Baggage

Things are going just fine here in Lagos. Ryan has spent the past week in Colico, Italy! I stayed behind in Lagos to keep an eye on all of our luggage. I know that sounds crazy, but it was just a business trip, not a vacation, and we have so much stuff! I didn't want to pack it all up again and beg someone to let us keep it in their apartment. I'm hoping the next time we move, it will be to our apartment. More on that later.

Here are some pictures of our stuff:

Our attempt at hiding it all behind the couch...

Those bags are stacked on top of other bags, and right now we're considered "unpacked" since most clothes are hanging in the closet.

The computer setup: iMac, hard drives,  Automatic Voltage Stabilizer (AVS), and Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS).

In the picture above you can see the AVS and the UPS. Those are necessary to prevent the computer (and any expensive electronic) from getting fried every time the power goes out. The red one is necessary to regulate the voltage coming from the wall before it goes into electronics. When the power switches between generator and NEPA (National Electric Power Authority, otherwise known as Never Expect Power Always) the voltage can be either very low or spike too high. The black and blue box is the battery backup so that the computer doesn't shut off every time we lose power. We lose power between 5 - 12 times a day. That's not an exaggeration. So both the AVS and the UPS are absolutely necessary, but very, very noisy. One does a lot of beeping and the other makes a horrible thunking sound. It took a while to get used to the racket, but now we sleep right through them.

Also, in the pictures above you might have noticed we're using a lot of these bad boys: 

We use these for Mardi Gras beads back home. Here, they are inexpensive, durable pieces of luggage. 

We started seeing these bags everywhere around here, but never knew what to call them. Durable-Plastic-Zipper bags? I had no idea.  Before our trip home we asked a driver to go buy some of them for us from the market  (Nigerians get much fairer prices than oyibos at the market), so we could bring home empty suitcases (to fill them up again while home).  He came back with the bags and we were very pleased with the amount of stuff they were able to hold. A few days later he asked how we were liking our  "Ghana Must Go's". What! He had to repeat the phrase several times before we were able to grasp what he was actually saying. Then, we asked for an explanation. Back in the 60's, during a time of political unrest in Nigeria, a lot of Nigerians fled to Ghana. Then, in 1969, Ghana kicked out all of the Nigerians, blaming them for a lot of the problems plaguing their country. Later, in 1983, Nigeria repaid the favor and ordered 2 million Ghanaians to leave their country. The rallying chant of Nigerians supporting the expulsion was "Ghana Must Go".  And the Ghanaians used these durable, waterproof bags to carry all of their belongings in when fleeing the country. Thus, anyone carrying one of these bags was assumed to be Ghanaian. The phrase stuck to the bags once all the Ghanaians went back home, and they're still called that today. There's your Nigerian culture lesson for the day.

Anyway, our apartment! It's happening soon! We have an apartment number, we have furniture ordered, we picked out curtains! But we don't have a lease signed yet. We are still really hoping to be in the apartment by the end of the month. Oh yeah, and when I say we have furniture ordered, I mean we picked some out online, saved the pictures, and sent them to a furniture maker to build for us. Crazy? So naturally, that does take a while, but apparently it's faster and cheaper than buying stuff here or having it imported. Same for the curtains, I picked out fabric and someone is making them. I have no idea what to expect. 

I'm trying not to get too excited, because there are still a lot of things that can (and probably will) go wrong, but we're definitely making progress and getting closer!