Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Travel back in style. Haha

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuh,

Yesterday adds on the the interesting working event in Nigeria. We had to be evacuated from the office by helicopter! So here's the story. There is this one group of people that call themselves Biafran.

Biafra was a loose territory of ethnic groups in pre-colonial Africa prior to the coming of the colonialists.Pre-colonial maps of Africa show the location of Biafra and the Bight of Biafra was renamed to Bight of Bonny by the Nigerian Government.[2] An attempt was made in 1967 to restore the old Biafran territory as an Independent state from Nigeria which caused the civil war. Biafra, officially the Republic of Biafra, was a secessionist state in south eastern Nigeria that existed from 30 May 1967 to 15 January 1970, taking its name from the Bight of Biafra (the Atlantic bay to its south).[2] The inhabitants were mostly the Igbo people who led the secession due to economic, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions among the various peoples of Nigeria. The creation of the new state that was pushing for recognition was among the causes of the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Nigerian-Biafran War. - Wikipedia

So for the past years, we've heard of movement  by these Biafran to claim their independence. They have many things going on, they even have their own radio, which is now banned and recently the director was detained by the Nigerian government. Then there was a court order for him to be release, but apparently it did not happened. So his supporters took it to the streets. They hold protest in few places, and yesterday it was done in Port Harcourt. So happened that the location of the protest is near RA. People in the RA can actually heard gunshots that was fired by the police to disperse the protesters. They even smelled the teargas that was released. The road heading to RA was closed.

We received series of text messages keeping us updated and one that came quater to 4PM says that bus from IA to RA has been canceled. We are asked to wait for the next update. By 5PM we were notified to make way to helipad, we are going home in style bebeh! In chopper :)

They have to make the decision very quickly, because by 6.15 PM it gets dark, and risk levels are elevated for night operations. We were loaded to 3 choppers on 1 trip and I cant remember how many trips they made, but everybody is back in camp by 8PM. Not even 2 years, yet I've experienced many interesting things, and most importantly, I can laugh about it. Yes, security is a big issue here, but so far it has been managed well, and I am fine. Alhamdulillah.

Till next time, wassalam.

  

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