terribly intuitive, you see

“Just say no,” Erik suggests when I ask how to get through customs with my carry on, hiker’s backpack, and two black 80 pound (36 kg) rolling suit cases full of books, martial arts gear, and tech supplies.

“Ask to speak to their supervisor,” Lindsey chimes in.

“Yeah, generally their supervisors don’t like them asking for bribes,” Erik adds. “And customs is kind of a joke. If you act like you know what you are doing you can generally just walk past. Can I buy you another beer?”

I’ve got to catch my flight. We exchange names and Facebook information and I’m off to begin my journey from New York to Paris to Lagos, Nigeria.

From the U.S. to Paris I sit between a 20-something white woman with a British accent and a tan girl, maybe in her late teens, with expensive headphones and cartoons on her personal in-flight screen. We sit silently in a four foot row of three chairs for seven hours.

I take my seat on the second flight headed to Lagos. I was the only young white person on the plane. I am greeted by a woman with a two-and-a-half inch scar running down her forehead and a bright smile accented with yellow braces.

“You sure you don’t want to store your bag?” she asks with a comfy, maternal air to her words.

I say no. I say, “well…” She stands to let me out of my seat. I take two books, a notebook, and my laptop out, and stuff my bag in the overhead.

“My name is Ibi,” she smiles.

Ibi is returning from a visit to London, where her son is studying economics. She has another son who is studying in Kentucky, and another, as it turns out, studying chemical engineering at the University of Maryland, my alma mater.

We get to talking about travel and Ibi celebrates my adventurous spirit. I tell her of my last trip through Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. “You are Jewish?” she asks.

“Well, my father is Jewish. My mother is Christian.”

“And that leaves you…”

I pause.

“Open minded…”

She laughs, “You should not be so open minded.”

She tells me I’ll have a great time and that Lagos is a wonderful city for me to explore. She tells me “one thing about Nigeria” is that the people are deeply religious. Not everyone is so understanding about open-mindedness when it comes to faith. She say people are very hopeful about the new president. That she hopes he will remain committed to changing things. That Nigeria needs that.

“You must thank God for a good travel partner!” Ibi beams. She gives me her card and suggests I let her take me out to lunch.

We land and shuffle past crooked cream-colored blinds and dusty cream-colored chairs in the thick, sweat-scented corridors of the airport. Personnel in beige uniforms, reminiscent of British colonialism, stand between banners detailing the risk of Ebola as they scan our foreheads with plastic guns. A stout, sweaty woman with a mole on her face hisses at me, pulls me out of the passing crowd, and asks for the yellow card that certifies that I’ve had my vaccination for yellow fever. I was supposed to have my shot at least ten days prior. It’s been five.

She stares at the yellow card, the wrinkles on her forehead wiggling as she counted and recounted the days since my vaccination. “I can either put you in quarantine or you can get on a plane back to United States,” she finally squeaks.

“No,” I say calmly.

“You want to go back to United States?”

“I just want to get on my way and get to work,” I say calmly.

“I can put you in quarantine then.” She holds my yellow card just out of reach.

“Can I speak to your supervisor?”

“I am the supervisor.”

“I just want to get on my way and get to work.”

She leans in and lowers her eyebrows. “Will you compensate me?” she asks, avoiding eye contact.

We go back and forth like this. She explains that she is just trying to help me, and asks why I am yelling and asking for her supervisor. I just want to get on my way and get to work, I repeat.

Finally, as if out of nowhere, she holds out my yellow card and scowls.

“Just go on your way.”

Ibi is in the baggage claim smiling.

“What, you had a fever?” she laughs.

Ibi offers me her phone to call my contact at the office. It does not go through. She calls over an attendant and gives me 2000 Naira (~$10) to help transport my 200 pounds (91 kg) of luggage through customs.

“The man who is picking you up, you know his face?” asks the attendant, a man perhaps a little older than me with a warm face and an air of quiet, sad frustration.

“I do not. Only his name.”

We get through customs with a cursory search of one bag and a bribe. Outside I scan the crowd and make eye contact with a long, slim-featured man with eyes that seemed to disappear behind rectangular glasses and a t-shirt that said something about mischief. He held an open MacBook with a vinyl design that made it look like pine.

“Michael!” he shouts.

“Hold on,” said the attendant, “I will ask him a few questions.

“Benga?” I ask, realizing I had given him a piece of information that would have confirmed his identify.

He nods.

The attendant begins to grill him.

“You are Michael Ross Rosenberg, coming to work for Andela,” he says quickly

“It’s fine,” I say to the attendant, regretting that my first encounter with Gbenga was marked with distrust.

“I knew it was you. I’m terribly intuitive, you see.” I look around at the sea of brown faces all around me. Later Gbenga explains that he hears messages of intuition from time to time about others.

We wait and eventually pile our luggage into a van that speeds through dirt roads on the way to the compound. We pass yellow vans packed with people, with young men hanging out the sliding door. Men and women carry large sacks, trays of fruit, and everything else on their heads. Men laugh boisterously and blast music.

We stop at a restaurant where a stranger helps us squeeze into a tight parking spot and a shy young woman smiles as she serves me chicken and orange rice.

As we back out of our spot a spry security guard directs us with a confident smile and strong, jerking movements, like a caricature of a military commander in a Wes Anderson film.

We pull up past a stone with two big black letters to a large iron gate. Guards in beige uniforms open the gates, as we pull into the estate.