Leavin' Lagos!

Leaving Lagos….

Today I was catching up on a Lagos blog I really like (theklanckes.com) and I had a small feeling of saudades for Nigeria. Saudades is a Portuguese word that is difficult to translate. It is a mixture of “missing” but also “sweet longings” for a time you know you could never have again/the same way even if you went back. And of the many, many words I have used in regards to Lagos, “saudades” was never one of them.

Here is the thing…

Living in Lagos, Nigeria is completely and totally terrible in so many ways. Too many ways to even list here actually. Every day is a struggle and sometimes, when it is the middle of the night and your UPS won’t stop beeping because the generator went down again, the struggle seems like it is about to pull you under. It is hard living and the rewards are few and far between. We all know this, lived this, even hated this at some point.

But, in spite of this… or because of this you also develop friendships that are the most organic I have ever experienced. The bond that “we are all in this together” creates is surprisingly strong. It brings out the worst and the best in people so you get a chance to really know them. None of the other places I have lived have I ever gotten so close to so many people so quickly. It reminds me of “college dorm-time” in some ways… the way things are so much more intense and a month of friendship experiences are crammed into a week, a day, an hour even.

Not very often in our adult lives do we have hour upon hour to spend just “hanging out” with our friends. So many of us have the responsibilities of adulthood that take up most of our time. Take the girls to ballet, pick up the boy scout, go to the grocery store, drop off books at the library, attend some work function in the evening, buy last minute art supplies for a science project, go to work, go to meetings… We end up with very little time to sit and talk. Then, when we do have some free time we don’t even really feel like talking, but would rather veg out in front of the TV or share a quiet meal with our spouses.

Not so in Lagos. Ok, first the technicalities: boy scout meetings, ballet recitals, recorder concerts… they were all held right on campus, about 32 steps from my front door. It was so easy to attend them that is was expected that you would attend not only your own kid’s performances, but your friend’s kid’s shows as well. Point one for friendship. I was there, with my friend when her daughter tried out for the Variety Show. Or when another friend’s son missed a word in the Spelling Bee. These shared experiences added rich layers to our relationships, stepping past the polite, “Hi, how are you?”

And then you add that in Lagos we had no TV. We did not have library books to return and most of us avoided grocery stores (and the three hour traffic jam to get there). We did not go out to restaurants. So in exchange, we were left with hours of time to just talk! We talked about all kinds of things… would we rather be bald or really short? …If we could have a different career, what would it be?… Our best vacation as a child… What made us go abroad in the first place… What kind of dreams we have for our children… and one of our favorite topics – our own family dramas back home! Be warned family members: we know WAY more about your life than you think!

Even though I am still abroad, we now live in a very different place. Qatar has restaurants and cable TV and language classes and movie theaters and malls and all the other things that make a city. We have made many wonderful friends. Having big White Trash BBQs right in the street in the middle of our compound is one of our favorite things to do! But, because we all have beautiful 5 bedroom villas with continuous electricity to go home to and grocery shopping at mega stores to do, we have not developed the same kinds of friendships as we did in Lagos. Who needs to bond over making pizza dough for 3 hours when you can just order Papa John’s delivery?

So looking at all of the Lagos pictures on Klanckes blog reminded me of all those shared experiences… the good one, the bad ones … that made Lagos such a crazy experience for us. I have learned over the years that more often than not, you don’t really keep in touch with people the way you hope to. Life gets in the way and so much of friendship (in the international gig at least) is situational. But instead of making me sad, knowing that makes me appreciate the situations I do share with people around the world that much more.

The thing about the word “saudades” that makes it so unique is that it takes into account that even if you were to go back to that place or that time, the feeling would never be the same. It respects the fact that you can remember and appreciate something, but you can never really go back to it.