Nigeria Day 5 and 6
Coming at you live from bumper to bumper traffic in Lagos! Yesterday was so busy but we certainly have updates from Days 5 and 6, both of which Zach and I spent over 12 hours in our suits for meetings. We kicked off Day 5 with a meeting at the American Corner, a section of town with everything from the US Embassy to local American businesses. We found some tech partners who can help us develop an app that can better serve our first responders in Nigeria. We then went to the Ministry of Health and had a very productive conversation with the Deputy Commission of Health and the Director of the Lagos Ambulance Service, both of whom great us wonderful advice on who to reach out to for first responder recruitment - don’t be surprised if the emergency divers for rescue operations in Lagos Bay are LFR-trained soon!
After a final meeting at Spectranet, a major telecommunications provider in Lagos, we went back to the HEI office to get some work done for a few hours. I was tasked with food duty and went right back to our favorite restaurant in Lagos for the third time in a row: Red Peppe Pizza N Grille. The cashier handed me a napkin with an item in it - I opened it up and it was Zach’s Invisalign from the other night. Kid better be happy I returned to the restaurant to save his shiny white pearls.
After some work, I hit the gym while Zach stayed at the hotel (a common theme in the trip). Even the front desk attendant at the gym asked me where my friend was, to which I had to unfortunately report to her that he was in bed sleeping. She told me to toss him in the car next time! Weight lifters in Nigeria are a whole another level - video evidence below. On the bright side, Zach slept with an eye mask on last night so my goal of converting him to an eye mask loyalist is complete and we still have three days left.
More meetings for us on Wednesday. But before, Pascal introduced us to his kind office colleagues who offered us kola, a the Yoruba word for a gift for a visit. And of course it ended up being a bottle of Andre at 8 in the morning (Zach and I had to kindly decline). We then showed up to trainings early in our morning - the last training for our pilot study in Nigeria! Seeing the commitment and enthusiasm from the first responders was beyond inspiring. We also met with the the district commander with the Lagos State FRSC. The legitimacy that teaming up with FRSC has brought the program has been incredible and it’s always nice to participate in the trainings with the first responders on the ground. Most importantly, we couldn’t be more grateful for our trainers on the ground. They are so energetic and as members of the community, have a special ability to connect with first responders to make sure they are grasping their knowledge to the best of their abilities.
After our stop at FRSC, we then had a pitch at Woodhall Capital, a financial group that was instrumental in funding HEI. They are a group that truly does value road safety and we are hoping to partner with them again as we plan to train 5,000 first responders in the next 3 years. Driving through the beautifully constructed islands of Ikoyi and Lekki was wonderful - this is certainly where a lot of Nigerian elite reside.
We then wrapped up the Wednesday by stopping by FRSC one more time to take photos with our newly trained and final batch of first responders for our pilot study! Chika was handing out food and she started this rumor that I don’t like local jollof rice, which by the way is super spicy but also delicious, so I didn’t get any. But no worries there because Pascal then took us to his lovely sports club for dinner. Zach, Pascal, Francis and I (the team of four in who have been driving throughout the city during our 12 hour days) had a jollof rice and chicken dinner. We then spent some time walking around the club before heading home. - Ashwin
The past few days have been a whirlwind. We have driven all over Lagos to meet with all kinds of incredible people, in addition to hosting our final training session of the 350 transportation providers our team is training as lay first responders. Tuesday started early, or maybe late, as Ashwin and I didn’t get to bed until about 3am after grading all of the pre-and post-assessments from our first responders! But it was well worth it- the scores we are seeing from our training of trainers program surpass anything we have seen before, with almost 40% improvement. After we managed to get about 3 hours of sleep, we had an early start to get to our first meeting at the “American Corner” where we visited the US embassy and met with representatives from the Venture Garden Group, one of Nigerias most successful incubator firms, who committed to helping us develop a mobile application designed specifically for our Nigerian LFRs to track their interventions and provide refresher educational materials. We then traveled across town to the Lagos State Government building where we met with the deputy commissioner for health and head of the Lagos State Ambulance service to discuss how we could partner to build EMS together. Everyone gave us such a wonderfully warm welcome, especially Ms. Beatrice, the director of the ambulance service. Lastly we visited Spectranet, Nigerias largest and fastest growing telecom company, to discuss how they might support our efforts both financially and otherwise.
Happy to report that all of these meetings were a smashing success! After driving for over 3 hours in Lagos traffic, a full day of meetings, and some pretty brutal heat, Ashwin and I realized that we had been so busy we hadn’t eaten all day. And on top of that, I was beginning to feel sick…COVID negative but I think my lack of sleep is catching up to me and I might be catching a cold. But anyway, when we finally got back to the HEI office and had chicken sandwiches at 5pm, lets just say a chicken sandwich never tasted so good…No like…I seriously cannot describe how delicious this chicken sandwich was. It was a very memorable sandwich. We were able to finish the day by 7pm which was about 5 hours earlier than our average, and I went straight to sleep at 8, hence the late posting of this blog. Woke up feeling sick still but at least I was able to get some rest! - Zach