... with horns honking and people shouting and motorcycles shooting by and beggars sticking their faces in the window and vendors carrying their wares and weaving their way through the cars (I'll blog about that separately!). So, we try to nap or visit or read (if the car's totally stopped because you can't read when you're bouncing through potholes and the jerking/halting struggles of attempting to make forward progress in the masses of cars-- which I'll blog about, later -- all of the time).

So, we arrive home. Say "good evening" to Michel. Drop our laptops in the office. Wash up. Light some candles. Turn on some music. And sit down at the dining table that is already set.
Then the fun begins. Michel comes out of the kitchen with the first course and continues with many other surprises. We usually have no idea what he is going to cook and it's just unveiled as we go ... Ahhhhhhhhhh, such peace! When we're done, he clears the table and does the dishes and disappears for the evening. We go to the office or, occassionally relax for the rest of the evening. Michel has our breakfast of fresh mango, papaya, cantaloupe, watermelon, pineapple all cut up into bite-sized pieces and ready for us for morning. In the morning, we either eat at home (if we're staying late) or we leave before 7 a.m. (to avoid the traffic) and eat our breakfast later in the morning at the office. And Michel packs a lunch for us each day -- quiche, salad, leftovers, etc.

And, some more about Michel -- he does all of the cleaning, laundry, flawless ironing, shopping, menu-planning, etc.

So, you're wondering about Lucy -- our dear maid from PH? We paid for her to travel by bus and join us for one week here in Lagos. She supervised our shipment's packing in PH and then spent the day bumping along in a crowded bus, arriving before the shipment because the shippers were so pathetic in their service,... oh well! Lucy took care of most of the unpacking, sorting of clothing, etc.

We took her out for a day of fun -- first the open air market where she was a great help to me as I bought some baskets and items for the house, then on to the fun! She saw her first mall (bear in mind that it's a multiple storied building with many small shops but in most of the shops you would not buy anything!). She saw and rode on her first elevator and totally freaked out -- it was glassed styled on the outside of the wall, adding to the thrill! She saw her first escalator but it was broken so we couldn't try it. She saw her first movie in a theatre and was so confused when we came out and it was still daylight! She had her first salted popcorn during the movie. I bought her some fun stuff along the way thourghout the day. She was totally exhausted by the time we climbed in the car to go home. Oh ya, she also saw the ocean for the first time in her life even though Port Harcourt is where the Niger Delta branches out into many rivers that all flow into the ocean! She stayed in our guest room and had her own bathroom --- all things she's never experienced in her whole life! She had to buy a bag to carry all of the stuff we gave her back to PH. The bag is called a "Ghana-must-go bag," harkening back to the days in the 1980s when the refugees from Ghana had to move back to their country -- these large plastic, plaid bags became popular then and have remained in Nigeria, name and all!

Our plan was to settle Lucy very well and help her get moved to another state where the work options are better. It's an area where she and her soon-to-be-fiance' wanted to eventually move anyway. But she wants to invest the money we gave her rather than wasting it on a move and on food, etc. while she waits to find work. So, even though Lagos is an expensive place for maids to live (or anyone, obviously!) she would like to move here for a few months and save money for a final move. We can't take her into our employ because we have Michel and, though we'd be willing to hire her just as a maid, there's no place for her to stay because Michel is in the staff quarters for our flat (each flat has a separate quarters for the domestic help). So, I'm going to get someone to hire her and we'll see her again, soon. That made saying goodby not so tough though she cried and cried -- mainly out of gratitude, I suppose.

OK, I'll blog on those other promised issues and some political thoughts sometime soon, maybe later today.

Now, it's time to have some lunch ... for which we are feeling very blessed!