A Nigerian (working) day in the life of...

I’m tired.

I’ve been doing these 7am-7pm work hrs all week, along with trying to juggle finding a new house, finding new kid’s school and settling into my new job all at once. But, the weekend is coming up so I will be able to rest. I have a 50th birthday party and a 20something bbq both tomorrow so I am looking forward to some eating and drinking.

I have spent 10 working days in Nigeria today. Not bad. I am still alive. It already feels like I have been here a couple of interesting months. I must be starting to settle in by now.

Work Yesterday
A letter came into our office yesterday from one of the companies we had invested in, sent by their debt financers to state that as the company had not honoured its interest payments, they were going to foreclose on the company unless the company paid up all the principal and outstanding interest (similar to the kind of letter you get if you don't keep up with your council tax (UK property tax) but a bit more money involved. With the letter, attached the company in question had asked that an emergency board meeting be called to discuss what to do next. How exciting for me, this now fell under my remit and I was chosen to go and represent our bank at this fun meeting.

Said company is an oooold school company in the heart of the real Lagos (we are talking Apapa Ajegunle Alaba/Orile for those in the know). So I carried myself with driver to the middle of old Alaba/Orile to go and sit down with mature people that I had to show some respect to while explaining to them that their financial management wasn’t up to scratch and no, we (the bank) are not an open purse to dip a hand in for more money whenever the last money finishes and that some financial discipline was required for us to ensure that this project doesn’t go belly up (obviously my bonus was swinging on this).

I think they got the message, and after further discussions about the additional truck loads of money they needed before starting to generate huge profits from day 1 we all became firm friends and left smiling (after I had thrown in of course that our equity stake would of course rise to take into account the truckloads of cash they were asking for – no free lunch as they say).

Have a great weekend everybody. My new tradition is not to blog over the wkend, (I can't help it, no access to the internet in my house), but I will seek to take some nice pictures of whatever I can lay my camera lense on.