Oga, kool tempa now o!

Nigerians are very expressive people. They are very loud, and they don't mind if everyone around them can hear what they are discontent with. There has not been a day without any loud disagreements between our office drivers and the "office boy". Most of the time I have no idea what they are disagreeing about, but it is always loud and I m sure that pretty much everyone in the office witnesses their daily disagreements. If you don't know that arguing and yelling at each other is a normal part of communicating around here you would think there is some serious trouble going on. Usually there isn't. Yelling and loud arguments are very commonplace. If you get angry at something or someone you don't just contain yourself and get over it, no, on the contrary, you make yourself heard. I have witnessed arguments about the most funny things in this country, people get angry about basically everything, they start screaming and yelling, the other person yells back, it goes on for about ten minutes. Usually, no solution is found, and the situation is hardly ever resolved, but after both parties have engaged in some heated argument and vented their anger they usually calm down and things are fine. Ever since I got here I think I witnessed around 50 loud and angry public arguments. Quite a number. I don't think I have seen half as many all through the 22 years I have spend in Germany. It hardly ever happens.

Nigerians are afraid of rain. People don't go out when it's raining. They show up an hour late for work because "it was raining" and they "couldn't go out". Hardly anyone carries an umbrella, even though during the rainy season it rains every day and when it rains it pours. Still, instead of being prepared for that case, people prefer to hide from the rain. It's funny to be outside when the rain starts falling - within 5 minutes you will be the only one still out. People literally run from the rain (and people here don't run very often, trust me). Taxi drivers feel like they can charge you three times as much (two factors coming together here: 1. I dey oyinbo, 2. It's raining, so I must be desperate to take the first taxi that stops). When you happen to be outside while it starts raining people are very sympathetic. Yesterday after I left work and walked to the main junction to get a taxi to get home it started raining heavily. I was standing under a tree, waiting for a taxi to show up, when some security/house boy came out of the gate next to the tree to open it for his oga madame who was driving in with her car. He told me "Sorry o, rain really bad" like three times. I don't really know why rain is considered such a desaster, the only harm it does is that it might get you wet, which in turn should not be considered the end of the world, because as soon as the rain stops and the sun comes out again you will dry off pretty quickly. I understand that it is more of a big deal for the Nigerian women, because of their hair, but still, I think people slightly overreact when it comes to rain.

Ah, Nigerian women and their hair.. Maybe it is like this all over Africa, I wouldn't really know - but to me this still is fascinating. Most women here don't wear their own hair, they have wigs, some sort of braids, etc. They literally get it done every week, and it always looks different. Getting your hair done here is not done within one hour (like mine, when I go to a hairdresser I hardly spend more than 45 minutes) but it takes all day. And it hurts (I don't know this from first hand experience, I have only been told - but from what I heard about the way it's done I believe without a doubt that it hurts). You don't see many women just wearing their own hair in some sort of a haircut, even though the few women you see with their own hair often have really cool and fashionable haircuts.

Today, I decided to name the two lizards that I see pretty much every day. I leave my office door open most of the time, so whenever I get bored I look outside to see what's going on. It's not exactly a thriller, mostly it's either the security guys or the drivers walk by, once in a while some arguments are going on right there (see above) and sometimes I get to watch the rain. My most frequent visitors though are Theodor,  and Peter-Harry (it's a really fat, lame and ugly one, he does remind me of P-H Carstensen), two nosy lizards that hang around my office a lot. They both have pretty distinctive features, so I m pretty sure I recognize them by now. Lizards are probably the most widespread animal around here (after BUGS), you literally find them everywhere. Having them in your house actually isn't such a bad idea, they eat bugs and thus support my endless (and rather futile) fight. I am a little sad that I haven't seen any exotic animals so far (Theodor and P-H don' really count, they are nice but not that exciting). I hope I get to come with my friends, they are planning on going hiking in Jos State, which would be a good opportunity to finally have something close to a Safari experience.