Travels with Mickey: Nigeria

Not long ago I posted a story about an experience I had in Kuwait in 2003. I have been meaning to post additional stories but just haven't gotten around to it. Perhaps it's time.

One caveat. Because these things happened over 30 years ago, many of the details don't come readily to mind. I'm not one for hyperbole, so I will make an effort to relate the key aspects of my journeys without the all too human tendency to exaggerate and hype the experiences. (I wonder if hype comes from hyperbole?)

Most of my travels took place after the age of forty, the year I hired on at Microsoft. I had never intended to travel much, but it turned out quite differently. Because I worked at a company that had offices worldwide, I had the opportunity to visit and experience an interesting array of peoples and countries, which had a profound effect on my world view going forward.

I worked in a sales training group that generally taught classes in three areas: applications (Word, Excel and Powerpoint), Systems (operating systems and other connectivity products), and skills (Sales techniques and presentation skills). At the time I was an applications trainer. 

Our audience was primarily the Microsoft US sales force, systems engineers, and some managerial staff.  However, one day our applications group received a visit from an account manager for Africa. He had a request from a French company in Lagos, Nigeria for some training of their local account execs. He wanted to know if our group could send a couple of people. Nigeria!? Don't we have anyone who needs training on the Italian Riviera?

Now to digress just a moment, my first travel experience at Microsoft had been about one month after I was hired in 1990 and it was to Hawaii (Maui) for our National Sales Meeting. A blast and eye opener to say the least. Quick, hand me a map.

Well, since there were only four of us in our group, and being the naive, adventurous sort, I some how managed to be one of the two who would need malaria and yellow fever shots, soon. My colleague Lynn got the other spot.

Lagos, Nigeria - 1991 

My first sojourn internationally for MS would be to the African country of Nigeria. 

Nigeria makes up approximately 3 percent of the land area of Africa and at that time had about 15 percent of the population of the continent. Yes, lots of people. I only bring this up to emphasize that we were not in Kansas any more. Lagos had a population of 4.5 million in 1990 and is estimated at a little over 17 million in 2025. Lagos was the capital city until 1991 when it was changed to Abuja.

OK, more about Lagos later. We had our shots and our boxes of training materials and the trip was afoot (aflight?). We flew first to London Heathrow, stayed over night, and flew from London Gatwick to Lagos the next day. I noticed the flight attendants sprayed a lot of disinfectant as we were boarding. Insects and airborne diseases are no joke.

At last we landed in Lagos in the middle of night. We got to what I assumed was a customs counter. My memory is vague, it was very late. We seem to stall at this point and the agent or person asking questions seemed overly interested in our boxes of booklets and materials. I told Lynn we should make a break for it but she was in no mood for my antics. We were finally released.

We were soon met by a young Nigerian couple who had been sent to deliver us to our hosts' house. This seemed straightforward enough. Not so. 

There was at that time only one main highway in or out of Lagos. We headed out and at some point turned off the main road to reach our destination. A few moments later we were met by armed guards who wanted a word. Our driver pulled over and a soldier, for lack of a better term, pressed his automatic rifle against our window. 

Now English is the official language of Nigeria and I realize pronunciations can vary, but I had no idea what the rifleman wanted. Our escort said he wanted to check what we had in the trunk and if I wouldn't mind getting out and showing him. Hmmm?

At this point Lynn had slid pretty much as far down in her seat as humanly possible. I got out. I opened the trunk and once again the fascination with the box of materials began. He tucked his weapon under his arm and picked up a training booklet and pretended to read it. At last, most likely satisfied that the box had no real value to him, put the book back and sent us on our way. Welcome to Nigeria.