I’m learning how to carry goods on my head, babies on my back, eating yams and sugar canes, and dressing street. The Niger Delta is a really poor and dangerous place. I’m looking out the bus window now. Dodgy juice shops, motorcycles, sugar cane merchants, colorful mismatching clothing, people half dressed, half caliced with 100 year old skin.

Slipper merchants, people under cars fixing them in the middle of the roads, umbrellas to protect from heat and rain. Only 2 seasons here – hot season and rainy season. I think we are in both now. Bad time to be here as elections are coming up in 1 month and a lot of political and military tension. GSM shops to Pimp and Unlock your GSM. Buy Your Kerosene Here painted in army stencil font on a dumpster. Call Your Plumber and a phone number scratched on a cardboard sign. Busy streets with stares provoking us in our prissy oil & gas company bus escorted by a convoy on each side. People plowing fields with sickles! Muscles all over.

You can get anything here. You don’t even have to get down from your car; you pull up and the vegetable merchant comes to you and you can pick and ask for things from your vehicle window; query to cash. Old 1980 Benzes, demolished cars left and right, barbed wire brick walls around facilities. Harsh accents – clear and firm, people speak with undaunted confidence. I feel like I’m going to get a bullet at any minute. Oh, it’s only a couple of weeks…