Had my last yoga session this morning.  I wanted to stay for the shaking exercise after, but I needed to get to Shoprite to buy some Kingklip as I'm having guests for dinner tomorrow night.  So now I still don't know what "shake" is all about.  Maybe they'll do it on Fri but I'm not sure if I can go to gym on Fri cause that is the day we fly out of Abuja to my favourite place in the whole world....not....Lagos. I'm already praying that there will be no delays and that we manage to make our connecting flight to Jhb.  We've moved our flight up from 19h00 to 17h00 as we were told by our good friend that we'd never make the connecting flight if we left Abuja at 19h00.  It's a one hour flight to Lagos and then our flight to Jhb leaves at 22h00, but there can be so many delays that we could actually miss that connecting flight.  For one, we could get stuck in traffic on our way from the domestic airport to the international one.  Or we could be stuck at immigration for some or other silly reason.  We've already been given advice that if they say there is something wrong with our yellow fever card, that we should take our passport and yellow fever card back and put some NGN3000 into the passport and give it back saying "please could you check it again".  It is ridiculous that this is the only way you can get out of here but needs must.  I have such a longing to be on my own soil, that I will pay up. I hope never to come back here. My daughter always says, "never say never" so I'd better not say I'll never come back here. 

Having said that, I will miss all my friends, my driver and all the cleaners here at the apartment.  They were always so friendly with a "welcome ma" and "how was your night or your day" depending on what time you met up with them.

The final stretch in Abuja. Funny enough I will miss the place and the people.  Hopefully on Fri we'll get seats on a plane to take us out of here.  I dread going through Lagos again but that's the way home. No more having to phone front desk to order airtime to convert to data after scratching about 50 vouchers @ NGN100 or NGN500.   No more ordering a taxi to anywhere.  In South Africa you don't take taxis unless you are very rich or very poor. The very rich will take the good taxis that cost an arm and a leg and the poor will take the very bad taxis.  The ones where the driver uses a wrench for a steering wheel and the wheels come off when you least expect it.  Even so, a basic trip in Abuja would cost us R100 (NGN2000) and then sometimes the taxi looks ok on the outside but is actually on it's last legs with seat belts not working and window wipers not working and you just pray that the brakes work cause they drive like maniacs.

Now the next phase starts.  We have one day to organize our goods in storage to be moved to Johannesburg and 4 days to find an apartment in Johannesburg so those goods have some place to go.  Then a well earned break at Cathedral Peak Hotel in the Drakensberg.  I hope I survive it all to enjoy that break.

Expat life is definitely not for the faint-hearted. Although it's been plain sailing after the initial hassles of finding accommodation,  getting connected and finding drivers, you never quite settle.  Maybe it is because we're only going to be here for a short while. There are always some people who think we are only here to take their jobs and their money not thinking that we bring skills to the table.  We are in a foreign country away from our family and friends. This is the expat life, I suppose but I'm fast losing interest in it. I think I would much rather just be back in my own home in my own country, thank you very much.

On the plus side, I've made some good friends again.  One of them a French lady from Martinique with a beautiful daughter.  We walked together for exercise every Mon, Wed and Fri.  She's gone back home for her daughter's baptism so hubby and I walk together now.  Then there's the German lady, also our gym instructress and a very strict one too.  I get a good work out on Thursdays.  Both the ladies are trying to get me to speak their language.  Interesting times.  I never thought I would come to Nigeria and get fit.  Now it seems I might even have a smattering of German and French to add to my repertoire.  I also have a few Nigerian friends, two of whom I went to lunch with twice already.  The one introduced my to her dressmaker who made me a beautiful traditional dress.  Then another goes to gym with us on Thursdays.  The manager at the place where we stay has also become a good friend and she's very sad that we're leaving.  I nearly forgot my good friend who lives in the same apartment block.  She's from the United States but they lived in Nicaragua for some twenty years or so.  I will miss her.  She's gone away for a few days to some little town in the South of Nigeria.  I will have to get all the details when she gets back.  I heard from a Belgian lady yesterday that conditions are really bad in the outlying villages, with no running water and electricity.

The funny thing I've noticed here is that most times the restaurants that look good on the outside is never any good on the inside.  You see this pokey little place and you're sure to know the food is good inside. So last Sunday we visited this new swanky place called Serendib.  Oh my word, the food was disgusting.  I'd ordered chicken and while we were waiting for our food, it takes quite long, John said he'd just heard a shot, must be them shooting my chicken for the meal.  When our food finally arrived, mine was smothered in some sauce and I knew right away it wouldn't be good.  The chicken looked very old, the meat dark.  I had some of it but it didn't sit very well in my tummy.  Early on we'd discovered Dunes and we liked the food there. Although if somebody didn't tell you, you wouldn't even know there was a restaurant in there.  Here people also travel to their favourite eating places, like in Singapore.  You have to go here for good schwarma and there for good chicken and so on.  These places won't have addresses either.  It would be close to some landmark.  The Lebanese restaurant where I had lunch with my two Nigerian friends, is close to Zenith Bank in Maitama.  Apparently if you give the taxi driver this information he will know exactly where to take you.  One really nice place we went to, was Salamander.  That was the second lunch.  It was so good, I took my husband and some of his colleagues there.  It was quite a mission to find the place, cause you had to pass Mr Bigs, turn left, then first right (after Chicken Fast Food place).  When I went for lunch with my friends it had been during the day.  This time round it was night and it was storming.  Everybody was looking to me to show them the way since I'd been there before.  We eventually found the place.  When we got there it was still storming and I hopped under another lady's umbrella as I didn't have one with me.  Still got well and truly soaked before we got inside.  The hot chocolate made up for it, though. Somehow the food wasn't as good as it had been when we'd had lunch there.  Different cook maybe?  Wakkis is an Indian Restaurant we visited only once.  I don't think we will ever go back.  I have a lunch date on Monday to Spice World, another Indian restaurant so I'll be able to compare with Wakkis who didn't have lassi.  They had no idea what lassi was.  They also did not have pista kulfi (pistachio ice cream).  To hubby and I a good Indian restaurant should have both.  Maybe we were spoilt by the Indian restaurants in Singapore.

So now we have exactly two more weeks in Abuja before we fly back to South Africa, the land of the lamb chop.  I'm drooling for some proper meat.  We have no idea where we'll go after that.  It might be Saudi Arabia, I hear.  From botter to wors as they say, which means from better to worse.  We might come back to Nigeria for a few more months which I'd actually prefer. I'd rather have the occasional bomb blast here than to be so close to very sophisticated weaponry just across the border.

Enjoy the weekend and the olympics.  Isn't it great that South Africa has three gold medals already?