Tricycles, elephant feet and mouldy beds

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.