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.