Little things have kept me busy since I last wrote something.  On Wednesday I visited with my friend who lives in the same apartments.  She was recovering from a bad bout of malaria.  I seriously hope I don't get it, ever.  She did lose quite a bit of weight, so maybe a few bouts of malaria might just sort out my overweight problem. On Thursday I joined my German friend for a work-out and she drilled us like a true Sergeant Major.  I was in agony on Fri but still managed to walk with my French friend.  On Saturday we were invited to a wine tasting at Silverbird Mall.  When we got there really loud music was playing and even though the invite said the event was to start at 14h00, nobody could really say when it would start.  We had a taxi waiting for us as we thought we would just be 40 minutes to an hour.  I mean how long do you need to taste some wine?  At NGN2000 per hour, we decided to leave as it could start at 17h00 for all we knew, being Nigeria. 

I could feel an allergy attack coming on, so on Sunday we visited a pharmacy for some meds and I self-medicated but on Monday I didn't feel to good and even though I swore I would not visit the clinic, I was forced to do so.  I went along with by baggie full of needles and swabs, fully prepared for the blood tests I was sure they would order.  Lo and behold, the doc, a lady this time, took my blood pressure and checked my chest with a stethoscope nogal.  I was impressed.  I got some cough mixture and some treatment with a nebulizer.  No blood tests, thank God.

So today I heard we might leave here in a week from now although hubby thinks it's highly unlikely.  I hate this "up in the air" stuff.  I'm never sure about anything until the very last minute.  Surprisingly, I'm not happy at the thought of leaving.  I've made new friends and I was just getting into a nice routine of walking and exercising.  I want to join the Abuja Literary Society's book club and I still want to see Zuma Rock.  Anyway, maybe it's time to hang up the old travelling boots and settle down so I can get to know my granddaughter and learn how to be a grandma.

Hubby wasn't feeling well so we went to Abuja Clinic.  Two people had referred us, so we reckoned it would be ok.  Got there and we had to stand in a queue at reception.  They do have online appointments but that means nothing, cause I had one but still had to stand in the queue.  So we get to the lady at reception but while we're speaking to her people ask her all kinds of things and she attends to them first while we wait patiently.  She gives us a number and we proceed to the waiting room but as we go hubby sees ENT on the number slip and he goes back to reception.  Initially we needed to go to an ENT but that changed when hubby started feeling unwell and sweating and coughing so now we needed to see a GP.  We don't know how to do that barge in thing so once again we stand patiently to ask for another number for the GP this time.  Then we had to pay at the cashier without having seen a doc.  It cost us close to NGN50 000 for this episode.  Of course we didn't have that much cash on us, so first had to go out and find an ATM to draw some. Back to the hospital and the waiting room.  After about half an hour we get to see the doctor who asks hubby all kinds of questions.  He doesn't take his temperature and he does not check his chest which I can hear is wheezy.  The doc tells us he wants to have blood tests done to exclude malaria and that we should come back the next day.  In the meantime hubby's coughing his lungs out.  We go back and do the blood tests and are told to come back on Monday for the results.  Still nothing for his chest.  Sunday we just took it easy and slept away the day as he wasn't feeling good at all.  On Monday we go back to see the doc.  No malaria, thank God but he has urinary tract infection.  Doc prescribes antibiotics and we're out of there.  I pray I never get ill here.  At least hubby feels better now so meds must be doing the trick or else it's just that he took a break from work allowed himself to relax. 

We went to the movies last night and watched Ice Age 4.  Had a meal at Bunna Cafe first and I managed to take a photo of the mosque and the Arts and Crafts village. I think I'll wait till I'm back home before I post them though.

Today I met Kate, a French lady, all the way from Montenique and we did a two hour walk around Maitama.  I now know where the Spanish housing and the British housing is.  Also where Farmer's market is for all my fresh fruit and veg.  I took some photos with my Iphone so they're not so clear.  One was of a beautiful blue and black butterfly and the other a mommy chicken with her little chicks, too cute.  We were walking along and chatting to each other and we heard a horn behind us.  The cars were driving on the pavement like it was another road and we had to make way for them. 

Kate reckons we are being overcharged for everything because we're expats.  She nearly fell on her back when she heard that we pay NGN2000 per hour for our taxi.  She's been here for two years already and she says we have to negotiate the price.  So there, I will become a professional negotiator. The problem with negotiating is, the person you are negotiating with must understand what you're saying.  I bought some material and had the dressmaker come over to take my measurements for a traditional Nigerian dress.  I got his name from a Nigeria friend and she also told me more or less how much he should charge me.  He says ok fine that's what I charge for a dress but I'm making you a jacket as well and that will be NGN4000 and you have to pay me my taxi fair for getting to your place, another NGN1000.  I tell him that I still want more work done, so he should give me a good price else I will go to another dressmaker for my other stuff and he doesn't bring down his price by 1 Niara.  I have lots of learning to do before I become a professional negotiator, maybe in my next life.

What a lovely day I had today.  I was a bit apprehensive at first to drive with my new friend as I know there are no road rules here.  Every driver just does his or her own thing.  She'd also warned me the day before that the cops seem to single her out as she's a white lady in a white car.  They would pull her over for any excuse and once threatened to take her to the police station if she didn't give them some money.  Well, we had none of that today, thank goodness.

We started off by going to Cedi Plaza and first stop was a coffee shop for some caffeine.  We needed energy for the day.  Then we explored each level to see what kind of shops they had.  We were actually looking for material for our traditional dresses but found some other interesting places, like a bookstore where we both bought books for our grandchildren.  It was lovely to just browse through the shops.  When I go with hubby, we just go for a specific thing and I don't get time to browse.  The material shop had so much fabric, it was really difficult to choose one.  My one piece of fabric cost me about R200.  Luckily my friend has a tailor so I don't need to go looking for one.  After browsing all the levels it was lunch time and we headed to Dunes. 

I'm still looking for sun-dried tomatoes, so I pop into any and all supermarkets.  This one was a really nice one, the best I've been in so far. It had Delifrance bread, oh happy day. I'd been looking for wholewheat bread as well. I found fresh veggies, all the green stuff that hubby so hates but I love, spinach and basil and celery.  I nearly clapped my hands at the sight and did a jig. No sun-dried tomatoes though.  We've been eating tinned fish since we arrived here so I ordered fish and chips for lunch.  It was so good.  Far too much food but so good.  My friend ordered a chicken fajita and she got a whole heap of food too.  I tasted some of it and it was also good but the portions are huge.  Two people could easily share one.  Guess where we'll be going next time we eat out. 

So I just googled "where can I find sun-dried tomatoes in Abuja" and my blog was one of the hits.  How cool is that.  I also learnt that consumption of sun-dried tomatoes could cause Hepatitis A, so I shall stop looking for them here.

I'm very happy to have found me a friend to do things with. Tomorrow I meet up with another friend for the first time for an early morning walk.  I'm also meeting a colleague of hubby's for lunch tomorrow.  I'll have my Bunco team before long.

Today, 29 years ago I gave birth to my son David and I remember his birth like it was yesterday.  It was in the apartheid era and non-whites were not allowed in the white section of the hospital but my late husband wanted the best care for his wife and child and so he lied and said I was white on the admission form.  I was about to give birth when the staff realized I was non-white and they put me in a wheelchair to push me through to the non-white section but an Irish nurse piped up and said to the head nurse, 'why can't she just have her baby here and we'll push her through right after, else she's bound to give birth in the wheelchair."  They quickly put me back up onto the bed and David was born not long after that.  Meanwhile my late husband was arranging with the gynea, that I stay in a single room and only for a few days and it was allowed. And so it came about that we could stay in the white's only section of the hospital.  I know this has absolutely nothing to do with Abuja but at times like these I miss my family.  Birthdays were always special days even if I only baked a cake.  We could have a party with half a smarty.  I remember when he was about 5 or 6 and I asked him what goes 99 plonk, 99 plonk and he said "I don't know, tell me" and I said "a centipede with a wooden leg" and it cracked him up big time.  He's a daddy now, all grown up.  God bless him.

Last night a note was pushed under the door saying fumigation of apartment will be done from 8 till 12 on Monday 10 July.  Not long after another one was pushed under the door saying fumigation will be done from 8 till 12 on Tuesday 10 July.  I couldn't possibly stay in the apartment while it was being fumigated so I decided to pluck up my courage and spend the day out and about.  Our driver dropped John at work and then took me to The Hilton.  I took my time to browse all the floors and made note of all the shops there and what the restaurants had to offer.  Wednesday night is steak night at Fulani Pool Restaurant and we're sure to check out that one.  After about half an hour of browsing inside and outside, I went to The Pastry Shop and had a cappuccino and a very large slice of Black Forest cake, yummy.  The driver fetched me at The Hilton at 12h00 and dropped me at the Silverbird Mall.  I need to find sundried tomatoes and I was hoping to get some there but unfortunately it is a newish mall and still very unoccupied with no supermarket as yet.  Not sure if one is planned for that mall. It has four levels and I had a lot of time to kill so I walked around on each floor.  There wasn't much to see but it had movie theatres on the fourth level and I bought a ticket for a movie called "Brave" at 14h30.  It's an animated movie about a royal family in Scotland that nearly gets destroyed because of the daughter's selfishness.  As it was only 12h45, I decided to have some lunch first.  I'd joined Internations and my first question had been where to find good coffee and a number of people came back recommending Bunna Cafe, so I decided to have lunch there.  The coffee at The Hilton had been good but the coffee at Bunna Cafe, definitely better.  I had a smoked chicken sandwich with lettuce and tomato, another cappuccino and a tropical fruit smoothie.  I chose a seat at the window so I could sit and watch what was going on outside.  Just across the road I saw a number of mudhuts and asked my waiter what they were and he said that it was an arts and culture village.  I absolutely love the dresses the women wear here and I want one.  My next visit will be to the village, hopefully with my new friend Doreen who I'm meeting on Friday for the first time and hopefully I'll get my dress there too.  I also want to visit the public library and spend some time there.  I am itching to take photos but I'm so scared.  I asked our driver this morning if I could take a picture of the biggest mosque I've ever seen.  We were told that the massive dome is made of solid gold.  It is awesome ,but he said that I couldn't take the picture for security reasons.  John's colleague spent some two hours in police custody for taking photos, so I'll pass on that.  I think I did well on my first day out and about in Abuja.  It felt good.

Still no car in sight.  Guy from Avis came and gave us a quote.  Now we wait for approval from the powers that be.  I think I'm going slowly nuts sitting in this apartment all day when there are places to go and people to meet but after hearing the horror stories of abductions, I suppose I'll opt for insanity.

Visited the brand new Shoprite yesterday and shopped till we dropped.  I never thought I'd shop at a Shoprite again but that's why never say never right? They had most of the things I needed but I couldn't find sundried tomatoes anywhere.  I asked for some lamb and they chopped up that lamb just any which way.  I'm not sure it is indeed lamb, it might be goat.  Anyway we're having Lamb Rogan Josh for supper. I wonder what I'll get if I should ask for lamb chops. 

After carrying it all up two flights of stairs and unpacking, it was nearly time for mass.  This time we went to Holy Trinity, which is a stone throw away from our apartments.  The trip still cost us NGN4000, there and back.  At least our driver also got a chance to go to mass.  We'd just had communion when there was a power failure, which is a common thing here, and had to wait about 5 or 10 minutes for the generators to kick in.

They hadn't done an inventory of our apartment yet and I mentioned that most of the crockery was chipped.  I got a brand new set right away. That's the only good thing I can think of for today.  It doesn't help that hubby heard that they might want to keep him here longer. 

So now the time has come for us to get our own car from either Avis or Hertz.  Hubby started phoning these companies last night with no joy.  He called Hertz and left a voice message, so far nobody has replied.  He then called Avis and a guy answered and said that he was driving and would call back.  He never did.  This morning hubby calls him again and he says he's not available right now but would give him his colleague's contact details.  He sms's the details through and hubby phones the number and all he hears is The Our Father being said.  We don't know if this is a voicemail or what.  I feel another challenge coming up. It costs us NGN2000 per hour everytime we use a taxi to go anywhere. So as hubby gets ready to leave for work this morning I wish him a great day and tell him that I hope that one of the car companies will get back to him.  He responds by saying, "ja, else I'll have to call them again and maybe I get a Hail Mary this time."  Thank God we still have our sense of humor.

This morning on our way to breakfast we met up with this guy doing pushups. They move their bodies up and down in order to gauge the level of danger.  If you come too close, they stop doing pushups and scurry into the nearest bush. 

Haven't had much excitement today.  I've been a real Lotus eater , just lazing about but realizing I can't do this every day for the next two months, I've decided to join a Meetup group again. 

Just heard a loud boom.  There's a lot of speculation on Internations about whether is was a bomb blast or thunder.  Didn't sound like thunder to us.  Seems to be a blast opposite Park N Shop, one of the biggest supermarkets in Abuja. 

When we first negotiated moving into the apartment, we had to pay everything up front but we couldn't as they didn't accept credit cards only cheques which we didn't have as we didn't have Nigerian bank accounts.  I did a telegraphic transfer from our bank in Singapore to the bank in Nigeria and it was rejected because Standard Chartered does not have an agent to convert Sing Dollar to Niara.  We found this out this morning at 2am Nigerian time, 9am Singapore time when we phoned our bank in Singapore to ask why the transfer had rejected.  On the day I did the transfer, I emailed Standard Chartered and the customer care centre sent me a reply to confirm that I could transfer Sing Dollar to their bank.  So now we're stuck.  We might be out on the street by tonight.  It's gonna be a looooong Monday.  Why must everything be so difficult?

To top it all I found the mother of all cockroaches on the floor just inside the main door.  Good thing he was already on his back but his legs were still moving so I gave him another shot of the old Mortein odourless and kicked him out the door.  He's still lying where I kicked him so very rudimentary cleaning gets done on the weekend.

I now have to use bottled water for everything.  Yesterday I cooked some Irish Stew and rice.  For the first time ever, I cooked rice in the microwave.  If I had cooked it in a pot, like I usually do, I would need bottled water to cook it in and then bottled water to rinse it with.  Then I had another challenge.  My microwave sits on top of the fridge and I have to reach up over my head to get things in or out.  I decided to climb onto a chair but I need both hands to climb off a chair so how to take the rice out of the microwave without getting burnt or breaking something?  Ask hubby to do it. Always knew I needed one for something, now I know why. Note to self - get a little table for microwave. I can just imagine getting something boiling hot out there and tipping it over my face, not a happy thought.

During the week I googled catholic churches close to us and found The Holy Rosary Catholic Church.  I made note of the address and times of mass.  We decided we'd do the evening mass.  In the meantime hubby had heard from a taxi driver that the one closest to us was the Holy Trinity so earlier this evening we leave for mass both thinking we're heading for The Holy Rosary where mass was at 17h30 when we were instead on our way to Holy Trinity where mass was at 6.  So it's 17h30 and hubby says "there's nobody here and it's 17h30 already.  Then we realize we're at the wrong parish, hop into the taxi again and arrive at the church half way through the gospel reading, eish. It felt kind of weird as we got a lot of stares.  Only later I realized all the women had a covering of some sorts on their heads and I had none.  Maybe that was the reason for the stares.  It was also really difficult to understand the priest.  Suppose I'll get used to the accent eventually.  Security was very strict.  My bag was searched and hubby had to take everything he had out of his pockets which made us even more late.

I am thankful that we could join this community and celebrate mass. 

The new apartment was great except the bathroom door creaked really badly and so I asked if they could do something about that which they promptly did but at the same time they noticed something wrong with the main door and decided to fix that as well. We had this long list of shopping items to get, so we called the driver to fetch us and take us to the new Shoprite but we did this before the maintenance guys noticed anything wrong with the front door.  So the driver arrives and Bataleur goes off with him to get an MTN modem as the Airtel one was too slow while I baby sat the fixing of the front door.  The guy hammered and screwed and eventually took the whole door off it's hinges and planed and went crazy.  In the meantime I'm biting my nails wondering when he'd be done as the driver was coming back to get me so we could go to Shoprite.  I seriously needed to cook something.  I had my Wanna be Chef apron out already.

After about an hour and a half, Bateleur calls to tell me that they're waiting for me downstairs.  The guy quickly finished putting in some screws and then he had to sweep up the wood filings, taking so long.  It's like time works differently here.  There is no rush.  It takes some getting used to.  Our lives are such a rush always. Anyway, so we head out to Shoprite on a Saturday morning when all of Abuja is out on the road.  I took a photo of the traffic but it could be bad traffic anywhere so useless to post but believe me it was bad.  I didn't think it could get worse.  In the meantime the plan had changed as we found out there is also a Spar here.  It was great walking into Spar, almost like being home till you get to the fresh food section.  Even so, we ended up shopping so much, we didn't have enough cash, so Bateleur goes off to get some NGN3000.  About 10 minutes later he's back and I'm just so relieved that his back cause it's quite embarrassing to stand at the till with too little money.  The packer who had gone with him to show where the ATM was had borrowed him the money and we had to give it back to him.  So we pack up everything in the car and off he goes again to the nearest ATM only to find it had no cash.  We learnt another lesson on Saturday.  Most ATM's won't have cash on the weekend which was proved by the second ATM also not having cash.  In the meantime the driver had borrowed us the money to pay the packer so now we had to pay the driver.

We eventually got some cash at an ATM at one of the hotels and could pay our debt.  I'd asked the girl at the till at Spar where I could find fresh veggies and she told me to go to some market, I forgot the name.  I remembered it yesterday though, as I asked the driver to take me there. OH MY WORD, the traffic there was even worse as everybody was on their way to this market.  I managed to get some fresh green beans, carrots and green peppers, little tiny ones.  I wanted pumpkin, but I don't think they have pumpkins here.  I did see some butternut in Spar but they were all wrinkled up.  The drive back to our apartment didn't take long, thank goodness as by that time I just wanted to be in the apartment with no sound of hooters around me.

I remembered one very funny thing that happened on Fri when we went to Airtel to get modems.  Hubby and I had had a tiff and weren't on speaking terms.  So Richard, one of the workers at the apartments, so kindly gave us a lift to Airtel with his car.  Richard has long legs so there's only the tiniest little space between his seat and the back seat and I, silly me, gets in on the other side and hubby with his long legs has to get in behind Richard.  I wish I'd taken a photo of that, it was the funniest thing.  I knew he would be even more mad at me but I burst out laughing at the sight of his knees all squashed up.  I did ask if he wanted us to change seats, but he was too mad at me to wanna do that and preferred sitting all squashed up.