Caboose

On Sunday morning we had a leisurely start to the day, Kay and Jenny went to church while Mary and Pete took Marebec and I on a walk to Opobo II, a new town being built nearby. On the way we passed a crane that had been brought in to build the road/causeway between Opobo and Opobo II, which had sunk into the swampy ground. We were also shown the huts built to fool this year’s census into thinking the population of Opobo is higher than it is. The picture below right shows Peter, Henry and Mary (with the obligatory umbrella).


We then had to pack up all our damp clothes and Henry took us across the river to Ikot Abasi, where we took a fleet of machines to the motor park, along the terrible mud track. The trip to Eket was fairly uneventful, apart from one junction where we were briefly caught behind a car with several machete-wielding youths hanging off it. It wasn’t quite clear what was going on, but there was a large crowd hanging around nearby so we didn’t want to stop to find out.

Once in Eket we found the home of another Charles (this time from Kenya), usually known as Uncle Charlie. He had been away visiting some other VSOs the night before so we went for a walk around town and bought our bus tickets for the next day. We noticed some interesting telephone wiring which may help to explain why it’s so difficult to get a line from NITEL.

When Charles got back he took us to the nearby beach, right beside a large oil terminal with a huge gas flare. Flares from the offshore platforms could also be seen from the beach (behind Charles’s friend, Kay, Jenny, Tracey and Marebec in the picture).