Living La Vida Naija

On Friday, 11th January, I traveled to Lagos from Johannesburg as part of a team that is working on the Pan-African talk show "Moment's with Mo". "Moment's with Mo" is hosted by the lovely Mo Abudu for her company Inspire Africa .

The trip was safe with only a couple of occasions of mild turbulence. I takes 6 hours to fly to Lagos from Johannesburg. We flew Virgin Nigeria which has a very friendly team of stewardesses and stwards.

I fell asleep 10 minutes in to the first in-flight movie, "Daddy Day Camp". John Legend's "Once Again" album was playing on one of the in-flight channels and I think I listened to that one and half times through before I actually felt fed up of sitting in the same seat and having an air conditioner blowing into my face. and I sat next to a friend and at least we kept a conversation going.

We arrived in Lagos at a quarter to five. The time zone here is an hour behind meaning we we were actually here at a quarter to 4 local time. Immigration and customs were a breeze except for a friends piece of luggage with his clothes had remained behind in Johannesburg. We are hoping that it will be brought in on Sunday.

The first thing that hit me when I got out of the plane at Lagos International Airport is weather. I can remember the pilot explaining that the weather would be cloudy and the temperature 28 degrees Celsius. It is hot and humid here. Every single place and car you're in runs air conditioning. My cousin, Edwin, came to greet me at the airport. We chatted for a while until our driver came to pick us up.

On the way to our hotel I was awe struck but simply how many people there are in Lagos.Having grown up in Kabwe, a town, city populations still get to me. I've hear that there are approximately 45 million people living in Lagos alone. I that is true then 4 times the population of my country, Zambia, lives in in one city here.

Lagos is a huge city and it doesn't help that there is always traffic. We left the airport at about half past five and only got to the hotel at a half past eight. We had spent three hours getting here and we were driving against the flow of home-going traffic!