Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Nigeria - Obeledu

So I did some calculating, and I haven’t been here in the village in a whole decade! I was last here in 1998 for my dad’s knighting or chieftaincy ceremony or something. Yeah, I was in high school then. Crazy. Anyway, I saw some relatives and friends of the family today. There will be much more of that to come in the next few days.

So my dad is pretty well off, but I don’t think that I really understood the scope of that. Before coming out to Obeledu, we went to go see all the properties that he owns, and I realized just how crazy well off he is. He owns like a dozen houses, apartment buildings and plots of land. He was talking about the cost of building them and of renovating them, and how much he would be selling them for and he was throwing around numbers like millions of Naira this, millions of Naira that (125 Naira = $1). @_@.

In any case, back to Obeledu. Being around here, I’m really struck – again – by how contradictory (or at least, counterintuitive) this country is. Power isn’t on 24/7 anywhere in the country (stupid NEPA!), and it’s worse in the countryside (it’ll be off maybe 3-4 hrs at a time in Abuja, whereas it’s occasionally off for whole weeks out here). And yet I still get cell service. I was singing the praises of satellite TV at the house in Abuja in the earlier post, but one TV’s satellite controls the channels that all the TV’s in the house will show. Here in Obeledu, every TV can watch a different satellite channel all modern-like (oh, and btw, half of the channels are evangelical and about half the rest are in French). What’s next, a free WiFi network that I can sign onto, lol?

Anyway, the power just went out again, so I’ll call it a night here. I’ll give a description of my domestic flight out here later. Oh, and I didn’t mention that my dad has a dog now! More to come.

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