a bomb

Thursday started like any other day and honestly it ended like any other day too.  There was just a bomb in between.  I don't mean to trivialize it - it certainly wasn't a minor thing - but maybe I've become desensitized to such violence since it seems like it's happening all the time here or maybe it's because it didn't really directly affect us (besides the additional work it created).  I think maybe I'm not able to consciously process all the emotions that go with such an act of violence so close to home in order to maintain my sanity?  I really don't know.  I was at work when I heard there had been a bomb, and I certainly was scared, especially because I knew Joey wasn't in the Embassy at the time and it took a few minutes before I knew he was safe.  And it's certainly overwhelming that there was a bomb inside Abuja, at the Police Headquarters, not to mention the fact it was perpetrated by a suicide bomber (the first one in Nigeria).  Maybe it's just too overwhelming for my mind to truly grasp and so that's why I don't feel any different or why I just kind of went on with my daily life or what.  I don't know.  I mean what else do you do? 

I guess more than anything I feel angry.  Angry that my parents and family have to sit at home, worried because there was a bomb in Abuja and although I'm safe for now, does that mean I'm safe tomorrow?  Angry that the people for whom my husband works won't assign Nigeria danger pay.  Angry that CNN's coverage of the bomb was limited to one sentence on the bottom of the screen.  I mean, really, how many bombs in Nigeria have to go off before somebody notices?  A suicide bomber from a group called Boko Haram, which literally means "Western Education is a sin," blew up the Police Headquarters two miles from the Embassy.  Hello!  Is anyone paying attention?!

So I've been really bad at keeping up my blog.  I've been really bad at keeping up my attitude.  After Thursday's bomb I am certainly thankful for my safety and that only a few people died but it's really hard to maintain a positive outlook when shit like that happens and then nobody even seems to notice.  It's pretty frustrating feeling like I just got dumped here in this incredibly difficult place.  I understand that we signed up for worldwide availability but I guess I just never realized the extent to which my life would change.  I'm so overwhelmed by so many things - I'm homesick, I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss being able to go shopping or running without looking over my shoulder constantly, I miss not having to worry about bombs going off!  I miss not having to worry that I'm making my family worry.  I mean, sure, we leave in 19 days for an amazing R&R and we just got back a month ago from an amazing trip to Stockholm, and we have all these other amazing trips planned and there are definitely so many positives that I cling to but at the same time I really feel that I am just grasping at straws.  Everything is so hard.  And it just keeps getting harder.  And it's hard on me, it's hard on my marriage, and it's hard on my family.

And that's life these days.  I don't know, for some reason blogging about my trip to Stockholm or Mallory's visit or all the other things I was going to blog about just seem really trivial and I guess that's my excuse for being horrible at staying in touch.  It is what it is.

getting to stockholm

We've had some bad travel juju lately.  Actually, the only really bad travel experiences seem to be related to Abuja.  You may recall our midnight roadtrip from Des Moines to DC to get to Abuja on time.  The melee that was trying to catch our flight to Stockholm is case in point #2.

I have an issue with punctuality. And procrastination.  Since one usually leads to the other, if you know me you would assume I made us late to the airport and this is why we almost missed our flight.  Well you're wrong.  You had better believe that I was packed and ready to go on time for this trip.  Hadn't left Nigeria in five months.  Trip to Europe.  Yeah, I was ready.

So we went to the airport, went through metal detector #1 (I seriously need to remember to wear socks the next time I go to the Abuja airport), waited in line at Air Ethiopia for our boarding passes, waited in line at emigration (the Nigerian personal space bubble is significantly smaller than mine.  And seeing as I'd just had to go barefoot in the Abuja airport, it's not air-conditioned and I really like my personal space, when some guy stepped on my shoe because he was all up in my shit in line, I might have told him to back off.  Fervently.), stopped at customs, went through metal detector #2 at the gate, and then had the entire contents of my bag searched by airline personnel while they told me that I need to give my husband a child.

So we're finally in the waiting area to board.  It's hot (seriously why would you air-condition your international airport in Africa?), I'm crabby, my Marie Claire is boring me and I really need some water.  Do you think in a space where you're cordoned off as "secure" before you get on a plane where you can't bring water they would sell water?  Ha.  Joey tells me to chill out - we'll be off to Stockholm soon and we can get water on the plane.

That's when they make the annoucement.  Now mind you, there's probably 250 people in this boarding area and they're all talking.  Loudly.  And this announcement is made by a man without a microphone.  "There has been a problem with the plane.  We have another one coming right now from Ouagadougou that should be here in about 45 minutes.  Unfortunately, the plane is smaller than this one and so only the business class passengers and 88 others will be able to take this flight.  We will ensure everyone makes their connection."

Now what would happen at any other airport is the passengers would orderly line up at the airline desk and be reassigned based on their connecting flight.  This is not what happened.  Mass chaos ensued.  People rushed Mr. Announcement to get their spot on the new flight - other people's connecting flights be damned.  So Mr. Announcement tries organizing people by their final destination - that doesn't work - it has become a giant clusterfuck and my husband has disappeared somewhere to get water.  At this point it's about an hour and a half past our original departure time - we're still okay to catch our flight to Stockholm as long as we get on the plane that's coming.  But that's looking less and less likely.

Finally the plane arrives and they have everyone who will be taking that flight get in line.  I'm pretty sure that all of the original passengers decided they were taking this flight.  And "line" is already a very loosely held term in Nigeria, so when you add to that the urgency of catching your plane it gets ugly.  I'm left in high heels (I really don't know why I had this ridiculous notion of arriving in Europe in my gorgeous shoes) with two gigantic bags that I cannot carry, freaking out that if we don't get on this plane we are not going to Stockholm, trying to scurry into line with everyone else and Joey is still nowhere in sight.

The line disbursed and reformed several times in the next 45 minutes since Mr. Announcement seemed be to the only person who actually knew what was going on, but eventually, Joey pulled me just beyond the "secure area" to drink some water and people started getting on the plane.  (If you are confused, don't worry.  I was there and I still don't know wtf happened).  Joey told me that he'd managed to get us on the flight manifest but we still had to elbow our way onto the plane.  And even once we were on the plane, seating was a free-for-all and we somehow got wedged in the middle of the last row on the plane - row 40 - right next to the bathrooms.   It still was another hour til we took off and we barely made our connection in Addis Ababa (we originally had a 4 hour layover), but we made it.  Almost exactly 24 hours after leaving Abuja, we arrived in beautiful, clean, crisp, wonderful Stockholm and it was worth every minute.

seriously. best. husband. ever.

So cabin fever has really set it.  Today is officially our 120th day here, and we both desperately need a vacation.  Just a little break to sit back, not worry about work, eat well and see something new.  Back in February we planned a trip to visit this darling little place near the Nigeria/Cameroon border over Easter.  Well for one reason or another that trip got pushed back to this weekend.  And then yesterday for one reason or another it got pushed back again.  Needless to say, I wasn't really so happy about it.  And may or may not have vocalized my need to get out of Abuja for a few days to my husband. 

So instead of doing what I imagine a sane person would do - telling me to suck it up and hopefully things will work out next weekend - he booked us a trip to Stockholm.

Sweden.

Next weekend.

Oh. My. God.  Europe!  The food!  The culture!  Next weekend!

And then Mallory gets here and then R&R is almost here and life is starting to look pretty good again.


Seriously, I am married to the most amazing man on the planet.  Who needs Prince William and tiaras and carriages when you have Joey Cordaro? 

bug pose

Well, yoga by the pool with the sun setting in the background seemed like a great idea.  I'm not really sure how considering most nights I'm willing to forgo comfort in the heat with long pants and long-sleeve shirts to avoid the mosquitos I didn't think they'd be just waiting for me by the pool.  So I spent the last hour down-dog swatting and smack- ing and now I will spend the next several days itching and scratching.  Ugh.

I also couldn't help but notice the infestation of dead flies in the pool.  My sister is coming to visit in the next few weeks (I am so excited!) - after seeing this lovely picture she is going to be excited too.

Then I noticed the giant pile of dead flies (are they even flies?) over by the drain - seriously, what in the world?  Our friends told us about one bug that if you smack while it's biting you, it causes a chemical burn and your skin blisters and peels.  Apparently around this time last year several people here experienced that first-hand.  I'm really hoping these flies/bugs/whatever are not the same.  Otherwise I guess I'll have some great pictures for my blog.

a fun discovery

We found a bowling alley - complete with bowling shoes, bowling balls, full-length lanes, and NEON!  Sure, the power went out every twenty minutes or so, but the automatic scoring system didn't miss a beat.  Believe it or not, we managed to bowl three games, eat pizza and drink beer. 

s.f.joey

You may recall from some of my earlier posts my husband's dumb luck.  If not, here's a quick rundown: Joey is the type of guy who finds $20 bills lying on the street.  So often that his mother lovingly calls him "Stupid F***ing Joey," or "S.F Joey" for short.  So I thought I'd share our most recent S.F. Joey moment.

Since we live in a place where it is exceptionally hard and/or expensive to buy certain foods, we are allotted consumable shipments.  Obviously we bought a ton of food before we got here, but we decided to go ahead and order some more food from ELSO, a huge military (I think?) commissary in Germany.  Since you have to order by the case, the cost grew very quickly and $1000 later, we had a ton of food on the way.

Well two weeks ago we received word that our shipment was due to arrive, and Joey and I anxiously awaited the truck like little kids on Christmas morning.  As they opened the huge wooden crate our anticipation turned to confusion - it wasn't our food.  The delivery drivers didn't believe us, so after a lot of hemming and hawing they finally took the delivery back to the warehouse in Abuja.  Just to make sure, the next day we took our order list to the warehouse to double-check that it really wasn't our order.  Nothing on our order list matched anything in the truck. 

So after a lot of back and forth between ELSO and Abuja, ELSO decided it would cost more to ship the goods back to Germany than they were worth, so we got to keep it!  The whole delivery - probably $1000 worth of food!  Not to mention that the people whose order we got (they got to keep ours) have good taste in food!  They had ordered a ton of tortilla chips, black beans, salsa verde, chilis in adobo sauce, canned tuna, canned salmon, olive oil...Ghiradelli Brownie Mix.  Seriously, SF Joey strikes again. 

The best part was that since there was so much food and we just really don't have room for it all, especially considering the order that we actually paid for should be here in a few weeks, we decided to give over half of the food to our steward. 

"Really?" she asked incredulously as she stared at the room full of food worth probably three months pay.  "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!"  She hugged me, hugged Joey, hugged me again - jumped up and down and clapped her hands.  Then one-by-one she put the boxes on her head and carried them home.  Cool.

fruit

As one may imagine when living in a new climate, he or she will encounter many new flora and fauna.  As such, I have detailed my fauna discoveries (check out this little F***er I found stuck in a cobweb in my bathroom.  I left him there for three days (he was stuck) before I made Joey throw him away - HE WAS STILL ALIVE) and so I feel I should also pay homage to some of the flora around here.


This is called a soursop.  Nigerians pro- nounce it "show (like cow) - ah - shop."  We found it rather tasteless and slimy.  Apparently it has amazing medical benefits.  Maybe we'll juice it.

Did you know that cashews grow on apples and you can eat the apple?  We got really excited when we cut into the apple and it smelled like starfruit.  Then we ate the fruit which soaked up every last bit of moisture our mouths.  So we now know why those delicious little nuts are so expensive.  First you have to remove the apple from the cashew, roast the cashew to get it out of its shell (because the oil between the shell and the nut is poisonous), and then roast the nut.  Thank God for Planters.

For photos of a more interesting subject matter, click here.