Every Stone

The story of Abuja is really interesting — until about 1976, Lagos, the port city, was the capital of Nigeria. It was decided that changing the capital would reduce regional and tribal bias, so the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was formed and Abuja was born. Abuja was built up from a small village, and it’s still small by comparison to other major cities. Much of the population is comprised of civil servants who leave on weekends, making it somewhat of a ghost town.

Got in around 8:20 pm, passed through immigrations and customs along with my very nice but very confused Portugese seatmate and found our guys waiting for me with a car. Then there was the initially alarming incident in which C and an airport attendant ‘chanced’ one another. Chancing is when someone sees how far he can push his position. Picture goats ramming each other for primacy. It’s almost violent. C lost. The attendant made us drive to a second loop, ten feet away, to load my luggage.

On the drive from the airport, about 40 minutes, the roads were completely empty, and dark, thanks to the failure of a transformer, and we passed the national cathedral, national mosque, national assembly, and the national stadium, which is used very rarely — maybe yearly.

Dinner was good. We can eat the vegetables and fruit at the hotel, which is super-nice, and have a ready supply of bottled water, so hopefully I’ll be able to leave mom’s medicines packed.

Skype is up and running. Tested it the other night with K. It works beautifully. Download the software from www.skype.com and call me if I’m on: it’s my two last names together without space or symbol.