Hey, Neo!
I told you so! Didn't I? Or was it you told me so? My memory of all those long, meaningless conversations at the BRC Bar is a bit foggy. Anyway, yeah, Nigeria's coming apart like a North Korean suit. Aside from keeping one's head down, what is there to do about that?
You seemed a bit put out that I couldn't find anything nice to say about Nigerian current events, so that I sat here thinking long and hard. I still couldn't find anything nice to say, though. No, wait, the mangoes are coming into season! You like mangoes? You always struck me as the type that liked a cup of black coffee and a couple of fags for breakfast but maybe a nice, fresh mango would cheer you up as you face a day of go-slows, NEPA shut-downs and the odd armed insurrection or two.
Here in Germany you wouldn't believe what a mango costs! In Nigeria they just grow on trees...
When my then-new wife went to visit for the first time she sent the steward scampering up a coconut palm to bring back a couple of coconuts; she thought that was just great: free coconuts. Well, except for me possibly having to support a steward's family for life after he broke his neck falling out of a coconut tree, of course.
She still turned down a deal to live and work there as the new Julius Berger dentist. Women! Too bad it wasn't mango season; that might have clinched the deal. Our friend the 412 pilot pulling out that .38-calibre Chief's Special, when we were talking about what sort of life it was, exactly, sort of put her off the whole Nigeria thing, with no fresh mangoes to cheer her up again.
I love the sort of questions people ask, first time in Nigeria. First one, looking up a coconut palm: 'Are those coconuts?' No dear, they are giant mangoes.
Next one, looking at that .38: 'Is it loaded?' No dear, it's not loaded. Someone attacks you, you THROW it at him.