Fear, Part II

(NB: This was written on Friday 24th September, but until now I haven't had sufficient internet connection to post it.)

On Monday of this week, I lay awake for most of the night because I was convinced there was a rat in my bedroom. As it turned out, it was just two huge cockroaches, making an unusually large amount of noise.

On Wednesday I had my phone stolen from my desk at work, and then, on the way home, got caught in a sudden and vicious rainstorm with winds so strong that my okada driver and I had to cower behind a car at the side of the road for several minutes, while the storm – and various large wind-borne objects – swirled around us. When I thought it had passed, we drove on, only to meet more rain on the way, at which point – since I was near to one of our offices – I stopped the bike and went in search of a dry seat and a cup of tea. No such luck – the office was all closed up for some reason, so I just had to wait until it was dry-ish and chance it. At home and having changed out of my wet clothes, I did the only thing you can do at the end of a day like that: ate Nutella from the jar with a big spoon.

And I wish I could say today had been better. But last night at around 9pm we received a phonecall from a colleague saying that there were rumours that there a group of Muslims were planning to strike out against Christians in Kaduna today and that we should stay indoors (the actual words used were "The Muslims have been urged to rise up and kill the Christians"). A few calls to and fro with VSO confirmed that the security services and the British Consulate had also heard that there was an attack planned and that we should stay at home for the day.

Natural worrier that I am, and since we live in an entirely Christian area of town, my mind went into overdrive. I was imagining all kinds of scenes from Half of  A Yellow Sun or various films I’d seen, and I was terrified. To be fair to myself, the scenes I was imagining were no worse than violence that has been seen in Nigeria as recently as March this year in Jos. I slept badly and have been on edge all day – making sure the gate to our compound was locked, jumping at every noise and generally being miserable.

As far as we can tell, nothing came of it. We heard that the rumours started because of an incident in an area out of town last night: the police shot two okada drivers and then, in retaliation, the police station was burnt down. Apparently a group of people were threatening to come into the city to cause trouble today; but they either didn’t or the security services intercepted them.

Talking to another volunteer based in Kwara state, she too a said that near them there were attacks last night and lots of sirens today. I hope this isn’t the beginning of a long and troubled lead-up to the election in January. I hope I manage to ‘master my fear’, as Iorek Byrnison would say. Because, if I’m honest, right now, I think I’d just like to go home, have 2.4 children and have the greatest danger I face be my overdraft.

It's not as Black and White as that

For those of you reading from the UK – or, I imagine, most of the white Western World – I’d like you to imagine that you are white and, walking down the street, you see a black person. Or perhaps a black person works for your organisation (not much of a stretch of the imagination for most of you, I wouldn’t have thought). Now imagine, walking up to that person in the street or at your workplace and saying ‘black man’ at him, or waving and shouting ‘blacky!’.

Exactly. It doesn’t bear thinking about. And, in most workplaces, it may well be a sackable offence.

So imagine my discomfort, surprise, perplexity when, on a more than daily basis, Nigerians shout ‘Baturia!’ or 'Oyibo!’ (respectively, Hausa and Igbo for ‘white person’) at me as I walk down the road. Or when people call ‘Whitey!’ or, on one occasion ‘Yellow!’ (?!) after me as they pass in their cars.

My first instinct, as my brain rapidly translates what’s going on, is an instinctive outrage. If anyone at home mentioned the colour of someone’s skin, unless it was absolutely relevant, I’d call them on it. I would expect a black person in the UK to be utterly offended if someone drove past them and shouted ‘Blacky’!

But out here, it is not an insult at all. Firstly, the fact is, that people have seen so few white people that sometimes they are genuinely shocked and a revelling in the rarity. Secondly, it’s actually – somewhat disgustingly – a mark of respect: maybe as a legacy of colonization, maybe as a result of how the developed-developing split in the world works, people here really look up to white people. And actually, when you translate ‘Baturia’, it actually means European, or something similar – it’s not a direct reference to the colour of my skin. It does make me wonder, though, how a black volunteer from the UK would be treated here; and how the VSO volunteers from Kenya or Uganda are treated by their Nigerian partner organisations.

The other day, as I was sitting in my boss’s office, one of my colleagues was explaining what another colleague of ours was doing. “She’s going to be coming in later.” Pause for effect. “With some White People.” Try as I might, I couldn’t hide the smile on my face, but I realised that what he was actually saying was that she was coming with some people who deserved our respect – they were foreign consultants and, he was assuming, more knowledgeable in their field than any of us.

Disgusting as it is to me, being called ‘white’ is a compliment here.

The Durbar in Kano

This weekend was a four day national holiday because of Eid, so lots of us volunteers travelled up to Kano - ancient city in the Muslim North of the country - for the durbar.

The durbar is a festival at which all of the local districts put on a display of men and horses, all dressed up in amazing outfits, some of them dancing and playing music. They parade around the town and then present themselves to the Emir at his palace. Apparently (so Simon’s told me – why have a husband and read the guide book yourself?), in days gone by, the Emir would call upon all of the local traditional leaders/chiefs to present all of their horses and all of their men so that he could see what resources were at his disposal before deciding to go to war.

It was amazing to see such a display of local culture. I have to say, though, it was a little bit scary. For a start, we were already a bit concerned about being a group of white people in a centre of Islam on the same day that an American was threatening to burn the Qur’an. When we arrived at the Emir's palace on Saturday, we were ushered through to take seats at the side of the arena (for no other reason than we were white, it seems - most Nigerians were waiting outside and watching through the railings, while those around us had either paid or been invited by someone important).

Since we were on time (very un-Nigerian), it was pretty empty for quite a while; then just before it started, the place filled up really rapidly - people sitting on the stairs, in the gangways, on the floor - and I suddenly realised that our nearest exit, should we need it, was a very long way away and almost impossible to get to should we want to leave in a hurry.

The durbar is pretty loud, with lots of drums banging, pipes playing and people shouting and screaming, so I was never sure whether there was something kicking off and the crowds were turning violent, or whether it was part of the performance. At one point there was a political rally outside the compound (a general election has been called for January and politics here can get quite nasty), which started a bit of a scuffle, but the police (heavily armed, supported by soldiers sitting on top of tanks) put a stop to it. Then halfway through the parade, there was suddenly an explosion in the centre of the courtyard which made many people scream; this was followed by 3 more explosions and then members of the Nigerian Red Cross running into the arena and carrying a lifeless body away. Now, since everything else continued without missing a beat, and since at the end of the performance there were lots more of those explosions in a more ordered fashion to round off the event, I assume that either it was meant to happen, or someone let off four of the bangs too soon. Nonetheless, I was more than a little shaky as we walked back along the main road – packed with people and horses, not to mention the motorbikes and other traffic which hadn't been diverted for the event.

On the second day, there was an event at Government House, and a colleague of one of the Kano volunteers managed, somehow, to get us 12 seats inside, in a room with a maximum of 200 people in it, four rows behind the Emir himself, and on seats that were marked ‘Diplomats’. Amazing. As people were filing in, the master of ceremonies explained in English, for the benefit of those of us who don’t speak Hausa (our lot, a group of German students here to learn Hausa (?!), the Spanish Ambassador and the EU Envoy to Nigeria), that over 100 years ago, the tradition began that the day after the main durbar event at the Emir’s palace, the Emir would visit the Governor of Kano at Government House to bring to him any issues which had arisen among his people and to hear what the Governor was doing about them.

Only 1 hour late, the Emir arrived amid a procession of horses, just as the day before. He himself sits high on a horse under a large parasol; his face is veiled, and there are 4 attendants around him, fanning flies away and clearing the crowds. He was carrying a staff and a ceremonial dagger, and he was wearing a truly extraordinary hat (like an oversized bowler hat, but red with decorations on it – like something you could imagine an amateur dramatics group making out of papier mache if they were doing a stage version of Paddington Bear). His attendants were also spectacularly dressed – the largest turbans in the whole parade and huge glittery robes, with very large shoulder padding, which they held out to shield the Emir at various points as he was sitting down.

Once he was sat in his white and lime green throne, all of the district heads then came in, each one prostrating himself on the red carpet in front of the Emir, before taking his seat. The Emir led everyone in prayer and then made his speech, and the Governor responded – all in a Hausa monotone, so not terribly interesting for us I have to say. An hour later, it was all finished: the District Heads left first (again, kneeling and bowing down to him before leaving), then the Emir. We went outside to the grounds to watch the procession of the same horsemen as the day before, but this time we were stood right at the side of their path and they were close enough to touch! The Emir passed right by us. And in fact, in order to leave, we had to walk along that same path, against the flow of horses (which are all understandably unhappy about wearing all of that finery, and not necessarily under the control of these men who don’t seem all that comfortable in the saddle) – another adventure outside of the Health & Safety box of the UK!

Barka da Sallah!

Today is the first day of a four-day weekend in Nigeria to mark Sallah – the feast to mark the end of Ramadan.

Yesterday, as the okada I was riding neared my workplace, we drove straight through a river of blood. I didn’t get chance to see where it was coming from, but the driver confirmed that it was coming from the animals they were slaughtering for the Sallah feast.

As I walked into the compound of our offices, I saw that my boss was already there (this was at 8.30 in the morning – I was technically 30 minutes late for work, but I have never seen him there before 9am), so I waved and walked over to him. It was only as I came close to him and the woman he was talking to that I noticed the activity to my right. On a raised concrete platform, there were about eight men hacking at bovine carcasses with hatchets, knives and other instruments; a short distance away, on a bright yellow plastic sheet spread out on the ground, another group of men sliced chunks of flesh, tore membranes from meat and washed and cleaned cow innards

My boss confirmed that shortly before I arrived they had slaughtered three cows in order to give some meat to every employee for the Sallah feast. I looked beyond the raised platform and saw another four men grappling with what looked like a live cow on its back; on closer inspection it turned out to be a dead cow with its head cut off which the men were skinning. He told me that the cows had been ‘troublesome’: “One of them, as we were trying to tie her up, broke her leg! Then, when we were dragging another of them across the courtyard, she broke her leg too!!’ He laughed and the woman next to him joined in, chuckling merrily and proclaiming with a smile “They didn’t want to be killed!!”. I’m no vegetarian, but this kind of humour when we were surrounded by the fresh flesh of the same animals made me feel slightly uncomfortable.

Later, after a morning shower of rain had passed, I went back out to take some photos of the event. I chatted to a colleague about what we thought the best bits of the cow were in terms of meat: she was absolutely horrified that we didn’t eat the head in the UK, and bemused by the fact that we didn’t eat the heart or intestines (so much so, that she repeated the question several times, as if I might not have understood). For the record, she said that Nigerians probably thought the neck was the best bit.

My boss returned to the scene. He walked over to the piles of meat, picked up a very large lump – difficult to identify: surrounded by a rounded membrane, looking almost like I’d imagine a stomach to look like, but with recognisable, steak-like meat inside – and said “How would it be if I gave you this?”. Now, we’d had a brief conversation the day before, so I was prepared for the fact that I would probably be given something from the slaughter, so I wasn’t too shocked and very gratefully accepted. Nonetheless, walking back across the courtyard to my office, I felt mildly hysterical about the fact that I had a heavy, unwrapped, unidentified chunk of beef in a carrier bag in my hand, and that I was going to just plop it onto the desk and get on with my day until home-time.

I left work early, and hurriedly texted other volunteers to see if they would come over and help us eat this enormous quantity of meat.  Simon and I then spent 45 minutes trying to cut this huge lump into more manageable pieces, using knives, scissors, hands; we are inexpert butchers. With that task out of the way – feeling slightly nauseated and with hands wreaking of raw meat – we were finally able to start cooking, and managed a very respectable beef stew (although the ratio of meat to veg was approximately 3:1) which we shared with 5 others. Happy Sallah!

Noises Off

Just as timekeeping doesn’t hold the same weight of etiquette and manners in Nigeria as it does in Britain, neither, it seems, do noise levels.

This morning I was woken by the young boy who lives next door singing ‘Hallelujah’ repeatedly outside our bedroom window. An hour later, when the NEPA had gone off and I was sitting reading on the porch with a cup of tea, the thundering generators started up. To top it all off, our neighbour on the other side then started to play Backstreet Boys tracks very loudly whilst she, on her own porch, sang along at the top of her voice, and – I’m afraid it has to be said – in more of a shout than tuneful melody.

I have to say, it doesn’t really bother me (for one thing, I quite like the nostalgic chord that the Backstreet Boys strike), but there’s a strong British urge to complain which it’s quite hard to suppress. My natural reaction is to be indignant – in my world, to create any sort of noise which is audible to others in their home, is impolite, intrusive, and – at certain levels – illegal. Here, however, I don’t think there is any thought given to whether people can hear the music you’re playing, or the noise of your gargantuan generator (actually, I don’t know how big they are, since they’re behind a wall, but they sound like massive monsters). And just as with timekeeping, that’s probably because there’s no chance of another Nigerian being offended by the noise you’re creating.

Necessity is the enemy of indignation (sorry – I’ve been reading Shantaram, and it’s made me want to make a philosophical point with every second sentence). But the point is, complaining and getting indignant about things around us are luxuries – as is privacy. In our compound, there are four houses; three are attached to each other, and the fourth (the landlord’s) is separated from ours by an alleyway of about two feet in width. Behind our house is another alley of the same width, then, just the other side of a high wall, another compound. So given that no-one in Nigeria gets a constant supply of mains electricity, of course some people are going to have generators, and when you’re living in such close proximity to others, there’s really no point in worrying about whether people will be disturbed by it – it’s a just a fact of life that everyone accepts.

The music is perhaps less to do with necessity, and more to do with the joyful spirit – both religious and generally – of people here. And it makes me wonder, why would anyone ever want to tell someone to shut up when they’re so happy they’re singing out loud? Then I remember the tinny sound of a mobile phone playing R&B on the top of a London bus, because the one person who wants to listen to it has decided to play it out loud and force everyone to listen to it rather than use earphones, and I’m right back to being British, quietly seething about the bad manners of our youth.

Timekeeping

Why does it make me so angry when people don’t keep to time? When workshops overrun by up to three hours? When something actually commences several hours after the publicised start time? And why doesn’t it bother Nigerians? Why does it not even bother those who have turned up on time, that they are hanging around for ages, waiting for others to arrive so the meeting can start, and wasting time that could have been spent on other things?

It seems to me that punctuality, in Nigerian culture, has nothing to do with respect. For me, with my cultural background, keeping people waiting, arriving late and not starting at the time I said I would are all acts of rudeness and disrespect for those I am keeping waiting. For me, it’s the equivalent of saying “What I have to do is more important than anything you might have sacrificed to be here.”.

But here, where people are far more laid back, where no-one ever expected things to start on time, where there’s nothing really pressing waiting to be done (because if there was, you wouldn’t have left it in the first place) – no-one really cares if things keep to time. And in the case of some workshops, the only reason people turned up in the first place was to get their per diems, so it doesn’t really matter whether the activities start on time.

It also seems that, when the prompt close of a workshop session – even that on a Friday afternoon – depends on there being no lengthy discussion on the final points, my Nigerian colleagues still prefer to make their points and finish the discussion rather than finish on time. So throw out that idea of the Nigerian work ethic being lazy, or people being focused more on their own needs rather than achieving their work goals: these people prefer to get the job done right rather than get home on time.