"" bshawise: Few things I noticed...

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Few things I noticed...

Nigerians have crazy balance. This helps when they have to get their mattress home on their motorcycle. Or carry their water on their head when their hands are busy carrying everything else.

It's hard to sleep in. Muslims wake up at 5am sharing their chants over loud speakers with the neighborhood. Cows and roosters parrot back.

As much as I used to make fun of soccer being a communist sport- it's universal. You don't to speak the same language. You don't need a fancy rink or diamond. You don't even need a real ball. Walnut-looking nuts work just fine.

Nigerians find it hard to believe we don't eat ram balls.

In Jos, people's electricity can go out for three week spurts. This isn't rare. Meanwhile the Nigerian government supplies neighboring countries (who have money) good, consistent electricity.

Same with gas. The only good way to consistently get gas is to buy it on the black market.

Their soups are crunchy. Full of bones. It's like slurping through land mines. But the taste is totally worth it.

Nigerian soccer fans are worse than Buckeye fans. Rumor has it when they won a match in the Atlanta Olympics the entire city of Jos streamed onto the streets. Kids were seperated from their parents for days. When a goal is scored during any match you can hear the neighborhoods erupt.

Americans are addicted to reality tv and starbucks. Australians to Outback Steakhouse. Canadians to saying "eh." Nigerians are addicted to honking their car horns. They must have a complicated system of morse code. It was noisy greek to me.

Nigerians also think their car lights drain the battery. So they rarely use them. Night driving is worth avoiding.

After all the hellos and how did you sleep greetings they always say, "You are welcome." And they literally mean it. "You are welcome here. You are one of us." It's a beautiful beautiful thing.

2 comments:

LTorres said...

Great post! Thanks

Anonymous said...

They must have shared the horn code with all of India. They love to honk there too, for warnings, when turning, when backing up, or even driving down the wrong side of the road.