Tuesday Night I Lost 7 Hours of Night Time

Summary Update. I have been in Nigeria a week and finally have internet access. Unfortunately, at the hotel I am currently in it is only 2G.  So pictures take a long time to upload. The hotel has WiFi but it is not connecting properly. Below is a posting I wrote while waiting to get internet access and Malaria. I will be in the hotel with air conditioning as a continue my Malaria treatment. 

This is somewhat of a long post. Probably could edit it down more but I am tired and need to go back to bed.

Flights from Minneapolis to Yola Nigeria were fairly uneventful. I left Minneapolis Tuesday afternoon to Chicago on United with a middle seat. I had a fairly long layover so I made the leisurely walk from the next to last gate on the concourse to Gate 3. Confirmed that it was the right gate and walked back to McDonalds for lunch. My Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany was full but I was lucky to have an aisle seat.

Wednesday morning I arrived at Frankfurt Main Airport on Concourse Z. I asked a Lufthansa employee where the flight to Abuja was located. He checked his tablet and told me gate B58. Then he told me to check the monitors for updates. My flight was at 11:10AM and the monitors only went as far as 10:00. So I decided to head over to Concourse B. I figured that by the time I got there the monitor should be up to 11:10. Concourse Z to B is not as bad as it sounds. Frankfurt Main Airport has concourses A through E and Z. Z is off the end of A. You walk through Concourses Z and A to get escalators going up to passage ways that loop around the building to the train. The walks to the train is about as convoluted as possible. I think I took enough left turns to make at least a complete 360.

The train ride is only a minute or two and it takes you to the hallway that leads you to the end Concourse B.  After the train ride you walk another 5 minutes past Gates B19 and down to B1 then follow the signs to the escalator down to gates B20 –B29, B30 – B39, B40 - 49, and B50-B59. At the bottom of the escalator is a wide hallway with concrete columns dividing it length wise. From this location there are no directions signs in sight. To my right I see gates B40, B41 and B42. The numbers were getting bigger to the right. To the left there were no gates, just a long hallway leading to some shops. My logic said my gate being B58 which is a higher than B42, therefore, it would be to the right. I walked to the end of the hallway to gate B49. I returned down on the other side of the hallway and saw the signs to the rest of the B gates. The sign was hung in a manner that it could not be seen from the base of the escalator. If it had been turned 90 degrees you could have seen it. If it had been on the same side of the hallway and down to the left you could have seen it.

I walked down through mass of shops in the center of the Concourse, to a Hallway leaded to Gates B50-B58. I checked the monitor and they were up to 11:00 departures. Went back to McDonald’s and had an Egg McMuffin, Coffee and free Wi-Fi. I still have another hour to boarding. As I sat down, a young boy about 3 years old came over and offered me a fry. He spent the next half hour walking to other tables and walking a on the shelf covering the heating and air conditioning by the windows. He managed to stay just out of the reach of his older sisters when his Mom sent them after him. Finally, they brought out a toy car and he came within reach. They hauled him off struggling as he and his family headed to their gate. After being entertained by my young friend I headed to the monitor and it said boarding starts in 2 minutes. I got to the gate as they were announcing the pre-boarding. Us cheap seat tickets won’t be called for a while. When we left the gate they sent us in groups down to busses that toke us across the airport, past a couple terminals, down past some maintenance hangers. I was waiting to get on the Autobahn and drive to Heidelberg. This was one of the longest airport bus rides I have ever taken. They had portable stairs up to the front and back of the plane. The staff was directing us cheap ticket passengers to the back stairs. Then the plane had to cross back to the other side of the airport to take off.

My flight to Abuja is only 5 hours and I have a window seat on my boarding pass. When I get to my seat there is a women already in it but the aisle seat is open so I take my preferred aisle seat. The flight is not full so before take-off I move to a center row that is empty and laid down across three seats. I had not slept much on the 8 hour flight from Chicago. So it was nice to get to stretch out a bit. It was not real comfortable on seatbelt bracket poked me in the back. But I got some sleep. In fact I slept through the passing out of the immigration forms.

We arrived about 30 minutes late at 4:45PM. The flight for Yola leaves at 5:45 which gaves me less than an hour to get through immigration, customs, buy a ticket at one end of the terminal, check luggage and get to the other end of the terminal and up to the third floor departure gates. Impossible with less than an hour and I still have to get and fill out the Ebola health form for the people in white coats, the Immigration form, and the custom forms. The white coat people are real friendly and patient. I answer "no" to everything. The immigration form for a half asleep traveler was smaller print and less room to answer. I scribbled out my answers then looked for a short line. The Immigration officers managing the lines directed me to the Diplomat only line which was the shortest. I protested that I was not a diplomat. They said it did not matter neither were the people in front of me. That is where I met the Immigration agent who likes to run things by her own book.

The Immigration agent turned out to be one of the worst I have encountered. She told me, my business visa should only be for a week or two and that is enough time to do my business and leave. I told her I am scheduled for six weeks of meetings and project reviews. I explained what I did and there were many projects to review. She asked for my flight itinerary. Seeing that I was scheduled longer than 30 day she said she was not going to let me into the country. After a little pleading and using my nicest church language she said since I was working for the church she would stamp my visa for 30 days and I needed to go to the Immigration office and pay them for an extension. I have always wondered how they distribute the funds collected at the immigration office for extensions. The Official Nigeria Immigration website says Business Visas are good for 90 days stay and you can extend beyond 90 days. Also, the official policy is that you pay all fees to the Immigration Service through a bank and no cash can be accepted. You are to get your application form off the internet and pay the fee at a local bank then bring the form and bank receipt to the local Immigration office. There are no forms or set fee for a Visa extension on the Immigration Website. You show them you original Visa application and give them 15,000 Naira cash which they slide behind the table and count then put it in a drawer and they stamp your passport with a new date. I am afraid with the inflation that has happened they will want more this year when I go it the extension.

With all of these delays I could not possibly make the flight to Yola on Wednesday Night. The Divine Love Retreat and Conference Center (DRACC Catholic Guest House run by the Sisters of Divine Love) had told me on Monday evening that they did not have room for me in their guest house. While I waited overnight at the terminal I saw a lot of Sisters and Priest coming off of planes. I had emailed some contacts in Abuja and Yola to see if they could find me an alternate site. But with little time I had not gotten any responses when I checked my email in Germany. I was on my own. So I decided on the cheap option, overnight at the Abuja Airport. I walked out of the International portion of the terminal to the Domestic ticket office and made a reservation on Med View Airline for Thursday Morning. They only allow ticketed passengers into the International part of the terminal, I fumbled for my ticket and said I am sorry, I am really tired. The man said go ahead. The domestic portion of the terminal does not have a waiting area. The International side has air conditioners that provide a little cooling if you are directly in front of them and is open all night.

I carried my bag up stairs to the restaurant floor and had a plate of chicken and rice. They had a TV connected to an satellite channel from India with Indian Soap Operas. They all were similar family drama but it took two time through them before I figured out who was who. The villain in one is the grandmother and in another the grandmother give sage like advise.  I sat there a couple hours sipping on a bottle of wateruntil the channel was changed to Nigeria music videos. Lots of twerking and Nigerian rappers trying to look tough and showing their underwear. Not everything exported from the US is good. Around midnight I went to the waiting area where half of the seats had luggage porters and other overnight staff sleeping and some travelers. I did not get much sleep. Planes came in routinely until about 2 AM and then started again around 6. Late at night I forgot that photography is strictly forbidden at the airport.

Thursday morning I walked back to the domestic side of the terminal and checked in to my flight. Climbed up the large spiral stairs to the third floor departure lounge. I feel asleep waiting for my flight and man who had noticed I had slept through calls for plane departures woke me and asked me where I was going. I told him Yola and he said they called that flight a long time ago. There were still four people in line at the departure counter after 16 hours at the airport I almost missed my flight.  

Yakubu Bulama met me outside of the baggage area of the Yola terminal. He is just getting back to work with since recovering from Chicken Pox. He said it was very painful but now he is over it and almost back to full strength. I asked him if he felt like Job since he burned his had badly in 2014, then his home village was overrun by Boko Haram he had 40 people living at his single family compound and now the Pox.

He had the front bedroom in his office fixed up, cleaned out and some mattresses stacked up for a bed. I got out the mosquito net and tied it off to the curtain supports and one eye hook in the ceiling. I have a ceiling fan when there is power and will need to get a desk lamp. The fluorescent bulb other the desk is burned out. The kitchen only needed a little cleaning. After cleaning the small pantry we went to the Oasis Bakery to get fresh bread. Slice bread in 250 Naira. The current black market money exchange is 310 Naira to the dollar.  So the bread was only 81 cents. Next we went to Luka Memorial Market for canned meats, canned vegetables, canned beans, and other things to eat. Then on to Yakubu Shopping Center for drinking water,rice and a couple things I forgot at Luka’s.

I have gotten lucky. The propane tanks for the old gas stove still have fuel. It took a little cleaning of the regulator but I got the burners working. It will be nice to have four burners. Rather than the single burner on top of a tank tipsy propane tank, I have used for the past three years. I have to reconnect the gas each time I use the stove. It only leaks a little. I heated a kettle of water and made a cup of tea. The power is not on so I decided to have a cold tuna fish sandwich for dinner. The Yola Diocese Women’s Association is having their conference at the Cathedral next door. When they turn on the big generator for their evening service I had power to the house. But I had already gone to bed by then and just enjoyed the breeze from the ceiling fan. They shut down around 9 PM. Sometime, early in the morning the power came on for a short period of time. A small sprinkle of rain cooled the evening air off a little so I did not sweat too much through the night.