Day 12

Mary woke up to her long-awaited apples she got from the fruit stand yesterday. Oops we almost forgot! You barely know mary, how rude of us. Let’s introduce her: Mary is a Coptic Egyptian, which the producer of Arise News (the #1 show in Nigeria actually) seemed to love. He even asked for a personal picture with Mary. Besides her popularity amongst our friends here, Mary absolutely hates cheese and chocolate. Best of all, she’s a slow walker so Haleigh and Aayush are always a million miles ahead of her.

Now onto our eventful day! It was back to the island today as Aayush, Haleigh, and Mary travelled with Paschal to the Inspiration 92.3 FM radio station (only Lagos’ number 1 family radio no big deal). Upon arriving, we were greeted by Tomi, a close partner of HEI’s who works with the Federal Road Safety Commission, more on them later. Inside the studio, Paschal, Haleigh, and Tomi took to the mics to answer questions both from a host and listeners, explaining the goals of our collective partnership to reduce deaths from road traffic incidents. Questions came in hot, including one asking Haleigh “so what do you get out of this” and another listener checking in telling us that the FRSC should be scrapped. Our interviewees handled it all with class over the course of about 45 minutes.

After the interview, we had a quick breakfast at Chicken Republic, where Mary’s spice woes continued. Mary yet again failed in her mission; she drank a lot of water and had to keep taking breaks to let her tongue cool down. Haleigh and Aayush laugh because Mary claims her tongue and lips feel numb after eating spicy food. Aside from Mary’s venture, everyone except Aayush got the Chickwizz while he went to town on some fries. Mary also asked Tomi if they had Taco Bell here. Haleigh got some coffee but is an infamously slow coffee drinker, however when it started spilling over her in the car she braved her way through and downed the coffee anyways.

Our next stop on the tour was at UBA bank, where we reaffirmed a partnership between HEI and one of Paschal’s long-time friends/colleagues at the bank. Interestingly, this friend is the one who set things up for Paschal and his wife! Tomi’s active selfie game got on a roll after this meeting, and continued through the afternoon. In between stops, Haleigh and Mary rode with Tomi, while Aayush and Paschall manned the boys car. After our stop at the bank we had a meeting with the producer of Arise News, to set up a time for us to appear on their widely viewed morning show on Thursday! Everyone at these meetings has been very accommodating and is keen on helping us reach our goals which has been super encouraging.

Our last meeting was with the FRSC Sector Commander, about 40 km from where we were on the island. Throughout the day, Haleigh had been trying to get some money out of local ATMs to no avail, but was finally able to get some on her 4th attempt. We stopped by Sura Market to grab some fruits as gifts for the Commander. Aayush waited in the car as Paschal shopped, which turned out to be a rookie mistake in the sweltering heat. A few pineapples and watermelons were purchased and the boys were back on the road. One interesting thing was when Tomi was trying to make a u-turn, she put her hand out the window and made a u-turn signal to the cars behind her before turning.

After a great meeting with the Sector Commander, we made our way back to the hotel to nap. A couple hours later, it was time to fulfill the prophecy and finally grab some Coldstone. HAM (new acronym for “Haleigh, Aayush, Mary”…I really hope it sticks) made a one mile journey to the shop, navigating the streets like pros. After some delicious ice cream, HAM headed back to ol’ reliable, Red Peppe, to cap the night off with some pizza. We then came back to the hotel and decided to be super optimistic and do some more interviews. Honestly it was a good idea because we got some really good responses. Aayush and Haleigh got a bit frustrated towards the end so we finished the call and called it a night. We really were business interns today with business meetings and press tours all day. Back to trainers tomorrow. We’ll see you bright and early tomorrow for training. Taking bets on whether we’ll be the first ones there at 7:30 in the morning.

6-3, Haleigh’s comeback starts today

Late night pineapple snack!

Big fancy news set up

Commercial break radio show selfie

After the interview we all asked to record radio introductions for the station, and also all did it badly and had to keep redoing it

Haleigh had to go up and ask for the last plate of fries we ordered and then a second time to ask for the two ”teas” that’s were actually coffees

Tomi is a pro at taking Snapchat selfies!

Some nice sights of the water from the island!

Bigshot tv people

Bigshot bank people (Haleigh is running very low on caption ideas)

Biggggg road safety people

We tried to pay with the lfr credit card and when it didn’t work he handed it back saying, “obviously it declined”

“I’m starting to think they don’t have red sauce here” - Aayush

How many times can Haleigh re-introduce herself to a confused responder as “Haleigh from Health Emergency Initiative, the organization that trained you in first aid last year” before Aayush steals the phone from her and tries to ask? Around 6.