The aforementioned British Village

As a VSO volunteer sent to work in a developing country I’m not entirely sure the British Village is really in the spirit of this whole adventure but it’s within walking distance of our flat, we are allowed in for free and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth (is that the saying or has the joy gone to my head?).

Yesterday afternoon we set off to go and find the British Village but first called in at the British Council rooftop terrace to meet up with another volunteer who was having a meeting there. This is a very lovely place to stop and have a beverage or two if you are on a proper salary. I studied the menu and found the cheapest drink after water as I already had a bottle in my bag and settled for an iced tea at 400 naira, our daily allowance works out at 1000 naira. It was lovely and as I said if you were earning a bit we would no doubt frequent it a bit more often as it was a great mix of locals and expats but a bit out of our price range. Anyway we had an appointment with the pool and some serious lounging to be doing so on we toddled. We realised a bit further down the road that we didn’t actually know precisely where we were going, I had a general idea from my investigative work on google maps but as none of us had actually been before, we called for back-up from Gordon our next door neighbour, who bless him promptly arrived in a taxi and drove us the last 200m. We were so close damn it!

What then followed was a nervous wait as we showed the security man our VSO ID cards and he consulted his list, we hoped, prayed, crossed our fingers possibly did a little please let us in dance as we had heard from past volunteers that it can take some time for ‘the list’ to be updated with the current volunteers names and thus our entry might be denied even with our ID cards. He managed to find my name pretty quickly, sometimes it pays to have an excessively long surname and I believed I exclaimed “Yes, I’m in!” We had already discussed that we would happily ditch each other outside if we didn’t all make it in, nice eh? We were under no illusion that the call of the pool and running water would’ve been stronger than the bond of friendship. Thankfully however after what seemed like an age and many suspicious glances from the list to us we were all admitted entry, hooray!

Behind the big security gates and bollards lies a secret paradise far away from the beeping and the tooting of the city and we very quickly realised that we would be spending a lot of our free time here, well it would be rude not to right? The pool is huge and there are lots of shady areas for those that merely have to look at the sun and find themselves a lovely shade of tomato red such as me. The bar area has lovely comfy seats and sofas to lounge on and there are two TVs to show different sports, I got to watch football AND rugby all on the same day and at the same time. Everyone was very friendly and best of all the prices weren’t too bad either, in fact they weren’t far off our local and the food menu contained many things with CHEESE, I can’t tell you how much I miss cheese. Happy, happy day. It actually decided to bucket down with rain so hard that we didn’t swim so of course we decided after spending over 4 hours there that we would need to come back on Sunday/today. I did however take the opportunity to use the shower facilities, hot running water (my first hot shower since I’ve left home) was too good an opportunity to pass up.

The Jacuzzi

I didn't quite get all of the pool in because I was too busy 'lounging' to move and get a decent photo :D

The two TVs for all important sports viewing

So here I am on Sunday evening having done some shopping this morning and then returned the place of joy for a swim this afternoon where I was able once again to indulge in sports watching but this time from the pool, genius! I do feel a bit like this is somehow wrong but at the same time I’m not complaining and the way I see it is that it’s a fair reward at the end of a week at work, right?