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.