Correspondent's Diary, Lagos - Day Three

Lagos is hazy in the morning, a persistent cloud that shrouds the air, though the sun still beats through. It is the time of the harmattan, dust carried on the wind from the deserts of the north. It is ever-present, but only seems to affect the air high above. At ground level the air is balmy, if humid.

Chris accompanied me out to the Federal Hotel where I was to exchange £500 Sterling into Naira. My mother reckoned the exchange rate was about 206 to the pound, at least according to the internet. I had envisaged walking in to the hotel lobby where there would be official travel exchanges set up. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

We arrived at the hotel and Chris led me to some wooden huts set up outside the hotel. They looked like market stalls, filled with fabric, threadbare chairs and local carvings. I got the impression from Chris that he knew one of the guys here was better than the rest, and we went inside. I left the talking to Chris, sensing that this was not the time to flex my negotiating skills.

After a few moments of barter and chuckles – two I didn’t exactly expect to go together – Chris beckoned me to come outside, then asked me again what the rate on the internet was. He nodded when I told him, then he took me back in and spoke to the guy again. After a few minutes he motioned to me and I pulled out the sterling, counting it out to Chris, who checked it and handed it to the trader, who did his own count. Several rolls of Naira were handed to me, and I stashed them out of sight after a quick check.

Heading back to the car, Chris explained that the traders knew the internet rate and would immediately offer that to ‘Whitey’, but he knew they did this and would negotiate with them for a better rate. Sure enough, he got us 210. Doesn’t sound like much, but it amounted to an extra 2000 Naira, which at present rates is about £10. Worth the few minutes of bargaining.

After my Dad finished work we headed to the yacht club again, and Elias, the assistant Bosun who also looks after the Tarpons, helped us push my Dad’s GP14 in to the water. He and I had a quick sail on a close reach, broad reach and a run, then back to the club. The winds were dying and as most of the boat-boys had gone home early we had no safety boat. Getting stuck against an ebb tide with scant wind wasn’t on our list of things to do, so sensibly we got the boat back out the water and de-rigged.

We had arranged to meet up with two of the other expats later on in the evening at an English place called Pat’s Bar. It was your classic English home-away-from-home sports bar, and the kind I usually avoid like the plague. It was also filled with mosquitos, though not the malarial biting kind. Some very svelte Nigerian girls were in, with a clear objective on their minds that would inevitably involve a transaction of some kind.

Not a transaction I was interested in making. Unfortunately, with homosexuality being rather illegal over in Nigeria, playing the gay card wasn’t really a viable option. Instead I just had to grin through their attentions and play along, knowing that at least I had some backup and an escape route. My brother fared a little better than I, having experienced the phenomena in Thailand.

For my part, I wasn’t at all sorry when we called home-time and headed for the safety of our Toyota 4x4.