Field visit - Port Harcourt #Part Ι
Visit in the MSF project in Port Harcourt, Rivers state in Nigeria
The car left Abuja around 7 in the morning.
The trip is long, and it takes almost 2 days to arrive in Port Harcourt, in
southern Nigeria. I am in the MSF Land Rover jeep with a bottle of peanuts, the
two drivers, and my colleague, Jacob. The weather is hot, you can feel the dust
everywhere and the pollution is obvious from the old and rusty cars and trucks.
The road in the south is not that safe; several cases of kidnappings and many
accidents happen with overloaded trucks.
We did only some few minutes breaks, mainly
for the driver to relax a little bit and then continue our trip to be on time.
While we cross the villages, people are looking at our car and when they
realize that a ‘white’ person is in the car, they are laughing, they are smiling,
and they are calling ‘ọcha’ which means ‘white person’ in the Igbo language.
Around afternoon and while we are crossing
a remote village, suddenly there is a long traffic queue. An overturned oil
truck is blocking the flow and oil is all over the street. There are tension
and some local people try to ease the flow of the cars.
When it’s our turn to pass through the only
open way and move ahead, I see people staring through our windows and yelling
at us.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked my colleague,
Jacob.
‘It’s Ok… no worries’, he said.
I feel that the drivers are trying to
negotiate, a guy who seems to be the one who leads the flow process seems not
to be that happy…
‘Block them!’ he is shouting, and he is
giving the order to another guy who is putting a log in front of our car
wheels.
Yeap… ok, let’s be honest… I was scared…
I mean, I am somewhere in Nigeria, the only
white person (I am sorry to say that…) everybody is looking at me, people yelling,
and I don’t get why?
‘Jacob… what’s going on? I am a bit
worried’ (actually I am scared but ok, breath, breath!).
‘No worries… guys, let’s move forward’, he
said to the drivers.
After several minutes of strict
negotiations and with the calm reaction of the drivers the way is open, and we
continue the driving.
"They were asking for money to clean
the road ..." Jacob explained to me.
After being in the car for almost 11 hours, with my face being full of black dust and smoke we arrived in a city which is almost in the middle of the distance. A big barbecued Catfish for dinner, a cold beer and nice Afropop music in the local restaurant is the perfect way to relax and prepare ourselves for the following day’s drive till we arrive in Port Harcourt.