A near CATastrophe

I knew that trying to bring a cat back from Nigeria was not going to be easy. But I underestimated just how difficult and stressful it would be. I spent my last week in Nigeria going backwards and forwards to the airport and doing my very best to not constantly lose my temper with the man I had to deal with from the airline. The man who works for a very well known and very well respected international airline. He made the process incredibly difficult. As an example, he phoned me and asked me for the weight of Squirt in the crate. So I gave him the weight – 9kg. I then arrived at the airport to find that he had put the weight down on the booking as 20kg. “Why?” I asked. Oh, because he needed to leave room for a margin of error. A margin of error that was over double the actual weight of the cat in the crate? Oh yes, silly me, because that way he can charge me double the amount it’s supposed to cost. I had a minor breakdown and had a small rant about how this was an international airline. An international airline that surely has internationally recognised policies and procedures. So how can he just bend the rules just because he wants to? I guess he realised that trying to extort me wasn’t worth the hysteria he would get in return, so he let me weigh Squirt in the crate in front of him. This didn’t however stop him from trying to extort me for ridiculous amounts of money every single step of the way. The day before I was due to travel the vet then kindly told me that he never has anything to do with this particular airline, not after they put his cat in the wrong part of the hold and she suffocated. So then when I asked endless questions about where Squirt would be on the plane, and would she be safe, he had the gall to say to me, “Please remember this is XX airline you are doing with here, forget you are in Nigeria and talking to me, and remember that I represent this airline. Your cat will be safe.” Gee, thanks mister. If only you could have remembered that weeks ago and saved us both the stress and hassle that has consumed my last few weeks in Nigeria.

The whole exercise turned almost farcical when Jenny and I arrived at Abuja airport on Thursday in time for our flight. The customs men asked me to put the “dog” through the x-ray machine with the rest of our bags. Jenny and I had to explain that the CAT is alive, and therefore should not go through that machine.

“Okay” they said, “take the “dog” out of the crate so we can scan the crate.”

“What? You want me to take this feral, terrified CAT out of the crate in the middle of Abuja airport? Seriously?”

“Yes,” they replied. “Yes we do”.

Oh goody. So out Squirt came. Trembling and scratching to get away from me. It got even better at check-in. The man from the airline was stood with me and Squirt, finishing the final bits of paperwork, when a member of staff came up to the crate and started peering in at Squirt.

“No, don’t do that,” said my new friend the airline man, who was on his very best behaviour on my day of departure, “I’ve been on the XX staff animal handling course, you can’t peer in the crate, you will scare the DOG.”

Excellent, so the animal handling course teaches them not to peer in crates at terrified animals, but it doesn’t teach them the difference between cats and dogs. Poor old Squirt remained a dog until we picked her up at Jersey airport and they asked us to sign the collection papers for a “live dog”.

“This is a cat, should we change the paperwork?” We asked them.

“Oh yes, so it is,” was the response. Oh goody.

All in all I will never ever again travel anywhere with any animal. Or pick up any animal off the streets of Nigeria – or any other country that I will then be leaving. But after two days of travelling, she made it, and she’s now settling well into her new home. And so am I.

Home sweet home

I’ve said it before; Nigeria is like marmite. People either seemed to love it or hate it. I loved it (on the whole!). And now I’ve ended my placement I’ve been thinking about all of the things that I will miss now I’m home. Some examples:

• The way people interact with each other. Wherever you are, people are laughing and talking (loudly), and gesturing with their hands. There’s a vibrancy to social interactions that I know I’m really going to miss. 
• The noise. I’ve been back almost a week now and I still can’t get used to how quiet it is. 
• My office: I was lucky enough to be placed with a really brilliant organisation, filled with lots of really brilliant people. And I will miss working there a lot. I will especially miss working in a place where babies come to the office. 
• The food – I NEVER thought I would say that. I will miss the food I could buy so easily from the street – akara, fried yam and masa to name a few. 
• The music. I have grown to LOVE Nigerian music. And with the recent release of Oliver Twist in the UK, it seems at least the UK is hopefully catching onto this as well. 
• Harp. Oh Harp, my best friend in Nigeria. I was never a beer drinker before I went to Nigeria, and I will probably never drink beer again at home. But when I was there, it helped fix many many things. 
• All of the “sit outs” or local parks where you can just go and sit outside and have a beer, order food, and listen to music. 
• All of the advertising flyers / leaflets that I was given during my time there. They never failed to cheer me up. 
• The weather. Whilst I was sweating 90% of the time, I am still far happier living in a hot climate. This has been proven even more since coming home – it is FREEZING and I find it very depressing to be walking around in winter clothes in August!! 
• My work life balance – overall my placement was very busy, but I still found I had a lot more time to myself, and I was far less stressed than I used to be – it’s hard to get stressed about things and timelines when no one else is. And when you know that really, it’s not the end of the world if something doesn’t get done that day.

And I suppose I should balance this list out with some things that I won’t miss:

• The corruption: I’ve given enough examples of this in other blog posts, and I don’t want to dwell on it. It makes me sick to my stomach and I truly hope at some point in the very very very very near future the government will do its job and start cracking down on some of the awful things that happen on a daily basis. 
• Oyibo prices: I will not miss having to haggle for absolutely everything, and people thinking I should pay more just because I’m white. I get it, a lot of expats who live there have a lot of money. I was not one of them! I haggled out of necessity, not just to try and cheat people out of a few extra naira. 
• Flushing the toilet with a bucket (and a general lack of running water) 
• Washing sheets and towels in a bucket. I can handle clothes, I got used to it. Sheets and towels still make me never want to use bedding or towels again.

Skin whitening cream, breast cream and padded pants

I had a great reminder of how direct people here are recently. We were in a shop at Wuse Market, the main market in Abuja. I wasn’t looking to buy anything, I was with two new volunteers who wanted to pick up a couple of things. But the guy who owned the shop couldn’t handle me standing there and not wanting to buy anything. So he kept bringing things over to me to try and tempt me to change my mind. Unfortunately I don’t think he’s quite perfected his sales pitch. He started off with skin whitening cream. I asked him how white he wanted me to be, so in noticing the error of his ways, he went off to find something else that I just wouldn’t be able to resist buying: breast cream. That’s what it said on the box. He handed it to me with a pointed look at my chest area. I asked a friend here, she said it’s meant to make your boobs bigger. Oh good, thanks Mister Market Man. Needless to say I left his shop without buying anything. Later on in the day we were sat in the park at the Designer Marketplace thing that I mentioned a couple of months ago, and someone came round to give us some flyers. For padded pants. That’s right, pants to make your ass bigger. See the photo of said flyer below. They only cost 1,000 N. The same amount as the cocktails that we were drinking at the time. Bargain.

And now I’ve got one week left. There are parts of life out here that I love and that I will really miss – the noise, the music, the laughter. And there are parts of living in Nigeria I definitely will not miss.

We went to a popular “sit out” place to get fish and chips a few weeks ago. We had a really nice afternoon, until we left to go out to the main road and flag down a cab. There was a no parking area on the side of the road, and so we walked past that area (we had thought) and a cab came and stopped by us. We were negotiating the fare when one of the military men who guard the entrance to the carpark came over, and before we knew it, he had used a knife attached to his rifle to slice not one, but TWO of the cabs tyres. He then took the car keys off the driver and went back to his station. I was literally speechless, I couldn’t believe he did it. There was no warning, nothing. And so an act that was supposed to punish the cab driver for stopping on that particular part of the road then left him unable to move anyway. They said it was because of terrorist threats.  I was interested to hear how rendering cars motionless would reduce the risk of bombs going off. I’d much prefer a car with a bomb in it to be able to move than have it stationary in such a crowded public area. The next car that came to stop in that area then paid the officer, so he was able to stop there. It’s that level of corruption and abuse of power that makes me sick. Replacing those tyres will have cost the cab driver god knows how much. And he must be so used to that sort of treatment, because he didn’t even try to argue. Until someone stands up to people, nothing will change, but at the moment with things the way they are, if you dare to stand up to them you end up paying dearly for it.

So leaving here will be bittersweet.

  

Worms, pizza, “wine bars” and more goodbyes

I’ll start with the hideous story first. I went to get in the shower the other morning and was surprised to see a big worm lying dead on the floor of the shower. There are many hideous creatures living in the flat, but I’ve never seen a worm before. I turned on the shower, and for some reason something made me look up at the showerhead. And how I wished I hadn’t. There was a whole load of worm tails (or heads?) hanging out of the holes in the showerhead. I know they were worms because I initially couldn’t work it out and tried pulling one of them with my tweezers and it disappeared back up inside the showerhead. The showerhead can’t be unscrewed because it’s welded on. How what looks like earthworms have got into the showerhead is beyond me. So now showering here is a whole new experience.

Someone was talking about a “wine bar” in Abuja, and loving wine, and bars, I obviously wanted to go. However when we got there we realised the name was a little misleading. There is a wine shop in a car park, and you buy your wine, and you can then sit and drink it in the car park out of plastic cups. And as always here, the red wine is served freezing cold, and often mixed with fizzy drinks. But it was somewhere new to go.

Another volunteer was staying with me last week before he flew back to America. We wanted pizza and beer one night, so went to get takeaway pizza, and took it to the bar opposite where I live. They know me well, so I asked one of the staff there if they would mind if we sat there and ate our pizza. He said no, of course not, but it was raining so he showed us through into their restaurant. And then he walked away. We had to call him back over to explain that we wanted to order drinks. He was just going to let us sit in their restaurant (which was really busy, we took the last table) and eat our pizzas that we had bought from somewhere else. I might just start taking my dinner over there each night, they have digital TV.

And then this last weekend involved ANOTHER goodbye. I’ve had enough of them now; I don’t want anyone else to leave before I do!

And a worm update – I wrote the first part of this blog a week ago. The worms are no more. Because the showerhead couldn’t be removed, my friend burnt them. He held a candle under the shower until anything living within it had burnt to a crisp. Then we ran the water until the worm remains came out. I will say it again, it’s a glamorous life this volunteering malarkey.

8 weeks and counting

So I’ve now got eight weeks left in Nigeria – almost to the day. I try not to think about this too much because it stresses me out. Not because I don’t want to come home, I miss home like crazy and I cannot wait to see everyone and I especially cannot wait for my friend’s wedding. But for a few different reasons, it’s going to be very hard for me to leave Nigeria. It’s also slightly unsettling that I have no idea what I will do next. I’m just going to apply for a lot of different jobs in a lot of different places and see where fate ends up putting me. But it’s also fair to say that the main reason I am dreading leaving is because I know the journey home with Squirt is going to be a complete and utter nightmare! Rainy season has started now, and so we’re having storms most nights at the moment. And Squirt is not a fan of loud noises. It’s not the thunder that wakes me up; it’s Squirt trying to climb underneath me to avoid the noise that wakes me most nights. So a plane journey is definitely not going to be something she enjoys.

It’s been another busy few weeks, and some fun highlights have included:

·      My first Nigerian Haircut! Another volunteer cut it for me as it was in desperate need of help, and she did a very good job.

·      Going for a drink on the top of a massive hill overlooking Abuja. It’s beautiful up there, and having lived in Abuja since last July I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve been up there.

·      More fish (and egg for me) and chips at Abacha Barracks.

·      A mini pubcrawl around the area I live – it doesn’t feel so bad drinking beer during the day when you end up walking about 8km in total.

·      Lots of sunbathing at the British Village.

·      Free dinner courtesy of someone who was visiting from VSO, which meant … you guessed it – CHEESE.

·      Walking back from work – it only takes me an hour and it’s a really nice walk. But I think people here think I’m crazy.

·      Getting a parcel from home that included an array of delicious food to keep me going until I come back. And it only took 12 days to get here, which is a new record.

·      Spending a Saturday night swimming and drinking wine (from the swimming pool).

·      Collecting my dresses from the tailor – and this time they aren’t a complete disaster.

I love going to work at the moment – one lady here gave birth 3 months ago, and so now her maternity leave is up. So the baby comes to work with her. It’s awesome, he just gets passed around from person to person all day and is a very welcome distraction when the generator is broken and all of our laptop batteries are dead.

But I also realised the other day when I smelt bacon cooking and felt very homesick (despite the fact that I am vegetarian) that it’s probably time for me to come home. I have never before felt homesick at the smell of cooking flesh.

REAL cocktails, shopping and abandonment

I went to a really fun place the other day – a friend from work took me to Designer Marketplace, which is held the first Saturday of every month and is full of local designers selling their work. There was also music, endless amounts of yummy food and PROPER COCKTAILS. I spent far too much money, and drunk a cocktail that was far too strong for 2pm on a Saturday, but it was really good fun. The downside was the blow to my self-confidence – I have never seen so many incredibly beautiful people in one place. Every person there was the height of fashion with immaculate hair, nails, and makeup. And there I was in clothes that I’ve now been wearing over and over again for 15 months and with hair that is in dire need of being coloured and cut. Someone came round to take photos and took one of us. She showed it to us to check we were happy with it before she uploaded it to the internet, and I said no because I looked pretty hideous, and her response? “Don’t worry, when I upload it I’ll try and make you look less… white.” Oh good, thanks!! Then we went to a tailor and I’m having 3 dresses made, so we shall see if these turn out any better than my last attempt, which have been confined to home because they consist of two rather bright and garish dresses, one of which contains a truly hideous 80s Madonna style pointy chest area.

On Sunday I experienced how the other half live here, as I went for breakfast at the house of some lovely people who I met on a plane journey home back in November. They’re ex volunteers, and so now want to help out current volunteers, and they’re so kind. So I had a yummy breakfast and a swim and got to meet some other lovely people who are also previous volunteers. I wonder what percentage of international development workers are ex VSO. From the people I’ve met here, it must be pretty high.

And now begins the mass exodus of volunteers. My housemate left this morning, another volunteer is staying in the flat until Friday when she leaves, and from June onwards there’s a steady stream of departures (including my own!). But there are also some new arrivals on their way, so I’m looking forward to that as they’re hopefully due to get here before I leave. It’s going to be a busy couple of months getting everything finished and preparing to come home.

Water water everywhere

And some other ramblings…

I mentioned in a recent blog post that our water supply has been pretty crap - our taps have been more for display purposes than anything else. So when I woke up the other night and heard water I was more than a little confused. It was coming from the kitchen, so I walked in there in the dark, stepped down into our kitchen (thankfully our kitchen and the bathrooms are all a step lower than the rest of the flat, presumably for this very reason) and was submerged in water. We must have left the kitchen tap on, and the water had come back on for the first time in God knows how long. And it had flooded our kitchen. Not just a small flood, a big big flood. Our kitchen was under about 4 inches of water. Uh oh. So after trying unsuccessfully to remove some of the water I realised this wasn’t a task I could easily undertake on my own, and woke my housemate up. We then spent two hours bailing water out using various cups, bowls and mops. Not my most fun activity at 2am when I’ve got a busy day at work the next day. Although Squirt seemed to have a wonderful time. Thankfully our downstairs neighbour hasn’t yet come knocking to say he’s got a new water feature in his kitchen. I was telling my friend about it the next day and he pointed out that perhaps next time (I’m kind of hoping there won’t be a next time!) I would want to be a little more careful in terms of potential electric shocks, given the fridge was also submerged in water. This hadn’t even occurred to me. Then the next night I went to turn off my bathroom light, and got the most painful electric shock I think I’ve ever had. My finger was almost stuck to the socket, and my arm went numb. The next morning my finger felt char grilled. So all in all I think I’m going to be a little more careful with electrical supplies in future.

The animal saga continues. Someone has “got rid” of the four kittens that were living downstairs. One day one of the downstairs neighbours was moaning that they were a “nuisance” and the next day they had disappeared. The security guard said a car came and “got rid of them”. Whatever they did with them (I prefer to not think about it) they spared the mother, who now doesn’t know what to do with herself and spends all her time sitting outside our front door howling because she can’t find her kittens. The approach to animals here is something I’ll never get used to. The kittens weren’t doing any harm, they meowed occasionally, and used to run up to see you when you came through the gate to our compound, but other than that they were completely harmless. And most people in the compound seemed to really like having them around, and would always put bread and rice and water down for them. Why they couldn’t have just left them be is beyond me. But one thing is for sure; Squirt is NEVER going outside here.

And now for non-animal related updates. I got invited to a “cocktail party” at the Sheraton Hotel the other night. I was so excited; I had images of pina coladas, margaritas, mojitos, and cosmopolitans. Silly me. The “cocktails” were wine glasses filled with soft drinks. Fanta, sprite, coke, orange juice. There were however mini chocolate cakes, so I ate about 10 of them to make up for my disappointment. And then I got bought beer instead, so it wasn’t a total loss.

I treated myself with a trip to the cinema on Saturday. We initially wanted to go and see the Hunger Games, so looked it up online and it said it was showing at 3pm. So off we went to the cinema in time for 3pm. Only to try and buy our tickets and be told the film isn’t showing yet, they haven’t received it from Lagos. Not only are they advertising it as showing on their website, the viewing times were also being advertised on the screen in front of us in the cinema when we went to buy our tickets. Never mind, we got to see another good film instead, and a coffee shop has opened up in the cinema that sells iced coffees – pricey but AWESOME! Then we went shopping at the Craft Village afterwards, so all in all a very fun Saturday.

Something not so fun are the run-ins I have been having with insects recently. My bed is being eaten alive by termites. I can hear them gnawing away even over the sound of my ceiling fan. It’s a little off putting when you’re trying to go to sleep. Then the other night the electricity was off, so I was sat eating a mango by candlelight. And then the electricity came back on. Oh how I wished it hadn’t. It turned out the mango I had been eating was crawling with maggots. I don’t think it’s possible to explain how disgusted I was by this. I brushed my teeth about ten times, and had a cup of scolding hot tea in the hope they’d shrivel up and die immediately. I will never again eat fruit in darkness , and it’ll be quite some time before I feel able to eat a mango again.

Easter fun

My second Easter in Nigeria. This year the long weekend was spent having lots of fun in Abuja. Jenny came to stay, and some highlights included:

• Going to the craft village. I need to start filtering down the number of things I want to buy from there to take home, as at the moment it’s pretty much everything they sell, including a big jewelled trunk thing and a chair and table. Given I’m already transporting a cat back with me I’m thinking all of those things may not fit in my luggage allowance.
• Having a drink at the Sheraton. Okay, it was only a fanta, and it was 5 times the price we normally pay for a fanta, but it’s nice to see how the other half live every now and again.
• Going for fish (or egg and chips for me) at Abacha Barracks and buying more mangos the size of my head.
• Having beer at our local bar.
• Sangria out of a carton. It’s actually pretty good.
• Spending two days lying by the pool at the British Village, and drinking gin and tonic (we could only afford one each, but still).
• A night in ordering pizza (yes, this service does exist in Abuja) and watching a DVD.
• Making yam balls (they’re nicer than they sound, really).

I even got to eat my body weight in chocolate as Jenny helped to deliver a super exciting parcel from my very own Easter Bunny in Calabar.

As always it was awesome to see Jenny, but it made me sad to think this was probably one of our last weekends together before the end of our VSO time here. July is definitely approaching far too quickly for my liking. But all in all, a very fun Easter!

No water, running in the desert and getting PUBLISHED!

Another blog post full of a whole lot of waffle…

I’ll start with the really exciting news first (well, I was excited anyway!) – our journal article got accepted for publication, so all the hard work and submitting about 600 different versions was worth it. I’m not quite sure this qualifies me as a published author, but I’m going to keep pretending it does anyway.

I have even more respect than I did before for the crazy people who do the Marathon des Sables through the Sahara desert. I was feeling very lazy the other day so decided to go for a run, but the temperature was pushing 42 degrees at the time. It wasn’t a pleasant experience; I truly thought I was going to have a heart attack. I almost considered selling my iPod so I’d have money for a taxi home. One lady I passed along the way looked at me and said “Oh Oyibo, sorry sorry sorry”. I might refrain from any more running until it cools down a bit.

And on the subject of heat, I thought I’d got used to the temperature here by now, but recently nights here have been a little unbearable. Our electricity has been off a lot meaning no fan, and so I’ve been getting up numerous times each night and pouring a bucket of water over my head before going back to bed again. A couple of nights have been spent trying to sleep on the floor as the tiles are about the coolest thing in the flat when it’s that hot. Poor Squirt is feeling the heat as well - I keep finding her lying in the shower. And because the electricity has been bad, the water has been even worse as they need electricity to pump the water. It normally comes on from Monday to Friday, but over the past two weeks I can count the number of times we’ve had water on one hand. So when I came home last Thursday and found the man from the water board disconnecting our water I was less than impressed. I asked him how he could disconnect something that was never on anyway, but he said until everyone in the building paid their bill it would be disconnected. So I begged. And when that didn’t work I told him if he disconnected it I would follow him back to the water board office with the bag of dirty washing that was fast taking over my room and use their water supply. I think I scared him, but it worked and he left it on. I also now have his phone number and he told me to call him whenever we don’t have water. He may live to regret doing that – this was almost a week ago and we’ve had water once since then.

We got in a cab home the other night and even though we’d already negotiated the fare, the driver tried telling us that we should pay more because we “must have money because we’re white.” We explained we don’t have money, we’re volunteers, so he said “But you must have air conditioning at home, so you’ve got money.” So we explained we do not have air conditioning, we do not have a generator, we do not have any of the things he probably thinks we have. And you would think we had told him that we were living in a shack, “You don’t have air conditioning? You must be hot all the time. You come here to our country to help us and we don’t give you air conditioning?” So then from trying to get more money off us he changed to saying he wanted to write to the President and tell him what a disgrace it was that we don’t have air conditioning. I tried explaining that I think the President might have slightly more pressing matters to attend to than our lack of air conditioning. I was glad to get out of the cab. Although he still tried the standard “when you go home to UK you take me, or you bring me clothes and books for my baby” line.

My Abuja Cat Sanctuary is flourishing. Cat Two’s kittens are now 6 weeks old, running around, and also require feeding twice a day. How I went from saying I would never have any pets here to feeding 6 cats is beyond me. But one thing is for sure; I need a job, as my volunteer allowance doesn’t even cover the cost of me living in Abuja, let alone me and 6 cats. If anyone wants to sponsor the very first Nigerian Animal Shelter then let me know, I’ll willingly run it.

And FINALLY. This small health and safety risk caught my eye the other day. Never before have I been so glad that my job doesn’t involve me having to climb scaffolding.

Contraception? What's that?

I apologise in advance. This is more of a rant than a blog post.

I mentioned in my last post that we’d been running some focus groups in some rural FCT communities this week. Some data the organisation had collected showed that there was a very high rate of teen pregnancy in these communities, so we went to talk to the unmarried girls there to try and find out why the rate is so high, and how the program the organisation runs there can better help to tackle the problem.

And lets just say it was an eye opener. I knew that the focus groups would be run in pidgin, so I didn’t hold out much hope of being able to understand what was being said, but I was pleasantly surprised as I think I managed to understand about 90% of what they were talking about. But boy oh boy does it make you realise just how much of an issue there is here. The girls basically outlined the following issues as stopping them from using contraception:

• Their boyfriends/partners won’t use condoms.
• Even if their boyfriends/partners will use condoms, they won’t actually initiate the buying of the condoms, and any girls who are seen buying condoms in the community are seen as easy and looked down on.
• People in the community assume that anyone who is buying condoms is buying them to use them with someone other than their partner, so even men don’t feel able to go and buy them without being met with disapproval.
• The health centre in the community is supposed to provide contraception free of charge, but they very rarely have condoms available. If the girls go there for the injection or the contraceptive pill they can get it free for the first two visits, but then have to pay 500N for each visit from then on. 500N a month for the pill is out of reach for pretty much all of the girls in this community.
• Because of it being frowned upon for unmarried (and to a certain degree, even married) girls to access contraception, even if the health centre provided contraception free of charge (and accurate advice), the girls would be too embarrassed to go there.
• The men in the community practice “Juju” (magic) on the girls, so that they can have sex with them without the girls realising it has happened (a summarised version of their words – not mine). We had to ask several questions when we heard this to try and understand what they meant. They explained that the men put something in the girls’ food or drink that makes them “go to sleep.” And then they have sex with them. My colleague’s response to this was “do you mean rape?” and the girls replied, “no, not rape, its Juju - like charm.”

And on top of all of these issues, the health centre in the community provides inaccurate information. We asked one of the girls we spoke to to go there as a “mystery client” and ask for advice on contraception. She asked the person there what contraception they could give her to protect her from HIV and STI, and they told her condoms AND, wait for it …

… the injection.

I had to take some very deep breaths when she came back and told us this.

And this is a community a couple of hours from the centre of Abuja. It was definitely one of the days when I went home wondering how anything is ever going to change here.

And then later that day I read an article about the police force getting a new uniform. A camouflage uniform that will apparently also have magical powers, given these uniforms will, and I quote, “discourage them [police officers] from developing cold feet any time they come face to face with robbers.” Having collectively spent over 3 hours over the past 2 days sat at one of the checkpoints here, news that money was being spent on uniforms rather than training did not fill me with joy.

Vets, cats, fish and motorbikes

I’ve been a bit useless with updating my blog recently. I think it’s a combination between being busy and also having been here for long enough now to find everything normal, so I never think there’s anything worth writing about.

I took Squirt to the vet a couple of weeks ago for the blood test she needs to pass to get her entry to the UK. To cut a long story short, it was hideous, and I won’t be taking her to the vet again here if I can help it. They had to “sedate her” (this actually just involved paralysing her whilst keeping her wide awake) and the drug either didn’t agree with her, or she had too much. It was meant to last for 2 hours, but instead lasted well over 12 hours, and then it was another 2 days before she’d come out from under my bed, eat, drink or do anything. Thankfully she’s okay now, and so was her test result.

And Cat 2 has had her babies. I was outside feeding her the other night when I thought my foot felt a bit wet. Unusual in the dry season. And sure enough, her waters had broken over my flipflop. Lovely. She hid them well and so no one knew where they were for the first 2 weeks, but since they were found she seems to have moved them again. I can’t blame her, there aren’t many cat lovers out here so she’s very sensible to keep them out of the way.

I got two parcels the other day, which was pretty much the most exciting event to happen for quite some time. I had to sit at the Post Office for ages whilst they tried to find them, and then whilst Customs went through the contents. The lady at the Post Office asked me if I had any money in either parcel, or anything of any value, as I would need to remove it before she called the customs officers in. Nice, huh? The customs officers had a good old look through the contents, including the box of tampax. They were clearly looking for things to be able to “confiscate” but got rewarded with a number of items they didn’t recognise. I had thought one item might require some explanation – the catnip hedgehogs that I had asked my mum to send me for Squirt – knitted hedgehogs stuffed full of an unidentifiable dried herbal substance. This would presumably be the kind of thing that may attract at least a question from customs at home. But not so here. Squirt proved how much better she was feeling over the weekend – I buried the hedgehogs at the back of my wardrobe on the top shelf (which is higher than the top of my head) underneath all of my clothes, so that I could save them for when she’d destroyed all of her current toys. Not so, I woke up in the middle of the night to her burrowing through all of my clothes to get to the hedgehogs. How she could smell them from up there is beyond me.

I’ve been to a place called Abacha Barracks two weekends in a row now, and it’s my new favourite place to go for food here. They mainly sell massive barbequed fish, but they also do an alternative of omelette and chips for strange people like me. If I was to break my vegetarianism for anything it would probably be this fish though, it looked yummy and smelt amazing. It’s on the outskirts of Abuja, but has a great atmosphere and is well worth the trip. They also sell mangos as big as my head (well, almost) so that’s another good reason to go there.

And as if that excitement wasn’t enough, I discovered leeks in the supermarket the other day. I nearly cried with joy. They were AMAZING. Other than that I’ve generally spent the weekends swimming, reading, and drinking beer. Not bad really!

I spent the first two days of this week helping to run focus groups in some rural communities on the outskirts of Abuja. Despite still technically being classified as part of FCT (Federal Capital Territory) these communities are a world away from the rest of Abuja. The one we went to yesterday is only accessible by bike down a long sandy track, and is miles away from any main road. It’s probably the least developed place I’ve been to in my time here. On the bike on the way back my flipflop broke, and given I didn’t really want to head back to Abuja bare foot, I tried asking the driver to stop so I could fix it quickly before I lost it for good. Which is when he turned to me and I nearly passed out from the smell of alcohol fumes. It then transpired that he couldn’t actually understand a word I said, because even when I shouted “stop” he just nodded and carried on driving. I’m quite happy on the back of a bike, but not when the driver is drunk, and driving at a crazy speed down a sandy road. I weighed up how badly I’d injure myself if I jumped off, and decided that as my main fear was him crashing and us falling off anyway, it would probably be better to wait for that than to throw myself off unnecessarily. So I clung on for 25 minutes and did the truly Nigerian thing and prayed. And thankfully we got there in one piece. I think the driver could tell how angry I was by the time we arrived at the road though, and it’ll teach me to check the drivers eyes in future before jumping on the back of a bike – if they’re bright red and having trouble focusing, I won’t be getting on it!!!

We're all going on a Nigerian holiday

I’ve been to two lovely places recently that have made me like Nigeria even more than I did before. A couple of weeks ago we went to Usuma Dam for the afternoon (40 minutes outside Abuja). If my memory serves me correctly, this place isn’t in the Nigerian guidebook, and I have no idea why as it’s one of my favourite places that I’ve been to in Nigeria so far. We spent a lovely afternoon going on a boat across the reservoir, walking around the path that leads all the way around the dam, and swimming in the lovely warm water (whilst ignoring any thoughts about the possibility of contracting bilharzia!).

And I have just come back from spending 5 days in Obudu – this is somewhere I’ve wanted to go since before I even arrived in Nigeria, so when the 1 year mark hit I decided it was time to finally visit. We spent the first night in Obudu town, before heading 60km up the mountain, spending 2 nights in Abebe’s Lodge (phone number for anyone who wants to visit: 08036242192) and then a final night in Obudu town. I love Obudu. I want to live there and commute to Abuja each day. But as it’s at least an 8 hour journey, I’m thinking that probably wouldn’t be too practical. The top of the mountain has to be one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to. It almost looks like the end of the earth – all you can see for miles and miles is endless expanses of unspoilt mountain views. Some memorable moments:

1. Our first night in a “luxury” room in a hotel in Obudu town. I had wanted to book a hotel before we arrived, but my travelling companion reliably informed me this would not be necessary, there would definitely be a vacancy in the hotel that he wanted us to stay in. Not so. And several other hotels were also fully booked. So we couldn’t actually afford to be fussy by the time we finally found somewhere that had a room available. This hotel had the hardest bed I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. It was literally like sleeping on a tabletop.
2. Going up the mountain on the back of a motorbike. This wasn’t planned, we were meant to be going up by car, but the lift we were going to get never arrived, and then when we went to the park to find a car it was Sunday morning, so it was likely to take hours for the cars to fill. I was told over and over that I didn’t want to go up by bike because it would be “challenging”, but I also didn’t want to spend the whole day sat in the park waiting for the car to fill, so bike it was. And I’m very very glad as I got to see so much more by bike than I would have seen by car. Admittedly there were certain times during the two hours (I had a very sore behind afterwards!) when we were going up the “intestine road” (see photo which explains this name) when I thought we might plummet to our death, but our bike driver was very good. I do however pity him as I doubt he had any ribs left intact after having me clinging on to him for dear life for so long.

3. The views. Everywhere you went they were breathtaking.
4. Visiting “Holy Mountain.” According to our guide this was named Holy Mountain as during the Biafran war people were able to hide there and remain safe, so it was said that God must have protected them (presumably as the mountain is so frickin high that you actually feel like you’re in the sky when you’re stood on it!). I think it probably had more to do with the fact that the soldiers couldn’t actually find them, or reach them, given it was about as far from civilisation as you could hope to go. We went there on a Sunday afternoon and there was a church group on pilgrimage there. There must have been over 50 people on the top of the mountain all praying and chanting, and the cloud cover was really low, so it was all a bit eerie as more and more people emerged from the clouds as we got closer.

4. Being cold. Obudu is COLD. Not just Nigerian cold, but proper can’t-sleep-for-teeth-chattering-cannot-physically-face-a-cold-shower-cold.
5. Abebe’s Lodge. This is the “economical” place to stay. There is the Obudu Mountain Resort, but with the cheapest room being over 22,000 N (£88) and my monthly allowance being 36,000 N, this was slightly out of the VSO price range. So for 5,000 N we got a room at Abebe’s Lodge instead, which had running water, hot water when requested, and was perfectly clean. The staff were lovely, and it was right in the middle of the community, so I actually preferred it to the Mountain Resort (or so I told myself, anyway).
6. Being able to eat fried yam, akara and fried plantain for dinner every night.
7. Doing very little. It was lovely to just play scrabble, read books, and be lazy. I’m not normally very good at doing nothing, but I think I was pretty exhausted as life here has been busy recently, so it was definitely time for some down time and some space from Abuja and life here.
8. Walking along the canopy walk at the Becheve Nature Reserve. I’m a wimp and I hate heights. I blindly walked onto the canopy walk before realising or contemplating that it perhaps might be called a canopy walk for a reason, and was about a third of the way across before I actually looked down and realised I was suspended over the forest. On a rickety Nigerian walk way. But it was worth getting to the end and seeing the views from the viewing platform (providing I still didn’t look down).
9. Our hotel on our last night in Obudu. This is the hotel we had wanted to stay in during our first night, so we came down the mountain a day early in the hope it would have a room available as it was mid-week. And yes they did. We wanted to stay in this hotel for one very specific reason – each room has a bath with hot running water. So after spending 20 minutes investigating several rooms, and finally settling on the one with the biggest bath, I spent a very long time lying in lovely hot water. Granted, this was Nigeria, and so making a plug to fill the bath took some experimenting, but we got there in the end (who would have thought a pot of vaseline, a black plastic bag, and a big bucket could be so useful).

Twelve months? Really?

Where did it go? I’m glad I chose to extend, I don’t think I feel ready to go home just yet. Whilst work is going well, there’s still plenty to do so I’ll definitely need the extra few months to finish things off.

So what have I learnt in the past 12 months?

• Expect nothing, and then (hopefully!) be pleasantly surprised.
• I am able to survive in a world where I can’t blow dry and straighten my hair every day.
• I am able to survive in a world without mascara.
• I am able to survive in a world without cheese and rose wine (although I’m not entirely sure about how long I could survive without these things. I have a feeling 18 months might be my limit).
• I will form too strong attachments no matter where I go – I am not cut out for a ‘traveller’s lifestyle’ - to say I won’t be coming home empty handed is an understatement.
• I am too sentimental to live in Africa (or certainly Nigeria anyway).
• If you had asked me before I left home what I would miss the most, and what I would be most grateful for when I got back, I’d have probably said electricity and running water. But these things don’t really feature anymore. Yes, it’ll be lovely to turn on a tap and know water will come out, but what I think I will be the most grateful for at home is the support structure from our emergency services there – knowing that I am living somewhere where you have trustworthy law enforcement agencies is going to be a huge relief to me. Where you can dial 999 and trust the process and the people at the other end of the line. Where the sight of police / secret service / army officers doesn’t scare me.
• I am stronger than I initially gave myself credit for.
• Don’t spend too long worrying about things – chances are (in Nigeria anyway) they will never happen, and if they do, they won’t happen as planned – things change in the blink of an eye here.

Other news… my life here has been pretty much focused on work recently. We’re trying to get a research article published in an international journal, so fingers crossed it gets accepted, as that would be awesome for the charity. No one ever claimed Cat 2. And Cat 2 has turned out to be pregnant. Every day is a battle with my conscience when she tries to follow me home and I have to shut her out. I feed her morning and night but have to stop there, as I cannot afford to take any more cats home with me.

We had an interesting experience the other night, which helps to illustrate my previous point about law enforcement. We were walking along and Jenny had her purse snatched out of her hand. The guy ran off, but it was pretty clear where he had gone to, so we went to ask for help from a man from a certain law enforcement agency who was stationed just down the road. This man was so drunk that I almost passed out with the strength of the fumes. We pointed to where the guy had disappeared to, could he chase him? No. Could he go in the vehicle he was with? No, the vehicle was bad. Is there anyone else that could help? No, his partner had gone to eat. Wonderful. So off home we went, minus Jenny’s purse.

I keep hearing people say that Nigeria isn’t an “Africa for beginners” country. And I do agree that it’s not an easy place to live, but I also think that if you just give it a try, it’s a country worth experiencing. And now for the next 6 months. Here’s to hoping they’re slightly calmer than the last 12, and that during that time I finally figure out what I want to do with my life when I get home.

Nigerian Catnip

I think this is what I am. Another one has appeared at our door. She arrived in our compound on Friday night. She must be lost as she seems well looked after, tame, and very affectionate. And very very hungry. I’ve been feeding her morning and night – Squirt won’t be impressed, her cat food supply is fast depleting. I think the people on our compound think I am insane. We came in late on Friday night (Saturday morning really) and she was howling outside, so our security guard found me curled up on our outside stairs in my pyjamas at 5am with the cat on my lap. He just shook his head at me, smiled in a sad sort of way (as if to say “poor girl, she’s clearly insane but no one has the heart to tell her”) and went back into his room. Then last night I was trying to get her settled in a box in an area underneath our stairs, so that she could have somewhere quiet and dark to sleep, as she just seems to be roaming around endlessly at night howling. The person that lives in the flat next to where I was came home to find me bent over some old boxes in a dark corridor, seemingly talking to myself (the cat disappeared when he walked up). He asked what I was doing, but I didn’t want to admit to harbouring a stray cat outside his front door, so I just said “nothing, just looking for something.” So he also gave me a strange look and went inside.

It’s not just the people in our compound who think I’m insane either; it’s potentially our entire neighbourhood. I’ve been trying to find who she belongs to, so I’ve put her photo on Abuja expat sites and mailing lists, and I got the vet to put a poster up in his surgery. I printed some posters out, and begged another (very kind) volunteer to come with me to stick them up. Potentially the most embarrassing two hours I’ve had since arriving in Nigeria. People just could not understand what we were doing. Half the problem was that the poster was in English, and most of the people we encountered could only read/speak Hausa, so trying to explain what the poster said was a nightmare. At one point a man at the market said “Ahaaaaaa” and I thought finally, someone understands, and then he said “you want to sell the cat?” Noooooooo!!! So the search for her owners continues. I’m trying to be practical, it’s bankrupting me just taking one cat home with me, let alone two. So I can't take her into our flat as it would be cruel to get her settled knowing that I'll have to leave her behind in a few months time. Squirt seems entirely disinterested in the whole thing, even when she can hear Cat 2 howling outside she doesn’t bat an eyelid. She’s obviously worked out she’s on the right side of our front door.

So if anyone wants to adopt a lovely Nigerian cat, please let me know. I’ll even throw in a couple of tins of top quality Nigerian cat food.

Strikes, dead monkeys and malaria (again)

So it’s been a fun filled two weeks. After 6 days of strikes, life slowly started to return to normal (or as normal as things ever are here). As things go, the strikes weren’t that much fun. There’s something slightly unsettling about having everything come to a complete standstill. There was no public transport, nothing was open (apart from the small shop at the bottom of our road, thankfully) and all the cash machines ran out of money (not that anything was open for people to spend their money on). However I was reliably informed that whilst most of the country seemed to grind to a halt, beer was delivered to our local bar each day. At least they have their priorities straight. One good thing about the strike is that it meant a lot more volunteers than normal were in Abuja, so it was good to have the opportunity to see people I don’t normally get to see. We did manage to do some fun things during the strike:

• Went swimming and for brunch at a posh compound down the road from us (I think the person that invited us felt sorry for us and could tell we hadn’t had running water for a very long time, so would benefit from being submerged in a swimming pool).
• Went on a ‘pub crawl’ in the area around where we live.
• Making fajitas (with real cheese and everything).
• Being lazy at the British Village (although they chose the week of the strike to shut their showers – the week when we had absolutely no running water).

And an update on the monkey that tried to eat us: the morning after that incident, we heard a hideous animal noise coming from outside (poor Squirt wasn’t taking any chances and went to hide deep inside my wardrobe as she could tell something wasn’t going well for the animal concerned). We looked outside, only to see a group of men with big sticks standing around beating the monkey. They then dragged the (slightly stiller) monkey outside our compound, and I’m not sure what happened to it next. But when we asked the Security guy later what had happened to the monkey, I distinctly heard the words “chop, later, chop”. When I asked again, he said, “Monkey set to run free. Smaller baby monkey coming tomorrow. This will be friendly monkey.” I somehow doubt that being bludgeoned with sticks by a group of men was a precursor to the evil monkey being “set free”. I’m yet to see the new monkey. I think I’ll avoid it for as long as possible, happy things don’t seem to happen around these monkeys.

And then after the strike, just as I was thinking how nice it was to be back at work, I got malaria. Again. So all in all, not a great start to 2012.

Cabin fever and being chased by rabid monkeys

Day 1 of the strike and it got to 1pm and I was climbing the walls. I learnt that playing scrabble by yourself isn’t much fun and even Squirt got sick of my fidgeting and went to lie down in a quiet place where I couldn’t disturb her. Thankfully electricity then came on so I could charge my laptop and at least do some work. By 5pm I needed some fresh air so my roommate and I went downstairs to take out the rubbish and to buy a soft drink. I’ve mentioned before that there is a monkey that lives in our compound that is tied up by a piece of rope as long as my arm. I also previously mentioned that I felt sorry for this monkey. I would now like to take back that statement. As we went downstairs I saw the monkey sat on the step to the security guard’s room, off his rope. I stupidly thought that as he was off his rope he must be friendly, and didn’t really worry about the fact that he was there. But then before I could say “roast monkey” the monkey started hissing and running towards me. The security guard managed to get between me and the monkey, but only for a few seconds before the monkey ran around him. I tried standing still in the hope he would get bored, but no, so I had no option but to try and get out of his way, and fast. But it turns out monkeys can run a hell of a lot faster than I can. My roommate and I tried running out of the compound but the monkey got to us first, and it turns out I’m a terrible human being because my instinct wasn’t to protect her, but to hide behind her and make sure she was directly between me and the monkey. The things we learn about ourselves when we’re forced to go into survival mode. Thankfully before the monkey was able to actually make contact the security guard managed to restrain it, and we ran away somewhat more terrified than we had been before. So it seems that VSO were right to advise us not to go outside, but it wasn’t the strike that put us at risk, it was the beast of a monkey living outside our front door.

Hibernation anyone?

No blog posts for ages and then two in as many days. I’ve had to do something very rare for me today and use my brain. On statistics. For 8 hours in a row. So now I’m too brain dead to concentrate on anything else apart from writing another waffle filled blog entry.

I’m not particularly looking forward to Monday. I mentioned in my last post that the government here have removed the fuel subsidy. It would be an understatement to say that this move has not been well received. Previous governments have tried it in the past but backed down in the face of widespread public outrage. But not only have they removed the fuel subsidy, they did it overnight without actually putting in place any measures to lessen the impact, and so overnight fuel prices doubled. And now slowly but surely other prices are rising as well as a result of the increased fuel costs. So there are people who can’t afford to get to work. The roads in Abuja are eerily quiet. We’re lucky; we live in the “centre” (I use inverted commas as Abuja doesn’t actually seem to have any centre, but the point is we live close to our office). The majority of my colleagues live on the very outskirts of Abuja. Doubling their transport costs to work is no small thing. The government also chose to do this on the 1st January when goodness knows how many people were trying to travel back home from wherever they spent Christmas, meaning people were stranded as they couldn’t afford the new cost of transport back to wherever they live. The government have now said they’ll buy 1600 buses to try and help improve the public transport system in Nigeria, but for a population this size, that’s not going to do much. Well, not unless each bus is going to carry about 100,000 people. It’s also not going to do much about the increased cost of everything else other than fuel. And whilst the government have said that the money saved on the fuel subsidy will be spent on other things, such as the electricity supply, education and healthcare, given the levels of corruption in the government here, they’re going to have to actually prove that before people start to believe it. So people are fed up. Many people saw the fuel subsidy as one of the few benefits offered to them by the government, and now even that is gone.

Anyway, the point is there has now been a nationwide strike announced for Monday 9th January. An indefinite nationwide strike. For all offices, oil production centres, air and sea ports, fuel stations, markets, banks and shops. Oh goody. So for us VSOs who aren’t allowed to be involved in any public protests/rallies/crowds (or actually go to any public event, gathering or outing if you follow the advice from the latest email received from them – I must remember to ask them to clarify this before I leave here. I’d find it a little difficult to exist here without ever going anywhere public. Sadly Tescos haven’t yet started delivering to Nigeria) this means an indefinite stay at home. Anyone who knows me will know that this is likely to drive me insane. During the elections we were meant to stay indoors from Friday evening through to Sunday morning, and even that sent me stir crazy. Combine that with the fact that if there’s a strike then they’re unlikely to turn our water supply back on on Monday morning, and this makes for a particularly miserable prospect. The press release from the unions advises people to stock up on basic essentials including food and water. But unless we want to exist indefinitely on packet noodles, it’s not actually that easy to stockpile large amounts of fresh produce in 38 degree heat without it going off pretty quickly. But I will follow their advice and stock up on cat food. And maybe I should also quickly take up knitting or sudoku.

Carnivals, long bus journeys, Christmas by the pool and lots more fun things

After an awesome Christmas break, the majority of which was spent in Calabar, I’m back to the real world. It was great to go back to Calabar, and lots of volunteers went there for the holidays so there were lots of us around to make the most of having the time off work. We did too much to fit into this blog post without making it very long, but here are some highlights:

• Making our own Christmas decorations – they wouldn’t win any awards, but it was fun all the same. I even sewed for the first time in about 15 years.
• Christmas Day – first Christmas away from home, and whilst I got a bit teary when I skyped home and saw everyone opening their stockings and having Christmas dinner, overall it was an awesome day. Lots of people, lots of lovely food, and lots of fun, topped off with karaoke in the evening.
• Boxing Day by the swimming pool – not how I’m used to spending December 26th, but definitely something I could get used to (especially as it also included pizza).
• Calabar Carnival – it would have been worth the 16 + hour journey to Calabar (turns out the 23rd December is not a good day to travel long distances in Nigeria!) just for the Carnival – it was AWESOME. And we truly made the most of it. From 10am through till 5am the next day. Although my body the next day disagreed, I’m definitely getting too old for late nights (or early mornings).
• Playing Percy Pig versus Colin Caterpillar Snakes and Ladders – best Christmas present EVER.
• Calabar Christmas Village – it never shuts. For 31 days in December it is open 24 hours a day. And we definitely made the most of its crazy opening hours.
• Fried yam at my favourite fried yam place in Nigeria.
• Just being back in Calabar, I think I will always prefer it to Abuja.

My journey back was interesting. I stupidly traveled on the 2nd January, after the Nigerian government removed the fuel subsidy on the 1st January. But having had no access to news etc, I didn’t realise any of this until arriving at the bus park on Monday morning at 6am. We had to wait until 8.30am to leave because they couldn’t find fuel to put in the bus. And that continued for the whole of the journey, it was a nightmare. I was very glad to get back and cuddle Squirt quickly before passing out.

And now it’s already January and my original departure date of February looms. I can’t believe that this time a year ago I was having what can only be described as major doubts about coming to Nigeria. Friends and family know that there are some parts of my time here that haven’t exactly gone as planned (!). It’s been the craziest and most unsettled year of my life, but despite that, I wouldn’t change my decision to come here for anything.

And so it’s looking like I might be extending my placement for a bit longer. Yes, I know, I’m a lunatic. But whilst parts of me yearn to return to a quiet life, where I can be sure of a hot shower, nice food and comfortable bed, without the fear of cockroaches crawling over me in my sleep, a bigger part of me isn’t quite ready to return to the real world of UK winters, and trying to find a job just yet. Although with Nigeria seeming to make a more regular appearance in the national and international media as the days go on, who knows what the future holds. But for now, Squirt and I will be staying (and my decision has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that if I stay until May/June I’ll have time to get all Squirts inoculations and blood tests done meaning she can avoid having to go into quarantine when she gets to the UK. That would be a crazy reason to extend my placement).