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.