八字万年历

Chapter 317: Arrival at the Buj II

They had landed a while ago and luckily were able to complete all the paperwork needed and were already on their way out. It seemed that the fact that it was past midnight didn’t prevent the airport from working at full power, but Jason noticed that things moved at an even quicker pace than the last time he was in Nigeria.

He wondered whether it was a difference in the airports he arrived at, or whether the workers couldn’t be too bothered with them because it was the middle of the night and everyone had a degree of sleepiness attached to the back of their eyes, making them not want to bother themselves too much.

For now, he didn’t really care what the answer to that question was because he was also quite tired and very sleepy, especially after staying awake throughout the flight.

“He said he’d be at the international wing or something, but I don’t know for the life of me where that would be,” Adele replied, a slightly troubled look on her face as she had thought it wouldn’t take this long to find their driver.

“… I think we’re in the international wing right now, but I don’t see our guy… which is expected since I don’t know what he looks like,”

“Try to call him or something,” Jason said, not keen on doing much looking around for a driver at almost 1 am.

“I’m trying to do that, but the internet connection seems to be having some issues,” Adele almost cried out.

This was her first time in Nigeria and she had come prepared, knowing that her phone’s original service provider wouldn’t be able to do anything in Nigeria, hence she had made sure to buy a portable wi-fi that could be connected to her phone and could be used to make internet calls before she bought a sim in Nigeria.

What she didn’t expect was that even the Wi-Fi she had turned to as an option had network problems as well.

“Network problems? That happens all the time,”

“Welcome to Nigeria, the land of confusing fun,” Jason said with a smile, immediately understanding the problem.

Network problems were quite a common thing in Nigeria and it wasn’t impossible to see areas right within cities that could have network problems or connection issues for half a day, and sometimes it could be even for a full day or a bit more.

It also didn’t matter what service provider one switched to, they all had their varying degrees of network madness at completely random times so the average Nigerian almost always had a phone with a dual sim slot, making them able to use two service providers and switch between whichever was performing better when needed.

If one was richer, then he could use two phones instead.

It seemed that Jason’s luck was bad tonight, having to experience one of Nigeria’s fun problems.

He called it a fun problem because Nigeria was a fun country with many interesting things likely to happen at any moment… this was the nice way of putting it.

The realistic way of putting it was that Nigeria was a funny country, and this was not because they had quite a number of comedians, but rather because everyone in every part of Nigeria was a comedian in one way or another… both in a good way or in a bad way.

One thing that remained unchanged though was that the general populace tended to find the fun even in the worst of situations and one would always see Nigerians having fun even if their house was on fire.

All that, however, was by the side and not what Jason wanted to think about at this time of the morning.

He would rather devote his time to looking for the driver that was supposed to take them to their hotel, otherwise, they would have to find their own way.

The driver was an arrangement made by the Nigerian Football Federation that Adele had contacted ahead of their departure from Porto.

“Let me see the last message between you and the driver,” Jason said as he gestured for Adele to give him her phone, deciding to take things into his hands.

They had found an empty bench and sat there while Adele handed her phone over to Jason to look at the message the driver had sent concerning his location.

Jason saw the location the driver had mentioned but didn’t recognize it as it was his first time at the Nnamdi Azikwe Airport in Abuja.

The few other times he had come to Nigeria, it was at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, so he had no previous experience with this place and could obviously not tell the place where the driver had said he would be, however, that was not an issue as they could easily ask someone.

Reading the phone number of the driver a few times internally to memorize it for the next five minutes, Jason stood up from the chair and said to Adele,

“Wait here for a bit, let me ask someone.”

With that, Jason looked around for someone to ask.

Normally, he would have left this job to Adele, but he knew that even though the majority population of Nigeria could speak English, he didn’t want to have to waste any more time when he could do the job easily himself.

Settling on a woman who looked to be in her twenties walking with a group of two other girls in the same age group, Jason moved.

Apart from the fact that it was a woman who would be easier to talk to for Jason since he was Jason, the actual reason for choosing that woman to approach was because of her outfit.

She was dressed in a flowing blue gown with various intricate murals arranged across its surface.

This cloth type was called “Ankara” which was a cloth worn by the Yoruba tribes in Nigeria, and Jason was one of them and knew the language which meant that even if she didn’t speak English all that well, he could still conversate with her.

Of course, that was unlikely as the phone she was using looked like an iPhone at a glance and Jason knew that those phones did not operate in a Yoruba language setting.

“Excuse me… sorry,” Jason said as he interrupted the girls and turned to the girl he had singled out from the start.

“Could I borrow your phone for a minute, I’m trying to reach someone but, our internet connection has a few issues and I don’t have a Nigerian sim,” Jason requested as he put on his best smile, but then a second later, he removed that he had on a face mask.

“Oh, where did the person say they would be?” the woman asked as well, a bit surprised by Jason coming up to her, but not taking any offense and was ready to help.

“I think he said the international wing, but this whole place seems to be the international wing, so I’m a bit confused,” Jason said, his hand reflexively going up to sweep away the hair that was covering the top of his face as he looked around, trying to look for anyone who fit the mark of who he was looking for.

Not finding anyone that fitted his description of a driver looking to pick someone, Jason turned back to the woman and his blue eyes fell on her black eyes, surprising her and the two other girls as they hadn’t noticed Jason’s eyes earlier.

“Uh… you can use my phone to try and call the person,” the woman said in a bit of a daze as she had never seen someone with a similar skin tone to hers having blue eyes that glowed like gems in the light.

“Thank you,” Jason muttered, completely unaware of the women’s surprise even as they kept staring at him.

Jason began typing in the phone number of the driver from his memory, and once he finished typing in the eleven digits, he pressed the green dial button on the phone’s screen and put the phone to his ear, but a moment later he was troubled by the thought that his voice may be muffled by his nose mask.

‘People shouldn’t recognize me here yet, right?’ he wondered.

The Portuguese League was not really popular all around the world and most of its fan base were the Portuguese themselves, though giants like FC Porto, Benfica, Sporting CP, and FC Braga were probably known for their qualification to the Champions League year after year.

With his mind deeming it as ‘no problem’, Jason pulled off his mask completely while waiting for the person on the other side to pick up.

*Vrmmm*

The phone vibrated slightly to indicate that the call had been picked up and Jason immediately spoke into the phone’s mic, smiling a bit at some people who looked his way.

“Hello,” Jason spoke into the phone.

{HellO!} a loud voice burst into Jason’s ear accompanied by the sound of loud music in the background.

{Who be this!?} The person on the other end spoke in an annoyingly loud voice, his voice heavily accentuated with a Nigerian accent.

He seemed to think that Jason probably couldn’t hear him over the loud music in the background, but before Jason could get a word in, another annoyingly loud voice blasted into his ears from the phone’s speaker,

{Raise am! Raise am! Raise am!}