Home Away from Home with Abi Adeboyejo
Email: abi.adeboyejo@yahoo.com Twitter: @abihafh
It isn’t everyday you have the unusual task of convincing people about the beauty of your part of the world. I was faced with this dilemma not too long ago and while I did my best, I think it is necessary (for the sake of my mental health) to blame some people for not making my task easier. Before I get to the ‘put the blame on someone else’ part of this article, I’ll fill you in on the events that led to my feeble attempt to ‘sell’ Nigeria.
It was only a few weeks ago when a colleague happened to come into my office to give us the details of his trip abroad. He was a six foot tall Jamaican with the requisite Rastafarian dreadlocks and a sing-song lilting accent. His voice was very loud but also so musical that I consciously had to stop myself from tapping my feet in a rub-a-dub style in time to his words. At least his very loud voice saved me from having to eavesdrop as he told the stories of his adventures.
He had just returned from his trip to Jamaica for a family wedding. He told the whole staffroom about how beautiful and sunny it was and talked about how he went to visit his relatives in their cottages by the seaside. He even had pictures of the beaches and lovely places he visited. He was like a live tourist advertisement for his country and he sure was selling it.
All my colleagues listened and ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhhed’ appropriately. But Mr Jamaica did not end there; he got on one of the computers in the office and showed us different tourist attractions, themed holiday parks, holiday websites and tourist information websites. He even showed us websites to buy cheap air tickets. The final straw for me was when he showed websites for cruises to Jamaica and recommended towns and ports to visit, with websites to match. I looked round and found that Celia, the ‘roaming soul’ of our staffroom was already taking notes!
I thought “Hang on, Nigeria is just as lovely, if not lovelier” and I felt my long-idle spirit of patriotism rise up in me. Actually, my husband later said the feeling was probably just me not wanting to be outdone. Anyway, I interrupted the man’s holiday presentation and asked if anyone had been on holiday to Africa.
There was silence and a few embarrassed tittering while Mr Jamaica looked decidedly annoyed. I ignored him. We had sat through 15 minutes of him waxing lyrical about Jamaican bliss and all I wanted to know was if anyone had ventured to my part of the world. Nothing wrong in that, abi? One person then said he had been to Egypt to see the Pyramids; another had been to South Africa. One colleague spoilt it all by asking if Peru was in Africa. It went down hill from there – they displayed their ignorance to a rather frightening extent when one said he thought that West Africa was a country on its own!
I smiled and explained the geographical location of Nigeria in relation to other African countries. I described our beaches and the different tourist attractions. I exaggerated a lot (as I am sure Mr Jamaica had done) and got them very interested. I should have stopped there but you can trust that I didn’t. I was too carried away at that point.
I got so enthusiastic about my ‘Naija’ sales pitch that I decided to log on to my computer and typed in ‘Holidays in Nigeria’ into Google. Disaster! The links I got were about getting cheap air flights and hotels. I quickly looked for tourist information about Nigeria and the information on those sites were not very nice. I must remind you that at this point I had about six colleagues gathered round my desk, trying to see this ‘paradise’ I had been telling them about.
I started to sweat profusely as I typed frantically, trying to find something positive about tourism in Nigeria. I mean, who actually put the information on those websites? One said “rampant corruption has left the country with deep divisions that will take many years to ease. Despite recent democratic elections there remains a real risk of renewed civil war and terrorist activities.” Who said we are considering war? And if there’s been corruption in Nigeria, it’s also present in other countries in the world but they don’t talk about it on their tourist pages. Another mentioned the prevalence of robberies, kidnappings and crime in cities across Nigeria. South Africa also has a high level of crime but it’s not the first thing tourists hear about the country.
We are in the internet age now. Majority of people get most of their travel and holiday information from the internet and they actually believe and rely on such information (or why do you think people are still being deceived by internet fraudsters?). While I am not in any way advocating dishonest stories when advertising Nigeria to tourists, I think entrepreneurs, businesses and people in the hospitality industry should invest in beautiful websites that portray what is good about Nigeria.
There is so much to see and so much to do on a visit to Nigeria that we could beat many other countries hands-down in the provision of wonderful holiday destinations.
Finally, after searching for the Nigerian tourist board website in vain, I confess that I found a picture of a rather lovely mansion in Abuja on the internet. I had to redeem Naija, so I claimed that it was a replica of our family house in Ibadan. Please don’t judge me. I was only trying to ‘big-up’ my country!
