We bought a whole bunch of equipment before we came to Nigeria. That's the only downside of being involved in video workshops; there is just so much stuff to think about (and drag with you). Especially when you bring 3 complete sets of camera, audio and edit gear, well you can imagine... With the new camera came a USB cable, to capture the footage into the computer. I work with Mac and Sony for quite some years now, always using the firewire connection. But hey, these cameras came with these USB cables. I thought: new cameras, new cables, it will work! But it didn't.

So here we are in Nigeria, where it is very hard to find any kind of specialized shop. Don't get me wrong, you van buy lots of stuff here, it is just that it all looks the same. Every office seems to have the same interiors; everybody drives either Honda or Toyota. Supermarkets that have the status of being "western" and have slightly more to sell than the average shop, have the nickname Park & Rob instead of Park & Shop – the stuff is just too expensive.

This is not the end of the world, of course. And if I need something special like Firewire 800- to Firewire 4 pins cable, well, there is the Internet. But getting something shipped within a certain timeframe to Nigeria, that is a no go.

Fortunately Ilse (director of our partner organization MIND) has in-laws who are now in the United States, but heading to Nigeria in 2 days. So she ordered 2 cables online to be shipped in the US to their address. When she was done with the ordering she had to fill in the name of the country of residence, which is... Nigeria, a country that made the screen immediately go on default again. Well of course she tried again, lying a bit on the last question, pretended she lives in the US. It took about 2 hours to be notified that her order was cancelled. We suspect that was her IP-address that gave her away.

It might have something to do with Nigeria being on many blacklists, known as one of the most corrupted and fraudulent countries in the world. To make a long story short, somebody living in the US now did the ordering for us, hopefully it will reach us in time.