17 Hours in Nigeria: A Seemingly Never Ending Story

Cast of Characters: a sailor from Madagascar who speaks little English and is going to work on a boat in Sierra Leone, a “gemmie” from South Africa who flies around the world appraising stones for a private firm, two frat-boy-looking guys who turn out to be fromer Mormon missionaries returning to Ghana to complete a water project, three Indian men with an amazing ability to sleep the entire time we were there, an assortment of Nigerian guards, and me – a little American princess who claimed some prime real estate in the form of an arm chair in a corner of the room :)

The premise: We 8 individuals and our Nigerian guard friends must all survive an overnight layover in the tiny “transit lounge” of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport Lagos on two small loveseats, two armchairs, and an assortment of stackable office chairs.  None of us have visas to be in Nigeria so our passports have been collected and kept overnight (so that can't can’t try to go into Nigeria).  We are allowed to leave the lounge and go into the unairconditioned airport where there are two or three open shops, but since we had to collect our bags, many of us have a good deal of luggage.

View from my corner seat of the transit lounge when we had a few extra short term visitors.

Highlights:

What’s the first thing you do when you settle down for your 17 hour layover?  You check if the airport has wireless.  Lo and behold, Murtala Muhammed did have wireless!  But only if you pay an exorbitant fee for it and have a code sent to you via text or email…meaning you need to have a Nigerian phone or another way onto your email if you want to buy internet access.  Things that it is very unlikely anyone on a long layover would have.  No internet for us. 

Even though we were there all night, there were other “transit passengers” who stopped in for varying lengths of time to have their passport information recorded before they were taken to get boarding passes for earlier flights.  Many of these travelers were not supposed to be suck in Lagos like us (we were the idiots who actually purchased flight plans with this ridiculous layover) and we were a very congenial bunch so we would talk and sympathize with their plight.  At about 10pm (about 7 ½ hours into my 17 hours), one of these shorter term transit passengers who had managed to get on a new flight that upgraded him to the Delta lounge, opened the door to the transit lounge and threw in a bag of leftover plane food for us! And I do literally mean threw, it was slightly awkward but very quickly forgiven when we saw the goods: chicken empanadas, a ham sandwich, and some boxes with cheese, biscuits, and Nutella!  While this might not sound like much to you, for those of us who were having to pay double price to buy any food in the airport because we didn’t have Nigerian currency, this was a gold mine!  It also just went to show that when you are nice to people and try to make their time in transit a little better, the favor can be returned ten-fold!

Besides that it was basically a night of watching a couple of movies to stay awake while listening to other people snore.  Not very exciting.  But at the end of it all, I got on my last plane (I had already been on two) which, although it had to stop in Accra, brought me to Liberia!  I’ve been here for about a day and a half now so my next post will be about my first days here – stay tuned!