One week after the "fun" on the 4th day of the fuel subsidy strike, the Yola-Jimeta area is remarkably quiet. We went shopping and saw that there were far fewer vehicles on the road, many shops were closed - in some cases whole streets of shops gated and locked up - and the main market itself was quieter than usual, though there still a decent amount of traffic around the stalls. It was very strange to see so little activity.
There were two big differences. Faro Water, the local bottling plant owned by AUN Founder Atiku Abubakar, has joined the strike, so there were no refill water jugs. One shop did still have cartons of water bottles we could buy.
Second, a couple key intersections now sport dedicated police searching every car. Each motorcyclist had to stop, dismount, and walk their bike through. Pedestrians passed with their hands in the air. Each car had to show what was in the trunk and sometimes answer questions. I will post some of it later. Most of the travellers, and our driver, laughed at most of it.
Oh, dear! I hope you'll be okay with water. I know you can boil the tap water, but does it still taste okay? (Our tap water is revolting.) Did you bring any Crystal Light with you?
ReplyDeleteJoy likes our boiled water better than the Faro water. I notice a slight difference, but I'm not certain which one I prefer. We do have some Crystal Light that we have been rationing perhaps a little too carefully. Good thought.
ReplyDeleteThe strike ended, so we'll be able to refill our water in the next couple days without touching any of the new bottles we added to our water storage, so we've gone from 2-3 days to a week's worth of water storage even during the crisis. Not bad.