It turns out it’s not as easy as I thought it would be to find time to update my blog. Our first 10 days in Abuja have been spent on in-country training, where we’ve been staying at the Crystal Palace Hotel (the reviews on trip adviser give a fairly accurate description!) We also all spent 5 days on placement visits staying with current volunteers, so I went to Kaduna, 3 hours north of Abuja for that. It was great to be able to see some of the north of the country, as once I’m down in Calabar (a 12 hour bus journey from Abuja) I don’t think I’ll be coming back up to the north very often!
Some of the highlights so far. As I expected, being a vegetarian here is somewhat of a challenge. As an example, the local vegetable soup comes complete with cow skin, unidentifiable floating chunks of meat, and fish in it. Goat head was a special at a restaurant we went to the other night. I chose some eggs instead. Road travel is also an interesting experience. I’ve found the best way to deal with it is to keep my eyes very firmly shut and to pretend it’s just not happening.
I managed to completely humiliate myself last week when we went to a park in Kaduna. There were two monkeys in the park that were chained to a tree, and anyone who knows me will know that’s not something I particularly enjoyed seeing. We had some bananas with us, and so I thought I’d try and find someone that worked there to see if I could give some to the monkeys. I asked a man sat very close to the monkeys if he worked there, as I wanted to feed the monkeys some bananas. At this point, although the monkeys hadn’t even seen the bananas, they must have been able to recognise the word as they started going crazy, and making a lot of noise. The man explained he didn’t work there, but pushed me in the direction of an office, and told me to go and ask the manager. I said I didn’t want to interrupt them, but he insisted and took me to the office. So I walked in, and was faced with what must have been about 15 people, all sat down in the middle of a meeting. The room went completely silent, and the lady in charge asked how she could help. I couldn’t think of any other reason why I would be stood in their office, and so just had to explain very quietly, and with a very red face, that I wanted to see if I could feed the monkeys some bananas. Everyone in the room fell about laughing, and they all got up and took me outside, where they watched as I fed the monkeys. I walked away very quickly after that!
Another highlight of the visit to Kaduna was being taken to the local meat market. It’s fair to say I probably won’t be going to another meat market whilst I am here. 30 odd degree heat, flies, a lot of dust, unidentifiable lumps of animal carcass, blood everywhere, and no fridges doesn’t make for a very pleasant experience!
So tomorrow morning (at 6am!) we leave for Calabar, and I will finally get to see where I will be living. The next update will therefore hopefully include some photos of my house! Miss everyone at home loads, so keep in touch.
