I dey for Eko

I arrived yesterday in Lagos without too much trouble, which should have been my first hint that something might happen... After the plane touched down in Murtala Mohammed airport, I told Kyle (my friend from across the street in Delaware who is going to be studying in Ibadan!) that getting bags usually goes pretty smoothly, so naturally Lagos decided to teach me a lesson. We waited for about an hour and a half, and sure enough no bags... Fortunately this happened in Lagos, so there were several disgruntled Nigerians who stormed around telling the airport workers how unacceptable the whole situation was and forced them to go back out to the plane and make sure our bags came out. Sure enough a few minutes later we got them!

When we got to my Uncle Seun's house here in Lagos, of course there was no electricity, but he told us that he had recently put wifi in his house! That means I probably won't see too much of the Hausa guys who sell Suya outside of the cyber cafe not too far from here. They always confuse me with Damini, but it looks like their confusion is at an end.

Today we went out to a market to get some sheets for Kyle and on our way there this small boy on the street yelled, "come an see Oyinbo!!" Oyinbo is the word people use for "white person" or outsider and I'm used to that meaning me, but when I looked he was pointing at Kyle! We went to a restaurant called Mr. Biggs and I had the second person in two days ask me if I was the youngest member of the Marley family, which I'm sure is a direct result of my hair. Maybe one of these days I should just go along with it and see what happens, but to date all I do is laugh and pretend to sing Buffalo Soldier.

Tomorrow morning we are going to leave for Ibadan to take my cousin Gbebemi to her school in Ilesha, and then take Kyle to the University of Ibadan the day after that. There were some complications with the house where I was going to be staying, so I might not get to go directly to Ife like I had planned earlier. If not I will probably come back to Lagos for a week or two and see my great aunt, or Aunty the Great One as we call her.

Since the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is notoriously congested and slow, we are going to leave pretty early in the morning so I'm off to bed, but hopefully I'll write more either from Lagos or possibly Ife.