Hustle and Flow

This time last year I was the sole tenant in a building block of four flats located in a very rural, decrepit part of Port Harcourt. 

The building was so desolate that the gate man used to sleep on the stairs in front of my flat because they hadn't constructed a gateman post for him. I would wake up in the morning (after having slept very little) and on my way to work, open the door to find him still asleep at my door step or sometimes, on the bare floor in front of the gate. The flat in question was upstairs with a bedroom window that faced the street, and the street as untarred as it was, was quite busy specifically with keke vehicles and their blaring nauseating horns. This incessant horn blaring would start from about 6am when I wake up to go to work and continue until the wee hours, probably about 2 am, then, resume at 6am start. Yes, most definitely not a chance to sleep in later in this flat. 

This wasn't the worst take of this place. The real kick in the nuts was, there was no electricity. None. There was never electricity. It was connected to the grid from NEPA/PHED but they never provided electricity to this part of town. They must have considered them not worthy enough. They would provide electricity between the hours of midnight to 2am, and that was it, sometimes not even at all. It was really that bad. I used all the connections I had at PHED to try to stir those MFs into providing at least 6 hours of electricity to this area (because it was my new home) but all to no avail. To make matters worse, at this time of year Nigeria was witnessing some inconsequential fuel scarcity so fuel was priced at a premium so running my generator for continuous periods cost a good chunk of change. If that wasn't bad enough my gate man who got to spend all day in the empty building would fiddle with my generator doing God knows what with it all day, so by the time I got home, he would mumble something, "Oh fuel don finish oh" even though there was fuel before I left, or, "Oh your plugs don spoil for gen" even though they were fine before I left. 

All this drama and self-imposed torture lasted about a month, until I couldn't take it any more. I up and left for another apartment, in another side of town where we were promised steady electricity (even though we were not connected to the grid at the time and it took another 2 months to actually get connected), the roads were better, it was a lot closer to work, with a lot more tenants so I wouldn't be the sole tenant with a leering gate man at my doorstep. Some issues with the first place immediately stopped, however they were quickly superimposed with a new set of issues in the new place. But that's a whole other post.

This year, being in Lagos, my living situation is a lot better. So much better. For one, I am not inundated with the incessant blaring of horns from kekes that speed past my window all frigging day. I am in the CITY. Most importantly, I don't have a creepy gate man that sleeps on my doorstep. That was, as I termed it, "a ticking time bomb" that I'm glad did not detonate. 

However, that is not to say that my current living situation is perfect. Those previous issues have as usual been swiftly replaced with a brand new set of issues. I live in a serviced flat that costs more than I can afford apparently all this so I don't have to deal with the persistent faulty generator issues from last year. But this serviced flat despite, and asides from the high sticker price, still poses a great challenge. The generator rarely works. The property management deals with the generator issues and in turn, they blowback on the tenant. Somehow I don't know how this electricity or lack thereof can ever be resolved in Nigeria. It follows me around no matter what part of Nigeria I live in. Sitting here with a freezer filled with food and no electricity, wondering how I'm going to have to go home to face decomposed food. 

My living space is important to me. It's my big splurge. Some girls spend money on clothes, shoes, perfume, etc. But I like to live well, eat well, and travel. So far I've not been able to accomplish either of these things in Nigeria. Formerly, I would spend much more than 50% of my salary to find the perfect most luxurious stress-free living space. I've always been like that. I consider my living space my oasis, where I get to hide from the world, hibernate and vegetate. We deal with a lot of stressful negative inconveniences and unwanted interactions in this world, the outside world is filled with hate and vileness but my living space is sheltered from all that, it's my cocoon, a space I can control. 

I may not be able to control the reckless stupidity of the outside world but I can handle my living space. So far in Nigeria, I have not been able to find that living space that applies to me and my lifestyle. And for me, with my high threshold for a living space, that represents a huge problem. Very few living spaces in Nigeria measure up and if they do, their sticker prices can only be afforded by corporate tenants with their huge wallets. I find it so sad that there isn't affordable manageable decent living conditions for the middle class, not even upper middle-class, just middle-class working professionals. It has to be all or nothing, and the rest of us, who like to live well, are subjected to the inbetweens - subpar managed properties by people who have no idea what they're doing.

It's like the hustle in this country never ends. It's on a constant loop. Move from one part of PH to another, and there are still problems. Move from one part of Nigeria to another and there are still problems. It's just on an endless loop.

That's it.

End of piece. End of rant.