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!!!