A lesson in the Danish way of life

I know three things popular about Denmark—Danish biscuits, Christian Andersen fairy tales, serial-killer novels and Sandi Toksvig, the former irreverent, sharp-talking shoot-from-the-hip presenter of BBC’s Friday Night Comedy.

I have no idea what the average Dane knows about Nigeria. 

Denmark wasn’t even a country that popped into the world’s consciousness as regularly as Brazil, China or the US.

But when a conference is meant to hold there, you suddenly have to know where to find the Danish embassy in Abuja.

Flying into the capital Copenhagen aboard a connecting flight from Munich and a hop from Frankfurt, it is impossible to know the exact moment when you cross the border.

Tar-black highways and winding lanes cut through green and yellow country vegetation. A vast green expanse of water rolls into white sands. Windmills high as 30-storey buildings poke into the air. It feels like Thumbelina’s village come alive from one of Andersen’s tales.

I get off the plane and walk through climate-controlled corridors and straight toward the exit. It runs in three ways—one each for EU, non-EU and rest-of-the-world travellers needing to declare.

“Not sure? Join the last queue,” said one notice. I wasn’t sure, so I did.

The nice-faced man politely greeted me, asked where I was from, as if he couldn’t read the green passport in his hand.

I obliged him, then added that I wasn’t really sure which queue to take so I had come straight to him.

He asked, “Do you have anything to declare—cigarettes, alcohol, precious stones?”

I shook my head, no.

“Well, then, welcome to Copenhagen,” he said.

I took the exit and my world turned upside down. It was my first lesson in how different Denmark is from Nigeria.

After three flights that lasted from 10pm Friday night to around 1pm Saturday, it was high noon. Weather checks before departure had shown it was summer in Copenhagen.

The cold that hit me in the face cleared my doubts. It was teeth-chattering, bone-rattling, loose-control-of-your-muscles cold. At 2 in the afternoon? Boy, you are not in Abuja anymore!

The wind didn’t pick up: it fanned through the country constantly, turning the windmills that power Denmark and whipping up more cold.

I wondered how certain matrimonial logistics were possible in this weather.

One English girl who flew in from London and was bundled into a parka that had come straight off a polar bear told me her home weather had her better prepared than I ever got.

I would meet Danes themselves, one of them named Martin, a hotel security guard, who told me it was colder over the border in Sweden, just an hour’s train ride away.

Even as I shivered despite wearing a thermal shirt on a babban riga on a vest, the clueless Danes in parkas cycled past on bikes, young people jogged in shorts and strap clothes. If this was summer, I didn’t want to experience winter.

The only semblance to summer was day light. That much I knew from secondary-school geography class.

But it was a shock to really what “long days and short nights” really meant. I put in a full day’s work and waited for evening to retire and call back home. The day stayed bright as I looked out 21st-floor window, but it was 10pm.

Copenhagen seemed a laid-back city. In every four Dane I met, one was smoking, one was pushing a baby pram or pulling a baby-carrying tricycle behind their bike, one was walking a dog, and one was just walking briskly to destinations unknown.

Eyes right, all the way, like no one’s business is the impression Denmark casts. The country practically runs itself with little help from anyone and all the help from taxation.

Half your salary goes to taxes, Martin, a father of two, tells me. It is 2am and I am shivering like a feather in the cold wind, and Martin is cool as a cucumber, telling me I would get used to it. Not on your life, I think.

He’s never been out of Denmark. His portion of Copenhagen was a slice of rural farm land that got swallowed up by high-rise buildings once the big-money developers came with their fat wallets. The same thing happens in Abuja, I assured him.

We discuss property prices. Council flats are going up around us, and a windmill needs to be torn down because regulations don’t permit high structures around construction sites. That’s just illegal, Martin told me.

The condos cost DKK1m to DKK2m, about the price of a car, and they have already been paid for, he said. We do foreign exchange, converting costs to naira and dollars, and we just shake our heads.

That expense gets compensation in free education, unless you send your kid to a private school at DKK1000 a month like Martin’s two boys, aged 12 and 16.

They began learning English in primary and by secondary school age can choose from Spanish, German, French.

“We have to learn the world’s language, because nobody wants to learn Danish,” Martin explained.

At the airport, it had been a rude culture shock when I saw boards in Danish all over the place and felt the most illiterate I had ever been. The words were in Latin alphabet, like English, but I couldn’t read a word. The more I looked, the less I knew.

What I knew was by sight, though. Speed limits were what they were, and every driver kept to them. Nobody was gunning to overtake anyone, and I didn’t hear a car horn for days. Everyone stopped at traffic lights, even at 2am with no one around.

Your average Abuja driver would call a Copenhagenian mad. Drivers would run through light as early as 8pm at Wuse, rev up to 140km/hr on their way to Zuba and narrowly miss knocking down anyone in their way.

“Danes are the same,” Martin said, shattering my perception. “They are nice inside, but they turn to devils and grow horns once inside their cars.” He had been putting up a barrier one driver had knocked down earlier.

They like their luxury too and hate any inconvenience, Martin went on. “Danes get easily angry when the bus or metro is five minutes late, and they go out and buy a car.”

For the record, Copenhagen’s public transport is timely to the second. You stand at a stop and a bus or train bears down on you just as a clock on an upright column counts down the seconds. So it is imaginable the fury a late bus would instigate.

Of course, everything is on a loan, a mortgage, some credit, to be paid back in monthly installments over, say, 10 years. And they can sell the car, give the money to the bank, get a fresh loan and get a new car.

Martin has had the same car for the past 10 years, not wanting to sink at least DKK1m into something new and shiny.

Things are expensive, he tells me, because of the taxes. He didn’t have to.

I paid DKK75 (that’s N2249) on an adaptor that I could get at Wuse for N100. I lost it and had to buy another.

And when I walked into a mum-and-dad dime store, I saw red, literally. The store clerk, looking Middle Eastern, took my money (the 20 euros I paid for through the nose on the black market), handed my change over, blocked off my shopping and turned to the next on the queue.

He seriously expected me to pick up the items and I didn’t have a bag.

“Aren’t you going to bag them?” I asked. At any store in Abuja, you didn’t need to ask that.

“You need a bag?” he asked.

Yes, I did.

“That will be DKK2.50,” he said.

Was he kidding me?

He wasn’t.

And that cost comes with value added tax slapped on. I took my shopping and swore next time I would stuff any shopping down my trousers.

The same way I stuffed down bread, bread and more bread day after day. It felt invariably hard and only differed in colour and stuffing: green vegetables, a dash of cream. They came nicely packaged in brown paper bags on the dot of 12 every day. Only a pear, an apple or a banana saved me from the sandwich routine.

I couldn’t wait to get out. Elonzo from Malawi and Eunice form Zimbabwe felt the same. If I ate any more, I probably would sprout bread from my head. If I didn’t see another loaf for half a year, it would be too soon.

I got water in a Tetra Pak carton and thought it was milk.

For each drink I had to choose between sparkling and still water. Never had to before. Sparkling tasted oddly like mineral water, and elementary science tells me water is tasteless. A look at labeling revealed the amount of minerals packed into it. I couldn’t drink another sip.

Yep, that’s me dissing a country polls say its people are among the happiest in the world. One survey named it the best place to be a mother, a woman or have children. State of the World’s Mothers regularly lists Denmark, Sweden and Norway among the best places to be a mother.

I happened upon new mother Malene at a “modregruppe”, a sort of support group for new mothers. Malene’s baby is eight months old, and she spends hours every day with other mothers talking about their experiences.

Malene explains the central underpinning of Danish society—equality for women, free education, free healthcare (though it won’t pay for a hair transplant, if Martin needs one).  

Her maternity leave is paid, and she can get work once it is over. It takes heavy taxes, she says, but she’s not afraid of forking over the money because she knows it is safe and will be used to provide her the amenities she needs.

“How do you say it, there is no…what’s the word…corruption,” she ended after searching for the right word. Then she asked me, “How is it in your country?”

I told her it had been a long time in the making but that the people were finally fighting it.

It was the same response I gave to an American I met on a bus and then she went on to ask what President Buhari’s stance on Sustainable Development Goals and women was. This was right after the London anti-corruption summit, a trip to China and the anti-terrorism summit back in Nigeria.

The President had a lot on his plate at the moment, what with the budget and all that ruckus going on, I said. SDGs will become clearer in time.

I met Malene at a replica of the Danish assembly at the Tivoli, an amusement park ages old. When I left her, I walked outside where an Audi and a Range Rover SUV idled away. I asked who they were waiting for.

The crown princess, one woman told me. Children stood in a corner singing. It threw me for a loop.

I walked past a Tivoli security, who like Martin can’t carry guns. If he hit a drunk guest, he got sued as the violent one. If he got hit first, he could hit back: once is self defence, twice is criminal.

A policeman, weapon slightly bulging in a clasp behind him, diverted a traffic of bikers from the curb where the crown princess’ car stood. The security detail was only six men. When Obama visited, he came with security big as a house, Martin told me.

Danes actually got up close with their royalty. That was unthinkable in Nigeria. A mere office holder moved with so much security, you were expected to stop breathing when they were around.

Mary, crown princess of Denmark, walked out, shook hands with foreign minister Kristian Jensen, gave a humble princessy wave and climbed into the backseat of her car. A crown and the figure 8 on the number plates receded as her car melded into traffic.

I had been standing right next to her car, and no “politi”—the Danish police—harassed me. The surreal lessons still leave my jaw on the floor.

The Danish government supports the church but Danes don’t do Sunday-Sunday relationship with the churches. Except at Christmas and for weddings, churches might as well stay empty all year, Martin said.

An acquaintance who flew in from Lagos explained the Danes probably felt they had everything and didn’t need God. “There are just some things that wouldn’t ever be on your prayer points,” he said.