December 22nd – An Early Start Outside Benin City
Good day. December 22nd. I woke up about 35 kilometers before Benin City, already behind where I expected to be before the previous day’s slowdown. I decided the best move was an early start, hitting the road around 7:00 in the morning.
One thing you can almost forget about is finding a hot drink like coffee or tea in town. It just doesn’t seem to exist much, but that never stops me from looking. That’s just how it goes.
Stuck Again and Meeting Innocent
The road conditions didn’t really improve, and while trying to take a route around Benin City, I ended up stuck in traffic once again. After about half an hour, someone showed up — his name was Innocent, which felt oddly fitting.
Innocent explained that the traffic had been stuck since the day before due to a serious accident on the road toward Onitsha, the route I needed to take. Several trucks and trailers were involved, with some having gone off the road near an underpass. It didn’t look like anything was going to move anytime soon.
Since it hadn’t moved at all since yesterday, he suggested I get out of the situation and take a completely different route. That didn’t take much convincing. With a bit of finagling — including driving through a large ditch and taking angles with the car I normally wouldn’t even consider — I managed to turn around. Innocent came with me for a short stretch, and I was more than happy to give him a few bucks for helping get everything sorted.
Turning Toward Warri
This time, the plan was to head toward a place called Warri. The road to Warri, however, was far from simple. It was more of the same: heavy traffic, rough roads, and endless large trucks.
Along the way, I picked up a passenger who needed to get to Warri. Often there are two lanes going each way, but quite frequently all traffic ends up sharing one side because of obstacles, ditches, or broken pavement. It makes things complicated and slow.
The man I picked up wasn’t very talkative. He worked in refrigeration repair and was just trying to get home to Warri. Since I hadn’t had coffee the day before, I mentioned it to him, and that turned out to be useful.
Finding Coffee in Warri
He pointed me toward the only mall in Warri — a regular shopping mall. Even there, finding coffee was a challenge. We kept walking past it without realizing it. There wasn’t a normal coffee shop at all.
Instead, in a central area near the food places, there was one person with a small coffee machine set up on a little table, making coffee to order. It wasn’t cheap, but it was such an interesting setup that I couldn’t resist. I finally got a cappuccino, grabbed some food, and made sure my passenger got to where he needed to go.
Onward to Aba With New Passengers
After that, I picked up two more passengers — a mother and daughter heading to Aba. It sounded like a tall order, but surprisingly, the roads improved after Warri, and progress was much faster than expected.
In the end, I still came up about 45 minutes short, meaning I had to drive part of the way in the dark. As usual, there were police checkpoints. Most officers were friendly, welcoming me to Nigeria. Kids along the road would call me “Father” or “Papa” — maybe the longer beard has something to do with that.
Police Stops and Night Driving
There was one exception: a policeman who claimed my spare tire was too old and no longer legal, which simply wasn’t true. He talked about writing a ticket, going to the bank, holding documents — the usual routine. We found a “compromise,” which cost me about 10,000 naira, roughly twelve dollars. It’s not something I enjoy, but it’s part of the reality here.
After picking up the mother and daughter, they helped handle later checkpoints by speaking up themselves, which made getting through much faster.
Arriving in Aba and Looking Ahead
We eventually made it all the way to Aba. The final stretch was slow due to poor visibility in the dark. They knew of a hotel, which we didn’t end up using, but it was good enough for the night. They planned to stay to do some shopping in the morning before heading back the following afternoon.
That’s how the day unfolded. Next up for me is moving on toward Calabar, with an interesting schedule coming up. Thanks for being with me — more tomorrow.
