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).