I've just had my first brush with serious Lagos traffic. I set off as I normally do after lunch to pick up the boys from school. I leave around 12.45, and that is normally plenty of time to pick them up at 1.30.

But not today. .... the traffic was awfull. Luckily I had some Norwegian papers to read, but as the time grew nearer and tne queue didn't move. I called my to good friends Lisbeth and Pernille to see if they would reach the school on time. But they were stuck in the same queue. We had to call the school ans say we were going to be late(as many people were) and the children were kept in the classrooms because it was also raining a bit.

Pernille and Lisbeth reached the school just before me around 3.30-45. My driver tried to take a shortcut so I didn't arrive untill 4.15. After 3 and a half hour in the car I wasn't keen to get into the car again,especially with Erik and Daniel even if they had their gameboys, so Lisbeth and i decided to go to a restaurant across from to school named Cactus. We ordered pizza for dinner and did homework with Erik and Alexander while Daniel played with some other schoolfriends that where stranded there. Pernille and Fredrik had started ack at 4 o'clock but as we kept in touch with them we sawthat the traffic wasn't moving in that direction either.

So we got Statoil to bring the boat over. It took them an hour and a half to get the driver, fill petrol and launch the boat for us,. But by 7.30 the boat was there to pick us up, and it took 5 minutes to cross the channel instead of three hours on the bridge in the car. When we arrived on Ikoyi we got to drive a police car to the house which Erik, Daniel and Alexander thought was brilliant. We were home by 8 o clock. I hope this won't happen often....