Road Trip Day 4

          We knew we would be eating snacks for lunch and dinner on our way home so we went to breakfast at 7 AM.  The host assured us the cook knew what French toast was so we ordered it.  There has been so many times that we thought we were understood and then later discovered we were not.  People here also tend to say yes even when they don’t know the answer because they think it makes you happier.  Actually it just makes me angry.  I can accept no a lot better than a lie.  The French toast did look good but it did not have cinnamon so it didn’t taste the same.  They did not have syrup so I asked for honey.  The jar said yeast something but it looked like a dark honey inside.  This area is known for producing honey so I wanted to try it.  Many times things you buy at the open-air market are in whatever containers they can recycle so I didn’t hesitate putting it right on my $14 two pieces of French toast.  I don’t know what it ended up being but I couldn’t scrape enough of it off to eat more than a couple bites.  It was a super salty gross tasting stuff.

These homes were in a village we passed through.

Some of the kids we saw along the way.

We decided it was safer to go through the stream than cross the bridge.

We lost the road for a while and had to ask for directions when we crossed the almost dry river bed.

          I was not looking forward to the trip down the windy hillside but it really wasn’t too bad.  At the bottom the lead truck pulled right over and the first grade teacher’s friend lost his breakfast.  Poor guy, I knew exactly how he felt.  I have had motion sickness before too.  It was nice getting to see what we had missed in the dark on the way up to the resort.  We saw a lot of little villages with people selling basically all the same kinds of stuff: fruit, yams, and a few commercially packaged things.  We rarely see cultural art pieces.  I guess they just don't get enough tourists to market it or these art forms are not being passed down.

One of the many amazing trees we saw.

It takes a lot of bananas to feed all the monkeys.  What looks like a pile of wood is actually stems from many, many branches of bananas.

          When we turned off the highway to get onto the back road to the Drill Monkey Ranch we lost the pavement.  We drove on a dirt road that at times didn’t look like a road at all.  When it rains it washes the road away so several times we drove across dry river beds.  We never could have gotten to the ranch if we were still in the van we originally left in.  It was so amazing the sights we saw along the way.  It is hard to describe.  The undisturbed jungle we went through had huge tall trees that must be hundreds of years old.  All the people we passed waved and said hello as if they rarely see other people and especially white people.  It was breath-taking beauty all around us.

The Drill Ranch Kitchen

The Drill Ranch living room

          At the Drill Monkey Ranch we saw the cabins we would have slept in.  They stood on stilts with heavy screens and each bed had a bed net also.  They were close enough to the electric fence which separated the people area from the monkey area that you could see the monkeys in the trees from your bed.  It would have been amazing listening to them during the night.  There is no electricity or plumbing out there so we would have been roughing it for the night but as it went we were in a worst situation our first night than it would have been staying at the ranch.

 

The sign made us laugh.  I think it was the first ADA sign we have seen in Nigeria.  The bathroom was really just a wood bench with a hole and a toilet seat placed on it.  You first pull the board away that covered the hole in the ground.  It was quiet lovely.  No door either.  You flip the sign up before you enter which says "Engaged".

         We had a short tour to see the monkeys.  We saw mostly drill monkeys but also chimpanzees.  At one point we came up to an enclosure and the tour guide showed us where there were about seven drills outside of the fence.  As soon as they saw us most of them went back in.  They either scooted under the electric wire or they swung over from a tree branch.  The guy said it was a constant problem.  They sneak into camp and steal the bananas even though that are frequently fed to them.  The main reason this ranch exists is to protect them from poachers who sell them for bush meat.  We each gave a donation to the ranch because we were thankful for their attempt to rescue us the first night.  They use the lodging money to help pay for expenses to keep the ranch in operation.  Since we did not stay they missed out on that money and used their own gas to search for us. 

The trunk of this tree has narrow edges like a zigzag instead of being round.

The monkeys on the right are outside of the fence.  I wish they had come closer to us since the tour guide had bananas with him.  I think they knew they were in trouble though.  He said the chronic escape artists get put in solitary for awhile.  I wonder how they know which ones and how they capture them? 

          When we left we went on the shorter road which was obviously used a lot more.  We passed some cocoa trees.  I saw a few cocoa pods but most of the few I saw looked rotten.  I don’t think it is the right season for harvesting them.  I tried to take pictures but we were moving really fast.  Out on the highway again our driver was going 150 kph.  The principal got really upset with him about how fast he was going but he really didn’t act like he cared and didn't slow down more than a little.

We came across this horrific car vs tanker truck accident.  The two drivers were wandering around the crowd that was gathering in a daze.  One of them only had one shoe on.  It all exploded right after we turned around and backed away.

          About an hour and a half before we got back to town we came upon a fire next to the road.  When we got close we realized it was a vehicle and a tanker truck that was on fire.  The black smoke was billowing high into the sky and the flames were taller than a two-story house.  I was very thankful we turned around and backed a distance away.  We had just barely parked along the road with all the other cars and motorcycles when the tanker truck exploded.  It was so scary to think we could have been passing by when it exploded.  Some crazy people were trying to pass by.  The principal and I were standing in the bed of the truck looking at it with our binoculars.  People can be so impatient.  We have never seen a fire truck so we did not expect to see one come and put the fire out.  As soon as people thought the big danger of more explosions was over they started passing it.  It was only on the shoulder of a two lane road.  I was terrified and could hardly keep from crying.  It was so incredibly stupid to drive past it with the flames so big.  I really thought we needed to wait longer.  It was a dangerous situation.

          Our driver kept speeding even though there were so many huge dangerous potholes in the road which could have caused us to be in a horrific crash.  He was weaving back and forth with no regard to visibility from hills and curves while on the wrong side of the road more than the right side.  We kept seeing tanker trucks in the oncoming traffic lane and at one point our truck went between a car on our right and a tanker on the left coming towards us.  He had started to pass the car when he could not see and barely squeezed between.  Our principal started really yelling at that point because again we were going 150 kph which is the equivalent of 93 mph.  He was driving like an insane lunatic risking all our lives. 

This is when we passed by the flaming inferno.

          At that point, I had reached my threshold of acceptable risk and started screaming stop the truck.  The school counselor next to me asked if I was going to throw up.  The driver still didn’t stop so the principal told the guard in the front seat to make him pull over.  I opened my door before we were stopped even though there were no seat belts and jumped out in crying hysterics.  I could not see the truck behind us where I thought Clint was.  I could hear the principal screaming at the driver for risking our lives and his wife was trying to calm him down. The guard asked me what was wrong and I said I needed my husband.  They had been following us but stopped ahead of us and I did not realize it.  I ran into Clint’s arms crying and telling him I was really scared we were going to die.  I didn’t want to die without seeing my grand baby.  It was all just too much.

          Hearing the news that our daughter was pregnant just before we left on this trip and all the drama staying at the dilapidated police station for 24 hours and then being forced to pass by the tanker on fire I was just at my end of acceptable risk.  I felt like everything was so out of my control.  People just don’t drive like that in the US.  There are reasons for the laws we have.  We must have passed ten really crumpled vehicles and yet our driver was driving crazy.  There was no reason for it.  We were not in a big hurry or trying to get away from something.  He had no business driving that way and especially as a paid government driver.

          I felt a lot better after getting my tears out and I guess it helped the principal plead his case because once I got back in the driver kept the speed down to a more reasonable pace.  I was really embarrassed once we got home but my principal said it was understandable because of the events of our vacation.  He was also pretty upset by all that had happened and was planning to send a report all the way to the top of the chain of command about all the bad things that happened on our trip.  They were paid to protect us and Her Excellency would not be happy.  She worked hard to get a good reputation for her American International school.  It wasn’t easy to get expats to agree to come when Nigeria is not rated as a safe place to go to.  We should have had a working vehicle the first day which could get us all the way to both destinations.  We should have had guards that did not try to get more money from us and drivers who are safe.  It all felt so out of control. 

          I can easily say this was the worst and yet the best vacation I have ever had.  The good parts were sandwiched between two really, really bad events.  I loved being surrounded by those children and having something for them.  It was so beautiful up there in the mountains but I cannot get the scary parts out of my head.  Now, I don’t know if I want to be here next year.  At some point you just have to say, “Is it worth the risk?”  My level of acceptable risk has gone down.  I have a lot to think about.  Both Clint and I feel the same way.  We love teaching and really enjoy getting to see some amazing things while teaching in an exotic location but we want to be able to go back home at the end of the year.  We love our family and friends and miss our life back home.  Sometimes an adventure just goes too far to be worth the risk.