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Nostalgic Bali

Bali, Indonesia was just like any other place to us with nothing spectacular to hold forth for its name. But the memorable experience we had…

Bali, Indonesia was just like any other place to us with nothing spectacular to hold forth for its name. But the memorable experience we had there got us thinking about where our dear country Nigeria should be in the comity of nations. The opportunity came suddenly when Kabiru and I were directed to represent Sunday Trust at the World Young Readers Summit and Ideathon, which held in Indonesia’s largest tourists’ destination.
Well, the envious chance to see the Asian continent came with its hitches, not because we were not qualified, but because Nigeria, unfortunately, is a marked land of drug dealing.
As it is expected of curious travellers, we went to the airport three hours before the scheduled departure time of 20:10 hours that Saturday from the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja where we passed through light security checks and finally, we were boarding the Emirates.
No sooner than our departure, the infamous Bali night club bombing of 2004 stuck my mind: “How soon would I be seeing this renowned Island? Why is it being called a ‘Paradise Island’?
This island had hosted the 2013 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting, where world leaders gathered, same way they thronged the neighbouring Australia’s Brisbane city this year.
We soon got answers to our questions the moment we alighted at the world class Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar, Bali. The Island as we would see shortly, appreciably explains the flurry of guests swarming in from the world over.
As Wikipedia puts it, Bali is the largest tourist destination in Indonesia, and it is known for its highly developed arts, including traditional and modern dance, sculpture, painting, leather, metal works and music. Since the late 20th century, the province has had a rise in tourism.
With difference of eight hours to the GMT, seven hours to Nigeria’s time, it did not came as a surprise when our ticket indicated two transits at Dubai and Malaysia’s capital city of Kuala Lumpur before reaching Bali, in three connecting flights of 17 hours.
We gradually took in the scenarios of the flight not to mention the turbulence we encountered through the days on our long haul to the Denpasar airport – the Bali gateway.  As anticipated, the 17 hours journey finally ended when we touched down at the airport at about 06:30 hours of Monday, but not without some fears that we were crashing into the Indian Ocean which shares just a ‘fence’ with the runway.
It was sheer luck that we didn’t miss the opening ceremony of the summit, as we arrived at the Westin Hotel and Bali International Conference Centre just some few minutes to kick-off time. The series short nights (from Nigeria to Dubai), and therefore sleepless nights left a telling effect on our eyes, but were suddenly wide-eyed when one of us tried sitting at the front seat. A mild drama ensued as the ‘passenger side’ of this car was just the wheel side. Well, Indonesians do the ‘right-hand’ driving and their vehicles were so designed.
As we drove out of the airport, still laughing at the drama with our driver, we had another shocker. This time, it was the right-handed lane populated by rushing school students on motorcycles.
“Where are you from?” The curious taxi driver asked as he noticed our visible surprises to the tidy-looking city. “Nigeria, in Africa,” replied one of us. He paused for a while and then the name Nigeria, rang a bell in his mind with exclamations “Ok! Super Eagles? You play good football.”
We lightly absorbed this unexpected identification of the Nigerian team even though it could not qualify for the African Cup of Nations (AFCON), to defend the trophy they won nearly two years ago.
 “So you love football and you watch Nigerian matches here? We asked. “Yes, good football. Nigeria is strong,” the driver said.
This identification was later confirmed by another driver that took us from our hotel to the summit as he mentioned Kanu Nwankwo, Okocha as some of the standout players of the “strong” Eagles. Not to say the least, but for the football glory, Nigeria may not have been heard of by inhabitants of the provincial  island, only separated by some nautical miles across the ocean from the farthest continent of Australia.

Decades of community policing in Bali
As we drove through the busy road to the summit, the driver suddenly halted, waiting for uniformed men to come for inspection. Akpakabar sob, (Hello) he said. The security official responded with a hand wave, “Iyalaah” (I am fine). They gave us a curious look, as they open the boot in a routine check.
Seeing the camaraderie between the drivers and the security officials, we then asked our driver about how well both parties fare. The taxi driver, neatly dressed with his name, phone number and contact address placed on the dashboard, replied “These are not “Polisi” (Police), they are community vigilantes. You know since the (2004) bombing here, this security formation was deployed in some places to do routine checks on commuters.”
This is a decade since the single night club bombing in the Island, but the consistency and commitment of forestalling an occurrence is still fresh not with the police or soldiers flooding the streets, but with just community vigilantes, neatly dressed and well-behaved!

Perfume in meals, perfume everywhere!
From our first taxi from the airport, to the summit venue and throughout, an identical perfume filled the air. It was the same in all of these places, no matter what part of the city we went to. When we came out for coffee, the same scent was in the hot water and it was also the same when I deliberately went to have a taste of their local food, made up of an entirely sweetened, but highly perfumed combination.
They value it as much as they value smoking cigarettes. The Balinese (Bali aborigines) smoke like chimney, and both the male and female folks compete in puffing unhealthy tobacco sticks.
On our way to ‘Uluwatu’, (The Last Turn), where the whole Island bowed at the ocean mouth, along the route to Australia, our taxi driver, Haddy, offered us cigarettes, to demonstrate the hospitable nature of the Islanders to tourists. We graciously turned down the gesture and took in the exciting sights and scenes splattered by flowers, boulevards, crafts and sculptures all along.

Red bricks bring good luck
A deep conversation with Hera Khaerani, an Indonesian participant at the summit from the country” capital, Jakarta, revealed some more amazing facts about Indonesians.
On our way to visit the 65-year-old Bali Post Newspaper house, she suddenly began to point at roadside buildings in red bricks. “You see these buildings with red bricks; they use it because they believe it brings luck to them.”
Being a regular visitor to Bali, she continued that the people of Bali have many superstitious beliefs because most Indonesians are Hindu. Her assertion confirmed Wikipedia’s dig that Bali Island “is home to most of Indonesia’s Hindu majority. According to the 2010 Census, 84.5percent of Bali’s population adhered to Balinese Hinduism, 12percent to Islam, and most of the remainder followed Christianity.”
Perhaps, that “luck” in the red blocks always gives them the upperhand over smuggling of drugs and narcotics into the city, as Indonesia is known for its strict prohibition of importing drugs. One week after our departure, they arrested a foreigner with drugs at the airport and he faced the automatic death penalty.
 
Religions don’t count here
It wasn’t a surprise then when we asked our driver on one of the routine trips to show us a mosque or church since we could not find any since we arrived. He simply said neither Muslims’ mosque, nor the Christians’ Church were found in the city centres of Nusa Dua, Mumbul, Kuta, Siligita and Denpasar where we passed. This corrected my preconceived knowledge about Indonesia as Muslims-dominated country, at least from available information from our yearly pilgrims to Saudi Arabia.
The driver who explained their near-secular society left us dumb-founded for a while. Our young driver, Haddy, 22, who left school for driving to fend for his mother and sisters after the father ran away said, “No. You cannot see them (Mosque and Church) here. If you are going to a mosque, you have to go to Uluwatu”, some 45 minutes’ drive from the main city.
“That is where you can see them because government doesn’t want religion to be a cause for disunity,” he explained.
The irony is that, the Indonesians insist that one must have a religion! Our colleague, Hera, said one must identify his religion, anywhere one goes in the country. She quickly brought out her identity card to show us her religion—Islam reflected on it.
“You see, it is just to identify yourself as having a religion but no one checks if you are an ardent follower. The purpose for the identification was to cushion the influence of communism that held the country for long in time past,” she said.
Hence, throughout our stay in the island, estimated to have about 3,890,757 population, there was not a single time that we heard “adhan” (call to prayer). There was, however, a provision of a room in the hotel, where the summit took place, where men and women pray at the same place, with no partitioning.
The red bricks belief even permeated the city’s government, as we noticed the same pattern even at the city’s beautiful Ngurah Rai Airport.
Another amazing belief is that of a deity monument at home fronts, malls and even their hotels, like the one we stayed, Pop Nusa Dua. Indonesians would dress the deity with stripped linen, put an umbrella on its top, to shield it from the scorching sun, and feed it with vegetables and fruits. The little statue-like images are hardly starved of perfumes too as they litter the many houses and commercial structures in the cities.
You find the images at government buildings, palaces and even at the airport. The biggest of all the deity images stood more than 30 feet tall and expensively decorated at the departure wing; this, travellers must pass before boarding any flight.
 
30,000Rupiah (IDR) gone for just 2 minutes call
Having spent days away from home, we longed to communicate with people at home. We were guided to buy two SIM cards of the Telekomsel service provider so we could make international calls.
The shock came when a recharge of 30,000 Rupiah which is approximately 3USD (550NGN) could not take us two minutes on a call to Nigeria.
The drama continued when we were guided to top our phones at a nearby ‘Mini Mart’. Reaching the shop at 11pm (local time), young girls and boys who could barely speak nothing but Balinese stuck around the corners puffing cigarettes and drinks.
They gave us, Africans, a searching look through the smoked-filled space while we returned unapologetic looks on them and headed into the shop for phone credit. After thorough explanation in a mixture of English and what seemed like a novice Balinese speech, we loaded another IDR30,000 each, (another N550).
But, on dialling a Nigerian number in another two minutes, I soon learnt that my credit had been exhausted! We prayed it wasn’t so, but it was nothing else as Simon’s same amount equally flared up within same minutes!
Then we banned all sorts of international communication because, to make matters worse, ‘business centres’ or call centres were not in sight. The visible shops everywhere were a money changer’s shop. Hence, it made it possible for the acceptance of dollars and other foreign currencies in Bali other than the Rupiah.
We arrived in Indonesia at a time when there should be an uprising because of the oil subsidy that was removed. But many a Balinese we spoke to said they were not disturbed even as fuel pump price rose from estimated N97 to N124 when converted. They all said the same thing: ‘We are confident on the president’s ability to revamp our slumped economy where a dollar exchanges for IDR12, 000.
‘He has provided bus perisiwata (transit buses) before the removal, and they are reviewing the wage increase alongside other capital projects. But most of all, prices of goods and services are regulated by public authorities and there is no planned increment.’
 
$60 per hour of sleep
It was a whole day’s trip from Bali to Kuala Lumpur and then to Dubai at the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As we boarded the MH714 Boeing 727, I was forced to recall the multiple crash of the Malaysia airline MH370 and MH017. The less than 3hours trip to Malaysia was great except for a little veer off on landing.
We were back to the Emirates flight EK0347, a Boeing 737, for a seven hour trip to Dubai international airport where we arrived few minutes after 22:00hours. We had to wait for another 12hours before connecting to our flight to Nigeria.
Like most of the international passengers at the ever-busy departure areas, we lodged at the section, under the lighted, air-conditioned terminal.
Throughout the night, it was a disjointed sleep saturated with cold for us in the lounge area. This plus the long hours still ahead of us inspired me to go looking for a comfortable place at least. I left the place alarmed and in disbelief when I was asked to pay $60 (about N11,000) for an hour’s sleep.
Boarding the flight from Dubai to Abuja had a discomfort that could only be imagined.  Nigerian passengers were packed in buses and taken to the rear of the airport garage where flight EK0785, a member of the Boeing 7200 series was waiting for boarding.
On boarding the plane, they had all the passengers smeared with sanitizers; two bottles were exhausted in a moment – all because of the Ebola label, even when Nigeria has been declared free by international bodies.
Although it was the same process during departure from Nigeria, we wondered why we didn’t experience that on our more luxurious cruise from Dubai to Kuala Lumpur and to Indonesia. No sanitizers, no Ebola scare!
Sadly however, as we waited to pick our luggage at our ‘esteemed’ Abuja airport on arrival that Friday evening, the “usual” news of death struck us. Kabiru overheard a passenger telling his friend of the Kano mosque blasts!  And then in a minute, I got wind of the Overland airline shooting in Ibadan.
So we are really back in Nigeria, we told ourselves. We murmured in agony of the multiple bombings in Kano central mosque and then the obsolete airport facility, the old fans, air conditioners and even the many old attendants and officers on desk.
Alas! In Dubai, Malaysia and Indonesia, most of the airport workers were less than 30 years with sound performance and prompt-service attitude. Not in Nigeria!
But as the saying goes, ‘there is no place like home’ and we are back to Nigeria, where the green land is being forced to assume a red colour characterised by corruption and violence!

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