Report to that man over there!
One Xmas long ago I was down at the Aero Engineer's House, the one on the corner of Works Road in Ikeja. I was out there flipping stuff on the barbecue when this rumpled figure in a cranberry-coloured blazer made its way up the drive to report for duty.
I explained that I was actually nobody in Dutch terms, not even working for Aero, so that he should go see that man over there, pointing to an English engineer. Then I went back to flipping stuff.
A moment later my new friend was back! The Englishman, with typical English wit, had told him that I was the Chief Pilot and that I liked to test newcomers by seeing if they could discern my high position in the Company. Jeez! I gave up on trying to get rid of him and asked if there was something I could help him with.
'Yes. They took all my money at the airport and now I need $100 to pay for the taxi. No one came to meet me.'
I got a Dutch pilot friend to sort out the taxi driver and told this poor soul to have a Star and to sit down and relax.
My friend gave the taxi driver twenty naira and told him to eff off.
Then the taxi driver wanted a Star, too, so that I gave him one. My friend got very huffy about this, when I explained that Lagos taxi drivers are meant to steal and, anyway, it was Xmas.
It turned out that the man in the blazer was a junior accountant sent from Leyden to find out why the expense reports from Nigeria made such complicated reading and why receipts were often missing.
At the airport he had been bounced from one guy in uniform to the next, being ordered to show his dollars, guilders, pounds and whatever, when someone would shout, 'Dis is a seerious offence!', grab a handful of valuta and send him down the line. He ended up out on the curb with his head spinning and his wallet empty, when he met this cab driver. I always wondered what he told the head bean-counter when he got back.