Look away if you're squeamish...

This was what Jenny (another VSO volunteer) and I were faced with early this morning. I’m staying at Jenny’s for the weekend because of the elections, and she asked me to bring my Sticky Rat Mat with me, because she thought she had a mouse. Turns out she had a family of mice. But at least the Sticky Rat Mat has served its purpose. I did feel very sorry for the mice though. Not a nice way to go.

Thankfully the security guy at her compound was able to help with the disposing of the mice. We weren’t being particularly helpful as the most we could do was jump up and down screaming in our pyjamas. I won’t be reusing the Sticky Rat Mat. I think it had mice head left on it by the time he had finished. Whoever said doing a VSO placement wasn’t glamorous.

Every home should have one

I give you the Sticky Rat Mat. I bought one from a man walking along with a basket of them on his head. I wanted to go for the good old rat poison, but my colleague told me that Ratty would eat it, and then go and die somewhere in my belongings where I couldn’t find him, and I’d be haunted by the smell of Dead Ratty for weeks on end. So Sticky Rat Mat it was. I’ve been putting Sticky Rat Mat down in the mornings before I leave for work, and making sure I make a lot of noise when I come back, just so Ratty knows he has company. I’ve told my neighbour that if he hears a scream, he was to come and remove Ratty from the Sticky Rat Mat for me, because that’s more than I’m willing to put myself through. But Ratty is one step ahead of me, and has decided against having his feet glued to a board for 10 hours. Instead he just comes out in the middle of the night to say hello, when he know that I haven’t left the Sticky Rat Mat down, because being faced with that first thing in the morning would be too much for me. I’ve never been much of a morning person, without having to peel a rat off a mat before I get in the shower and have a cup of tea. The best part about the Sticky Rat Mat is the instructions make it clear that once you catch your prey, you just remove them from the mat and reuse it. Trying to ignore the bits of rat foot that are left stuck to it. So there you go, a useful and welcome addition to every household. I will give one word of caution – if you leave the Sticky Rat Mat down, make sure that you don’t walk around barefoot without looking where you’re going. Removing the glue from your feet is a time consuming and irritating process. Especially if you haven’t got a running water supply.

Elections, Backstreet Boys and Custard...

So my neighbour has a new CD. The Backstreet Boys. I never thought I’d hear myself saying this, but I think I preferred Celine Dion.

The elections were due to start on Saturday, and as no movement is allowed on election days, on Friday night I went to stay with another volunteer for the weekend so we didn’t have to be housebound on our own. We tuned into local radio on Saturday morning only to find the elections had been postponed until Monday. But then on Sunday we heard they had been postponed again until the following Saturday. So we’re waiting to see what happens next. On the plus side, we did make ourselves an exciting dinner on Saturday night to make up for the fact we couldn’t go out (my colleague still advised us to stay in) – spicy bean burgers, proper bread rolls, CHEESE SLICES, chips and beer. Apart from a minor chip pan fire, it was amazing. Combine that with a 2-day Uno tournament, and captivity wasn’t so bad.

Then the most exciting thing in the world happened on Sunday – I got back to My Squat and I had water AND electricity. At the same time. I didn’t actually realise that My Squat provided this service; I thought I could only have one at a time.

My emotions have been a bit crazy this week. I wouldn’t change being here for anything, but there are times when I really miss home. What’s confused me the most is that there are situations where I would expect myself to get fed up and miserable (a week without electricity, running water, and Ratty running around My Squat disturbing my sleep every night), and I am completely fine. But then I’ll be doing something like listening to Chris Moyles and I’ll burst into tears. I’m a strange human being. I think it’s because there is nothing here that is familiar or that reminds me of home. And so then when I come across something that does, it catches me by surprise.

The thing I’m struggling with the most at the moment is the complete lack of anonymity. It is literally impossible to do anything, or go anywhere, without attracting endless amounts of attention. I’m hoping that after a while people will get used to seeing me around, at least in the area where I live. You’d think the novelty would have worn off my now, it’s not as if I’m ever doing anything more exciting than walking or buying something from a shop!

And now for some cultural lessons learnt the hard way:

1. Never peel a mango. Just bite it and eat it like an apple. Yes, that’s right, skin and all.
2. When asked by a local colleague what you normally eat with custard, banana is not the right answer. This receives a response similar to when you try and peel a mango. Not good.
3. Be very specific when asking what ingredients certain foods contain. For example, if you are given a bean cake to eat and you ask if it is vegetarian and the answer is yes, follow this up with a question about what it has in it. Otherwise you’ll find yourself in a situation where you start to eat the bean cake, then ask what the ingredients are, and hear the word fish. You then have no choice but to carry on eating and smiling politely when all you really want to do is wash your mouth out with nail varnish.
4. Walking to work in flipflops in torrential mud and rain doesn’t create a particularly attractive look on very white legs and a cream skirt.
5. When asked by a colleague if you believe in mermaids, think very carefully before replying.
6. When being told that cats whiskers are poisonous and they kill you if they come into contact with you, once again think very carefully before responding.

And finally, the prize for the week’s most interesting transport journey goes to….

The taxi driver who picked me up and then did an emergency stop at the side of the dual carriageway in rush hour traffic because another car on the side of the road was on fire. He shouted at me to throw him his fire extinguisher, and off he ran to save the day. Bless him, he got to the crowd of people stood around the flaming car, told them all to get out the way because he had it under control, got his fire extinguisher poised and ready and… it was empty. Poor guy, I really felt for him, he looked crestfallen. Thankfully someone else arrived soon after with a slightly more useful fire extinguisher. I think he’s now realised that when he uses the fire extinguisher it then needs to be refilled.

You TREKKED?

This is a question I get asked on a daily basis. I am a constant source of amusement to the people living in the same area as me. They cannot understand that I like walking from My Squat to the main road where I catch public transport. It’s not far, if I’m walking quickly it only takes me 25 minutes. But even though they see me doing this at least twice a day, they still look just as horrified every time they see me. I went out quite a few evenings last week, and on Thursday my ‘trekking’ proved too much for one poor lady to comprehend. She saw me walk back to my compound after work, then 10 minutes later she saw me walking back past her again when I was leaving to go out:

“Bakara (white person), where you dey go, you trekking AGAIN?”
“Yes”
“But you just trekked?”
“Yes”
“If you dey go again, you trek 4 times today”
“Yes”
“Ah Bakara, no….”

At this point she started pushing her half eaten dinner towards me and tried to get me to eat it. She seemed to think I wouldn’t make it back up the hill otherwise. I don’t like to think about how they’re going to react when I start running again. I’ve avoided it until now, because I wanted to get used to the heat and the area I live in. Just walking attracts enough attention; running might be too much for them to cope with.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, so I haven’t had much time to update my blog. But to summarise, some more highlights:

• Working on an orphans and vulnerable children project at work, which meant I have been able to spend several afternoons holding babies and playing children’s games. My ideal job.
• Finding another supermarket. The best thing about this supermarket is it’s clean, it has air conditioning, and most importantly, the stock doesn’t seem to be 20 years out of date. It’s the only supermarket I’ve been to here where I didn’t feel like I was disturbing some sort of museum exhibition when I took something off the shelves.
• Going to the two monkey sanctuaries in Calabar. I want a monkey. Although as these sanctuaries were populated with monkeys that had been rescued from being ‘pets’ (and I use the term lightly), I think that’s probably out of the question, and I might just need to stick to becoming their most regular visitor.
• Finding a real bakery. That sells real bread. With salt in it, not sugar. I might survive the year after all.
• Mango season arriving in Calabar. It’s quite impressive how many mangoes I can get through in one day.
• Finding a bar within walking distance of My Squat and another VSO’s house that serves cold beer at the cheapest price we’ve paid for beer since arriving in Calabar. We’ve found ourselves our local!
• Going to Freddy’s, a Lebanese restaurant (and the most expensive restaurant in Calabar) twice in one week. I can only afford the cheapest thing on the menu, the falafel wrap, but it still beats anything else I’ve eaten since being here.
• ‘Cooking’ my first meal since moving into My Squat. It was only beans on toast, but still, it’s progress. And it’s a step up from my staple daily diet of avocado, bread and tomato!

And some lowlights…

• The insect bites I got from the monkey sanctuary. I didn’t think it was possible for me to look any worse than I did already, what with the constant sweating, frizzy hair, lack of makeup and all the bites I already had from my bedbugs. I was wrong.
• The light switch breaking in my room. In the ‘on’ position. I can’t reach the lights to take out the bulbs. And in the days that followed this happening last week we had more electricity than in the whole time I’d been in Calabar (although having had none for 5 days now I feel bad for complaining about this!) “The electrician is coming” apparently, or so I’m told whenever I ask about his whereabouts. It’s already been nearly a week so he must be coming from a very long way away.
• The most irritating taxi driver in the world. I shouted out where I was going. He stopped, which is the cue for me to get in. I stupidly wasn’t paying attention, and when I looked up I realised nothing looked familiar. I asked where we were, and it turns out he wasn’t going where I wanted to go after all. So why did he stop and pick me up? Because he liked driving a Bakara in his car. Great. I was then further away from home than I had been in the first place. But being a kind person, he didn’t make me pay for the diversion.
• Going to one of the local primary schools to run a session on personal hygiene and seeing some of the classrooms. The ceilings were half caved in. It’s dangerous enough at the moment, but I can’t even think about what it’s going to be like when the rainy season starts.

And finally, The Sweat Index. I mark my journeys to work in the morning on the following scale:

1 – Lift with my Lovely Neighbour Number 1 in his lovely air-conditioned car. No sweat.
2 – Lift with my Lovely Neighbour Number 2 in his lovely car – but no air-conditioning. Slight sweat.
3 – No lifts, so start walking up the hill but then get offered a lift by someone who stops me on the way. Mid sweat.
4 – No lifts so walk up the hill and catch a public taxi. Muchos sweat.
5 – No lifts so walk up the hill and no public taxis going in my direction so have to get a public bus. Same cost as a shared taxi but a step up the Sweat Index as it’s much more cramped and crowded. Sweat galore.

4 days out of 5 I arrive at work with a rating of 4 or 5 on the Sweat Index. This wouldn’t be such an issue if my colleagues didn’t always look so immaculate and fresh faced, meaning I constantly feel like some sort of swamp monster.

Rats, rotten mattresses and no water

Anyone who knows me knows I am not so good at coping with ‘nature’. Camping would never be my holiday of choice. Bugs, rodents and any other creepy crawlies are things I just cannot deal with. Nearly seven weeks in and I can just about handle the cockroach situation in My Squat by spraying Raid morning and night, and then just sweeping up any dead ones when I see them. But anything that’s alive and I turn into a screeching wreck. So when I woke up in the middle of the night on Saturday and went to the bathroom, opened my kitchen door to get the bucket to flush the toilet (the water was off) and a rat jumped out of my kitchen bin, ran over my bare foot, and went behind my bed, I didn’t cope with it particularly well. I thought about calling my mum, but realised there was perhaps little she could do to help me in that situation. So I got my hiking boots out of my wardrobe, got the broom and stood on top of my toilet. For two hours. There was no electricity, so I couldn’t even turn a light on, which would have at least made me slightly less terrified of the giant rat residing behind my bed. When I realised I couldn’t actually spend the entire night stood shaking on my toilet, I jumped onto my bed and cocooned myself in my mosquito net so Ratty couldn’t get me, and sat there until daylight when I was brave enough to turn My Squat upside down looking for him. I never found him. But I also never saw/heard him leave, so now I refuse to walk around My Squat without my broom and my hiking boots. Combine this with 4 (and now 5) days without electricity and water, a dodgy stomach and a mattress full of bedbugs, rain sodden, and smelling like a wet dog (there was a torrential downpour the other day and I left my window open, so it rained in on my bed), I was less than impressed with life for most of Sunday. On the plus side, on Saturday I spent half my weekly allowance on packet macaroni cheese and wine gums, so whilst I was unwashed, thirsty and rat traumatised, I at least had some rubbish to eat to console me!

I have now bought a sticky Rat Mat, which apparently I just put down in my kitchen with some food on it, and poor unsuspecting Ratty will fall victim to it. The prospect of disposing of an alive rat whose limbs are stuck to a mat doesn’t fill me with much joy, so I’ll only be leaving that down when I go to work in the morning, so I can then beg someone from my compound to do the honours for me when I get back after work. If Ratty falls for it that is. If not, it looks like I’ve got myself a housemate for the year.

My heart will go on and on...

Celine Dion has become the theme music to my life here in Nigeria. It’s like living in some sort of bizarre cheesy TV sitcom. She seems to be following me everywhere I go. As well as continuing to wake me up each morning, she also accompanied me as I lay by a pool and sunbathed, and in one of my taxis to work. But with the exception of good old Celine, I do seem to have found a country that shares my taste in truly cheesy music. Round every corner is another Power Ballads classic just waiting to brighten my day (Kate you’d hate it!)

I managed to wholeheartedly humiliate myself at the end of our team meeting at work the other day. They start and finish all meetings here with opening and closing prayers. At the end of the meeting, my boss asked me to lead the group in the closing prayer. I tried to ask if I could maybe just observe a few more meetings, because it’s not a practice we follow at home, and so I wouldn’t really know what they normally say. But that didn’t work. So after thanking God for bringing everyone together for a successful meeting, my brain went completely blank. In hindsight I should have just called it a day and said Amen then. But no. My boss had just been on a 2-day conference in Abuja, and had brought everyone some chocolates back. This was the first chocolate I’d eaten since arriving in Nigeria 4 weeks before. I love chocolate. Because I was meant to be praying, my eyes were cast down onto the table in front of me, and what did they see? The chocolate. So what were my next words in my attempt at a closing prayer? “And thank you God for bringing us back this lovely chocolate from Abuja, I love chocolate God, thank you. Amen.” To which there was then nothing but silence, until my boss finally said, “Samantha, did you just thank God for chocolate?” I don’t think she’ll be asking me to do a closing prayer again for a while.

I seem to have unknowingly acquired a curfew at My Squat. I got back the other night at about 10.30pm. Not what I would consider to be a particularly late night. Almost as soon as I got back there was a knock on my door, but I was in the shower so couldn’t answer it. The next morning, the security guy came knocking on my door again at 7am: “You were back late last night, what happened?” I explained that nothing had ‘happened,’ I’d come back at the time I was expecting to come back. “Oh. Well that’s late. Will you be late tonight?” I said I wasn’t sure yet, but I would let him know. My boss then came round for something else, and he must have mentioned to her that I was “back late last night” because when she came to my room she asked why I was out so late the night before, and if I was wanting to get pregnant in Nigeria. I’m still not entirely convinced that there’s a direct link between my coming back late and getting pregnant! Now whenever I go anywhere, even just for a walk, I get about 5 different people from my compound asking me where I’m going, whether I know how to get there, and when I will be back. I have a sneaky suspicion that my boss may have set them all the task of keeping an eye on me. If 10.30pm is considered a late night, this could be a long year!

In an attempt to try and even out the t-shirt tans, we found a lovely swimming pool to collapse by the other day. At 1,000 Naira per time though (which is the equivalent of my daily living allowance) it’s probably not going to be a frequent occurrence!

Some other highlights of the past few days. Going to the Calabar Museum. Seeing the Presidential Rally held at Calabar Stadium. Finding Bar Munch, a really nice beer garden. My lovely neighbour taking me to work in the mornings in his lovely air-conditioned car. Finally getting my mosquito net hung up. Yes, I’m a weirdo and love nothing more than sleeping under a mosquito net. Don’t ask me why. Possibly because it provides an extra layer of protection between me and any cockroaches. Finding a supermarket that sells Dairy Milk and wine.

Some not so good bits. Finding unidentifiable tiny creatures crawling on my skin, which seem to be the culprits of the bites that are covering my hands, legs and feet, and I think might be living in my mattress. Going to a meeting that was meant to start at 1pm but didn’t start until 3.40pm and then spending the first hour doing introductions and going through the minutes from the last meeting. Bring back Scrutiny Panel meetings (I never thought I’d hear myself say that!). Finding out that hand washing bed linen in a bucket really isn’t very much fun. At all. Sitting in a taxi on the way to work and being convinced I could smell petrol. I said to the driver I could smell fuel, but he didn’t take much notice. 10 minutes on he pulled over, looked in the boot, and sure enough the 20 litre jerry can full of petrol he had been carrying had leaked all in the boot.

I realise my blog posts aren’t really making much mention of work. At the moment I’m spending a lot of time just observing and attending all of the activities and projects the charity undertakes, so that I can make sure I understand the way they work as much as possible. But a blog posting on work will follow!

I dey okay...

So, nearly one month in. I now have somewhere to live, which is a big relief. From hereon I will affectionately refer to it as My Squat. The initial accommodation I was meant to be living in didn’t work out (long story!) and so after 10 days staying with another VSO in Calabar (who is possibly the most patient person I have ever met for putting up with me and all my bags for that long) I moved into My Squat on Saturday. Photos will follow as soon as I find an internet connection fast enough to upload them.

I thought I would share the joy of my morning routine. I wake up in My Squat to the sound of Celine Dion’s greatest hits. I think my neighbour must have only just discovered her, and so is taking full advantage of listening to the same CD at any given opportunity. And this CD isn’t just played at normal volume. It’s set to ‘Nigerian Loud’. Take the loudest setting of any music system at home and triple it. I should probably also mention that this isn’t just her normal greatest hits either; this is the techno trance version. And this is at 6am. I am either going to have to buy him (yes, it’s a him) another CD, or somehow subtly suggest that if he wants to be able to hear by the time he reaches the age of 40, he should probably consider listening to it on a quieter volume.

So I get up. I don’t actually need to be up that early, but sleep isn’t an option. I boil water for a cup of tea on my camp gas stove in my little tin kettle (I have always wanted a proper old style kettle, and now I have one!) and try and assess the water situation. If the water is off, I fill a bucket from the store of water I keep for such situations, and have a bucket shower, which is actually more effective than using the normal shower, for reasons about to be explained. If the water is on, I attempt my new ‘Shower Routine’. My Squat has a stand up shower, which seems to be unusual here. The taps for the shower are about 20 cm from the floor, and the showerhead is at normal height. Because the water pressure is so bad (and for obvious electrical reasons, power showers do not exist) the water cannot get from the taps UP the shower hose to the showerhead. The only way water comes out of the showerhead is if it is held at the same height as the taps. So, to have a shower, I need to curl up on the floor of the shower cubicle. It’s a whole new washing experience, and involves some pretty nifty yoga moves to try and get myself to fit into the base of the shower cubicle, and try and wash at the same time.

I try and leave by about 7.15am. I don’t need to start work until 8.30am, but it’s a 25 minute walk from My Squat to the main road where I catch public transport to work, and if I leave any later than that it is too humid to try and walk that far, unless I want to arrive at work sporting the ‘wet look’. Public transport deserves a mention. There are no motorbike taxis allowed in Calabar, and so the only way to get around is by shared taxi or shared minibus. One journey costs 50 Naira (there are 250 Naira to the pound). You stand on a road somewhere, wherever you want to get picked up from, and whenever a shared taxi or bus drives past, you shout out the place you want to get to. I work by an area called Bogobiri, in the centre of town, and for some reason, me saying that word in an English accent sends every single taxi and bus driver into a fit of hysterics. So trying to get a taxi takes some time and patience. And whilst all this is going on, I am trying to work out that the cars I am flagging down are actually taxis, because I realised for the first week I was just getting into random mens cars, and then not being able to work out why they wouldn’t accept my taxi fare. But now I know that the taxis need to have red number plates on the front AND the back, so I won’t be making that mistake again! Once I manage to find a taxi or bus that doesn’t just drive off after listening to my accent, in I get. Taxis tend to seat 4 or 5 people in the back (yes, this is just a normal sized car) and 3 people in the front. So I arrive at the junction I jump out at covered in not only my own sweat, but that of my fellow passengers as well.

And then I walk a short distance to work, and find it difficult to believe that all that has happened and it is only 8am. Work is going well, it’s much busier than I expected it would be to start off with, which I’m very grateful for. Having worked in a political environment for the past 5 years, I was looking forward to starting work here and focusing on a different subject area. So it made it me laugh when on my first day at work I found out that one of the main projects the charity is currently working on is a Voters Education project. Its focus is on mobilising the community and raising their awareness of the electoral process and their right to vote in the run up to Nigeria’s forthcoming elections (scheduled for April). So more politics for me! It’s been really interesting observing the workshops that the charity are running, and hearing about some of the challenges they face here.

Calabar is great and there’s plenty to see and do. And last night we even celebrated Shrove Tuesday, although making pancakes on a gas stove, with the opposite of a non-stick frying pan, was slightly more of a challenge than it is at home! I’m gradually starting to find my way round the city and so I don’t feel completely lost all of the time now, and my Pidgin English is slowly improving. So all in all, I dey okay.