Confused? I was too

There are some phrases here that took some getting used to. Some examples:

1. “I’m coming” – Actually means ‘I’m going, but at some point will return.’ The return seems to be open ended. I’ve waited over 3 hours for someone who said, “I’m coming” to come back to the office.

2. “I need to ease myself” – I need the bathroom.

3. “How far” – A greeting, or a way to ask about the outcome of something. The first time I was asked this I responded with “how far to where?” and the other person burst into hysterical laughter

4. “You’re welcome” – this is said ALL the time as a greeting when you get back from somewhere or arrive somewhere.

5. “Well done” – again, said ALL the time by people you’re passing as a greeting. It’s quite nice, I get told well done for walking down the road, putting my rubbish out, successfully sitting at my desk, and the list goes on.

6. “You’ve tried” – at home this would be a bit patronising, implying that the person had tried but hadn’t quite achieved what they were meant to achieve. Here it’s a form of praise.

I was told the other day that Nigeria has the highest number of early leavers but also the highest number of people wanting to extend their placements. I can understand that, I’ve come to think of it as the VSO equivalent of marmite, people either seem to love living here, or hate it. Thankfully, despite all the ups and downs of the past few months, I still love it. Although sometimes I’m not entirely sure why! Speaking of marmite, I get some tonight! A previous volunteer has just got back from London, and was under strict instructions to return with marmite. I used to find it easily in Calabar, but can't find it here for some reason and so I am very excited.

Twenty ways you know you've been living in Nigeria for too long...

1. You automatically flush a toilet with a bucket of water rather than trying the flush.
2. You find yourself sitting in the dark even though the electricity is on.
3. You think nothing of watching a pirated DVD where for most of the film your vision is obscured by the outline of the people who were sat in front of whoever was illegally filming it. You also get the added benefit of a unique soundtrack - the sounds of people laughing/coughing/talking in the background.
4. It’s normal to drink all of your water out of a plastic bag.
5. You crave the smell of Raid because it’s associated with the slow (and hopefully painful) death of the cockroaches that make you want to climb up walls to avoid them.
6. You think nothing of not having running water for half the week.
7. You see a washing machine at the British Village and wonder how easily you could get away with bringing your weekly washing there without anyone noticing.
8. You stop thinking your hair falling out is a strange occurrence.
9. You stop worrying about getting into a car which smells overwhelmingly of petrol, feels like it has at least one tyre that is about to fall off, has a massive crack across the windscreen, doesn’t appear to have working brakes. The list goes on. Anyone considering introducing MOTs to Nigeria would be a brave soul.
10. You stop expecting police checkpoints to involve the police actually CHECKING something, and start seeing them more as a means for the police to earn some extra pocket money.
11. You make plans but no longer expect them to happen as arranged. If anything it is always a nice surprise if things do actually go as they’re meant to. I noticed the other day that I had started saying things like “I am meant to get back to Abuja on….” Or “He is meant to be coming to see me on…” Everything has become a possibility rather than a certainty. This is more a method of preserving my sanity than anything else. The less I count on things happening as they should, the less chance of me being disappointed when things don’t go as planned.
12. You can’t sleep without being under a mosquito net.
13. Washing your clothes in a bucket has started to seem normal.
14. Walking into a shop and paying a fixed price for something seems strange.
15. You no longer find it odd when you’re sat at work and people around you suddenly burst into song. Or prayer. Or both.
16. You find yourself adopting the habit of making ridiculously obvious statements like ‘you’re back’ when someone walks through the door.
17. You crave fried yam.
18. You crave beer (this might not seem that odd, but coming from someone who never drunk beer before coming here, it surprised me)
19. You develop the ability to work in an environment that would make Waterloo train station seem peaceful and quiet. No one does anything quietly in this country.
20. You forget what colour your feet are meant to be.

Adventures

Doesn't look like much, but ahhh to be out of Abuja!

I was lucky enough to be able to travel for work last week. We went to two of the other offices the charity runs in Nigeria to do some training for the members of staff there. It was brilliant getting out of Abuja for the week. I’ve said before that whilst I don’t think I could handle a rural placement for a full year, few things make me happier than being surrounded by nothing but trees and greenery. I know, I’m odd. That’s what growing up in the middle of nowhere on a very small Island does to you. Some highlights of the trip:

• Getting on the back of a motorbike with 2 rucksacks, my laptop, a projector and flip chart paper and giving the driver the fright of his life when I then went very quickly off the back when he pulled away. He’d been driving off from a steep muddy hill way too fast, and that combined with the amount of things I was carrying on my back meant I just disappeared off the seat. Much to the amusement of all around me.
• Going to lock my door at one of the hotels we were staying at and the door handle coming off in my hand.
• Being told the electricity had come on in the hotel, so I could put my air conditioning on. I spent about 15 minutes messing around with various switches and electrical sockets in my room, but could I get the air conditioning to work? Called a guy from reception who came into my room and pressed the switch marked ‘water heater’, that was situated no where near the air conditioning unit, and on came the air conditioning. Silly me.

Clearly the switch for the air conditioning, how could I not have known that

• Day two of the training, going to set up the powerpoint presentation and realising the projector wasn’t around. Where was it? In the car of someone that worked in the office, we’d kept it in there because she said that would be safer than keeping it in the office. Where was the car? Ohhhhh someone had borrowed it… it was on its way to Abuja, 2 hours away, with the projector in it. Perfect.
• A driver stopping the car to answer his phone. First time I’ve seen it happen in 7 months.
• The driver of one of the cabs turning to me and saying ‘don’t worry auntie, I’ll drive very slowly for you’ and then proceeding to drive at the craziest speed I have ever known. I shut my eyes and pretended it wasn’t happening. I dread to think how he drives when ‘auntie’ isn’t in the car.
• Arriving in one of the towns we were running training to be told that all the hotels were fully booked because there was a massive conference going on.
• The place we then had to stay for two nights because all of the other hotels were fully booked. Basic doesn’t quite do it justice. Suffice to say it made My Old Squat look like the Hilton. It came complete with many free additions, including pets of various descriptions in my room, sticky sheets, no electricity, and no water. The no water thing wouldn’t have been so bad if the person that had been there before me had flushed the toilet before they left. I wasn’t too sad to check out.
• Being told by some of the staff in one of the offices that they wanted to ‘buy me yams to help my body’. Why? This was answered by moving their hands up and down in a straight motion. I wonder how many times someone is going to tell me that I don’t have an African woman’s figure this year. If Nigeria created food that didn’t include meat AND fish in it, then I’m sure I’d be able to maintain a slightly heavier or more rounded figure! Being away for the week really reminded me how difficult it is for me to eat anything here, I’m fine when I can make things for myself, but otherwise it’s just a case of buying ground nuts, biscuits, and yogurt drinks, and hoping malnutrition waits a while before setting in!

So all in all it was a great week, and I hope I get to spend some more time in the other offices again soon. I’m getting used to Abuja, and I’m happy here, but it’s just not somewhere I would have ever chosen to do my placement. For many reasons I’m very glad I got to spend 6 months in Calabar before coming here.

Honour God with your mode of dressing

A man ran across the road (a very busy road, he had a few too many close encounters with cars and bikes that didn’t want to stop for my liking) to give me this leaflet the other day. He didn’t seem to be giving the leaflets out to anyone else, so there was obviously something about my appearance that offended him enough to risk his life for (don’t worry mother, I really wasn’t dressed inappropriately, by any stretch of the imagination).

And some extracts from the leaflet:

“Once I was looking out of the window of my house, and I saw many young ladies, but noticed one lady dressed like a prostitute with her breasts, thigh, and contour of private parts exposed.”

“Note: The body is not to be used for sexual immorality, but to serve the Lord you know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Shall I take a part of Christ’s body and make it part of the body of a prostitute? Impossible!”

“What must I do to be saved
Admit that you are a sinner, repent ye therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out.”

So it looks like I’m going to have a busy few days trying to make sure I get myself saved and having my sins blotted out.

Healthcare Nigerian style

I managed to go 7 months without having to encounter the Nigerian healthcare service. Until last week when I had to take myself to a clinic in Abuja. The clinic itself was completely fine; that’s one of the benefits of being based in Abuja, there’s a clinic that VSO recommends here. I did however find some elements of the experience slightly amusing. When I registered at the reception I was given the number 35 so went to sit down to wait until it was my turn. I had assumed that I would follow whoever had number 34. Silly me. It became clear that it didn’t really matter what number you had in your hand, what was far more important was how much of a fuss you made and who could run to the door of the consultation room the fastest when the last patient came out. I’ve never seen so many clearly ill people move so fast. Not being one for pushing in or creating a scene, I didn’t relish the prospect of this. The man next to me asked when it was my turn. I pointed at my ticket and said after number 34 and he burst out laughing. It seems the numbers are really quite meaningless. Thankfully my friend was with me, who is far more used to the ways of doing things here, so I didn’t have to wait too long. Then when I was in the consultation room being examined, a woman walked in, sat down, and started talking to the doctor. I have no idea who she was, but they seemed to have a lovely conversation about how their children were, about general life in Abuja, and about how busy the clinic was. After 10 minutes she got up and walked out and the doctor returned to my consultation. I then had to repeat the fun game of jumping the queue when I went down to the lab for the next stage of the ‘process’. The lab technician was very friendly. He wanted me to take him to the UK to do his attachment in microbiology. I had to gently explain that perhaps that wouldn’t work, because 1. I am not living in the UK; I am living in Nigeria, and 2. On my VSO allowance I don’t really have the money to support myself and a random stranger doing his medical attachment. He looked quite upset, I almost wished I’d mentioned this after he’d done the blood test, I think he’d have been considerably more gentle with the needle if he’d still thought there was a chance I’d adopt him and take him home with me.

So, that was my first encounter with the healthcare service here, and also my first encounter with malaria. Not too bad after 7 months, but an experience I’m hoping I can avoid repeating for the remainder of my placement, I don’t really like going to the doctor at the best of times.

Flexibility and Adaptability

Two of VSO’s key selection criteria. And I now know why. Some things that have recently tested these characteristics:

1. De-worming. The less said about this experience the better.
2. Constantly being covered in bites and finding creatures crawling on my skin. I’m hoping that in the same way that whatever was living in the mattress in my Old Squat gave up and stopped chewing on me, the same thing will happen in my New Squat.
3. Being prepared to start a new placement in a completely new city 6 months into a 12 month placement. This hasn’t been easy. Abuja and Calabar are very different places. The local dialects are even different.
4. Electricity. Whilst I now have electricity most of the time, it’s weird how little it now affects me when we don’t have it. I now know I can easily live somewhere with a poor electricity supply. There have been several instances in my New Squat where I’ve found that I’m sat in my room in the dark without even realising it because it didn’t occur to me to try and turn a light on.
5. Water. The water in my New Squat is off every Friday until the following Monday (as well as several other times during the week!). Before I came to Nigeria, I would have thought this would be something that would have bothered me. But it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Especially as we generally know it’s going to go off, and so we can make sure the bins of stored water are filled. I realised the other day how used to having a poor water supply I have become when I poured a bucket of water down the toilet in the office, only to then hear the person that went into the toilet after me actually using the flush. It hadn’t even occurred to me to try and use the flush, I’m so used to using a bucket. Sad but true.
6. Going to long drop toilets (or really just any toilets, plumbing isn’t Nigeria’s strong point) and trying to then avoid noticing that the hems of my trousers are soaking wet.
7. And finally and most importantly: accepting that there are things I have absolutely no control over. And that sometimes even when things are going very wrong, there’s nothing I can do about it apart from just waiting to see what happens next. People who know me well and know how much of a control freak I am will appreciate that this has been the hardest lesson for me to learn.

Life in Abuja has been ticking along. I’m getting into a routine, and finding my way around. Last week we got an extra two days off work as public holidays for Eid ul-Fitr to mark the end of Ramadan. Someone from VSO invited us to his house to chop. I’m so used to not being able to eat food here that I really wasn’t expecting to be able to eat anything and was just looking forward to catching up with people and going to a new part of Abuja. So I was very very excited when he brought out not one, but TWO massive dishes of salad. Not just salad, but salad with LETTUCE. It was a good day. We’ve also now got a DVD player in our flat, and we can buy DVDs from the market down the road for 200/250 N each (about £1). We’ve also found a place that does live music at the weekends that might be one of my most favourite places in the world. I’m developing a bit of an unhealthy obsession with the singer. I consider it to be a bad weekend if I don’t get to go there. I’ve so far managed to refrain from walking up to the stage, throwing myself at his feet, and clinging onto his ankles, but give me time.