You’d think that I’d have learnt my lesson the first time it rained heavily and my mattress got soaked. But no. Given how difficult it is to get a good night’s sleep in My Squat my only coping strategy is to just bury my head under my pillows and pretend that none of the noise exists and force myself to sleep anyway. After a few weeks of sleep deprivation this is easier than I had anticipated as I think I just pass out. So the other night when I woke up and felt damp I obviously didn’t wake up enough to work out that it was because it was raining in on me. Until I got up in the morning and put my feet in a puddle. A puddle that was covering the entire floor of My Squat. My mattress was once again soaked. As was my curtain, and anything else that was on the floor at the time. This will presumably only help to enhance the mould that already grows on everything that lives in My Squat. I got a pair of shoes out of my wardrobe that I hadn’t moved since I arrived here and they were covered in mould. It wouldn’t surprise me if my skin started to turn green soon as well.
I put closed toe shoes on the other day for the first time since I got here, and despite them being big on me when I left home, they are now too tight. It seems that four months of flipflop wearing isn’t particularly good for you, as my feet seem to have expanded to the size of elephant’s feet. Just another addition to the attractiveness list.
I have a new obsession. Because it’s been raining more and more in the mornings recently I’ve been getting tricycles to the main road to catch a taxi to work. The tricycles are all bright yellow, and they are called Keke. They conveniently leave from the hill at the top of the road where I live, and go all the way down to My Squat. And I think they are the best things ever. I want one. It would solve all my problems. I would never be brave enough to drive a car here, but I would happily just trundle along at 10 mph in one of these. I could go up and down the hill to My Squat as late as I wanted without having to worry. And people would stop thinking I was the strangest person in the world for walking everywhere. But I would definitely paint my tricycle pink.
When I imagined living and working in Nigeria I imagined that I might develop a tan. Or at least be a little more tanned than I normally am at home. As with most things here, I should never make assumptions. I am probably the whitest I have ever been. There are two new volunteers coming to Calabar in July and I went to meet the head of the charity they’ll be working for to check the accommodation that had been found for them. I walked into her office and she looked at me in horror and said, “You’re so so white. I knew you would be white, but you’re so white. Have you ever seen our sun?” I told my friend what she’d said and he laughed and said, “she’s right, you look like a chicken that’s had its feathers plucked out.” So there you go, four months in Nigeria and I’m almost translucent.
I’ve mentioned before that church is a big deal here. Everyone goes to church several times a week and you would struggle to find a road that doesn’t have about five churches on it. The question I have been asked the most frequently is which church I go to, followed by an insistence that I accompany them to church after I explain that I don’t go. But last week for the first time since I arrived, I actually went to church. Twice. The first time was slightly more terrifying than the second as I went with a friend from work who was in the choir and so he had to spend most of the time on stage. This meant I was left stood on my own pretending that I felt perfectly comfortable trying to sing and dance to songs I had never heard before, and simultaneously trying to ignore the fact that every single person in the church seemed to be staring at me. The second time was a slight improvement as I dragged Jenny along with me. The only downside was that the Pastor in the second service seemed unhealthily obsessed with the sound of his own voice and gave a two-hour sermon on ‘help’. I initially thought he was saying ‘hell’ so I was very confused when I thought he was making everyone chant ‘send me to hell, send me to hell, send me to hell’. Turns out I was just missing the pronunciation of the ‘p’. The sermon wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been an evening service, and if we hadn’t been out very late the night before. There were several awkward moments during the four hour service (yes, it lasted for four hours in total) when I really had to force myself to fidget so that I stayed awake. Thankfully Jenny had brought a packet of Percy Pigs with her, and so the occasional sugar boost helped to sustain us until we were allowed to leave. So at least when I am next asked if I have been to church I can say yes, twice in one week.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Can someone press the pause button
I’ve now been here for four months. I’m a third of the way through my placement, and it’s almost a year to the day that I went to the VSO assessment day in London. And I want someone to press the pause button, as despite the hair loss, constant sweating, daily irritations and living in an almost permanent state of confusion, I’m loving life here, and if the next 8 months go by as quickly as the last 4 then I’m going to be home before I know it.
But my current state of happiness (or euphoria, according to the VSO emotional map) may not last. Because apparently the next stage is likely to be shock and denial. Or guilt, depending on whether you follow the map clockwise or anti-clockwise. And so it seems I should enjoy the euphoria whilst I have the chance.
But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can beat the VSO emotional map and keep the depression, shock and denial at bay. I’ve found myself enjoying being here more and more as time has gone on. Whilst I know I was meant to find the start of my placement exciting, part of me just found it overwhelming. It was frustrating not being able to understand anyone, no one being able to understand me, not knowing how to get anywhere, not knowing how much to pay for things, and basically not being able to do anything on my own. I think part of the reason I am now enjoying being here so much is because I feel settled and it has started to feel like home (or home for now, anyway!). I like the fact that I can find my way around, I can understand a lot more pidgin than my colleagues realise (I am keeping this very quiet as I have a feeling it may work to my advantage!), I no longer get charged crazy prices for everything I buy, and I’ve got into a routine. Well, a routine of sorts anyway. It goes something like this:
6.30am: wake up to the sound of whatever strange thing my weird neighbours are doing. Or at least, get up. Chances are I’ve been awake since the crack of dawn, as everyone that lives in my compound seems to be nocturnal.
7.15am - 7.30am: hover by my window like a crazy person waiting to see if I can pounce on one of my three neighbours who have cars and frequently find themselves with the joy of driving me to work.
7.30am: Give up on the stalking and accept that if I don’t start walking up the hill I’ll be late. Walk up the hill from the End of the Earth sweating endlessly, and trying to say hello to everyone who walks past whilst also concentrating on not getting run over or falling into the open sewers that line both sides of the road.
8.00am/8.15am: Get to work and make sure I sign the staff register before the Red Line of Doom is drawn at 8.30am (once this line has been drawn there is no going back. You are officially late).
8.15am - 8.30am: Sit very still in the hope of stopping the sweating that has taken over following the walk up my hill/sharing of a seat in the taxi with 3 people more than you would think possible.
11.30am – 12.00pm: Admit defeat and accept that given I’ve already drunk my body weight in water I cannot put off going to the toilet any longer. I avoid this for as long as possible for several reasons. Firstly, the toilet never has any toilet paper in it, meaning I have to take the one that I keep in my bag with me, which means walking through the entire office carrying a toilet roll, which amuses my colleagues endlessly. Secondly, the floor of the toilet at work is always covered in about 2 inches of water. I have blocked the possible reasons for this from my mind, but I still find it difficult to ignore the sensation of water squishing between my toes whenever I walk in there. Thirdly, there is no running water in the bathroom, and so to flush the toilet I need to fill the bucket from the barrel of water we keep in there, which inevitably leads to water splashing back up from the toilet and onto my feet, exacerbating the problem referred to in my second reason for avoiding the toilet above.
12.30pm: Go outside and blink crazily like a newborn hamster for about 20 seconds whilst my eyes adjust to the light (my office is very, very dark). Go and see the lady who sits behind our office and try and decide what to have for my ‘lunch’ (I like to use the word ‘decide’ as it implies I have a choice. Whereas really, this just involves a combination of ground nuts, crackers, water, and maybe a sprite if I really want to push the boat out).
Work has been crazy busy the past few weeks, as there have been a lot of funding proposals to work on recently with very short deadlines. I went to one of the local orphanages the other day. And as I knew it would, it broke my heart. There was a two-day-old baby that had been abandoned, and I just wanted to pick her up and take her home (don’t worry Mother, I didn’t. But I’m not making any promises that I won’t go back).
4.30pm – 5.00pm: Finish work and start the journey back to the End of the Earth. Buy some combination of the only ingredients I can get from my road: bread, tomatoes, onions, avocadoes, oranges and pineapple.
Then there are two options depending on what day of the week it is:
A: 6.00pm: If it’s a Wednesday or Thursday I usually meet Jenny at a bar we go to on the main road at the top of my hill. Or my favourite yam bar where not only do I get beer, but fried yam as well.
B: 6.00pm: If I’m not meeting Jenny, get home and have a shower to try and address the fact that I am once again sweating endlessly after walking back down my hill.
6.30pm: Try and motivate myself to make something edible for dinner before it gets completely dark and I can no longer see what I am doing, but fail miserably and end up either doing some washing, checking emails, or reading.
7.00pm: ‘Cook’ some sort of meal involving the ingredients I bought on the way home, which generally involves just chopping up tomatoes and avocadoes and eating them with bread, unless I can motivate myself to make something more adventurous like an omelette or pasta. However the chances of that are slim, given the fact that using my gas stove in my already over heated kitchen when I cannot see what I am doing does nothing but irritate me and means I then have to have my third shower of the day.
7.30pm: Mop my kitchen floor, as any use of my sink involves the floor flooding within seconds as there is no U-bend in the sink (or so I’m told, all I know is that when I turn the tap on I get very wet feet).
7.45pm: Do some washing and then leave it to dry in my room and then have to mop again because I am absolutely unable to wring it out enough to stop the water from dripping onto my floor.
8.30pm: Spray Raid obsessively until I find it difficult to breathe, but this is definitely preferable to waking up in the middle of the night, putting my foot down on the floor, and stepping on a cockroach (this has happened more times than I care to remember. I have no idea how they always end up in just the place I want to put my feet when I get out of bed).
8.35pm: Once I’ve stopped coughing I start watching something on my laptop. Generally House, given I have all 6 series (Miss Bell, you’re my hero).
9.00pm: Try to ignore the fact that I can’t actually hear a thing from my laptop, as a result of the 20 industrial size generators that are running outside my bedroom.
9.15pm: Decide that lip reading really isn’t one of my strengths, and so give up and read instead. Generally by torchlight.
10.30pm: Start to think about going to bed. Or, going to sleep, given I’ve been ‘in bed’ since getting home as it’s the only surface to sit on in My Squat.
10.45pm: Cocoon myself in my mosquito net. Since Ratty came into my life this now involves using every book I own to weigh the net down from the inside (my bed is just one big lump of foam and so there’s nothing to tuck the mosquito net into, and leaving it hanging down the sides of the bed is not an option as I just lie there imagining all the cockroaches and rats that could climb up inside the net and crawl over me whilst I’m asleep. Yes, I’m just that paranoid and delusional).
11.00pm: Bury my head underneath my pillows and try to think about something apart from the sound of the generators/car alarm/howling puppies/shouting neighbours.
11.30pm: Pass out.
2.00am: Wake up and try to pretend I don’t need the toilet, as the effort involved in moving the books from my mosquito net, locating my torch, and praying there aren’t any half dead cockroaches for me to stand on just doesn’t seem worth it.
4.00am: Wake up again and admit defeat and get up to go to the toilet. 6 nights out of 7 the water will be off and so I’ll need to fill a bucket to flush the toilet whilst also trying to keep my eyes half closed in the hope that I won’t wake up entirely and be unable to go back to sleep.
And that’s my routine. The only real difference with weekends is I’m out later at night, sleep a bit more (well, actually that’s not always the case as the noise levels don’t decrease at the weekend, but I’m just more stubborn and lie there refusing to get up), clean more, and do more washing.
So, here’s to hoping I can maintain the ‘euphoria’ for the next 8 months.
But my current state of happiness (or euphoria, according to the VSO emotional map) may not last. Because apparently the next stage is likely to be shock and denial. Or guilt, depending on whether you follow the map clockwise or anti-clockwise. And so it seems I should enjoy the euphoria whilst I have the chance.
But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can beat the VSO emotional map and keep the depression, shock and denial at bay. I’ve found myself enjoying being here more and more as time has gone on. Whilst I know I was meant to find the start of my placement exciting, part of me just found it overwhelming. It was frustrating not being able to understand anyone, no one being able to understand me, not knowing how to get anywhere, not knowing how much to pay for things, and basically not being able to do anything on my own. I think part of the reason I am now enjoying being here so much is because I feel settled and it has started to feel like home (or home for now, anyway!). I like the fact that I can find my way around, I can understand a lot more pidgin than my colleagues realise (I am keeping this very quiet as I have a feeling it may work to my advantage!), I no longer get charged crazy prices for everything I buy, and I’ve got into a routine. Well, a routine of sorts anyway. It goes something like this:
6.30am: wake up to the sound of whatever strange thing my weird neighbours are doing. Or at least, get up. Chances are I’ve been awake since the crack of dawn, as everyone that lives in my compound seems to be nocturnal.
7.15am - 7.30am: hover by my window like a crazy person waiting to see if I can pounce on one of my three neighbours who have cars and frequently find themselves with the joy of driving me to work.
7.30am: Give up on the stalking and accept that if I don’t start walking up the hill I’ll be late. Walk up the hill from the End of the Earth sweating endlessly, and trying to say hello to everyone who walks past whilst also concentrating on not getting run over or falling into the open sewers that line both sides of the road.
8.00am/8.15am: Get to work and make sure I sign the staff register before the Red Line of Doom is drawn at 8.30am (once this line has been drawn there is no going back. You are officially late).
8.15am - 8.30am: Sit very still in the hope of stopping the sweating that has taken over following the walk up my hill/sharing of a seat in the taxi with 3 people more than you would think possible.
11.30am – 12.00pm: Admit defeat and accept that given I’ve already drunk my body weight in water I cannot put off going to the toilet any longer. I avoid this for as long as possible for several reasons. Firstly, the toilet never has any toilet paper in it, meaning I have to take the one that I keep in my bag with me, which means walking through the entire office carrying a toilet roll, which amuses my colleagues endlessly. Secondly, the floor of the toilet at work is always covered in about 2 inches of water. I have blocked the possible reasons for this from my mind, but I still find it difficult to ignore the sensation of water squishing between my toes whenever I walk in there. Thirdly, there is no running water in the bathroom, and so to flush the toilet I need to fill the bucket from the barrel of water we keep in there, which inevitably leads to water splashing back up from the toilet and onto my feet, exacerbating the problem referred to in my second reason for avoiding the toilet above.
12.30pm: Go outside and blink crazily like a newborn hamster for about 20 seconds whilst my eyes adjust to the light (my office is very, very dark). Go and see the lady who sits behind our office and try and decide what to have for my ‘lunch’ (I like to use the word ‘decide’ as it implies I have a choice. Whereas really, this just involves a combination of ground nuts, crackers, water, and maybe a sprite if I really want to push the boat out).
Work has been crazy busy the past few weeks, as there have been a lot of funding proposals to work on recently with very short deadlines. I went to one of the local orphanages the other day. And as I knew it would, it broke my heart. There was a two-day-old baby that had been abandoned, and I just wanted to pick her up and take her home (don’t worry Mother, I didn’t. But I’m not making any promises that I won’t go back).
4.30pm – 5.00pm: Finish work and start the journey back to the End of the Earth. Buy some combination of the only ingredients I can get from my road: bread, tomatoes, onions, avocadoes, oranges and pineapple.
Then there are two options depending on what day of the week it is:
A: 6.00pm: If it’s a Wednesday or Thursday I usually meet Jenny at a bar we go to on the main road at the top of my hill. Or my favourite yam bar where not only do I get beer, but fried yam as well.
B: 6.00pm: If I’m not meeting Jenny, get home and have a shower to try and address the fact that I am once again sweating endlessly after walking back down my hill.
6.30pm: Try and motivate myself to make something edible for dinner before it gets completely dark and I can no longer see what I am doing, but fail miserably and end up either doing some washing, checking emails, or reading.
7.00pm: ‘Cook’ some sort of meal involving the ingredients I bought on the way home, which generally involves just chopping up tomatoes and avocadoes and eating them with bread, unless I can motivate myself to make something more adventurous like an omelette or pasta. However the chances of that are slim, given the fact that using my gas stove in my already over heated kitchen when I cannot see what I am doing does nothing but irritate me and means I then have to have my third shower of the day.
7.30pm: Mop my kitchen floor, as any use of my sink involves the floor flooding within seconds as there is no U-bend in the sink (or so I’m told, all I know is that when I turn the tap on I get very wet feet).
7.45pm: Do some washing and then leave it to dry in my room and then have to mop again because I am absolutely unable to wring it out enough to stop the water from dripping onto my floor.
8.30pm: Spray Raid obsessively until I find it difficult to breathe, but this is definitely preferable to waking up in the middle of the night, putting my foot down on the floor, and stepping on a cockroach (this has happened more times than I care to remember. I have no idea how they always end up in just the place I want to put my feet when I get out of bed).
8.35pm: Once I’ve stopped coughing I start watching something on my laptop. Generally House, given I have all 6 series (Miss Bell, you’re my hero).
9.00pm: Try to ignore the fact that I can’t actually hear a thing from my laptop, as a result of the 20 industrial size generators that are running outside my bedroom.
9.15pm: Decide that lip reading really isn’t one of my strengths, and so give up and read instead. Generally by torchlight.
10.30pm: Start to think about going to bed. Or, going to sleep, given I’ve been ‘in bed’ since getting home as it’s the only surface to sit on in My Squat.
10.45pm: Cocoon myself in my mosquito net. Since Ratty came into my life this now involves using every book I own to weigh the net down from the inside (my bed is just one big lump of foam and so there’s nothing to tuck the mosquito net into, and leaving it hanging down the sides of the bed is not an option as I just lie there imagining all the cockroaches and rats that could climb up inside the net and crawl over me whilst I’m asleep. Yes, I’m just that paranoid and delusional).
11.00pm: Bury my head underneath my pillows and try to think about something apart from the sound of the generators/car alarm/howling puppies/shouting neighbours.
11.30pm: Pass out.
2.00am: Wake up and try to pretend I don’t need the toilet, as the effort involved in moving the books from my mosquito net, locating my torch, and praying there aren’t any half dead cockroaches for me to stand on just doesn’t seem worth it.
4.00am: Wake up again and admit defeat and get up to go to the toilet. 6 nights out of 7 the water will be off and so I’ll need to fill a bucket to flush the toilet whilst also trying to keep my eyes half closed in the hope that I won’t wake up entirely and be unable to go back to sleep.
And that’s my routine. The only real difference with weekends is I’m out later at night, sleep a bit more (well, actually that’s not always the case as the noise levels don’t decrease at the weekend, but I’m just more stubborn and lie there refusing to get up), clean more, and do more washing.
So, here’s to hoping I can maintain the ‘euphoria’ for the next 8 months.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Two out of three ain't bad
Patience is something that I do not possess. Well, not in large quantities anyway. A few things have happened in the past week to test my patience. Some of them are not printable on my blog. But here are the ones that are…
For some unknown reason the electricity supply in My Squat has been amazing. By amazing, I mean really amazing. I’ve had electricity for at least 2 hours every day for the last week. I know you’re probably thinking how could this possibly be something I can complain about. But as people who know me will readily confirm, I can pretty much always find something to complain about. The electricity supply was so amazing on Saturday that in the space of 1 minute it managed to explode every lightbulb in My Squat (well, there are only 2 – I have never had a lightbulb in my kitchen), break my iPod and break the adapter to my laptop, which had only just been plugged in to charge so had no battery left. This was despite everything being plugged into a surge protector. I was less than impressed. The exploding of the lightbulbs didn’t seem like something that would be too difficult to fix, so I thought I’d tackle that one first. After walking 20 minutes up the hill to try and find lightbulbs, failing, and walking 20 minutes back down the hill, I decided to at least try and remove the remnants of the old lightbulbs from the light fittings. The ceiling in My Squat is quite high. To reach the lightbulb in my bedroom I had to balance a small table on my bed and stand on top of it. Needless to say, I fell off, bruised both my legs and swore quite a lot. Before I broke my neck climbing up to the one in my bathroom, I enlisted the help of my friend who is thankfully over 6 foot tall, and also brought me the new lightbulbs, so he managed to resolve that issue. As for my laptop, I am very proud of my ability to fix that. For some unknown reason it occurred to me to try swapping the fuse in the plug of my laptop adapter with the fuse in my hair straighteners as they were both 3A (yes, I really did bring hair straighteners to Nigeria with me. And yes, I can count the number of times I have used them on one hand). Given that I am the most clueless person in the world when it comes to electrical equipment, and I have never consciously thought about the fact that a plug even has a fuse in it, let alone considered how to remove the fuse, I have no idea why this occurred to me. But IT WORKED. So I was very happy. My iPod is still firmly out of action and I haven’t yet worked out how to fix that. But as good old Meat Loaf said, two out of three ain’t bad.
There’s a dog that lives on my compound. This dog is kept in a cage round the back of the building, which is where I’m meant to hang my washing to dry. But every time I go round there I want to cry because in 3 months I have never seen the dog let out of the cage. So I don’t go round there, and just leave my washing drying in my room (this also helps to contribute to the wet dog smell that I seem to carry around with me on a daily basis – another addition to the ‘how attractive can I possibly get’ list). I have tried sneaking up to the cage to feed the dog, but he (or at least until recently I thought it was a he) is so badly treated that whenever anyone goes near the cage ‘he’ starts barking and snarling and making so much noise that I have to run away again before someone sees me. I’ve tried telling the security guy on my compound (who I think owns the dog) that if he wants ‘him’ to be an effective guard dog then he needs to feed ‘him’ because otherwise ‘he’ is just going to get sick and die. But this has never worked either. If I didn’t think I’d get my arm bitten off then I’d sneak out and release ‘him’ because even roaming wild would be a better life than the one ‘he’s’ got at the moment. And recently ‘he’ has been making even more noise than normal, and this has been combined with howling from what I thought was another dog as well, but which I discovered on Monday was howling from 6 baby Alsatian puppies. So the ‘he’ turned out to be a ‘she’. How she was healthy enough to give birth is beyond me. The puppies are so cute. But they are also the noisiest things in the world. For some completely crazy reason they are being kept apart from their mum, and so they howl allllll day and alllllllllllll night. She also howls and barks allllllllll day and allllllllllll night because she is distressed that she can’t stop her babies from crying. The only way I can deal with the way animals are treated here is just to pretend it’s not happening. Pathetic I know, but there’s not much else I can do. I asked how much they were selling the puppies for. 40,000 Naira (£160). I had considered buying them all and keeping them and the mum in my room and feeding them all up but at that price I think I may need to reconsider that decision. Although it might be one way to ensure I could at least get one good night’s sleep.
My neighbour has a very posh car that he parks directly outside my bedroom window at night. I am very grateful he has a posh car, because on the odd occasions we leave for work at the same time (or rather, when I manage to stalk him and to run out of my room as soon as I hear him locking his door and then start walking out of the compound at a very slow pace with a very sad expression on my face in the hope he’ll feel sorry for me and offer me a lift) it means I get an air conditioned journey to work. But this week I have been less grateful that he has a very posh car. Because his very posh car has a very sensitive alarm system. The alarm goes off whenever I open or close my bedroom window. It also goes off when there is a lot of heavy rain. We are now in rainy season. 6 nights out of 7 we have very heavy rain. 6 nights out of 7 it is like sleeping in an ambulance bay because his car alarm is sounding and the lights are flashing directly outside my bedroom window. So sleep is something I have not had a great deal of recently.
Combine that with some ‘issues’ at work, and I’ve had a few grumpy moments in the past week.
I know this sounds like a very negative blog post. None of these things ever really get to me, apart from perhaps making me a bit grumpy for a few minutes and then something will happen to make me laugh and remind me why I love living here all over again. Like when I was standing on the main road trying to flag down a taxi in the pouring rain the other morning, and a guy came up to me with a wheelbarrow and an umbrella and told me he would provide me with my transport to work. I was about 7 miles away from my office and so I had to politely decline, but he made me smile all the same. Or like the taxi I got into that then broke down 2 minutes later and I was already very late to meet someone. So the taxi driver flagged down the first taxi he saw, which was going no where near the direction I needed to go in, and dashed the driver (tipped him) to take me first, and then go to where he was meant to be going, out of his own pocket.
And some other good things that happened this week. My friend taught me how to fry yam, which is now my favourite food (this isn’t saying much, given I normally eat the same thing, or variations of the same thing, every day). But still, it’s something I can cook for myself and can count as one of my five a day. Plus until I learnt how to cook it myself, the only place I could go to buy it was my favourite outside bar, and this meant that not only was I having fried yam, but beer as well. So at least now I can cook it for myself my liver can have a slight break. Someone from VSO came down to Calabar to do our first placement visit, and took us for dinner on Friday night and I had CHEESE. The first cheese I’ve eaten in as long as I can remember. One of the other British people I met a few weeks ago is leaving Calabar soon, and she has been amazing and given me loads of things she no longer needs. So My Squat has now had the Nigerian equivalent of Changing Rooms, and is the proud owner of a rug, two sets of stacking shelves, two little tables, some scales, and a massive black bin I can store water in. It’s sad how happy these things have made me. We got Monday off work as a Public Holiday, and so I had a lovely long weekend. And the best thing of all – getting a letter from my Grandma and Grandad, which cheered me up instantly xxx
For some unknown reason the electricity supply in My Squat has been amazing. By amazing, I mean really amazing. I’ve had electricity for at least 2 hours every day for the last week. I know you’re probably thinking how could this possibly be something I can complain about. But as people who know me will readily confirm, I can pretty much always find something to complain about. The electricity supply was so amazing on Saturday that in the space of 1 minute it managed to explode every lightbulb in My Squat (well, there are only 2 – I have never had a lightbulb in my kitchen), break my iPod and break the adapter to my laptop, which had only just been plugged in to charge so had no battery left. This was despite everything being plugged into a surge protector. I was less than impressed. The exploding of the lightbulbs didn’t seem like something that would be too difficult to fix, so I thought I’d tackle that one first. After walking 20 minutes up the hill to try and find lightbulbs, failing, and walking 20 minutes back down the hill, I decided to at least try and remove the remnants of the old lightbulbs from the light fittings. The ceiling in My Squat is quite high. To reach the lightbulb in my bedroom I had to balance a small table on my bed and stand on top of it. Needless to say, I fell off, bruised both my legs and swore quite a lot. Before I broke my neck climbing up to the one in my bathroom, I enlisted the help of my friend who is thankfully over 6 foot tall, and also brought me the new lightbulbs, so he managed to resolve that issue. As for my laptop, I am very proud of my ability to fix that. For some unknown reason it occurred to me to try swapping the fuse in the plug of my laptop adapter with the fuse in my hair straighteners as they were both 3A (yes, I really did bring hair straighteners to Nigeria with me. And yes, I can count the number of times I have used them on one hand). Given that I am the most clueless person in the world when it comes to electrical equipment, and I have never consciously thought about the fact that a plug even has a fuse in it, let alone considered how to remove the fuse, I have no idea why this occurred to me. But IT WORKED. So I was very happy. My iPod is still firmly out of action and I haven’t yet worked out how to fix that. But as good old Meat Loaf said, two out of three ain’t bad.
There’s a dog that lives on my compound. This dog is kept in a cage round the back of the building, which is where I’m meant to hang my washing to dry. But every time I go round there I want to cry because in 3 months I have never seen the dog let out of the cage. So I don’t go round there, and just leave my washing drying in my room (this also helps to contribute to the wet dog smell that I seem to carry around with me on a daily basis – another addition to the ‘how attractive can I possibly get’ list). I have tried sneaking up to the cage to feed the dog, but he (or at least until recently I thought it was a he) is so badly treated that whenever anyone goes near the cage ‘he’ starts barking and snarling and making so much noise that I have to run away again before someone sees me. I’ve tried telling the security guy on my compound (who I think owns the dog) that if he wants ‘him’ to be an effective guard dog then he needs to feed ‘him’ because otherwise ‘he’ is just going to get sick and die. But this has never worked either. If I didn’t think I’d get my arm bitten off then I’d sneak out and release ‘him’ because even roaming wild would be a better life than the one ‘he’s’ got at the moment. And recently ‘he’ has been making even more noise than normal, and this has been combined with howling from what I thought was another dog as well, but which I discovered on Monday was howling from 6 baby Alsatian puppies. So the ‘he’ turned out to be a ‘she’. How she was healthy enough to give birth is beyond me. The puppies are so cute. But they are also the noisiest things in the world. For some completely crazy reason they are being kept apart from their mum, and so they howl allllll day and alllllllllllll night. She also howls and barks allllllllll day and allllllllllll night because she is distressed that she can’t stop her babies from crying. The only way I can deal with the way animals are treated here is just to pretend it’s not happening. Pathetic I know, but there’s not much else I can do. I asked how much they were selling the puppies for. 40,000 Naira (£160). I had considered buying them all and keeping them and the mum in my room and feeding them all up but at that price I think I may need to reconsider that decision. Although it might be one way to ensure I could at least get one good night’s sleep.
My neighbour has a very posh car that he parks directly outside my bedroom window at night. I am very grateful he has a posh car, because on the odd occasions we leave for work at the same time (or rather, when I manage to stalk him and to run out of my room as soon as I hear him locking his door and then start walking out of the compound at a very slow pace with a very sad expression on my face in the hope he’ll feel sorry for me and offer me a lift) it means I get an air conditioned journey to work. But this week I have been less grateful that he has a very posh car. Because his very posh car has a very sensitive alarm system. The alarm goes off whenever I open or close my bedroom window. It also goes off when there is a lot of heavy rain. We are now in rainy season. 6 nights out of 7 we have very heavy rain. 6 nights out of 7 it is like sleeping in an ambulance bay because his car alarm is sounding and the lights are flashing directly outside my bedroom window. So sleep is something I have not had a great deal of recently.
Combine that with some ‘issues’ at work, and I’ve had a few grumpy moments in the past week.
I know this sounds like a very negative blog post. None of these things ever really get to me, apart from perhaps making me a bit grumpy for a few minutes and then something will happen to make me laugh and remind me why I love living here all over again. Like when I was standing on the main road trying to flag down a taxi in the pouring rain the other morning, and a guy came up to me with a wheelbarrow and an umbrella and told me he would provide me with my transport to work. I was about 7 miles away from my office and so I had to politely decline, but he made me smile all the same. Or like the taxi I got into that then broke down 2 minutes later and I was already very late to meet someone. So the taxi driver flagged down the first taxi he saw, which was going no where near the direction I needed to go in, and dashed the driver (tipped him) to take me first, and then go to where he was meant to be going, out of his own pocket.
And some other good things that happened this week. My friend taught me how to fry yam, which is now my favourite food (this isn’t saying much, given I normally eat the same thing, or variations of the same thing, every day). But still, it’s something I can cook for myself and can count as one of my five a day. Plus until I learnt how to cook it myself, the only place I could go to buy it was my favourite outside bar, and this meant that not only was I having fried yam, but beer as well. So at least now I can cook it for myself my liver can have a slight break. Someone from VSO came down to Calabar to do our first placement visit, and took us for dinner on Friday night and I had CHEESE. The first cheese I’ve eaten in as long as I can remember. One of the other British people I met a few weeks ago is leaving Calabar soon, and she has been amazing and given me loads of things she no longer needs. So My Squat has now had the Nigerian equivalent of Changing Rooms, and is the proud owner of a rug, two sets of stacking shelves, two little tables, some scales, and a massive black bin I can store water in. It’s sad how happy these things have made me. We got Monday off work as a Public Holiday, and so I had a lovely long weekend. And the best thing of all – getting a letter from my Grandma and Grandad, which cheered me up instantly xxx
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