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.