How much your money now?

The art of dealing with the police in Nigeria is a skill you have to develop and refine. First rule: the police is always right (even if they are wrong), Second rule: they are to be treated with respect, even if they treat you like a piece of crap while they are performing their illegal activities. You might be angry as hell on the inside, but all you say is "Yes officer", "I understand officer", "You are right officer". People here are really good at it. I am not. I feel like yelling at them, telling them about how ridiculous it is to me that they are acting the big shot, feeling all important and almighty because they are the Nigerian police and have a machine gun they randomly point at you. They don't seem to suceed in making Nigeria any more safe. They do suceed in making people a lot more poor. Of course this is not what I say to them; I try to be as polite and respectful as I can ("Thank you officer", "Have a nice day officer"), while I m filled with spite.

Now that Christmas is coming closer, there is even more police activity around Abuja. There are more "rules" you have broken once you get stopped, there are more requirements your car has to fulfill. And dashing is a lot more expensive. Usually the rule for dashing is: the bigger the car the bigger the dash. But even a crappy old taxi doesn't mean your safe from them. They give you ridiculous reasons once they want your money: my friend's jeep is in an excellent state; it is new, clean, fulfills all safety requirements. The police really couldn't find anything to complain about (he even had a fire extinguisher in the trunk). After they had been walking around the car (it was 5 of them, one had entered the car, the others were busy looking for something to complain about) they told my friend that the cover of his spare (!!) tire had a crack. The cover. Of his spare tire. A crack. Big crime. Huge safety risk. He should go to prison for that. Right away. He didn't, he decided for the "easy" way out and dashed them 2000 Naira (unfortunately the more policmen there are the more you have to pay. 2000 is quite a substantial dash, but around this time it seems to me that you are expected to pay more than usual).

This morning, my taxi driver got pulled over. He is a really nice guy, and not very Nigerian in many ways. He has never tried to rip me off, he is not aggressive whatsoever, and he even obeys most traffic rules. This police guy enters the car (really old, looks like it will fall apart soon - and sounds like it too) while telling my driver how he didn't like the way my driver was trying to turn, that he should pay more attention to the opposing traffic, etc. He asked for his driver's license and papers and while the poor guy is taking them out the police officer complains about the fact that he had folded them and packed them into a plastic bag. Apparently they are supposed to be "neat" (which they were, that's probably why they were packed into a plastic bag) and that he doesn't like the way my driver had parked the car (well, we were stuck in the middle of a crossroad, partially parking on the pedestrian path. There weren't too many possibilities of parking nicely and securely). We ended up NOT paying (surprise), but only because the guy next to us, who had been pulled over by the same guy as well, did not have a license at all - so the policeman saw that his pay day had come ripping off the guy who didn't have his license on him and decided to let poor Benjamin (taxi driver) go.

It is interesting to see how people react to a white woman apparently living in this country (as opposed to being a tourist). Yesterday I took the bus back from work, it's a 20 minutes walk from my office to the highway in Wuse where the "bus stop" is located (which is more or less just a bunch of very old and very broken minibusses, there is no sign that this is a bus stop, but you just have to know. Well, it's not that hard to figure considering all the busses there). Before I got there I had to cross several streets, most of them very busy because of the rush hour between 4:30-7:30 and while I was waiting, some guy shows up next to me and says: "White woman want to cross?" Which was more or less meant to say: Well, you are white, you cannot cross this street. Errm, yes - I wanted to cross, and yes I eventually did. It is not a matter of being black per se, to be able to cross the streets here, it is a matter of being used to the traffic and of being courageous enough to actually make the move. People think that once you are white there is just no way for you to survive the normal life (I don't mean the expat-life, with 24hrs electricity, AC everywhere, your own cleaning and cooking staff, drivers to take you to the Transcorp Hilton to use the pool, the tennis court or the gym, where you will only meet other expats, but the real life in Nigeria, which is a little more challenging and a little more interesting than that).

Taking the bus in Nigeria is very different from everything I am used to concerning public transport. There's no such thing as bus stops, signs, directions, schedules. (Actually, not true - there are random bus stops, but they are used for everything else, busses don't stop there). The "system" is more need-based. There are certain places that busses leave from, so if you know you can go there and look for one that goes into your direction. A bus always has a driver (if you're lucky and he shows up that is) and in addition it has a conductor. The conductor is responsible for getting people into the bus, collecting the money and during the drive he is standing half inside half outside the bus, yelling "Wusewusewusewuse", "Setracosetracosetraco" (which is the rough direction, you can never be sure which route they take exactly, but they might ask on the way and if you need to go somewhere specifically they will change the route for you) to find more people to squeeze into the bus. If you need to get off you tell the driver (or the conductor) - so they can stop the bus. If you are sitting in the back and you want to come down, everyone sitting in that row will have to get up and get out and then move back into the bus. Being a white girl I still get the most amazed looks from people (inside and outside the bus). Admittedly, it must look really funny - me squeezed in in between 15 Nigerians (mostly men, women hardly ever take the bus). One piece of advice: You shouldn't be afraid of physical contact - you will not really get much space and sometimes they make you sit partially on someone's lap (no joke!), as to squeeze in as many people as possible. It's a fun thing to do, gets you closer to the people (in every sense) and it gets you closer to the real life in Nigeria (not that I feel to separated from it anyways..).