I was woken up by a cockroach. It fell on my face sometime after 5am. I was in deep dream and I thought it was a grasshopper. I shook it onto the bedside where I thought I killed it with a pillow and threw it off bed.
Only later when I looked for the grasshopper on the floor, carpeted, and I couldn’t find it, I realised what it was. There are no mosquito nets in Nigeria. There haven’t been any since Ivory Coast. Instead there are nets in windows and they work well. I burnt some mosquito coils, the last one maybe in Cape Coast in Ghana, but not so many. And I haven’t been bitten in hotel rooms.
Nigerian cockroaches are big and fat. And I saw a few in my room that morning, and I heard them falling down on the floor. Not sure what it is but they keep climbing walls but they fall of them. Often I used to see big ones lying on the floor upside down in the morning in bathrooms, moving their 10 millions of limbs. The ones here managed the climbing well, reaching the ceiling. And the light went off around 6am. A woman’s voice in the corridor called me to check if I’m really leaving that morning.
I once had a cockroach climb my shoe and I only felt it when it was on my neck. I was walking on a pavement in Lagos, coming out of a bar when I watched one of the World Cup matches in 2010. I was dressed very anti-malaria, sneakers, long trousers. Or maybe I was afraid they wouldn’t let us in to the bar. I had been refused from clubs in Lagos on the basis of my clothes (shorts, sandals = banned).
In the darkness I took shower and packed and left. Okada to the motor park = N100, though in Idanre the calling price always was N200.
There was noone except me and okada drivers in Idanre motor park. There was even one guy who claimed was Nigerian but he spoke French to me.
Soon a car arrived, the price I heard was N500, I said it’s N300, the driver said it’s then N600 coz I should take two seats but I said no and off we went. While closing the car doors the okada drivers kept asking if I had “anything for the boys.”
Everyone in Idanre insisted the town was doing well, that it had cocoa and timber to trade. I saw one wrecked huge lorry with enormous tree trunks.
In Akure to get to Benin motor park wasn’t too easy, first okada insisted I paid N300, I refused. Next okada asked for N1000, with that one I didn’t even wanna talk. Third okada started with N500 and agreed to N300. The one who’d asked for N1000 was visibly upset. I even told him what happened but he just shouted to me “Go! Go!”.
It was far. We rode and rode. I was holding to the seat, especially when the bike accelerated, after speed bumps and traffic lights, the rucksack was dragging me back.
We arrived and almost as usual I was the first passenger in the bus. Not bad. I could chose my seat, front of course.
I think that there were alternative busses going to Benin, possibly a bit more expensive and more comfortable, and more reliable, but I didn’t know it until we left in this one.
It took a good two hours to fill the bus. I managed to eat very tasty breakfast at a shack nearby. I asked for fried egg thinking I’d eat rice but I ended up eating bean stew – it was delicious. I paid N230.
I also managed to buy charging cable again, this time the man had the right one, USB-C plug, which admittedly is not that common yet. However it took a while, he asked for a whopping N3500 but he claimed this, being branded “New Age”, is a quality product but if I ever came back to Akure I could find him and claim the money back. Right. I said I could pay N2000 for it and we parted coz my price was too low for him but then some time later he approached me and said N2000 is OK. It’s the “shop” on the right on the picture below.
The price to Benin was N1600. Not too little given that it’s really less than 3 hours on the road but I think I know the reason for the amount.
As the bus just got full, 12:20pm, a woman left it shouting that she was supposed to meet someone at 2pm in Benin and now she was gonna be late. Chaos ensued, as it can only happen in Nigeria. She demanded refund, the men handling the busses pointed that there were no refunds. Someone else left the bus and entered discussion. Meanwhile, the driver couldn’t start the engine and the men were pushing the bus, full of passengers, while the shouting continued around. Then someone blocked the way out, the men pushed the bus back. People started commenting on the state of our vehicle. Nigeria! Finally, the woman and the man who left the vehicle came back to it, she was shouting to be given the change, the car started and off we went.
The road was either very bad or very good. There were very many checkpoints. And gradually, the checkpoints became weirder and weirder. Everyone had guns, be it Nigerian Police Force (NPF) or some “rapid response” people, or NIS, Nigerian Immigration Service (in the middle of a country). The driver was handing over N100-N200 and it seemed the price was fixed as on at least one occasion the policeman was actually giving change from what he got from the driver. There were sandbags on some checkpoints, there were tyres placed so one had to slow down. Then there were checkpoints with wood all over the road which you had to cross over, slowing down of course. Some checkpoints were in the middle of nowhere and then there were some, manned with gunned people, who carried t-shirts saying “vigilante”. Community or village checkpoints. Always gunned.
I thought these vigilante were against the Fulani herders who clash with farmers fighting for the land for their cattle. I saw a herd grazing on the very green grass. The landscape in general was very green. I even saw signs warning the herders against grazing. I once read it’s one of the unknown conflicts that keeps going on in Sub-Saharan Africa, killing thousands of people but it’s virtually unheard of.
If you ask me who’s the culprit, I’d say it’s climate change so it would only get worse.
The taxi driver in Benin, when I asked him about the vigilante checkpoints, enigmatically answered “people from states are causing problems”. When I told Sola about it she said that there were many kidnappings in Edo State and that’s why the checkpoints. Right.
In Benin City we stopped far from the centre. There are no okadas and no tricycles in the city, I had to take a cab. I paid N1500. The driver said he wanted to go where I was from, without even knowing where it is. I asked him “even if I was from Russia?” Well, Belarus may be more fucked up than Russia but Russia is more known and it has a wicked president. The driver said no, to Russia he couldn’t go because it was too cold. Poland, well, too cold, no language, so maybe Spain coz they have sun and he can reach Spain by boat?
I stayed in Lixborr Hotel, picked both from Bradt Guide and iOverlander, also it’s right in the centre. It looked quite opulent, replicas of Benin bronze statues around, there was a monitor displaying prices of rooms and you could touch it to see the availability. There was WiFi but it barely reached my room. I wanted to continue this luxury and pay with a card but the machine only took Nigerian cards. I picked the cheapest room, N6500. It had both AC and a fan, and both were running. The “single” bed was rather double. All beds in Nigeria are vast. The room also had, wait for it, h o t w a t e r. Now you may say in 30C weather hot water is unnecessary but I dare you to enter a cold shower after a night that cooled you, with a little help of AC, and not squeak.
It was already before 4pm so I left the hotel to see the museum. Benin City in the long forgotten past was one of the biggest cities in the world. The link is here.
Across the street from the hotel there is an alley with maybe 10 shops selling their own work: the bronzes.
Benin bronzes are perhaps one of the most famous pieces of art coming from Africa and possibly the best place you can see them in is British Museum in London. There are calls for returning the bronzes and all other artifacts to their home countries and I think they should be returned. But if you ask me if there is space to properly keep them and display them I’d say there isn’t. Although it seems the countries who demand the return are aware of their shortcomings. There is a very good article on this here.
The artefacts on display in the shop are a bit tacky but maybe it’s because they are all shiny and new. The shop sellers invite me in but they are not pushy at all. One shop has very beautiful pieces, no longer shiny and new. The man said they are about 80 years old. I ask for prices of two pieces: N10,000 and N20,000. (Pic below shows the new bronzes).
I walked towards the museum of Benin which is close by in the middle of a so-called ring road. I bought a bag of groundnuts mixed with pop corn for N100 but the pop corn is hard, so I bought a bag of groundnuts only for N50. Then I saw a man selling what he called groundnut cake. I bought a piece of the cake for N50, it was groundnuts connected with a sort of sweetish groundnut paste. Tasty. My late late lunch.
The ring road has many beggars with horrible body deformations. One man had as if half face melted, skin covering what would be a left eye. There are also statues that add to the atmosphere of the place.
Crossing the road is a challenge, the museum in the middle of the ring. But it’s closed, open only until 4pm. It would open the next day at 8am.
I walked around the ring road snapping the pics of the statues. There is an oba (king, perhaps) palace nearby. I went there. The gate was shut and there were policemen so I asked if I could take a photo. They directed me to a man who said that I can’t take photos that inside there was a man with whom I should discuss “arrangements.” Seriously. But of course, I am a veteran so I snap a pic from a distance. It was strange especially that I was approached later by someone asking me why I was taking pictures and his first question was “are you a tourist?”. Wow. People who understand what a tourist is.
And then I should add everyone in Nigeria was very friendly to me, even the ones who asked for money. Perhaps it’s my skin colour but I think it’s also Nigerian sense of humour that turns the hell that life here is into something a bit more bearable. Also, so far noone shouted at me for taking photos.
There are remains of city walls and a moat in Benin City. I took a taxi, for N500 to cover the 2kms to the wall and hoping perhaps the man would help me to find it. He just called it a moat. It was in a very sorry state. You wouldn’t know what you were looking at if you didn’t know.
On the road to the walls there is what Bradt Guide calls “an ancient house”, the only house that survived a 19th century fire that ravaged the city. We spotted it with the taxi driver. Apparently it’s still inhabited and of course it’s not displayed in any way. Imagine all houses in town looked like this.
I walked back to the hotel, stopping for food in a bar. Banga soup, which Amyn cooked for me in Lagos, is a Benin specialty. I have it with pounded yam which is sweet. It’s delicious and I have it with a snail and a bottle of 33, N1300.
In the hotel I charged my phone a bit, the cable performs very well. Finally.
I went out after dark for Guinness to a bar next door. I asked for pepper soup but they it had roasted fish and it was catfish. Not knowing how it tasted (and missing the deliciousness as I later found out) I refused.
When I left it at 11pm, the streets were dark and empty, the hotel gate was locked.
Coming back to Maman 