The “E” Word…

I thought that now would be a good time to post a little something about our newest adventure in Nigeria since we’ve been here nearly two and a half weeks and well, you know, because of the “E” word. You know what I mean. The E word is not really something that I  thought we’d be contending with, I mean, it wasn’t even on my radar before we left Olympia for Lagos. There were other concerns, mainly other people’s concerns, that Greg and I had discussed and decided were another set of calculated risks that we were willing to deal with… Boka Haram, check. Malaria, check. Bouts of dysentery and the occasional yet inevitable food poisoning, check and check. I was willing and excited to go back to another land of mystery meat, scurrying cockroaches and rats the size of cats (no kidding!) even after our less-than-stellar experience in Indonesia. But what I had not, did not, could not (but am) thinking about is the E word, the word that’s on everyone’s mind here in West Africa. Ebola. So, just to get this conversation out in the open and hopefully out of the way, we’re fine. One of the upticks to living in an expat bubble is that we’re not exposed to the same risks that the typical Nigerian is. But, the risk of contracting Ebola truly is minimal as long as one does not engage in the following activities: treating people infected with the virus, attending funerals of people who have died, eating bush meat (monkeys, bats) and pigs. I’ve thrown away the little bit of pork we had and eating monkey wasn’t on the menu anyway. We are being cautious, school has been delayed and we are hunkering down and seeing what happens.

So, I will wrap-up this post so I can move on to a lighter and funner topic. “Our New Digs” is the title of my next post and I’m working on it as soon as I wrap this up , so stay tuned.

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