Nigerian experience: first impressions

Even though I was sort of dreading coming to Nigeria because of all the bad publicity that country gets and the somewhat scary stories of working with local collaborators I have heard from colleagues, so far it has been quite a pleasant experience. Yes, it is definitely a unique country, where many things don’t go the way you expect (I even felt that I was being solicited for a bribe at the immigration and customs). However, despite the poor infrastructure, inefficient services, and other things that initially get on your nerves, I have been enjoying time time here, especially considering that it is 90F here and probably around 30F in DC. Abuja has pleasantly surprised me---it is a well-planned city with nice roads and not a lot of traffic (nice break from traffic jams in India, Uganda, and Kenya). The best part of all has been the work. I don’t want to get into all the nerdy details of what I’m doing here, but I have been in very intense animated meetings with all men (professors) for the past two days, and feel very rejuvenated and excited about the work, even though the discussions revealed plenty of challenges. I realized that even though I like the polite discussions of colleagues from East Africa, I also quite enjoy the animated and heated (almost to the point of yelling at each other) debates here in West Africa---they actually remind me of debates between Russians. One cultural thing I learned today---silence means “yes.” At various points during the meetings, everyone around the table would be silent after something I said, and I would start getting nervous---they just laughed at me and reminded me of their cultural rule:) Tomorrow I’m traveling to the Northern part of the country for more meetings.