Beep Beep

Or should I say toot toot? Either way that is pretty much the constant sound of Abuja. There is no real highway code to speak of here, or if there is one it is pretty much totally ignored. Having spent a day in the 'car of death' in Tunisia I didn't think I would ever again experience such an exhilarating/unnerving car journey ever again, but just about every time I get into a taxi here (at least 4 times a day at the moment) I get that familiar feeling. The only difference here is that the drivers toot their horns when they are annoyed at other drivers performing highly dangerous and possibly illegal manoeuvres, as well as when they are about to perform one themselves as a sort of warning, it goes a bit like this: Toot toot! - I'm about to pull out across 3 lanes of fast moving traffic
Toot toot! - I'm really annoyed that you did that but I'm about to stop here without warning/do something else incredibly stupid. Lets just say it's very noisy in Abuja.

In other news we had an audience with Andrew Lloyd yesterday, not of Sir Webber fame but of British High Commissioner of Nigeria fame. It was a tad surreal on day two in Nigeria to be sipping on cocktails in a house with a grand piano and a dyson hand dryer in the downstairs loo. The event was part of some other VSO volunteering that's taking place at the moment with some youths and because we were there a week later than originally planned they let us tag along too. The bona fide guests were however late and as we had arrived on time we had a good chat with Andy (as I like to call him). He was very nice and he mentioned something about being there to look after us and making sure we helped ourselves to drinks etc. Vonnie and I thought it might be nice if we moved in so we could be looked after properly and in style but I'm not sure that's what he had in mind. We did leave eventually if not a little reluctantly.

Andrew talks to the 'youths'

A group photo in the garden



Well he'd be a rubbish diplomatic type if he didn't have some royal things, there was even picture of Liz on the wall.

Then today, rather sooner than hoped for (well I never hoped for) I had to visit a clinic here. Fear not parentals I'm not ill or injured but VSO Nigeria simply must know my blood type, so another volunteer and I had to go get it checked. It was a rather long drawn out process that finished up with a visit to the 'bleeding room'. I'm pleased to say I didn't faint but if I'd known I definitely needed to have this information I would've got it checked at home!