Nigeria 2012 - Day 6 (1/26)

I was up and dressed by 8 this morning.  My attire for the funeral consisted of black slacks, a gray dress shirt, and a black tie.  We met the same driver from the day before downstairs and hit the road before 8:30.

We made it to the house in plenty of time for the 10:00 service, which started late anyway (not a surprise if you are familiar with Nigerian time).  While waiting in the house before the service I met a few relatives on my mom's side.  A couple of the younger ones were particularly intrigued by my camera and smartphone, but I did not have much for them to play with on there.  I started downloading Angry Birds from the Android Market, but it was really slow on EDGE, so I had to wait until after the funeral to let them play it.

The funeral service was in an open patch just outside the compound.  It went from about 11 to 1 (I hope nobody has to sit through that sort of thing when I die) and ended with the burial in a hole that had been dug next to the house just inside the gate to the lot.  After that I spent most of the next couple of hours in the parlor upstairs, including eating some jollof rice and watching the kids drain my phone battery with Angry Birds (which had been successfully downloaded and installed during the service).  A little after 3 my parents and I made a quiet exit and rode back to Enugu with the driver.

I was quite relieved to make it back to the hotel, even though we were greeted with a couple of short power outages before we could even make it up to our rooms.  Back in my room I changed out of my clammy clothes, plugged in my phone, turned on some soccer on TV, and laid down for a while.  I later dined with my parents (yam, plantains, and stew), and watched the Ivory Coast v. Burkina Faso AFCON game. 

Some pictures from the trip: