News, car woes, questions and randomness.

You may have heard about an oil pipe in Nigeria bursting and killing 100 people a couple days ago. I just found out about it online, so I figured I should post in case anyone was wondering about it in relation to me. It happened in Lagos, which is much farther South West from me, in Jos. It sounds pretty bad, and apparently happened near a school and quite a number of children were killed as a result. Numbers vary depending on the source, but it remains a terrible event. Pipeline explosions aren't new to Nigeria, but they have normally happened as a result of people breaking the lines in order to steal the oil. This one happened during road construction.

In other news: an HIV-positive man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for spitting on a policeman's face and mouth in the States. His spit was declared as a "deadly weapon." Now, while it's pretty gross, but in case you were wondering, HIV has NEVER been reported as been transmitted via saliva.

Ever.

For the policeman to have been infected from this man, the officer would have had open sores right where the spit landed and the saliva (which carries much lower quantities of virus compared to other body fluids, thus limiting the chance even more), would have had to entered these sores. Even then, there is still a greater chance of the officer NOT having contracted HIV than for. Contact with the virus in any situation isn't 100% sure of infection. It's actually closer to 1% in a risky one with fluid of a high HIV rate. Which this was not. Even if he managed to swallow the spit (even grosser), the virus would have been destroyed by his stomach acid. You could drink infected blood and not get infected. HIV infection is as much in your body when you swallow it as a marble is in your body when you shove it up your nose. It's there, probably feels pretty funny, but it's not going to make you sick. The odds were stacked hugely in the officer's favour. Like big time.

Does the guy really deserve 35 years in jail?

Granted, there were other factors. There usually is. He was drunk. He's resisted before. Resisted the paramedics' help. Gotten in fights with inmates, etc... So there was other stuff. He's an angry guy. But the main reason he was convicted was because of his spit. That was the focus. After he spat on the cop, he turned to him and said: "I have AIDS." So it seems he wanted to scare the cop into thinking he would get HIV. Which, since the man does have AIDS, is ridiculous. No one knows more about HIV/AIDS than someone who has it. In other words:

He bluffed.

And they bought it.
All the way to court.

And now he's going to jail.
For 35 years.
That's nuts. I'm 21. The guy is 42. I can't imagine 35 years in jail for drunken spittle.
35 years. (Tack a dozen more years on that and you have the life expectancy of a Nigerian)

Even if he did believe that the cop would get AIDS when he hocked a loogie in his face, it's silly that he's getting so much jail time for it. If I had fakus-diseasus and you got me pissed off so I pissed ON you (thinking I was punishing you by passing on what I got), I wouldn't go to jail for three and a half decades. It would be recognized as a childish bluff. Even if I thought I was passing it on, the fact is, I'm not.

You're not going to get fakus-diseasus from my pee.

I think the reason this has angered me so much (almost to the point of me taking a leak on my computer) is because of the difference in laws from a Western country to one like Nigeria. In a Western country, someone who has HIV, knows it, and sleeps with someone else without mentioning the infection, and then infects that person, he/she can be charged with a sexual offense, assault with a deadly weapon, assault, even murder if the person dies as a result. Compare this to places where up to 1/3 of all infected women were virgins before marriage and remained faithful during. Some don't even know their husbands are 'fooling around' and are infected. And even if they did, there's often very little they can do about it. In so many cultures the man is The Man. What he says, goes. That's it. We often do things like this, but on a smaller scale. But that's a blog for a different day. I think it's just ridiculous that someone can be jailed for causing no harm, when many are, in effect, actually killing people. What is it that makes us not care so much? What makes the life of an American worth SO much more than an African?


That's it for world news.
Now for ME news.

umm...

I had what I thought was a doughnut today. It kinda was. But in the centre, where tasty jelly is normally placed, was an entire hardboiled egg (shell off, obviously). I had no idea things like this existed. Who's been hiding these delicious doueggnuts from me?

What else...

The car I'm driving, a Peugeot station wagon, is a pain. Which goes along with any car I've ever driven. I tend to have bad luck with vehicles, starting in Canada and spilling over into Africa.

Case in points:

• Flat tire at 1 am on the side of a dark highway.
• Gas tank runs empty on the highway. (My dad never told me the light didn't work, and that when it's near E, it's actually on E.
• Rear-ending a Land Rover that decided to stop in the middle of Plains Rd.
• After honking to warn a guy who was driving in wrong lane (oncoming traffic), he resolves to thank me by cutting me off and hitting the front of the car. He then takes off on the highway and denies everything. I got his plates, but the cop didn't feel like driving out to London to talk to the guy, so I got shafted.
• Sliding in the snow into a guardrail after giving space to an oncoming van. Which turned out to be my sister. Damaging what had been fixed after the hit-and-run.
• Thought I had forgotten where I had parked my car in Toronto at 2 in the morning. While I was out searching for it, two people were shot (one killed) where it had been parked. It had been towed. I then had to search for where it had been towed to, taxi there, argue with the guy at the lot that it WAS there (I could see it, but he didn't have the paperwork, so therefore it wasn't there), then pay the fee and get home in time to get an hour and a half of sleep before I had to get up.
• Flat tire first week in Nigeria.
• John Orkar loans me his wife's car. The key breaks off the chain and gets locked inside the car. (Fortunately the hatch was open).
• Driving with RURCON and the car decides to not stop applying gas. Which would have been a huge problem had it not been standard.
• First morning I get to drive my 'new' Peugeot and the back tires seize up. I didn't make it out of the compound. Rear axle later gets replaced.
• Horn stops honking. Not a problem in Canada, but essential in Nigeria. I'm not kidding. Driving actually became harder. It's the only way to stop the motorcyclists from getting hit when they constantly cut you off. Plus it's how you get the guard's attention to open the gate. Had to get OUT of the car to knock on the door to let me in. If I wanted exercise, I wouldn't be driving a car in the first place...
  
• Saturday: I wake up with a flat tire. Completely flat. Take it off, put on the spare and get it fixed (for less than a dollar!) While I'm replacing it, I notice fluid having leaked all over the wheel. Plus, two lug nuts don't tighten. This is going to be fixed tomorrow. Hopefully.
• What next??

This is my view from the inside of my car. Which may give you some insight as to how everything is under the hood...

Yes, that is a giant shatter-crack on the left. Yes, that is a giant crack diagonally down the centre. And YES, those are stickers in the centre-right. For insurance. They have to be there.

And people wonder why accidents happen...

PS, That large, button-like thing in the middle of the steering wheel? That's nothing. To honk the horn, you need to pull the signal indicator towards you. This is not unusual here.

Oh, and guess where the ignition is...





That's pretty much it from me. Just have a few questions for you.

What book did you just read?
What book are you currently reading?
What book are you going to read next?

I just finished Velvet Elvis. Which I recommend to be your next read. (I'll blog about how much I enjoyed this book later).
I'm currently reading Long Walk to Freedom, the autobiography of Nelson Mandela. (But I've technically been reading it for months now - it's a long book, okay!).
I'm not sure what I'm going to read next. What do you recommend?