Bob’s First Driving Experience

Bob just got his drivers license so we have a little bit more freedom now. We don’t plan on driving into the office or for errands on Saturdays but we may want to drive and not have to rely on having a driver. Bob needed to go to the office on Saturday evening (May 19th) to check on a computer process that had been running since Friday so he drove us there. The first drive was rather uneventful, luckily, and I think Bob only honked his horn once. Horn honking is one of the main languages on the roads in Lagos. During rush hour the noise is constant but you learn to tune it out, I hope!

You may wonder what it takes to get a drivers license and we found out that it does not take much, just 7000 naira (~$55 US), two passport photos and a bit of info. No driving test or anything! We asked our driver, Yves, to get one for Bob on a Monday and Bob had it in hand on Friday. I will get one soon so that I have one if I ever NEED to drive, but don't plan on driving much.

The car we currently have is a Toyota Avensis which is similar to the Toyota Camry, but not as nice. We got really lucky as a lot of the pool cars are junk and our car only has about 4000 kilometers on it. We are waiting for the car assigned to us, our “status car”, but we may be waiting for quite some time. There are many people here that have been waiting for over one year. If we were happy with a Toyota Rav4 then we can get one now but we are holding out for the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, an SUV. We want something with more clearance so that we can take it on long trips exploring the back country of Nigeria and surrounding countries (with a driver and a guard from the Nigerian Polie force, automatic weapon and all). We may just luck out again as we recently heard that a bunch of Prados are in stock and we may get one soon. The ones the received have tinted windows and therefore require a permit before they can be used. Once the permits are received, the Prados will be distributed.