Week 14: Welcome to Nigeria
After over 3 weeks in Kigali, we finally came back to Uyo. We were both convinced that we would miss being in Kigali mostly the fact that we had very little stress while we were there. Being in Kigali has personally helped me deal with much of the accumulated stress I had before travelling there.
Nigeria doesn't stay very long before it hits on you. From airport staff and random guys outside the airport asking for tips, about your car stopping on the highway in the middle of the night. To different fixes in the already-stuffy-house and the car left untouched for over 3 weeks. I just realized what I didn't have to deal with in the last 3 weeks. I'm convinced I will embrace these kinds of travels more often.
On the other side, I'm glad we're back, and we can finally resume our daily routines. I hold off on my routines before travel as I didn't want my presence in Kigali to feel like I was in Nigeria, I wanted to have only little things to do in that period and I’m sure that worked well for me.
After lots of tests, I finally shipped the fix for our storage on PHPSandbox which worked perfectly after a couple of after-patches. Now we can have as many EBSs as we want. I can't stop thinking about what the next problem will be. When I consider some scenarios, I already see this solution not being enough at some point. For now, it should suffice.
I had the privilege of being in a discussion with some friends in Uyo about some of the difficulties we all go through while trying to build businesses - mostly around funding. I find it quite insightful for new founders like myself to discuss things like funding plans and investors often to know how things are. Lots of experiences shared by folks who have already gotten their product off the ground could be helpful for starters.
Had another encounter with the Police and I can't seem to think that the Police force isn't getting better anytime soon. This is at least my fifth encounter with them this year. This time it feels scary as I was alone in the car on a cold night (almost midnight). I was finding it very difficult to convince about 8 armed police officers that I wasn't a “Yahoo Boy” they claimed I was. In a Nigerian context, things can go bad quickly with being alone with eight armed police officers.
I even offered to show them my employment contracts which they declined to see, saying it is an ID card they would like to see. My company doesn't issue ID cards so all I could provide is my employment contract.
It was annoying how they wouldn't believe everything I said even with my offers of proof not to mention being alone with them at the night. Since I wasn't new to it I knew it would get to them asking for money. Although I was finally let go after driving to another location, I come to think of how many people could have been detained illegally and without sound investigation.