Saturday, December 10, 2011

A Long Overdue Farewell


I actually left Nigeria over a month ago now, but in order to surprise a friend at her hen night, I decided not to post anything about it. And then, the hurtling pace of life in the UK just kind of took over and I forgot that I had unfinished business on this blog.

I’m sad to have left. Every now and again I feel a sudden and real wave of sadness at everything that I no longer have in my life. The people: my friends, who will always be friends but whom I know I won’t see again for many years; those beautiful, beautiful children who are now gradually forgetting who I am; the people on the street who were so friendly and full of laughter and who would hand me their babies or chat to me about their lives. The general joy of life: the sun and the warmth; the laughter, everywhere and always laughter; the pleasure I was able to take in everyday tasks at an African pace of life. The calm, and the space and the time to really live life.

And it’s not just those big thing I miss – it’s also the little things. Like the food, and the fact that there are toothpicks with every meal, and taking okadas. And having a fairly limited choice of what to buy or cook or eat – it’s overwhelming to have so much variety!

And then there are the things that I don’t exactly miss, but I’m finding it weird to be without. For instance, I still find it strange that I can have the window open at dusk and not worry about mosquitoes. Or that I don’t have to worry about my laptop’s battery running out of charge. And I wonder how long it’s going to take me to see a twig or shoelace on the pavement and not have my immediate thought be ‘snake!’. I’m having to remember what it’s like to live in the UK – what constitutes a meal, how to move in a busy London commuter crowd, how to work a washing machine!

For the first couple of weeks, I really didn’t want to be back here (although it was amazing to see my friends and family again, to eat mushrooms and to marvel at just how wondrous a thing the NHS is). Now, a month later, I can’t say that I’m wholeheartedly excited about being back here, but I’m getting used to it. Which, I suppose, is how it felt when I first got to Nigeria, so I’m hoping with time I’ll fall back in love with my own country. The trouble is, part of me thinks that it might actually be the case that I’ve been shown a way of life which is ultimately better, closer to the fundamentals of life, and that it might be impossible to ever feel comfortable in any other world.

Nevertheless, I remain hopeful that Nigeria has worked its way into my system, under my skin, and that I will take something from that experience into the rest of my life. I think it has probably changed me in ways that I can’t even see at the moment. Not the dramatic “I’m going to go and live in a hut for the rest of my years” sort of change, but a deeper, more subtle shift of how I view the world and live my life within it. And for that I will be eternally grateful.

So farewell, Nigeria; I can’t thank you enough. Sai watarana.

(PS This will be my final post on this blog – thank you for listening, and goodnight. If you are so inclined, you can follow me on Twitter @jennyfawson)

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Things I will miss about Nigeria, Part II

  • Warm weather all the time (well, more or less). That hug of heat whenever you walk outside; not needing to 'get ready' to go out - just walking out of the door in a t-shirt; living space that is partly outside.
  • Bougainvillea. Beautiful magenta flowers on long, lolling arms falling over walls at the side of the road.
  • Joy. As far as I remember, there's not much joy in the UK. In Nigeria, there's joy everywhere. Laughter in every situation, even when - in fact, especially when - something has gone wrong.
  • Friendly, smiley, chatty people everywhere. Just chatting to someone on the bus, or on your way down the street. Feeling genuinely welcome.
  • Barbecued fish covered in chilli and served with soggy chips.
  • The lovely Sea Breeze bar - a serious contender for the best local in the world.
  • Shawarma (kebab type thing), suya (grilled meat), fried plaintain, and kosai (little fried bean cakes).
  • The best work-life balance I'm ever likely to experience. The experience of living, rather than just surviving (which, ironically, coincides with the time of my life when my living conditions have been closer to survival than in the UK). Having time and headspace to think, to create, to just be.
  • And, it goes without saying, the many wonderful people I have worked with, spent time with, drunk with, laughed with, played with, watched grow up, and generally grown to love. 

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Compassion

There are situations in life which test our ability to be the people we want to be. Over the past few weeks, I have been facing a situation like this at work - a situation which makes me angry, upset, and despairing for the validity of all the work I have done here over the last 16 months.


Now, in a work setting, I am an extremely professional person: I pride myself on behaving rationally, without prejudice or emotion and with fairness and consistency. Meetings and workplace clashes in recent weeks have tested this ability, but, nonetheless, I think I've managed to remain calm, I've focused on achieving the desired outcome and I've sidestepped the temptation (in fact, in many cases, the explicit invitation) to get bogged down in personal disputes and blame games.


But that's not the test I'm talking about. Let me explain. Yes, in a professional sense, I have been tested and, I think, I have passed. But the greater test is my human response to all of this. I can succeed at making it through a highly tense and aggressive 4 hour meeting without losing my patience, but just because I have managed to suppress my emotional reactions to the things which are taking place, doesn't mean they don't exist: the anger, the upset, the disappointment, even - I can't decide whether this is too strong a word - the hatred which have bubbled up inside me, have to go somewhere. And, what I've realised these past few weeks, is that they do go somewhere - if I push all of those emotions deep down inside of me, that's where they stay (I suppose it's not rocket science). And that's not healthy. What am I supposed to do with that? As I walk out of a successful meeting, how do I deal with the knot of negativity in my stomach? Surely the answer to remaining professional isn't that I go home at the end of the day to weep and yell at my husband?! No, it can't be. Surely the real answer is not to feel these things in the first place, but instead to be able to look at things from the other person's perspective, understand them, forgive them - be compassionate. That's the person I want to be, and that's the person I'm struggling to be.


I've recently discovered the Dalai Lama. I don't mean I've found him hiding in a cave in Northern Nigeria - I mean I've come to realise (through the magic of Twitter, incidentally - @DalaiLama) that he has some hugely valid things to say and advice to offer about how I could better live my life. It's not a religious thing (I naturally resist belonging to any such institution, and my lack of belief in anything supernatural, including reincarnation, will, I think, preclude me from ever claiming to be a Buddhist), but more of a someone-talking-sense thing. Like Obama, or Eddie Izzard, or Jamie Oliver, or Bob Geldof, or my old boss: when people talk sense, when they say things that resonate with you, that seem to answer questions you've been holding onto, you naturally start listening and turning to them for guidance.


Anyway, the point is, his main message is one of compassion - he teaches that we should rid ourselves of the negative and destructive emotions of anger and hatred, and instead, practice empathy and compassion. Now that's all very well, but what about justice? What about fairness? What about when others are hurting you or those around you? How do you prevent yourself from just becoming a doormat who doesn't stand up for anything? Surely anger - a sense of outrage at injustice - has been a powerful driving force for change in all of human history. If I just love and understand people who are doing harm, what motivates me to do anything about it?


I know there must be a middle ground. I know it's not an either/or situation. I know I should be able to gain some inner calm by empathising and showing compassion for others, while still taking a stand where necessary to prevent harm being done. But I'm not that person yet. Right now, I'm a very angry person, hurt and upset by the injustice and the futility of my efforts in the face of those who are destroying or blocking them, and unable to take any positive action about it without a side order of negativity.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The things I'm going to miss about Nigeria, Part I

As well as making sure I remember that there are things I love about the UK, I also want to make sure that I don't forget or leave behind in Nigeria everything which has been wonderful about my experience here. No list for now, just a little story.


The other day I was being driven home in one of the funder's vehicles. It was a driver I didn't know very well so when it came out in conversation that I don't drive, even at home, he was shocked (as are most people here). "Well why don't you learn here?". As I have many times before, I geared myself up to explain why that wouldn't really work, and, as always, worried about how I could do so without saying "Because you guys drive like crazy people". 


"Well," I said, as we turned off the main road, "some things about driving in Nigeria are very different from driving in the UK. You see how you just flashed your lights at the oncoming traffic to tell them that you were going to turn and they should stop? Well, in the UK, that would mean that you're allowing them to come through and you'll wait to turn. You see? If I learnt to drive Nigerian style, when I go home I could have some serious accidents." He concurred. "And you know how Nigerian drivers use the horn all the time to let people know you're coming through, or.. well, for any reason at all really? Well, at home we only really use the horn when someone's done something wrong." He nodded. Finally, cautiously so that it wouldn't sound judgemental, I ventured, "And, you know, Nigerians drive more by instinct, whereas British roads are a little more...regemented." He seemed satisfied with my answer.


As I walked across the courtyard to my front door, that phrase repeated in my mind, and it occurred to me that it encapsulates what has been so beautiful about living here: Nigerian's live more by instinct, whereas in Britiain, we're more regemented. I hope I can learn to live with fewer rules.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Food and other things I'm looking forward to (but mainly food)

I think that when I end my placement and return to the UK in December, I'm going to have mixed feelings about it. There will be moments when I am overjoyed by having all the things I have missed all these months, but a huge part of me will miss Nigeria enormously and will be overwhelmed with the idea of growing up and getting a job, house etc. So I've decided it would be a good idea to make a record of all the things I miss out here, so that I can look back and remember why I'm choosing to live in the UK. So here goes...

  • Friends and family, obviously - that goes without saying
  • Nice, bouncy mattresses, duvets and proper pillows that aren't as hard as stone
  • Journeys which don't make me doubt whether I'm going to be alive when I reach my destination
  • Rain which doesn't bring everything to a halt
  • Cheese, in its many varieties
  • MUSHROOMS!! And while we're on food...
  • Celeriac, fennel, BROCCOLI!!, dark green leafy vegetables, spinach that tastes right, proper yoghurt, cottage cheese, squash, dark chocolate, prawns, sandwiches, wholegrain bread, bacon, cured meats (ah prosciutto, chorizo, salami - even a pepperami would do), lovely big juicy garlic cloves, low fat spread that's real enough to need refrigerating, cheap apples, plums, orange oranges, pears, liquid milk (skimmed milk!)
  • A reliable electricity supply
  • The miracle of drinkable tap water
  • Washing up in warm water, and, more significantly, water that doesn't smell of sewage
  • Leaving doors and windows open without worrying about mosquitoes
  • The NHS
  • Landline telephones
  • Weekend papers - an actual real, paper version to hold, and smell and read
  • Debit cards
  • Health and safety laws (yes - think on, those people who feel they have got out of hand in the UK: you should try living without any at all - it's exhausting)
  • Feeling really, properly, bitterly cold

Well, that's all I can think of for now. And, if I'm honest, I was trying to make the list longer so that it will be more of a comfort to me when I leave. But if it was a list of things I'm really struggling without, on a good day I think I could relatively easily whittle that lot down to just three: 1. Friends and family, 2. the NHS and 3. Mushrooms (who knew?!). 

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Choices, Matthew. Choices.

As the end of my VSO placement hurtles towards me, I am more than a little daunted by the life choices which are staring me in the face.

The thing-that-was-in-between-me-and-being-a-grown-up-getting-on-with-the-rest-of-my-life, will soon be behind me, leaving me, supposedly, being a grown up and with both feet in the-rest-of-my-life.

The facts that we gave up our rented flat, gave away many of our belongings and don’t have jobs to go back to, don’t scare me. In fact, I loved the process of shedding the unnecessary baggage in our lives and I love the feeling of freedom in not being tied to any one particular option when we go back. But actually, now that I’ve come to think about what the next step should be, I’m overwhelmed by choice. It’s not natural. People generally end up living somewhere because that’s where their job or partner’s job takes them: they don’t sit staring at a map of the country (or even the world), wondering where they’d like to live.

Perhaps I’m just not imaginative enough. Perhaps I’m lacking The Dream which other people have to drive them on (or to bemoan as their lives take a different, parallel route). I genuinely don’t know where I want to go, or what I want from life. Where do I want to be in a few years’ time? Strutting, high-heeled, through Manhattan on my way to work, coffee in hand and cocktails to look forward to after work? Yes please. Making soup from my home-grown vegetables, pinny on and two rosy-cheeked toddlers at my feet? Sounds good. Drinking wine in an East London flat, stacks of paperbacks for furniture and several art galleries within walking distance? Why not?!

I can see myself in all of these scenarios and more, and I can imagine myself happy in them. Although, I can also imagine, in any one of those tableaux, a niggling thought: what would like have been like if…? I’m starting to see that this the-grass-is-always-greener tendency can be toxic: it either means you never allow yourself to be fully happy with the choices you’ve made, or you’re paralysed into stasis because you don’t want to take any path at the expense of closing off the roads not taken. But it’s not easy to snap out of it. Having so much control over what I do next (or try to do next) feels like a lot of responsibility.

Coda

As a result of having recently read Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman, and a number of articles about women’s life choices popping up as a response to a recent UNICEF report, my mind is in a feminist space at the moment: please bear with me. I’m wondering whether the quandaries above have anything to do with gender. This constant debate about ‘Can women have it all?’, which rears its head in films, sitcoms, newspapers, celebrity magazines – is it really only a question which women have to ask themselves? What about men – do they find themselves with their boxers in a twist about which direction to take their life in? Sure, there’s the unavoidable fact that having a baby (if you’re going down the biological route) is more restrictive for the woman – for a start, I believe it’s pretty difficult to pick your keys up off the floor when you’re 8 months pregnant. But few careers would collapse as a result of having to take the few weeks off necessary to give birth and recover enough to be able to go back to the office. So, that process aside – why should these life choices be any different for men than women? Are men (or actually anyone other than me) angsting over whether they want to go for the cottage in the country or the swish city pad, the high-powered stay-late-in-the-office job or the part-time child-friendly option?

Perhaps, really, it comes to down to an ability in men to focus, single-mindedly on a particular goal, a particular kind of life; perhaps there’s something inherently female about weighing up the pros and cons of our choices endlessly, and worrying ceaselessly about how our choices will affect others. Maybe I just need to man up and get on with it.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Sallah In Sokoto


A couple of weeks ago, we were invited to travel with some Nigerian friends to Sokoto and celebrate Sallah (the end of Ramadan festival) with their family.

On Monday morning, they came to pick us up and, having crammed our bags in the boot with theirs, along with the food and gifts they were taking and our offering of a bag of yams and some cloth, we crammed ourselves into the car: Mahmoud (my colleague’s husband) in the driver’s seat, Simon in the passenger seat, and the back seat: Hadiza (my colleague); Hauwa (her sister); me; and three children ranging from 1 to 10 years old. It was a surprisingly comfortable, 6 hour journey (most of which was spent with a sleeping child on my lap) to the far north of Nigeria, which is hot and dusty and can see temperatures of up to 50 degrees!

We were warmly (no pun intended) welcomed into the family home and shown to the guest room where we would be staying. Over the 5 days we were there, we were treated as warmly as family, but as generously as honoured guests: really very humbling and lovely. The visiting culture here is quite different from that in the UK. At home, the burden is perceived as being with the host – the visitors make sure they arrive at a convenient time, having announced their intention to visit (or, actually, more usually with an appointment) and make sure that they bring a gift to repay the hospitality they receive. Here, however, the hosts are honoured to received guests and are expected always to provide some manner of refreshments for their visitors, who can – and usually do – turn up unannounced.

Visiting others is a duty, particularly around festivals like Sallah. On our penultimate day in Sokoto, we accompanied Hadiza and other family members on a round of Sallah visits to friends and relatives. We drove from house to house, took our shoes off, sat down in living rooms, were presented with soft drinks and bowls of chin chin (deep fried dough snack) or slices of cake and left after brief greetings – the longest we spent in any one house can’t have been more than 15 minutes, the shortest was around 2 minutes. It seems that the visits aren’t really about having a catch-up or conversation (or even the pretence of this, as might be the case at home), but just about having shown someone the honour of paying a visit.

Of course, on the day we travelled – the day before Sallah – the family were still fasting. (We attempted some sort of camaraderie in that we tried not to eat and drink after our large, late breakfast, but after several hours, simply couldn’t go without water any more!) At 7pm, we joined them in breaking their fast – sitting on the floor in Hadiza and Mahmoud’s room, eating with the women and children (the men seem to eat separately, although Simon as a foreign man seemed to always be with us). The food was good: tamarind gruel (nicer than it sounds!), kosai (deep fried bean cakes = food of the gods), chips and omelette, all washed down with coke on ice. But being invited to be a part of that family scene was really special.

That night, we were told that the moon had been sighted in Saudi Arabia (the sign that Ramadan has come to an end), so the following day would be Sallah. The next morning, we were taken by a couple of friends of the family to watch the tail end of the Durbar. The town was busy, festive, strung with bunting. Crowds of beautifully dressed men, women and children gathered on the streets, maintaining at least 3 or 4 feet between the front row and the barking police dogs on leashes. Whole families rode motorbikes, with the youngest perched at the front with plastic sunglasses and big, proud smiles. Small horses and gargantuan camels strode through the streets, covered in tassles and sparkly things.  The great and the good sat up on the canopied seating in the Sultan’s palace, and the media crowded round as he gave a speech. We would meet the Sultan face to face later in the week.

The day of Sallah is marked by dressing up in your finery (everyone – even the children who are usually seen begging in rags), cooking and eating a feast with your family and going round to visit other people. In this household – and, I assume in most – the men got up early and went out to pray at the mosque. The women didn’t take their bath or get dressed up in their festive outfits: they got down to the dirty work of cooking while still in their nighties or t-shirts and wrappers. As a guest – and, more significantly, a wussy western woman who doesn’t know how to cook Nigerian food and can’t heft a big pot full of rice – it was difficult for me to help, but they involved me, nonetheless. We were behind schedule (for no other reason than this is Africa, as far as I could see), so it was after what should have been lunchtime when we took the par-boiled rice and other ingredients outside to make a fire on which to cook our fried rice. Surprisingly (to me, anyway), being with all the women, who were doing all of the work, was a LOT of fun. As the men looked on, hungrier and hungrier, unable to do anything but wait until the feast was prepared, the women laughed, and joked, and danced, making amused remarks all the time about how it was riling the men to see the women enjoying themselves when their food was late. Babies were passed round, wood was added to the fire as we tutted about how poor quality it was and how it was taking ages to really heat up, songs were played on mobile phones that sparked reminiscing about when they were first heard. Lots of fun. And when it was all cooked (who knew that making Nigerian fried rice was such a complicated and long process?), and we had tipped it into a huge thermos box to be taken back into the house, Hadiza, Simon and I sat by the dwindling fire, scraping out the bits of rice stuck to the bottom of the pot and eating them with our fingers.

On the Wednesday, we went for a picnic by the river. The women had prepared some delicious snacks – yam balls, ‘stick meat’ (i.e. kebabs), cabbage rolls (steamed cabbage leaves filled with spicy meat – a bit like ready-assembled yuk sung), prawn crackers, crème caramel and a cake – and we sat down on mats by the water to eat. There were some men with camels, riding up and down the path next to us, transporting goods to or from the market or the farm, and one of our party decided to ask one of the men to stop and let her have a ride on the camel. Everybody wanted a go, but several people were really quite scared of it: every time it lifted it’s back legs to stand up, tipping the rider forward in the seat until it lifted its front legs too, there was a communal scream followed by laughter. I decided not to go anywhere near it, preferring to stand and the back of the crowd with two terrified children. I kept explaining to the 6 year old that it was ok, nothing was going to happen, no-one was going to fall off and then, obviously, someone fell off. And in spectacular fashion – instead of holding on when the camel came to kneel to let them off, the woman riding at the front of the seat just let go, and toppled over its head, face-down onto the ground, swiftly followed by the woman who was riding behind her, who landed squarely on top of her. No-one was seriously hurt and, as is the way with Nigerians, everyone found the whole thing hysterically funny, including the victims. (Although the 6 year old was decidedly perturbed by the whole thing, and the one year old was clinging onto me for dear life!)

On our penultimate day, a friend of the family, who is related to the Sultan, arranged for us to go and visit the Sultan in his palace. This was a big deal: the Sultan presides over all of the Emirs in Northern Nigeria. He is, I guess, the most powerful man in Northern Nigeria and has paid state visits to Prince Charles etc. Upon entering the grounds of the palace (which is quite a modern, not very grand building), I noticed that I was the only woman apart from one hawker who was trying to sell slippers or something. There were hundreds of men, just hanging around – some waiting to see the Sultan, but mainly just those who hang around to show their respect to him. We were shown into a private waiting room, where one of the Sultan’s staff spoke only to Simon, including to ask what I did: we weren’t in Kansas any more.

I was really surprised, then, to find that when we were eventually ushered into the Sultan’s room (where he sat on a throne, with three aides to his right), he actually spoke to me. We took off our shoes and went to kneel before him: he held out his hand, so Simon went to shake it before kneeling (I knew better than to try this myself). Having greeted us in Hausa, he went on to ask us a question we didn’t understand, and so switched to very good English (most Emirs and Sultans are educated in the West) and proceeded to have a conversation with both of us about VSO, how it was funded and who we were working with. The meeting can only have lasted a maximum of 5 minutes, but we were told by Mahmoud and his friend who had accompanied us that it’s highly unusual for the Sultan to say anything at all during those meetings: usually people just go in, kneel before him, and then eventually say their goodbyes and leave!

These few adventures aside, the week was mainly spent eating, watching TV, playing with children and being just one of the family. A fantastic few days of being made to feel incredibly welcome in someone else’s home, family and culture, for which I am very grateful.