Anyway na vex carry me commot today.
We got a call this morning to go and get a Brazilian journal because there was an article about Nigeria in it, to say the article was vexing is beyond an understatement.
It was the Brazilian version of The Times which is called Epoca here.
As usual the main photograph was of Oshodi- nothing wrong with that- and then a staff of a Brazilian company in Nigeria was interviewed.
Oh boy e come be like say dis people dey suffer for Naija. there wasn't one single positive thing written about Nigeria. Below is a link to the article in its original form and then roughly translated by yahoo babel. might be difficult to understand but i am sure you will get the thrust of the matter.
http://revistaepoca.globo.com/Revista/Epoca/0,,ERT17663-15227-17663-3934,00.html
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In ENGLISH(SOME WHAT)
The New York of Africa
The day-by-day of the families of Brazilian executives in the way to the 14 million inhabitants and 300 ethcis groups of the biggest Nigerian city - where to go to the beach demands armed escort.
A pedestrian and multitude ambulant occupy a station of train in the city that receives 6 a thousand immigrants every day. Who survives there, survives everything.
It is 5h30 in the morning when the awakening burrow in suíte of couple of the apartment of four rooms, finely decorated and surrounded by varandas. The geologist of Petrobra's Alcindo Moritz, 43 years, been born in Joinville, Santa Catarina, wakes up for one more day of work. Before going for the office, he leaves for the children's school - Luísa, 10 years, and Júlia, 8. The similarities with the routine of any another Brazilian with of superior level and a good job finishes here. Moritz is one of the 13 Brazilians who work for Petrobra's in Lagos, in Nigéria. Day-by-day in the megacidade of Africa, that has 14 million inhabitants and bigger demographic growth ten times that of New York, it is chaotic and surprising, as the mixture of more than the 300 tribes that coexist in the country. To arrive at the American School, a passage of 5 kilometers, Moritz almost loses one hour in the transit.
Armored cars or with armed escorts lead the high executives of multinationals and if they mix the thousand of motions. They are the okadas , that usually take up to three people and some load, and if they get in the traffic - its drivers arrive to remodel the handlebar to make it narrower. In the streets, a sea of pedestrians who carry everything in the head, even mattrasses. It has cows and goats, ambulant salesmen and beggars, many deficient or sick times, that peer in glasses of the cars in ratios never seen in the great cities of Brazil.
Every day, about 6 thousand Nigerians of the agricultural and immigrant areas the arrive in Lagos in job search . They call the city “the New York of Africa”. If she is thus, valley to parodiar verses of “New York, New York”, the music immortalized for Frank Sinatra: If I can survive there, I'll survive anywhere (If I to survive there, will survive in any place).
After the lunch, Pillar, wife of Moritz, picks the children from the school. The return will lead up to two hours. When it rains, the streets, exactly in the best quarters and the center, they transform into puddles of incalculable depth. Pillar fears little to be imprisoned in the traffic that to be literally imprisoned. TheTraffic police of Lagos feels in the right to beat the drivers - enough reason so that rich, black or the white ones almost never direct. Pillar affirms already to have passed the experience that frightens the majority of the foreigners: to be stopped by a policeman and to be led to a police station. “I've never cried so much. They could do any thing to me”. “The vulnerability sensation is total. Still well that I was not with the children”.
Another Brazilian, Terê, wife of Júlio Gontijo, local manager of development of Petrobra's, jumped of the car walking not to pass for the same experience that Pillar. The cost of the rescue of the vehicle exceeded 60 thousand nairas, the weak currency Nigerian, equals R$ 0,0179. The Moritz and the Gontijos live the same in building, a condominium with swimming pool, churrasqueira and square of tennis, in the quarter of Ikoyi. The address is the same of the 13 families of employed Brazilians of Petrobra's. The apartments are decorated with the beautiful African arts, have air-conditional in all the cômodos, including the kitchen. And armored doors.
The policy of the fear, but the violence of the streets and the lack of institucional instruments to deal with it are still worse. The kidnappings of foreigners are frequent. The kidnappings of foreigners are frequent the assaults practised for gangs in the roads.
In accordance with the Itamaraty, about 15 thousand Brazilians lives today in Africa. In the Nigéria, they are about 330. It never had assaults to the building where the executives of Petrobra's live. But Terê and some of its neighbors had been victims of outlaws who had invaded a costume party in the house of a Brazilian who works in a multinational. With men, women and children in the ground, cellular, jewels and the money had been taken, but nobody was wounded. She knows more *”
In the way of the integration Pillar almost never opens the doors of glass and screen of varandas. Beyond the violence, she fears the mosquitos that transmit fever yellow and a type of malaria that kills. Esquistossomose, leptospirose and tifo are some of the illnesses more feared in the Nigéria - this because the majority of the foreigners never heard to speak of lassa, a hemorrhagic viral fever. Endemic in Africa Occidental person, it reaches of the 300 a thousand 500 a thousand people per year, provoking around 5 a thousand deaths. Pillar is extremely careful with the food. Knowing that other illnesses, beyond lassa, are transmitted by excrements of the rats found in grains, she loads kilos of rice each time that goes to Brazil. The foods are expensive - except the bought ones in the streets, in tents that divide space with sewer ditches the open sky and group of bencheses where lizards of red head if camouflage between tomatoes.
WITHOUT VEGETABLE
The Brazilian Camila infront of the empty shelves of the market ''LaPoint''.It is necessary to arrive early to buy a lettuce , that cosst R$ 23. To obtain lettuce in Lagos is an epic with marked hour. “Madams” - as the house servants call the masters - of some nationalities stand in queues on thursday from 8o clock in the morning at LaPoint, of Lebanese owners, to open the doors. The Brazilian Camila is one of whom runs for the balcony of imported hortaliças of France. “Madams” if engalfinham to pay about R$ 23 for a foot of coveted green calendars. Its comfortable cars wait in front of the store, in a parking bordered for an immense ditch, full of sewer and garbage. Therefore, until the French lettuces they need to be dived in basins with baby's bottle deodorant.
Barbecues, and picanha of Brazil, and the hole championships that beach a ship the Saturday dawns are the main diversions of the Brazilians. To go to the beach only with the invitation of one who has house in the edge and only supplies of security armed. The risk of being assaulted by gangs in the roads is great.
When they plan to travel, the scripts are safáris in the Kenya or the pyramids of Egypt. The financial compensation does not arrive to be so great, given the high local cost of living. In the private restaurants to the elite, one filé-mignon with mushrooms and vegetables - so good and in so parsimonious amount how much the served ones in Paris - cost around R$ 100. It is a considered price highest, even for the elegant Sky Restaurant, in the top of the Eko hotel in Victoria Island, one of best and the most expensive ones of Lakes, with sight for the city and beaches of the island.
ACCLIMATIZATION
The Alcindo Brazilians Moritz (above, with the Luísa son, of 10 years) and Pillar (to the side, with Luísa and Júlia, of 8) try to surpass the differences and if to integrate, either in visit to a tribe massai, either in the beach Alcindo Moritz believes the possibility of professional ascension for the interaction with the other international operators, in a highly competitive environment, where they are exactly the Brazilians who dominate the market and the technology. The chance demands daily sacrifices. Pillar remembers the hard arrival, when the children were 5 and 7 years. Without understanding a word in English, they were obliged to pass most of the day with professors and children Nigerians and of many other nationalities. With the time, the multicultural conviviality started to be reason of joy and pride. In the day of celebration of the Culture Nigerian, a Luísa and a Júlia already total ambientadas had been to the school - as all, also the South Koreans - dressed the character. They had learned to negotiate with come salesmen of the Lekki, the market where the mother already got used to pechinchar - a so arraigado habit that not to negotiate the price offence is considered. Studying in a school of high standard, them they live the globalization in day-by-day. Between children of governors and granddaughters of former-presidents, they had had to learn in marra to respect the differences. “Less to make coconut and pee in the street”, they say in choir, unresigned with the lack of respect to the plates placed in the streets for the government. After the initial strangeness, the multicultural conviviality it started to be reason of joy and pride “Here, we are the Gringos in colorful shirt walking on Copacabana beach”, says Pillar.
“I feel more curiosity that hostility on the part of them, but is the first time in the life that experiment the sensation of being minority.” For it, the misery the time all around leaves a guilt feeling. The impression of Pillar is common to the majority of the whites, called by the blacks “oyibos”,a word in iorubá that means “without skin”. With we baixíssimos development indices (its Index of Human Development is enters the 25 minors of the world),
the Nigéria if it freed of the English settling in 1960, but she continues immersed in a teia of corruption, under the permanent threat of guerrilla movements. About 80% of the state revenue comes of the oil. The inaquality level is difficult to compare with any another place.
Ironically, Lagos, for its mixture of misery and chaos with an incredible cultural wealth and a genuine joy of living in its children, either today optimum place of the world so that of it are perhaps feel in the skin that most of the humanity - and the one that more grows - is very far from if seeming and of living as estereótipo of what the Brazilians call middle class.
ACCLIMATIZATIONThe Brazilians Alcindo Moritz (above, with the Luísa son, of 10 years) and Pillar (to the side, with Luísa and Júlia, of 8) try to surpass the differences and if to integrate, either in visit to a tribe massai, either in the beach.
My people is this fair? see brasillians o. Me and them who will complain about being a minorty or being kidnapped. Rio de Janeiro has one of the highest rates of kidnappings in the world.
I'm not here to bad mouth brazilians but i just wonder why a reporter went all the way to Africa only to come out with the same shitty shit.
How have you guys been? Am i back to blogging? I am not sure but why not? Going home to Nigeria soon jaré, make I rest for this people.
P.S Afrobabe na wa for ur blog o, the kain serious warning i get evrytime i come avisiting.... hmm...
