My face was glued to the window as we were descending into Murtala Muhammed International Airport. I hate to say it but I was like, where are all the buildings?! I can’t see anything! To give myself some credit, this airport is a good 1.5 hours w/o traffic outside of the city of Lagos, so we were kind of out in the middle of nowhere..but still, it’s not like there’s sky scrapers here! Getting off the airplane was literally painful. It felt like I just walked into an oven set to BROIL. side note: LOS is listed as #1 on the worlds top 10 worst int’l airports..great news.  I changed right before we landed into lighter weight cotton leggings, a tank and a sheerish short sleeved over thingy and sandals (exposing leg and arms in this airport would not have done me any favors). Within minutes I could feel sweat trickling down my legs, back and between the girls. It actually only took us an hour from landing to leaving the airport. ALL of our bags came!!!! Let’s be honest, I was half sweating for fear of my entire life being stolen. Someone met us at the airport to guide us through the shadiest version of immigration EVER and then take us to our driver. Our bags got loaded up into a police truck and then we were loaded into another vehicle. Ummmm… why am I being separated from my luggage???? I had my eyes darting back and forth from the scenery of my new surroundings to this truck excorting us from behind. I sure as hell better not loose sight of that truck, I’ve made it this far already!!!

The drive was mind blowing. It was a saturday so traffic wasn’t too bad but the mayhem on the road was insane. There are no lanes, no laws, horns act as blinkers/last second warnings, and most vehicles didn’t have doors.. in fact, it was hard to consider some of these moving objects as vehicles at all. I couldn’t take pictures at this time but I will take pictures of the roads where I am now and it will give you a slight idea of what that route looked like. Ryan and I sat in silence. This was nothing new to him having spent two years in the middle east, but I could tell he was just letting me absorb everything. The police escort (the truck that had my luggage) really helped push us through swarms of bottle necked jams and 4 lane round-abouts that made my palms sweaty. “Safety First” is clearly not the motto here!

1.5 hours later we arrive to the camp. My very first thought was that security didn’t seem too secure…we like drove right in pretty much with a few waves of a hand. Then Ryan had to remind me that we were arriving via THE SECURITY. Oh, right. Blonde moment #1. Second thought: this place looks like the Darma Initiative from the show Lost. Tropical setting and everything! The trees are beautiful, the yards are uniquely manicured, houses and buildings are a neutral color and made of cement, thick cement walls/fencing topped with barbed wire, and armed guards everywhere strolling around. Oh, and LOTS of lizards! They’re so cute though! Big ones, small ones, colorful ones and gray boring ones. The birds sound like baby pterodactyls. They don’t look nearly as weird as they sound, but all I’m used to are damn crows. It was quite the site to take in. I like, live here now… Home Sweet Home!