घाना अंडर २० अरे वर्ल्ड champions

Ghana U-20 are world champions.

Ghana won on Friday the 17 of October the world under 20 championship that was held in Egypt. The match itself saw little drama during regulation time and thirty minutes of extra time. The drama in regular came when a defended from Ghana was send off for a fowl during the first half. Replays of the offense showed that the referee might have been a little bit stiff in his decision. The team from Ghana had to make some adjustments and they pretty much defended the rest of the 120 minutes, waiting to take their chances in penalty shoot outs.
Brazil dominated must of the encounter and they would be kicking themselves for not winning the game in regulation or extra time. Penalty shoot outs came and Brazil had the chance to win the game, up 3-2 in the penalty shootouts. They missed their next penalty kick though and gave Ghana the chance to tie the shoot outs are 3 a piece. The next round of the penalty kicks are sudden death and Brazil took their next penalty kick and missed it, while Ghana converted to lift the trophy for the first team for an African team.
Adiyiah from Ghana was the revelation of the tournament, winning both the golden boots and the best player trophy.

क्रिसिस इन गुइना Conakry

Crisis in Guinea Conakry.
The situation in Guinea Conakry is created by a military government that took over power last year and promised to be in as a caretaker and not stand for any future elections. Captain Dadis Camara though changed his mind once he got into power and plans to be one of the candidates for the the upcoming elections that are now in doubt due to the recent complications. Demonstrators from the opposition party were opened fire upon while in a soccer stadium and 157 people ended up dead. So there is now a crisis of who ordered the military to open fire on civilians. The Captain has denied given out any such orders but he is having a hard time convincing people in the international community. He also beliefs that the situation in Guinea is now in a state that only a tough military guy like himself can keep the country in peace. You ask my opinion about the military ruling countries, I would say no way. They are good for keeping the peace and the ruling the the country should be left in the hands of the civilians.

Great Music

If you want some great music you have to forget about cultural bias and listen to the music and draw your own conclusion.I love music a lot and I get to listen to it quite a bit. My musical taste goes from pop,rock,reggae,rap,soul,r and b,religions.As you can see I have just listed just about all of the musical categories. While I am channel surfing looking for something interesting to watch, I would stumble on a musical video. For some reason, the video itself does not interest me much.The music is what gets my attention and I would stick with the program until they start to play something that I do not like and I would stop listening to the music.
Great music to me is easy to discover.As soon as I listen to it I just know that this is good. There is going to be a list of favorite world know artist at the end of this article but do not by any means limit yourself to those artists.What I have found out is that just about all the cultures have some great artist. Some cultures just happen to have a lot of them. Whether you find yourself in Europe, North America,Africa, just keep an open mind and you would find the good music. In Africa I think that the people from the Congo region play the best music in the continent. In North America, the US by a wide margin, in Europe it has to be the English,followed by the French.

The list below includes some of the great songs and artist in the musical industry. You have to listen to some of the music and then draw your own conclusion.The way to detect good music is to listen to all types of music a lot. After you do that over a long period of time, you would start to pick out the good ones right away.

The dark side of the Moon by Pink Floyd(1973),The Joshua Tree by U2(1987).Wish you were here by Pink Floyd(1975),What's going on by Marvin Gaye(1971),Hotel California by The Eagles(1976),The Wall by Pink Floyd(1979),Thriller by Michael Jackson(1982),Exodus by Bob Marley and the Wailers(1977),Legend by Bob Marley and the Wailers(1984).Graceland by Paul Simon(1986),Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen(1984),Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits-1985.Saturday Night Fever by Bee Gees(1976),The Diary of Alicia Keys by Alicia Keys. Rattle and Hum by U2(1988),Kind of Blue by Miles Davis(1959),Songs in the key of Life by Stevie Wonder,Star Time by James Brown,Lady Soul by Aretha Franklin,Let it Be by the Beatles,Sign 'o' the times by Prince,Greatest Hits by James Brown,Blueprint by Jay-Z,Life after Death by The Notorious B.I.G,Illmatic by Nas,Nebraska by Spruce Springsteen,Run-DMC by Run-DMC,The Genius of Ray Charles by Ray Charles,The Slim Shady LP by Eminem,My Life by Mary J.Blige,The Chronic by Dr.Dre,So by Peter Gabriel,Elvis:30 No.1 Hits by Elvis Presley,The College Dropout by Kanye West,Star Time by James Brown,Like a Prayer by Madonna,It takes a nation of millions to hold us down by Public Enemy(1988),Red Headed Stranger by Willie Nelson,Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones,The Harder they come by Jimmy Cliff and Various Artists,Coat of many colors by Dolly Parton,The Beatles('The white Album') by the Beatles,Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan,Here's Little Richard by Little Richard,Abbey Road by the Beatles,Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen,Purple Rain by Prince,Sunrise by Elvis Presley,The Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem,Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan(1965),Sticky fingers by The Rolling Stone(1971),Who's Next by The Who(1971),Aaliyah by Aaliyah(2001),Tender Lover by Babyface,Share my World by Mary J.Blige,FutureSex by Justin Timberlake,

Gabonese Elect a New President

The official presidential elections results were out yesterday in Gabon and the son of former president Omar Bongo was elected the second president of the country since independence in 1960.
He is Ali Bongo and was prior to his being elected president,the defense minister in the country. The French news media was the area where you could get most of the information about the election.
Ali Bongo got close to 42 percent of the votes, beating the next person by about 17 percent. There was report of civil disturbances both in Gabon and in some of the country's embassy overseas.
The embassy in Senegal I believe was light up and so was the French embassy in Libreville, Gabon.
The country thus voted for continuity and if the son gets to be in office as long as his father did, then it would be as if the Gabonese are in a monarchy.

Reaction from around the area
Most people expected the elder son of the former president to win and that he won did not come as a surprise to many people. The opposition at one time entertain the idea of forming a single front but negotiations broke down before the elections could take place. That would have been the best bet to get somebody else in office. Ali Bongo himself is preaching reconciliation, promising to be the president of all the Gabonese, not just a section of the population. The opposition though is crying fowl and for the moment I would say that things would not get settled down for some time.
The fact that another Bongo is getting into office after a 42 year period during which a portion of the population characterize as a period of suffering, the just ended election provided an opportunity for someone else to bring change into country. That has not happened though and for the moment it is just going to be a period of wait and see.

सेनेटर एडवर्ड केन्नेद्य लैड तो Rest

The long term Senator from the state of Massachusetts was laid to rest yesterday in the Arlington Memorial burial grounds in Virginia. This was after a church service in Boston that was attended by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and his wife,George Walker Bush and his wife and Bill Clinton and the present US secretary of state. The current president and his wife also attended the ceremony.
What I remember about the long term serving senator from Massachusetts is that he was the third part of the famous brothers, two of which lost their lives in the 1960s. John F Kennedy killed in office and Senator Robert Kennedy assassinated while running for the presidency of the United States. Edward Kennedy was then left with the burden of carrying on with the legacy of the family. He did run for presidency of the US and lost to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential elections. He was a champion of world peace and justice and fought for the end of apartheid in South Africa. He did get to visit South Africa in the 1970s and his picture was flashed all over the local and national newspapers.

Though he lost the race for the US presidency, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because there after he focused his attention on the senate in which he would be greatly remembered. Champion of issues such as human rights, minority rights and justice across the nation in particular and the world in general, the "Lion" as he came to be known in the senate would be greatly missed by the Democrats in general and the current president whom he helped in his race for the top job in the nation.
There was a lot in his personal life and if you want to read about it try a book titled "Senatorial Privilege" that chronicles his early life as a senator from Massachusetts.

I believe he is the last in the line of the famous Kennedy. The person that I thought would have carried on with the legacy was J F Kennedy Jr. The son of the former president, JFK, but he passed away in a tragic plane accident in 1999 and Edward Kennedy was there with the rest of the family again to mourn another lost in the great family.

अबिलिटी तो स्लीप फॉर एइघ्त एंड हाफ hour

It read an article today on USA today about the fact that we as individuals need about 8 and a half hour of sleep a day to function properly and it got me thinking about how much sleep I have been getting of late. Lately I have been sleeping in stretches of periods that I do not believe come close to the required 8 and half hour of sleeping. What usually happens is that at around 6pm I would fall asleep and be gone for about 3 hours. The sleep would totally then disappear from my eyes. I know right away from experience that there is no way that I am going to fall asleep again. What I then do is to head to where the television set is and start to flip through the channels. I would watch a few news items about world events, local news, local and international sporting news,some music and lastly a movie if I could catch a good one. Catching a good movie depends on the characters in the movies. I would be flipping through the channels and bingo I would see an actor that I recognize and know that they have made some good movies in the past and I would stick to that channel through the movie. There are no commercial breaks in the movie channels that I watch so the flow of the movie is uninterrupted. The time sorts of passes quickly when I am watching a movie and by the time that I looked at the clock if would be around 4.30 to 5.00am and I would be ready to go back to sleep. I then get about two to three hours of additional sleep and that would be it for the day. The routine continues the next day.

Solutions.
It the past what I used to do it go get some exercise. That helps a lot.I used to play soccer,jog or go to the gym and work myself out. What it did was it made me so tired that once I get home I just kind of crash out to sleep. I did try some sleeping aids in the past through the recommendations of a doctor. What happened though is that when you start taking the pills, they work very well in the beginning. After some time though you do get deep sleep but the period of rest starts to run short. Your body adjust to the amount of drugs that you take and starts to resist. The drug that I took was called Stresstabs and they are an over the counter medication.

The second approach is to take some alcohol.
Alcohol would help get you to sleep also and this is like the approach that a lot of people take to get to sleep. The approach is good for people that do not get sick. Personally there are periods during which I take alcohol and it does not seem to have any negative effect on me. But what I have realized is that over a period of continuous intake,I get sick. Some type of stomach complication arises and If I touch a drop of alcohol I would feel so much pain to the extend that I would not only not get any sleep at all, I would feel pain throughout the night. So that is why there are periods of time that I just flat out stay away from alcohol

Music
What I do sometime if I want to fall asleep is to put about three good musical cds in my mini-system and just lie in bed. The music would be playing and by the time that I realize I would be fast asleep.You have to select a cd though that has some continuous good tracks in them. You listen to one good track after another and by the time you realize,you would be fast asleep.

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हिव-टेस्ट रिजल्ट इस NEGATIVE

I woke up late today because I was up catching up on a Nollywood movie that had two parts to it. Either the movies are getting better or I am just getting used to them. The only complain that I have now about the movies is that they always have at least a part one and a part two on a movie that can be compressed into a single unit.I then decided to take a walk down towards Likomba round-about. For people that are not familiar with where the place is, it is at the intersection that takes people to Douala, Tiko,Limbe or Buea depending on your destination. I did stop by the computer cafe at long street and bought a ticket for 500 francs CFA which allows you to get about 2 and a half hour of internet time, good for a period of 8 days.Meaning if you do not use up the minutes before the eight days expire then you lose them. I used up about 2 minutes checking on a website and continued my journey towards the roundabout. Once I got there I saw a sign about a test going on for hypertension and diabetes for free and decided to take the test,afterall I had some free time on my hands. I went and stood on the line, got a ticket number 079 after showing them my ID card and answering a few personal questions, then I was pointed to another area in which the test was to take place.

Once I got to the test area, it turned out that there were testing for HIV aids. I have never done one before and I decided to go for it. What they did is they took blood samples using a needle and told me to show back in about half an hours time for the result.I then took a cab and headed to a place called Mutengene. I was just passing the time. I reached Mutengene, check on something and decided to make the returned trip on foot to get some exercise.I have been eating too much of late. Has to be the fact that the gastric pain that I occasionally suffer from has gotten better.
I made it back to the testing area and met some friends from the past that had also taken the test. I was not worried at all. I am usually careful once it gets to getting off my pants. So what they did is they call your number then send you to the back of a four wheel vechicle with a counselor in it.
The counselor then hands you your result and you open it and it says negative. They then explain in the message what I negative test result means. It means even if you have the disease it has not developed to the stage of showing up on the test. Or better yet, you do not have the disease at all which is good news.

Is the World Recession Coming to an End

Most of the news articles that I have been reading or seeing recently contained good news about the economy of the leading nations in the world.From the US to the nations in the Far East there are signs pointing towards a pickup in activities that are leading indications in nations economy.This would be good news for the nations in general and individuals in particular. Recessions are bad news for everybody and this one was not any different. There is something though that can be said about recessions. It looked like it does not hit the people that are already at the bottom of the ladder in terms of economic success. The reason in my opinion is that these individuals have adjusted very well to living with the little that they have. They may be farmers, small businessmen, traders and hawkers. They have the fighting spirit in them and the recession seems to be an everyday thing to them. They just ride along with it.
The big guys though feel it the most. The adjustment that you have to make especially if a job lost is involved is pretty drastic. You can find yourself going from owning a car,renting your own apartment to losing all of that and finding yourself in the street somewhere. It happens and you have to be a very strong individual to be able to survive it. Some people do not make it and some that do are never the same after the recession is over.
I am currently living in the Republic of Cameroon and the country according to their present minister of public works, went through a recession that started in the late 1980s and lasted for a period of about 15 years. This current world recession did not seem to affect a lot of people here in my opinion. Things such as foodstuffs, gasoline prices went up a little but that was about it. There was one mass strike during the current recession period in the country and it had to do with gasoline prices that where due to go up. The strike was staged primarily in the economic capital of the country, which is Douala,though various other smaller cities were involved.
If the current world recession is really coming to an end what are the lessons that we would have learn from the current crisis. Greed drove this recession and a little bit of moderation in our lifestyles might help prevent future severe recessions. The minor ones are always going to be around due to the law of economics. You can not continue to have good times all of the time. There is always bound to be a downturn. The idea is not to make it a man made downturn as the great depression of the 1920s and this current one were.

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Working for AT&T Wireless

I joined AT$T Wireless in the second half of 2000.The transition to AT&T wireless was made easy by a guy named Don Johnson.He used to call me Doctor Tambe all the time and I always wondered why.I had worked with him at Circuit City and during the period that employees were leaving Circuit City to join Sprint Spectrum,he left and joined AT&T wireless instead.While I was at Sprint PCS I was always in contact with him and he said that anytime that I felt as to join At&t Wireless I should let him know.I did let him know when the time came that I wanted to leave Sprint PCS and he was the one that told me of an interview that was being conducted in the Beltsville area to hire new employees for AT&T wireless.He even told me what store to insist on going to.At the time he was the Assistant Manager of the AT&T store in Rockville but he pushed to get me hired in the location in downtown Washington DC in which a friend of his was the manager.
I started working there, in the Connecticut and L street store located in NW Washington DC.I worked with them for a period that lasted for four years.My employment with them ended sometime around October of 2003.

The Training
As soon as I was hired,I was placed on the sales floor.Shortly after, a training schedule was made for those of us that were hired into the company.Training took place at the branch headquarters in Beltsville,Maryland and it was done for a period of one week.The trainer came from Atlanta and she was pretty good in looks and knowledge.I won a umbrella in training that I ended up using for an extended period of time before it was giving away by somebody that thought the umbrella was outdated.

The Original Staff
When I got hired, the store manager was Paul and Nathan was the Assistant Manager.The lead sales person was Robert.There was Dwee,a guy about my age originally from Vietnam.He would tell us some horror stories about his family's move to the US.He ended up taking a vacation to his home country during the period that I worked with him.
There was me,Eric Tambe,there was Maya Martin,the lone female member in the staff at the time.There was Darrell,there was a Lebanese fellow called Gilbert Maaloff that I had known back in my days at Circuit City.There was another fellow with a military background named Gary, divorced with a beautiful daughter that he talked a lot about.The staff composition would change after some time.
Robert was the first to leave.He was replaced by Dion Wiggins who had attended Norfork State University in his college days.He like to talk trash about how Norfork state had a better football team to my Howard University.
Then Paul would also leave for a store in the Virginia area.Dwee went along with him.Nathan also left for his own store in the Georgetown area of the city.He was replaced by John.A guy called Dwayne Freeman came in with very little cellphone knowledge but did well for himself with time.He spend a lot of time talking about his ex-wife and his son who lived with him in Washington DC.
A new store manager named Robert came along,an African-American.
A young lady named Shantee Haynes came in just about the time that Maya Martin left.Shantee Haynes was about twenty five and good looking although we did not get along on the first day at the job.She came in from within the company,the store located in the Ronald Reagan building in DC.There was another Robert who came in in sales and lastly there was Ike Wardley who came in from the West Coast.He like to talk about his California Angels and the Williams sisters who play tennis.

The pay structure.
The pay structure consisted of an hourly rate of just under 11 dollars an hour.This was less than what I was used to while working for Sprint PCS but the money was going to be in addition to a sales commission.The sales commission was broken down into different categories that included pay for all the phone accessories that you sold.The company paid you also for upgrading customers telephone.This was unlike the case in Sprint PCS where they did not pay you for selling the equipment.
There was pay for selling the services.These were the rate plans.The rate plans ran from the $29.99 range to $199.99 rate plan.AT&T wireless did not have an accelerator rate for going past your target amount of cellphone sales.I believe this is where the major difference is between the two companies in terms of potential earnings.For the close to four years that I worked with AT@T my gross salary was around 50,000k a year.That was good money and I did not have any complain with the company in that area.There were other benefits like health care that the company took care of.AT&T wireless had bonus performance plan which if reached, the company pays money to the employees.About twice we got checks that was close to 2500 dollars.On the down year it was about 1450 dollars.

I missed this one.
This one took place before I joined AT&T Wireless.What happen is that when AT&T Wireless was lunched, the company wanted to keep track of its performance,so it lunched a tracking stock that is different from that of the parent company, AT&T. This happened during the period of the dot-com boom so the idea was very appealing to a lot of employees.Stocks were issued for a price of thirty dollars per share and you were required to purchase at least one hundred shares in order to participate.So a lot of employees including managers went for the offer.The employees that I talked to said they put in about 6 grand into the stock.
AT&T wireless stock was suppose to fly like its Sprint PCS and Nextel counterparts but it never did.The stock stayed around the 29 dollar mark for a long period of time before heading downwards.By the time that AT&T Wireless announced its merger with Cingular Wireless the asking price was just under 15 dollars a share.This caused a lot of stress to a lot of employees in the company at the time.If you have ever bought stock with the hope of seeing the price go up and see the reverse happen,you would know what I am talking about.The employees that stayed with the company got some relieve though in the form of performance bonuses that were issued each year that AT&T Wireless produced some good earnings.That helped eased some of the stock pain.

The Coverage area.
For a change with AT&T wireless there was no issue in terms of coverage.The company had its own digital TDMA network and an agreement with Cingular wireless for its customers to roam while out of the AT&T network.We hardly had any complains about drop calls and lack of coverage in some areas.Some of the popular plans that we offered included something called the digital one rate plan.There were price plans for for $59.99,$89.99,$149.99 and I believe another for $199.99 each.What the price plans did was give the customer nationwide coverage no matter where they were in the country.They only get to pay the single rate.The rest of the plans, ranging from 29.99 to 199.99 dollars were plans for local and regional coverage.The local plan covers mainly the DC metropolitan area while the regional plan gives you coverage for the whole of the North East US region.Long distance calling and at times nights and weekend promotions were included in the plan.Roaming within your coverage areas came free of charge.
What the long distance calling allows you to do is to be able to make a call say from Washington DC to somebody that is based in say Denver.
While working for Sprint PCS and now for AT&T wireless, what you realize is how far the cellphone was replacing the traditional land line telephone system.Because both services had long distance included in the service plan,you could basically make all of your calls using your cellphone.For the employees,we were provided with both a free cellphone and a free monthly service plan that included nationwide usage and long distance calling.AT&T wireless later on gave us free data capability.So we could surf the net from our cellphones.I believe that before I left Sprint PCS they gave us free data capability phones also.I used mine mostly for keeping track of stocks that I owned at the time.

A typical week during my time at AT&T Wireless

A typical week for me would include getting up in the morning earliest at 6am if I am schedule to work the 9am shift or getting up around 9am if they have me coming to work around 11am in the morning.I would get up,take a shower.At times I would get something to eat or I would head to work and buy lunch in one of the many restaurants that are present in the work area.
Once I got to work though, it was all business on the days that I was scheduled.We had a sales quota and I always try to beat it before the month comes to an end.We had some down time at work and that is when you get to check out the news.World news,local news, sporting news,those are the favorite areas that I check on the website.In addition to working Monday through Friday,the stores were opened on Saturdays.On Sundays we were closed.On the Saturdays that I was scheduled to work I would drive to downtown early to try and get free parking.The Saturdays were usually slow days because most of the people that we sell to in Washington DC were employees of the Federal government.On weekends you would hardly catch them around town.So the Saturdays you hard to will yourself through the day,spending quite a few hours at times just looking at the clock.
The days that I was not scheduled to work I try to get in some excercise,playing soccer mainly to keep in shape.I used to love it when I was not schedule to work during the weekend.That is because I loved to go to the club during this period of time.If they had me off on Saturdays,you know that I would be heading to a club called Dream Night Club,located in SE Washington DC.That would not be the end of it.On Saturday nights it would be time to head to NW Washington DC, this time to a night club called DC Live.Both clubs were great and you had like the most beautiful people in the world attending week-in,week-out.So during this period of time the weekend nights were never a period that you were going to catch me at home.A typical time for me to get home at times during the weeknights would be sometime in the 4am time period.I was just having fun with the night life.This would continue until the period that I left the company.

Why I left AT&T Wireless.
I had a total of two sales managers while working for AT&T Wireless.The first one we got along pretty well,the second one the relationship was just indifferent and later degenerated to a point that I had to leave the company.There was harassment and threats of we are going to fire you which is something that I am not used to in my professional working life.It got to the point that I just had to leave the company.Something that I did in October 2003.It was bye bye AT&T wireless after about four years of service with them.

Arbitration
About I year after leaving the company, we had to come face to face again in arbitration. This was because I collected unemployment benefits that were funded partly by the state and partly by my former employer that was AT&T Wireless. After about four payments the company filed a complain with the state that they are not going to continue the payments. The controversy was whether I left the company without any legitimate reasons. In the arbitration, the company claimed that they had offered me a higher position within the company and I turned it down. I do not recollect at all when the offer was made. We met at arbitration and the company won.They had a lawyer to lay their case and I was not to familiar with the arbitration process and I went there to defend myself.
Anyway that was the end of the relationship with AT&T Wireless. The company had since merged with Cingular Wireless who were a long time rival and the Wireless part of the company is no longer independent. There is just one giant company now called AT&T like it used to be in the past. They sell land line, wireless and internet services to individuals and businesses.

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मुएया-कुम्बा Road

Muea-Kumba Road
The road was to be the second part of Mutengene-Kumba road that is sponsored by 80 percent from funds from the European Union and about 20 percent from the Cameroonian government. The first part of the road from Mutengene to Muea was completed back in 2007 and the second part was to begin immediately thereafter. But something happened and the construction of the Muea-Kumba part of the road got delayed. No reason was given for the delay despite the fact that the then Prime and some other high ranking officials in the South West Province had come to Muea where the first part of the construction ended and lunched the go ahead for the second part of the project. The company that is responsible for carrying out the road construction is called Soger Satom and they had all the materials that they needed to complete the work in their chantier in a place called Ekona.

I had been at the chantier while I was leaving in Molyko and the chantier is pretty impressive. Heavy equipment and gravel was in place. The construction company gets the gravel that they used for the road construction in a part of the Mount Cameroon. Anyway I believe the funding for the second part of the project came in and work resumed and the construction of the road is now up to the beginning of a part of the town called Buea road in Kumba. If you are similar with Kumba, the road has reached the part of Buea road just after the Cameroon college of Art and Science.

There is a big contrast now between getting into the town and trying to move around the town. The first part is now pretty easy. It took me back in 2006 when I first visited Kumba about 4 hours from the mile 17 park to Kumba town. Now from Mutengene to Kumba town can be done in just under 1 and a half hour of driving. Good time for a journey that used to be strenuous. The construction company did a decent job also. There is a bridge that used to lead you into Muyuka town that was in a pretty bad state and they fixed it. There is also a place called Ediki that had a terrible hill and the hill is now something in the past. The hill in Ediki claimed a few lives including that of one of my elder brothers who was a driver. That happened way back in the 1970s.

रेसस्सिओं मय्बे किंग तो अन End

Turnaround in the Economic
For the first time in 15 months the figure for the number of people losing jobs in the US fell instead of increasing and experts are saying that this is a clear indicator that the current recession is coming to an end. The recession started around 2007 and if it is true that this recession is almost over, then it would not be as bad as the great depression that started in the late 1920s. The unemployment figure itself is still high at about close to 10 percent. The worst figure of unemployment that I can remember in my years was when it hit 6.4 percent in the early 1990s.

If the recession is almost over then we have to give some credit to some individuals such as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve for his early intervention to save some of the financial institutions that started the mess in the first place. Also the President has to get some created for pushing and getting the 789billion stimulus package passed as soon as he got into office. There were rumors just about one month ago for the need for a second stimulus package and thank god that is not going to happen. The government has pumped enough money into the economy and it is time the private sector takes control as it is usually the case in a free market economic.

This current economic crisis was widely publicized because it hit the rest of the world. But it looks like the US has learnt how to deal with economic crisis by interfering in a very timely manner. Talk of a great depression never did materialize due to a number of reasons that included drop in the price of oil and how the people in charge had learned from the past. Individually, it is still going to take some time for the effects to be removed from people’s memory. I remember the situation in the early nineties when there was a little recession and some of the actions that I took to go through it set me back for about 7 years. Things like personal bankruptcy, lost homes, repossessed cars take some time to get out of the credit bureau system. Fixing your credit and trying to get a better job with a bad credit is going to be difficult and that is how though a recession may be coming to and end as a whole, individually the pain takes a much longer period of time.

Something happened in this recession though that was strange to me in that the stock market held up pretty nicely. At one point the Dow Jones industrial were down to the upper 7000s and now it sits at 9300 which is pretty good for a recession period. The NASDAQ is at 2000 which is a good figure even during periods when the economy is booming. The market has a mind of its own and just when everybody is telling you not to put money into it that is when it is taking off. When the recession would be over and people will start having disposable income to put back into it that would be the period when it would be very difficult to make some money in it.

The recession did leave its mark though. Just look at the number of companies that had to go through reorganization. The list includes GM, Chrysler and a few others.

Making the Move back Home

There is always the tendency for people to want to migrate to a better life somewhere else. You have people that are moving from Africa to go to Europe, North America and Asia. You also have people that are making the reverse move from North America, Europe and Asia to Africa looking for opportunities to a better livelihood.

If you are planning to make a move to relocate back to your homeland and you have been away for a very long time it is not a good idea to just pack your bag and head back home as they say. The best manner is for you to at the very least visit your homeland first and get to relearn the ways of the society that you left behind some time ago. Societies change and that is true whether you are making the move from North America back to Africa that you used to call home. Forget about all the information that you see in the media and also forget about information that people give you. You have to come and make the assessment by yourself and then decide whether it would be a good idea to come back.

It is amazing how society changes people and that is true of all societies.
If you are coming as a result of not having any other option but to come then your situation is different. You have no alternative and you are about to be thrown into an unknown situation and you have to survive. If you have a choice, the idea is to approach your new society as if you are almost like a kid. You are coming to learn new ways and it is going to take some time.
If you are going to start a business, it is going to take some time for you to be successful. When people leave from Africa and migrate to Europe or North America they do not just become overnight success stories. It takes time for them to learn the ways of the new society and then the knowledge that they had acquired from their old society would kick in. It is the same way with trying to come from overseas and succeed here. You come in and the best way is to maintain a low profile.
Forget about all the luxurious cars that you used to drive. In fact you might want to sell your cars and come here and buy one that would make you blend into the society. If you come in here with your fancy cars and try to maintain the lifestyle that you had overseas you would get into trouble and start looking for an exit strategy.

It is at times very hard for people coming from overseas to not standout in the new society. But try as hard as possible not to do that. This means if you come in here and see that the majority of the people are taking taxi cabs to work then the is what you would want to do .If you find out that the majority of the people are taking bikes to their different destinations then that is what you would want to do. If you find out that the majority of the people walk to go to the market then that is what you would want to do also. If the majority of the people are going to church then that is what you would want to do on Sundays also.

There is going to be a time when you would know that you have succeeded and that is when you would want to start bringing out your fancy cars and clothing if that is the lifestyle that you choose to live. People are going to be criticizing you a lot especially if you are coming from industrialized countries to the homeland and you are acting like just one of them. They are going to be saying that you did not bring anything with you coming from Europe. That you came empty handed. Accept all of that and if possible keep the knowledge that you have acquired to yourself. It would come out eventually. The simplicity that made you successful once you hit Europe is the same that is going to make you successful once you make the move back to Africa.

थे अफ्रीकन कोन्तिनेंत हस अल थे इंग्रेदिएंट्स तो कोम्पेते विथ थे रेस्ट ऑफ़ थे World

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Kenya.
Hillary Clinton is making a tour of some African states and she is presently in Kenya. She would be leaving Kenya today to continue her trip that would include a stop in South Africa, Cape Verde, the Republic of Nigeria and some other African states.
South Africa and Nigeria are included in this trip to show that the US considers them strong allies in Africa despite the fact that US President choose to visit Ghana as the flagship of African democracy and I am sure that this did not sit too well in Pretoria and Abuja.
Anyway she struck on the same point that President Obama did when he visited Ghana. That is that all the ingredients are in place in Africa for the continent to take off and start competing with the rest of the world. She made that statement yesterday in Kenya which was her first stop. Kenya was the closest of the African countries to the US until they had their election trouble a couple of years back that backtrack their democracy. They would have been the logical choice for the President to visit as the first African state. That reason together with the fact that his father was born in Kenyan.

I like that fact that she would be making a stop on Nigeria. Nigeria is the most populated state in the continent with one of every four Africans being a Nigeria. So they do have an influence in the continent. They are the country that provided the most troops during the peace keeping mission in Sudan in the days when Obasanjo was President of the country. I would like to see the reaction of the people when she gets there.

Internet Connection

What to do with the internet connection.
Most of the cyber cafés are just having a lot of problems with their connection. I used to think that is was just certain areas that have problems but I would try in this article to share my experience with you on the internet connection in the nation. I have used the internet in the cities of Tiko, Douala, Buea, Limbe, Molyko and lastly at Mutengene.

The first place that I used the internet once I got into the country in the year 2005 was in long street Tiko. I went to the place to try and get some copies made on resumes that I planned on sending out to employers. The copying part of the transaction went very well. It was the internet that was moving very slowly to me at the time. I thought that it had to do with this particular location and left the place planning on testing different internet locations. The next area that I tested the internet connection was in an area in Mutengene and it work surprisingly well. At the time the internet places that I visited did not get as much traffic as they do now. I did talk to my uncle in Buea and he told me that the University campus in Buea does have internet connection and it was relatively inexpensive also. I believe you get two hours of internet connection for four hundred francs CFA. That is one hundred francs cheaper than in the rest of the other areas.

The University of Buea does have by far the best connection in all the places that I have visited. At the time that I started to go there, my visits were about two times a month. I mainly used the internet for reading news items.

Next stop was in Douala. In Douala there were so many internet cafes and you could make your choice of many. There was one that I used in an area called Bonaberi. When it was on, it worked very well despite the fact that there were many people using it at the time. Two other places that I used the internet in the Bonaberi area worked pretty well. There is a place just at the entrance of the ancient route and the connection there was pretty good. There was no interruption of the service also. The one at the end of the ancient route entrance was pretty good also. It was not as large as the first one but it worked pretty well. I did spend some time at Bonamoussadi and there the connections were very unsteady. A lot of interruptions. That was also the case in Akwa at an office that I worked at. You would be doing some work and the connection would just go off. Also there were some days that you did not get any connections at all.

Mutengene has a good connection on a place called Buea road. There are about three other places in the small town but the one on Buea road is the better one. There is connection in Molyko and Buea town .They work most of the time but there are also problems that might include interruption of electricity.

There has been talk of bringing better connection to the nation like the use of fiber optic cables instead of the phone line. The company in the country that deals with electricity had suggested that the future might include bringing the internet connection through the electrical lines. That might improve things a bit since there is electricity in a lot of areas.

There is also the question of how many people put the internet into use in the country. I believe that is one of the problems. A lot of individuals still do not use the internet and for the moment that might be the reason why investing a lot of money into it would not be such a great investment. The internet places are run by individuals with their own personal money and they have to make a profit before they could invest more money into getting a much faster connection for the customers.

त्रौब्ले इन साउथ अफ्रीका एंड Nigeria

Trouble in the Top Two African Nations.
South Africa is the richest of the African nations and they are due to host the World Cup next year. The Republic of Nigeria is Africa’s top populated country and it is also the continents top producer and exported of oil. Both nations are suppose to be the flag bearers of the continent but they are now both involved in social unrest with disturbing images being flashed across the world’s media about what is going on in both nations.

South Africa.
The first troubling sign was when workers involved in the construction of the world cup 2010 stadiums went on strike temporary demanding higher wages. That problem was taken care of in a hurry as not just South Africa but the world at large had something at stake in the world cup. The strike moved on to other areas of the work force though and it is this current strike that is having the most negative of images of the South African nation. The images are disturbing to say the least partly due to the history of the nation of South Africa. People are on the streets harassing government vehicles and littering the streets and some of the pictures look like they are going back to the days of apartheid.

Jacob Zuma got elected as President of South Africa last year amid a lot of controversy about his role in bribery and corruption that took place during his term as vice President of South Africa under the then government of President Thabo Mbeki. Jacob Zuma’s charges were dropped in the court of law and he went on to become the president of South Africa amid a lot of expectation from the masses that he was going to change their lives. Well so far that has not happened and it seems as if the same people that went to the polls to vote for him are now beginning to demand for real changes to their livelihoods in this nation in which the people have sacrifice a lot. The President has appeared on TV and he is questioning whether people have the right to be littering the streets in a move towards taking strong action against them. What I think he should be going is focusing on trying to find out what exactly the people are angry about and work towards finding a solution to the problem.

Nigeria.

Nigeria’s recent problem involves militants that are fighting to get their own nation in the northern state of Bauchi. They are of the Muslim faith and they are looking for a place in which they control and can practice a rigid form of the Islamic law. Some of their demands include no type of western education for their children, restriction on some of the rights for women and the large one is for them to have their own state. That would not happen though.
Nigeria went through a civil war in the 1960s and their leadership are quick to strike down on any actions that could lead the nation towards the path of war. The sect leader has recently been killed and some human rights groups are crying fowl. The reason that human rights organization are complaining is that the initial police report claimed that the sect leader was killed in combat. But later on a police chief said that the sect chief was in their custody when he died. So there is bound to be some investigation before the rest of the world can get a clear picture as to what really happened. The President of Nigeria, Umaru Yar’ Adua though is less concern about the group and has ordered a major crack down on them with close to about 600 people now reported dead. The President of Nigeria got elected in a democratic process but there were allegations of election violations once he got into office. He has been a very quite leader of the heavily populated nation compared to Nigerian leaders of the past. He has been working hard though. He has brought the situation in the Delta Region under some sort of control by granting amnesty to their leader and negotiating with the group. Some of their demands are being met as major constructions are ongoing in this part of the country to trickle down some of the oil revenue that is being exploited in the region.

The latest in सोशल Interfacing

Twitter

Twitter is a social network in which young people and adults interact with each other. It is relatively new and it is just like Face book. You can register on it and try and find friends and love ones that have been missing for some time. The signing process is relatively easy. All you have to do is provide your email address, full names, and a username that would enable you to lock on into the website and of cause a password. You can write a blog on the site and you can interact with other individuals.

The most popular of the features to me right now has to be to see just how popular some people are in the US or the world at large. To find out how popular somebody is, once you register you can go to the section- find person, type the person’s name and voila you get their popularity rating .I was just playing on the site today and it was surprising to me looking at some of the numbers.

Michael Jordan who is now retired from professional basketball as a player had about 25000 followers. He follows four people on twitter. The list of people that he follows includes Oprah.
Kobe Bryant, I was surprise had just close to 2513 followers, he tracks 16 of his friends on the website.
Lebron James has 6483 followers; he keeps track of 100 people, busy for a popular guy.
Golfer Tiger Woods had about 13000 followers, his number of followers to close to that of Michael Jordan.

I kept looking and then I hit on the people that are really popular in the US.
Shaq, who did his college education at LSU and still plays professional basketball, has just under 1.9million followers. He keeps track of 555 of his friends on the website. This is a huge following for the soon to be retired basketball player. He has openly express his desire to be a sheriff once he retires from the game of basketball. Maybe he should be looking at a higher position like running for Governor in the state of Louisiana and why not maybe run for the top job of the nation, president of the United States.

President Barrack Obama’s followers where close to that of Shaq at just under 1.9 million followers. The President though had everybody beat by a huge margin in terms of people that he keeps track of on the site. His number stands at 800,000. Nobody came anywhere close to that number in terms people that you keep track of on the website. For somebody who is the Chief executive officer of the nation, where does he get the time to keep in touch with all these people, just amazing?

Oprah tops the list with the most followers with just under 2million people keeping track of her on the website. She keeps track of four people on the site and the people that she follows include, you guess it Shaq.

Former President George Walker Bush has 23 followers. Bill Clinton has 1803 followers and he keeps track of nine individuals on the website.
Out of the US, I put in Nelson Mandela’s name and he had 1108 individuals that are his followers. He keeps track of six people.

अ ट्रिप तो लागोस,Nigeria

This journey begins in a small town called Tiko, located in the South West Province of the Republic of Cameroon. The purpose of the visit was to travel to Lagos, Nigeria to see a man called T. B Joshua who is really popular in this part of the world. The guy is noted for performing miracles like Jesus Christ did in his days and the idea was to go check it out. We traveled the three of us from where I live but there were a lot of people also traveling that I would get to meet during the course of the journey.

The means of transportation is a ship called "Asuka".It carries about 500 passengers at a time and it has a lower and an upper section. The lower section is the first class. We were in the second class and the cost of this part of the journey was about 50,000 francs CFA.In dollars that is about 100 dollars for a round trip ticket. This part of the journey would take us from Tiko to Calabar, Nigeria. The ship was loaded with both passengers and cargo, with some people lying on the floor through the whole journey. The journey started at around 11pm and we were told that by around 8am in the next day we should be at the port in Calabar. What you do once you get into the ship is to look for a place to seat and place your hand luggage. There is enough space in the ship for the rest of the merchandise that people are transporting to Nigeria. Most of it is foodstuff; a lot is merchandise that is going to be sold over there. There is a separate attachment to the ship that is quite huge and the crew of the ship loads and off load the cargo that goes into this area.

To make the journey convenience, there is a sales counter where you can get soft drinks, sandwiches and other foodstuffs. The counter stays open until about between 1 to 2 am in the morning. It reopens early at about 7am in the morning when breakfast is served. On the upper level in which we were located there were two 35 inches television monitors that showed movies through the journey. The movies alternated between western movies and movies from "Nollywood" that is the name of the Nigerian film industry. There are decks also that you can go out of the sitting area to relax outside. You could stand out there and get to see the ocean. That is my favorite part of the ship. I always love to look out at the sea. The time of year that we traveled, the sea was quite calm, at least during the first part of the journey. Also it looks like at night the sea is calm. The ship itself does not move very fast but there is enough distraction around to keep you busy so that the journey does not get boring at all.

The Immigration Officers

You have to go through some immigration formalities while you are inside the ship. The crew members collected 3000 francs, about 6 dollars from those of us of Cameroonian nationality. We would also get to pay about the same amount to get out of the ports once you reach Calabar, Nigeria. You would be required to show proof of vaccination at the Calabar port also before you can continue your journey. The vaccination was for yellow fever. On your way back to the Republic of Cameroon, you would repeat this immigration procedure. The Nigerian immigration would require you to pay 4000 francs CFA, about 8dollars before you can board the ship out of this country and once you get into the ship, there would be another 4000 francs charge, this time the fee is for Cameroonian immigration authorities and this is collected sometime before you arrive at the destination in Tiko.

Arriving Calabar.

We arrived at Calabar about 8am in the morning after being at sea for about 9 hours. That is the time it takes to complete the journey by ship. You get to pass quite a few people that are making the journey with speedboats and at times local canoes that are powered by engines. They are wide open at the sea making the journey with no type of protection at all. A lot of people have lost their lives traveling with these boats but the journeys are still going on. The method that we used is by no means the safest . There are no border patrols through the course of the journey and I get the feeling that if something happens in the open sea we were all on our own.

From Calabar to Lagos.

Once you got to Calabar, the next part of the journey is to travel by bus to your Lagos destination. There is a make shift motor park that is located right at the Calabar port and there you can board buses that take about 15 to 20 passengers for the trip to Lagos. Though we arrived at Calabar at around 8am in the morning, we did not get to leave from there until about 11am in the morning. There are a numbers of things that needed to be done, like getting the rest of our luggage off loaded off the ship. Also we had to convert our currency from CFA to Naira. Naira is the Nigerian currency and there is quite a market flourishing in the currency conversion business at the Calabar port. At the time that we traveled the rate of CFA to Naira was about 3CFA francs for I Naira. The advice that you get is to convert only the amount of money that you feel that you are going to need while in Nigeria. So that is what we did. We converted enough money that would cover us for transportation, hotel stay and feeding while we were in Nigeria.

The cost of the journey from Calabar to Lagos at the time we traveled was 5000 Naira.15, 000cfa or about 30 dollars. The journey itself by bus runs for about 11 to 12 hours depending on the skill of your driver. We did not make it to Lagos on the same day because it got dark at about the time that we arrived at Onitsha. The advice of the driver was that we spend the night there and continue the journey in the morning. He said it is not safe to travel at night in the country because of armed robbers. So we spend the night at a small hotel and continue the journey at about 7am in the morning. By about noon we had made it to the outskirt of Lagos.

The journey form Calabar to Lagos is not a smooth one at all. The roads in Nigeria are good in some areas but there are also some bad areas that make the journey much longer. That is the case in the country that we were coming from. So if you have heard stories that the Republic of Nigeria is full of paved superhighways everywhere, forget it, that is a myth. Armed security men are all over the highways. They would stop the vehicles occasionally, but most of the time they just wave you along. They are there to safeguard your free passage from one part of the country to another. The country is quite large though and there are stretches of land that is uninhabited. The Delta Niger area is on the news a lot because of the struggle that is ongoing between the rebels and the government for oil revenue sharing and we passed through this area. I kind of like the area a lot. The Nigerian government has started to do something about the problems of the people in this part of the country and you could see that in the highways that were being constructed in the region. An international airport was being built also and you could see part of it from the major highway.

Once we arrived at Lagos, the next step was to find out where the Synagogue, Church of All Nations is located because that is where we were heading. From all the talk about the Man of God that we got before leaving Cameroon, I thought that the first person that we talk to would know where the place is. The driver that took us had said that he knows where the place is but that was not the case. We had to spend about close to two hours driving through traffic in Lagos before we could finally get the right directions to reach the area. So arriving the outskirts of Lagos at around 12noon, we did not get to reach the church area until around close to 3pm.

We are in Lagos

We arrived at the church area and looking at the church building from outside, it is quite an impressive building. A lot of money and time was spent putting up the building, I would say. The place was also jammed pack with people from both within Nigeria and other neighboring countries. Word has sure got around that the Man of God is performing miracles here in Nigeria and people are flooding the area. As you move around you would see people that had just arrived and have no place to stay and they are sleeping on the streets underneath large Lorries. Some areas looked like make shift refugee camps. Hotel Accommodation could be gotten for about 8500 francs cfa a night that is about 16 dollars a night. A lot of people do not border to stay in a hotel which at 16 dollars a night is stiff to a lot of people here. So what they do is look for somebody that lives in the area and pay them 500 Naira, about 3 dollars a night and they are provided with a mat on which they could spend the night on.

So we arrived at Lagos on a Tuesday and on Wednesday we visited the area where the man of God is. The aim of the visit was to inquire as to how you get to see him in the first place. We were told that appointments have to be made on Thursdays and Fridays and then you get to meet the man at church service on a Saturday and Sunday. Saturdays and Sundays are the days in which the actual healing takes place. The area that we had to go for the appointment is a building that is opened at the sides. It is like an unfinished building, one that is under construction. There are enough seats for just about everybody that cares to take a seat. Just adjacent to this building is the built in restaurant of the church. They serve food at discounted prices. What you have to do is go to one of the counters and you purchase a meal ticket for about 50 to about 200 Naira, let's just say that for a little more than a dollar you can get the higher end ticket and then you proceed to the area that the various foodstuffs are being served. The Wednesday that we went to the open area for inquiry the Pastor happened to pass by with a little entourage. He want to the restaurant area briefly and then just left.

On Thursday at about noon we headed to the appointment hall to get a talk with one of the representatives of the Synagogue, Church of all Nations. There are many of them, of various nationalities also. They came from South Africa, some from England and also from the local area. The ones from overseas were said to be volunteers. What is done in the appointment area is to divide all of the visitors into various areas according to the purpose of your visit to the church. Announcement is made for people with mental disease to go to a certain area, people with HIV/AIDS to go to their own area, people with physical disabilities to go to their own area and then the rest of the group is placed in their own area. The reps are then assigned to the various groups. What they do is they talk to everybody that is in the hall to narrow down their problem. Those that can not be attended to on Thursday are attended to on Friday. They would ask you for an appointment during this period. It gets tricky here because when we visited we did not have an appointment. What saved us is that we had a recent medical report from a doctor. What the reps would explain to you is that you should not come if you do not have an appointment, which is understandable once you actually visit and see the amount of people that arrive daily to visit the church. At the very least you should get a medical report if your case warrants one. If you are just looking for a break-through in life as some of the cases might be, then it is a good idea to get an appointment. Quite a few people visit the church from far away countries and they do not get attended to at all. Some of them take a chance and extend their stay for another week in the area and hope that they would get attended to in the following week. There is an elderly man who came with his son and spend the whole week and returned without any attention. The man explained to me that he had to sell his farm that he had cultivated for a period of about twenty five years to raise the funds to make the trip from the Kumba area in the Republic of Cameroon to Lagos, Nigeria. He could not walk and he left the area without attending the healing service. He came without an appointment and had to be calling back home to raise some funds for transportation back home. So you might get lucky and get attended to without an appointment but to be on the safe side, it is a good idea to get an appointment before making the trip especially if you are coming from a foreign country.

So you get attended to by one of the representatives and what they do is talk to you, get some feed back and assign you to show up for church service on Saturday for the healing service. You have to go get a personal sign-board on which your problems are written on. If you have watched the program on television you would know what I am talking about. The signs are written up on the same day that you get assigned for church service. There is a different area that takes care of these and it is in this area that we met the Pastors wife who was helping with the writing up of the sign-boards. From this area you get to go inside the church and there is a video camera session inside the church itself during which everybody is video-taped with you displaying your sign. This is the last part of the appointment session and we left the area after this to be back on Saturday for the healing church service. The appointment time is written on a little piece of paper and indicates for you to show up at around 8am in the morning for the healing service. The note is your proof that you have gone through the screening process and you are ready for the healing service on Saturday.

What you do on your downtime.

When you visit the Synagogue, Church of all nations, the whole visit is supposed to take about a week. In our case we arrived at Lagos, on a Tuesday and left the following Monday for Calabar, Nigeria. We did not leave Nigeria until Wednesday morning when the ship bound for Tiko; the Republic of Cameroon left the Calabar port. So there is going to be a lot of downtime while you are in Nigeria. What I do during my visit to large cities is to walk a lot to see places that are in the vicinity of where I live. A did a lot of this while at Lagos to get a feel of what it is like to live in a city like this. I would get up in the morning and start my journey on foot around 9am in the morning. I would visit places like shops and market areas, computer centers and get home sometime before it gets dark. You really get a feel of what city life is like this way. Lagos, Nigeria is a busy city. By the time you get up, the streets are already crowded with people heading to various destinations. There are a lot of bikes in the city and three legs mini-vehicles. The mini-vehicles look like something right out of an Indian movie. There are also mid-size buses that is the primary means of transportation, second to the bikes. I found the mini-buses quite old and there were all painted yellow. As you walk on the streets of Lagos, there are hawkers everywhere. Mostly children and women hawking all types of items from cool drinking water to home-made bread and various soft drinks. We visited when the weather was quite hot and I spend a lot of money buying the drinking water to keep myself cool. I visited a few cyber-cafes and there was usually parked with young men and women, mostly university students. The cost was okay though the connection speed was quite slow. The service people would speak to you in English but amongst themselves they speak in their native language. This is true in all the places that we visited starting from Calabar.Each area that you go to the individuals speak in their native language amongst themselves. I found this rather interested. I believe the Federal Republic of Nigeria is made up of three mains tribes, Yoruba, Ibo and the Hausa which makes it possible for the people to be able to communicate easily in their native languages. This is in a country with close to 170 million people. You contrast that with a country like the Republic of Cameroon which is making up of about 16 million people but has close to 200 native languages and you see clearly the advantage that the Nigerians have in this category. I learn while in Nigeria that they do not have a national identity card. I guess it is easy for them to tell wether you are a foreigner or not. You have to know how to speak the local language. So once you open your mouth to speak they know right away that you are from a different country.

The Church or healing service.

On your appointment slip they say that you should come to church on Saturday around 8am in the morning. This is true for both individuals that got their appointments either on Thursday or on Friday. So the healing service is the one that takes place on Saturday. Sunday is a regular church service, though some healing still goes on during that church service. We arrived at Church service at around 8am in the morning and the place is already packed with people. You are assigned seats into the Church with some people sitting downstairs, those that would be attended to first and rest of the people moving upstairs from where you can still get a clear view of what is going on. The healing area is located on the floor and it is clear of chairs. What you would find there are video cameras that are taking pictures during a large part of the service. The floor area would be surrounded with people and what the Pastor would do is to move around and touch each and every one of these individuals. That is part of how the healing process is. For some people he would spend more time actually preaching to you and depending on the case, he would yell to try and drive away the devil. Pastor T.B Joshua did not get into the church until about 2pm in the afternoon. So between the time that we arrived at the healing service time was spend between getting everybody seated and allowing some people during lunch time to go get something to eat and come back to church. The rest of the time is spend watching a large screen monitor on which past healing services are shown. There are a lot of sick people that visit the church and some of the video footage is quite gruesome. So you have to have a stomach for some of the stuff that would be displayed on the screen from disable people with individuals with terrible sores. People with HIV-AIDS, leprosy, mental illnesses, nothing was left without display. On the day that we attended the healing session, there were close to about 10.000 people present.

Arrival of T.B Joshua

The man of God arrived about 3pm in the afternoon and the place just got real electrifying. Everybody got on their feet and he began be given a little speech then proceeded with the healing process. What happens is that people are taken from their seats to the floor level and it is from there that they are placed in a circle. The man of God then goes around and touches everybody. In some of the case, you are literally pushed onto the floor. This process goes on until everybody in the church is touched. This is really something because we are taking here about close to 10,000 people that have to be attended to. Once this part of the work is over, the next part is that of giving out the anointed water. This process takes some time because TB Joshua has to leave the church to go bless the water before coming back into the church. He left that Saturday for about an hour and thirty minutes before returning. His workers accompanied him and upon his return there were the famous little plastic bottles with the water in them. There is a lot of ceremony that goes on before he starts throwing the water bottles into the crowd. You are advised to only take one bottle. That would be enough for each individual. There is the ability for you to refill the bottles once you return, so it is something that is supposes to last you a long time. There is a general prayer by the whole church to bless the water and you get to get about three drinks of it in the church before the whole process is done with. After the anointed water is distributed we get into testimonies. This is the part that people actually come up to the healing floor and say how they have been affected by the man of God. There are people that testify that their pains are all gone. Some that come on crutches claim that they can now walk and actually do a demonstration on the floor. It is quite something to watch. You would see some elderly people actually run on the floor and do some kind of dancing. The healing service did not end until sometime close to 10pm. That is quite a lot of church service for one day. I had no idea that I could attend church service for that long a period of time. There was announcement as to when the Sunday service will take place. This service is to cap your visit to the Synagogue, Church of All Nations.

There were going to be an early service and a late one. I believed that I made it to the later part of the early service and just continued throw the late service. There is voluntary thanksgiving during this service. This is one way that the church supports itself. The other way is through the sales of prophesy books, audio cassettes and video compact disc. You can also choose to be a member of the church and get admitted while there at the church. There is a fee for that, which they get to tell you once you are at the church service. There is testimonies that goes on during this service and a lot of experience sharing. Some people are exposed. There is a guy that used to be a gang member and came in for healing. He told us that all of his friends are all dead from gang related activities. There was a gentleman from the Republic of Gabon who had been claiming to be the personal representative of the man of God in Gabon. People had to pass through him to come to Lagos and he was collecting some money. He came to repent and he was forgiven.

The Sunday service ended around 7pm and that was the end of the visit. Everybody went home to start making arrangements for the trip back to their place of origin. Our delegation that traveled to Lagos, Nigeria were close to fifteen individuals. We did not all travel back to Calabar due to that fact that we did not get to stay in the same place. I left for Calabar early Monday morning, thinking that our ship would be returning to Cameroon on Monday night. It turned out that the ship would not depart from Calabar until early on Wednesday. The actual driving from Lagos to Calabar took place during the day. We had a very good and experience driver and he got us to Calabar in about 11 hours. The guy knew all of the back roads and used that knowledge to help us escape a lot of the traffic. We made some brief stops on our way back but overall the drive back was pretty quite. The armed police officers were still around. I guess that is just the reality of traveling in Nigeria by road. You get to pass through a lot of security. Most of the time, they just waved you through. The drivers also ignore them at times and get away with it. Our driver knew exactly when to stop and when to just keep going. I rested a bit on Monday and spend the whole of Tuesday sight seeing in Calabar. It turned out that Calabar is not a bad place at all. The area is quite good for residential purpose.

The Trip Back home.

Because I made a miscalculation on when the ship was to depart from Calabar, I had to spend the night at the port in Calabar and wait for the ship to arrive on Wednesday morning. There are a lot of workers that stay at the port in Calabar and you just look for a place and spend the night. The ship arrived on Wednesday morning and it was quite a relive to see it. After the passengers got out you could go in and place you luggage and look for a place to rest inside the ship. Departure was not due until some time early in the morning on Thursday. There was news that ships do not travel at night to return to Cameroon due to one reason or the other. My guess was one of safety. Before boarding back to Cameroon you had to check in one last time with the Nigeria immigration and pay a fee of 4000 CFA francs, about 8 dollars I would say. You are then provided with a pass that you would show to the authorities while in the ship. There would also be one more payment of about the same amount to the Cameroonian immigration authority while inside the ship and sometime before you reach Cameroon. We left Calabar about close to 6am on Thursday morning and did the whole trip on broad daylight. I had my Camera with me through the course of the journey but I did not have any films with me. I left Cameroon, thinking that I would get films while in Nigeria but it turned that they have completely move into the digital age over there. While in Cameroon you could walk into any electronic store and get films that was not the case in Nigeria. I looked all over Lagos and could not find a single store that sell films for Cameras. That was the case on my way to Lagos from Calabar and during the period that I stayed in Calabar.I look everywhere but could not find any films. It was really disappointing to me. Anyway it turned out that traveling during the day in the seas is a bit turbulent than at night. The sea was not really rough but it was not as smooth as during the day. The waves had arrived and you could actually feel or go outside and see the ship did a side by side wave on the open sea. I do not get scared at all but I guess to somebody that is not used to the open sea it could be quite a trip. I did get to check out areas on the ship and they had life jackets, although this was no mention of what to do in case of an emergency as they do on air fights. The open sea is always fascinating to me and I did like the fact that I got to go outside and take a look at the water. Oil drilling is going on and that is part of the landmark that takes you to and back from Nigeria in the open sea.

Conclusion.

Quite a trip if you asked me, I had been staying at home for quite a while and the call for adventure made me not to hesitate on making the trip. Going out in the open sea is always risky especially when you get to listen to stories of armed men boarding some of the ships to look for money. The stories that I got is that they come in and look for money and once that get the money the head out. They would only course trouble if their demands are not met. There was another story that one of the ships actually sank during one of those trips and a backup ship had to be sent in to move the passengers in open sea. Trying to rescue the cargo was out of the question.









This journey begins in a small town called Tiko, located in the south west Province of the Republic of Cameroon. The purpose of the visit was to travel to Lagos, Nigeria to see a man called T B Joshua who is really popular in this part of the world. The guy is noted for performing miracles like Jesus Christ did in his days and the idea was to go check it out. We travel the three of us from where I live but there were a lot of people also traveling that I would get to meet during the course of the journey.

The means of transportation is a ship called "Asuka".It carries about 500 passengers at a time and it has a lower and an upper section. The lower section is the first class. We were in the second class and the cost of this part of the journey was about 50,000 francs CFA.In dollars that is about 100 dollars. This part of the journey would take us from Tiko to Calabar, Nigeria. The ship was loaded with both passengers and cargo, with some people lying on the floor through the whole journey. The journey started at around 11pm at night and we were told that by around 8am in the morning we should be at the port in Calabar. What you do once you get into the ship is to look for a place to seat and place your hand luggage. There is enough space in the ship for the rest of the merchandise that people are transporting to Nigeria. Most of it is foodstuff; a lot is merchandise that is going to be sold over there. There is a separate attachment to the ship that is quite huge and the crew of the ship loads and off load the cargo that goes into this area.

To make the journey convenience, there is a sales counter where you can get soft drinks, sandwiches and other foodstuffs. The counter stays open until about between 1 to 2 am in the morning. It reopens early at about 7am in the morning when breakfast is served. On the upper level in which we were located there were two 35 inches television monitors that showed movies through the journey. The movies alternated between western movies and movies from "Nollywood" that is the name of the Nigerian film industry. There are decks also that you can go out of the sitting area to go relax outside. You could stand out there and get to see the ocean. That is my favorite part of the ship. I always love to look out at the sea. The time of year that we traveled, the sea was quite calm, at least during the first part of the journey. Also it looks like at night the sea is calm. The ship itself does not move very fast but there is enough distraction around to keep you busy so that the journey does not get boring at all.

The Immigration Officers
You have to go through some immigration formalities while you are inside the ship. The crew members collected about 3000 francs, about 6 dollars from those of us of Cameroonian nationality. We would also get to pay about the same among to get out of the ports once you reach Calabar, Nigeria. You would be required to show proof of vaccinations at the Calabar port also before you can continue your journey. The vaccinations were for yellow fever. On your way back to the Republic of Cameroon, you would repeat this immigration procedure. The Nigerian immigration would require you to pay about 4000 francs CFA, about 8dollars before you can board the ship out of this country and once you get into the ship, there would be another 4000 francs charge, this time the fee is for Cameroonian immigration authorities and this is collected sometime before you arrive at the destination in Tiko.

Arriving Calabar.
We arrived at Calabar about 8am in the morning after being at sea for about 9 hours. That is the time that takes to complete the journey by ship. You get to pass quite a few people that are making the journey with speedboats and at times local canoes that are powered by engines. They are wide open at the sea making the journey with no type of protection at all. A lot of people have lost their lives traveling with these boats but the journeys are still going on. The method that we used is by no means the safest was idea. There are no boarder guides through the course of the journey and I get the feeling that if something happens in the open sea we were all on our own.

From Calabar to Lagos.
Once you got to Calabar, the next part of the journey is to travel by bus to your Lagos destination. There is a made shift motor park that is located right at the Calabar port and there you can board buses that take about 15 to 20 passengers for the trip to Lagos. Though we arrived at Calabar at around 8am in the morning we did not get to leave from there until about 11am in the morning. There are a numbers of things that needed to be done, like getting the rest of our luggage off loaded from the ship. Also we had to convert our currency from CFA to Naira. Naira is the Nigerian currency and there is quite a market flourishing in the currency conversion business at the Calabar port. At the time that we traveled the rate of CFA to Naira was about 3CFA francs for I Naira. The advice that you get is to convert only the amount of money that you feel that you are going to need while in Nigeria. So that is what we did. We converted enough money that would cover us for transportation, hotel stay and feeding while we were in Nigeria.

The cost of the journey from Calabar to Lagos at the time we traveled was 5000 Naira.15, 000cfa or about 30 dollars. The journey itself by bus runs for about 11 to 12 hours depending on the skill of your driver. We did not make it to Lagos on the same day because it got dark at about the time that we arrived at Onitsha. The advice of the driver was that we spend the night there and continue the journey in the morning. He said it is not safe to travel at night in the country because of armed robbers. So we spend the night at a small hotel and continue the journey at about 7am in the morning. By about noon we had made it to the outskirt of Lagos.

The journey form Calabar to Lagos is not a smooth one at all. The roads in Nigeria are good in some areas but there are also some bad areas that make the journey much longer. That is the case in the country that we were coming from. So if you have heard stories that the Republic of Nigeria is full of paved superhighways everywhere, forget it that is a myth. Armed security men are all over the highways. They would stop the vehicles occasionally, but most of the time they just wave you along. They are there to safeguard your free passage from one part of the country to another. The country is quite large though and there stretches of land that is uninhabited. The Delta Niger area is on the news a lot because of the struggle that is ongoing between the rebels and the government for oil revenue sharing and when passed through this area. I kind of like the area a lot. The Nigerian government has started to do something about the problems of the people in this part of the country and you could see that in the highways that were being constructed in this part of the country. An international airport was being built also and you could see part of it from the major highway.

Once we arrived at Lagos, the next step was to find out where the Synagogue Church of All Nations is located because that is where we were heading. From all the talk about the Man of God that we got before leaving Cameroon, I thought that the first person that we talk to would know where the place is. The driver that took us had said that he knows where the place is but that was not the case. We had to spend about close to two hours driving through traffic in Lagos before we could finally get the right directions to reach the area. So arriving the outskirts of Lagos at around 12noon, we did not get to reach the church area until around close to 3pm.

We are in Lagos

We arrived at the church area and looking at the church building from outside it is quite an impressive building. A lot of money and time was spent putting up the building, I would say that. The place was also jammed pack with people from both within Nigeria and other neighboring countries. Word has sure got around that the Man of God is performing miracles here in Nigeria and people are flooding the area. As you move around you would see people that had just arrived the area and have no place to stay and they are sleeping on the streets underneath large Lorries. Some areas almost looked like make shift refugee camps. Hotel Accommodation could be gotten for about 8500 francs cfa a night that is about 16 dollars a night. A lot of people do not border to stay in a hotel which at about 16 dollars a night is stiff to a lot of people here. So what they do is look for somebody that lives in the area and pay them 500 Naira, about 3 dollars a night and they are provided with a mat on which they could spend the night on.

So we arrived at Lagos on a Tuesday and on Wednesday we visiting the area where the man of God is. The aim of the visit was to inquire as to how you get to see him in the first place. We were told that appointments have to be made on Thursdays and Fridays and then you get to meet the man at church service on a Saturday and Sunday. Saturdays and Sundays are the days in which the actual healing takes place. The area that we had to go for the appointment is a building that is opened at the sides. It is like an unfinished building, one that is under construction. There are enough seats for just about everybody that cares to take a seat. Just adjacent to this building is the built in restaurant of the church. They serve food at discounted prices. What you have to do is go to one of the counters and you purchase a meal ticket for about 50 to about 200 Naira, let’s just say that for a little more than a dollar you can get the higher end ticket and then you proceed to the area that the various foodstuffs are being served. The Wednesday that we went to the open area for inquiry the Pastor happened to pass by with a little entourage. He want to the restaurant area briefly and then just left the area.

On Thursday at about noon we headed to the appointment hall to get a talk with one of the representatives of the Synagogue, Church of all Nations. There are many of them, of various nationalities also. They came from South Africa, some from England and also from the local area. The ones from overseas were said to be volunteers. What is done in the appointment area is to divide all of the visitors into various areas according to the purpose of your visit to the church. Announcement is made for people with mental disease to do to a certain area, people with HIV/AIDS to go to their own area, people with physical disabilities to go to their own area and then the rest of the group is placed in their own area. The reps are then assigned to the various groups. What they do is they talk to everybody that in hall to narrow down their problem. Those that can not be attended to on Thursday are attended to on Friday. They would ask you for an appointment during this period. It gets tricky here because when we visited we did not have an appointment. What saved us is that we had a recent medical report from a doctor. What the reps would explain to you is that do not come if you do not have an appointment, which is understandable once you actually visit and see the amount of people that arrive daily to visit the church. At the very least you should get a medical report if you case warrants one. If you are just looking for a break-through in life as some of the cases might be then it is a good idea to get an appointment. Quite a few people visit the church from far away countries and they do not get attended to at all. Some of them take a chance and extend their stay for another week in the area and hope that they would get attended to in the following week. There is an elderly man who came with his son and spends the whole week and returned without any attention. The man explained to me that he had to sell his farm that he had cultivated for a period of about twenty five years to raise the funds to make the trip from the Kumba area in the Republic of Cameroon to Lagos, Nigeria. He could not walk and he left the area without attending the healing service. He came without an appointment and had to be calling back home to raise some funds for transportation back home. So you might get lucky and get attended to without an appointment but to be on the safe side, it is a good idea to get an appointment before making the trip especially if you are coming from a foreign country.

So you get attended to by one of the representatives and what they do is talk to you, get some feed back and assign you to show up for church service on Saturday for the Thursday appointments and Sunday service for the Friday appointments. You have to go get a personal sign-board on which your problems are written on. If you have watched the program on television you would know what I am talking about. The signs are written up on the same day that you get assigned for church service. There is a different area that takes care of these and it is in this area that we met the Pastors wife who was helping with the writing up of the sign-boards. From this area you get to go inside the church and there is a video camera session inside the church itself during which everybody is video-taped with you displaying your sign. This is the last part of the appointment session and we left the area after this to be back on Saturday for the healing or church service. The appointment time indicates for you to show up at around 8am in the morning for the healing service with a little note that they advise you not to loose. This is the proof that you have gone through the screening process and you are ready for the healing service on Saturday or Sunday.

What you do on your downtime.
When you visit the Synagogue, Church of all nations, the whole visit is supposed to take about a week. In our case we arrived at Lagos, on a Tuesday and left on a Monday for Calabar, Nigeria. We did not leave Nigeria until Wednesday morning when the ship bound for Tiko; the Republic of Cameroon left the Calabar port. So there is going to be a lot of downtime while you are in Nigeria. What I do during me visit to large cities is to walk a lot a see places that are in the vicinity of where I live. A did a lot of this while at Lagos to get a feel of what it is like to live in a city like this. I would get up in the morning and start my journey on foot around 9am in the morning. I would visit places like shops and market areas, computer centers and get home sometime before it gets dark. You really get a feel of what city life is like this way. Lagos, Nigeria is a busy city. By the time you get up, the streets are already crowded with people heading to various destinations. There are a lot of bikes in the city and three legs min-vehicles. The mini-vehicles look like something right out of an Indian movie. There also mid-size buses that is the primary means of transportation, second to the bikes. I found the mini-buses quite old and there were all painted yellow. As you walk on the streets of Lagos, there are hawkers everywhere. Mostly children and women hawking all types of items from cool drinking water to home-made bread and various soft drinks. We visited when the weather was quite hot and I spend a lot of money buying the drinking water to keep myself cool. I visited a few cyber cafes and there was usually parked with young men and women, mostly university students. The cost was okay though the connection speed was quite slow. The service people would spend in English but amongst themselves they speak in their native language. This true in all the places that we visited starting from Calabar.Each area that you go to the individuals speak in their native language amongst themselves. I found this rather interested. I believe the Federal Republic of Nigeria is made up of three mains tribes, Yoruba, Ibo and the Hausa which makes it possible for the people to be able to communicate easily in their native languages. This is in a country with close to 200 million people. You contrast that with a country like the Republic of Cameroon which is making up of about 16 million people but close to 200 native languages and you see clearly the advantage that the Nigerians have in this category. I learn while in Nigeria that they do not have a national identity card. I guess it is easy for them to tell weather you are a foreigner or not. You have to know how to speak the local language. So once you open your mouth to speak they know right away that you are from a different country.

The Church or healing service.
On your appointment slip they say that you should come to church on Saturday around 8am in the morning. This is true for both individuals that got their appointments either on Thursday or on Friday. So the healing service is the one that takes place on Saturday, Sunday is a regular church service, though some healing still goes on during that church service. So we arrived at Church service at around 8am in the morning and the place is already packed with people. You are assigned seats into the Church with some people sitting downstairs, those that would be attended to first and rest of the people moving upstairs from where you can still get a clear view of what is going on. The healing area is located on the floor and it is clear of chairs. What you would find there are video cameras that are taking pictures during a large part of the service. The floor area would be surrounded with people and what the Pastor would do is to move around and touch each and every one of these individuals. That is part of how the healing process is. For some people he would spend more time actually preaching to you and depending on the case, he would yell to try and drive away the devil. Pastor T.B Joshua did not get into the church until about 2pm in the afternoon. So between the time that we arrived at the healing service time was spend between getting everybody seated and allowing some people during lunch time to go get something to eat and come back to church. The rest of the time is spending watching a large screen monitor on which past healing services are shown. There are a lot of sick people that visit the church and some of the video footage is quite gruesome. So you have to have a stomach for some of the stuff that would be displayed on the screen from disable people with individuals with terrible sores. People with HIV-AIDS, leprosy, mental illnesses, nothing was left without display. By the way on the day that we attended the healing session, there were close to about 10.000 people that were present.

Arrival of T.B Joshua

The man of God arrived about 3pm in the afternoon and the place just got real electrifying. Everybody got on their feet and he began be given a little speech then proceeded with the healing process. What happens is that people are taken from their seats to the floor level and it is from there that they are placed in a circle. The man of God then goes around and touches everybody. In some the case you are literally pushed onto the floor. This process goes on until everybody in the church is touched. This is really something because we are taking here about close to 10,000 people that have to be attended to. Once this part of the work is over, the next part is that of given out the anointed water. This process takes some time because TB Joshua has to leave the church to go bless the water before coming back into the church. He left that Saturday for about an hour and thirty minutes before returning. His workers accompanied him and upon his return there were the famous little plastic bottles with the water in them. There is a lot of ceremony that goes on before he starts throwing the water bottles into the crowd. You are advised to only take one bottle. That would be enough for each individual. There is the ability for you to refill the bottles once you return, so it is something that is supposes to last you a long time. There is a general prayer by the whole church to bless the water and you get to get about three drinks of it in the church before the whole process are done with. After the anointed water is distributed we get into testimonies. This is the part that people actually come up to the healing floor and say how they have been affected by the man of God. There are people that testify that their pains are all gone. Some that come on crutches claim that they can now walk and actually do a demonstration on the floor. It is quite something to watch. You would say some elderly people actually run on the floor and do some kind of dancing. The healing service did not end until sometime close to 10pm. That is quite a lot of church service for one day. I had no idea that I could attend church service for that long a period of time. There was announcement as to go the Sunday service will take place. This service is to cap your visit to the Synagogue, Church of All Nations. There were going to be an early service and a late one. I believed that I made it to the later part of the early service and just continued throw the late service. There is voluntary thanksgiving during this service. This was one way that the church supports itself. The other way is through the sales of prophesy books, audio cassettes and video compact disc. You can also choose to be a member of the church and get admitted while there at the church. There is a fee for that, which they get to tell you once you are at the church service. There is testimonies that goes on during this service and a lot of experience sharing. Some people are exposed. There is a guy that used to be a gang member and came in for healing. He told us that all of his friends are all dead from gang related activities. There was a gentleman from the Republic of Gabon who had been claiming to be the personal representative of the man of God in Gabon. People had to pass through him to come to Lagos and he was collected some money. He came to repent and he was forgiven.

The Sunday service ended around 7pm and that was the end of the visit. Everybody went home to start making arrangements for the trip back to their place of origin. Our delegations that traveled to Lagos, Nigeria were close to fifteen individuals. We did not all travel back to Calabar due to that fact that we did not get to stay in the same place. I left for Calabar early Monday morning, thinking that our ship would be returning to Cameroon on Monday night. It turned out that the ship would not depart from Calabar until early on Wednesday. The actual driving from Lagos to Calabar took place during the day. We had a very good and experience driver and he got us to Calabar in about 11 hours. The guy knew all of the back roads and used that knowledge to help us escape a lot of the traffic. We made some brief stops on our way back but overall the drive back was pretty quite. The armed police officers were still around. I guess that is just the reality of traveling in Nigeria by road. You get to pass through a lot of security. Most of the time, they just waved you through. The drivers also ignore them at times and gets away with it. Our driver knew exactly when to stop and when to just keep going. I rested a bit on Monday and spend the whole of Tuesday sight seeing in Calamari turned out that Calabar is not a bad place at all. The area is quite good for residential purpose.

The Trip Back home.
Because I made a miscalculation on when the ship was to depart from Calabar, I had to spend me night at the port in Calabar and wait for the ship to arrive on Wednesday morning. There are a lot of workers that stay at the port in Calabar and you just look for a place and spend the night. The ship arrived on Wednesday morning and it was quite a relive to see it. After the passengers got out you could go in and place you luggage and look for a place to rest inside the ship. Departure was not due until some time early in the morning on Thursday. There was news that ships do not travel at night to return to Cameroon due to one reason or the other. My guess was one of safety. Before boarding back to Cameroon you had to check in one last time with the Nigeria immigration and pay a fee of about 4000 CFA francs, about 8 dollars I would say. You are then provided with a pass that you would show to the authorities while in the ship. There would also be one more payment of about the same amount to the Cameroonian immigration authority while inside the ship and sometime before you reach Cameroon. We left Calabar about close to 6am on Thursday morning and did the returned trip on broad daylight. I had my Camera with me through the course of the journey but I did not have any films with me. I left Cameroon, thinking that I would get films while in Nigeria but it turned that they have completely move into the digital age over there. While in Cameroon you could walk into any electronic store and get films that were not the case in Nigeria. I look all over Lagos and could not find a single store and sell films for Cameras. That was the case on my way to Lagos from Calabar and during the period that I stayed in Calabar.I look everywhere but could not find any films. I was really disappointing to me. Anyway it turned out that traveling during the day in the seas is a bit turbulent during the day that at night. The sea was not really rough but it was not as smooth at during the day. The waves had arrived and you could actually feel or go outside and see and the ship did a side by side wave on the open sea. I do not get scared at all but I guess to somebody that is not used to the open sea it could be quite a trip. I did get check out areas on the ship and they had life jackets, although theirs was no mention of what to do in case of an emergency as they do on air fights. The open sea is always fascinating to me and I did like the fact that I got to go outside and take a look at the water. Oil drilling is going on and that is part of the landmark that takes you to and back from Nigeria in the open sea.

Conclusion.
Quite a trip if you asked me, I had been staying at home for quite a while and the call for adventure made me not to hesitate on making the trip. Going out in the open sea is always risky especially when you get to listen to stories of armed men boarding some of the ships to look for money. The stories that I got is that they come in a look for money and once that get the money the head out. They would only course trouble if their demands are not met. There was another story that one of the ships actually was sinking during one of those trips and a backup ship had to be sent in to move the passengers in open sea. Trying to rescue the cargo was out of the question.