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)

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. 

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.

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.

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?!). 

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.

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.

Trapped in the trappings of luxury

People with relative wealth often look on, astounded, at those who live with so little: how can they survive? How can they be happy? And, embedded in those questions, is the assumption (or the assertion) that these people would be happier if only they had more money or possessions.

It happens at all levels of the prosperity ladder. Celebrities and footballers cease to understand how anyone could possibly live without multiple cars, full time hair and make-up artists and first class travel. People who work in the City can’t conceive of giving up their morning latte, or of preparing their own lunch to take to work, or of travelling across town on a bus rather than taking a cab. Parents visiting their grown-up children bite their lips, but behind closed doors justify the brevity of their stay with references to the lumpy mattress, the lack of en suite facilities and the noise of the occasional plane flying over head. And even those of us living relatively modest lives in the developed world, experience books, documentaries and images of the developing world with a sense of wonder – how is it possible to live on less than $1 a day? How can people put up with sleeping on mats, in dirty, infested homes?

When one signs up for something like VSO, part of the experience you’re anticipating – perhaps even looking forward to – is a more basic way of life. It’s an adventure to see how you’ll survive with no electricity or running water, and it’s a volunteer badge of honour to live with no air conditioning, no generator, no chauffeured cars: we sniff at the luxurious expat way of life, and are proud of the fact that we are toughing it out (although, of course, we live very well compared to many local people). So in that sense, because it’s a definite choice to live in that way, and because we’re prepared for it before we come out here, living without the usual trappings of our lives at home isn’t too much of a hardship.

But I’ve noticed, since moving into this new expat-style house, that I’ve started to get annoyed about things not working. Things like the air conditioning, which we didn’t even have in the old house – now, if it doesn’t work, I get frustrated. We’ve been having a (-nother) problem with our electrics, in that when the generator is on, it seems only to power one side of our home, and that has been making me really angry: but we rarely had power at all in the old place! And last night the TV stopped working and I was desperately trying to get it fixed: I didn’t even want a television, and have enjoyed not being a slave to it over here, but the second it was taken away I was furious. It’s like my frame of mind has changed with my physical relocation: I am no longer in the mindset of “whatever we have is a bonus” and “we’ll make do”; instead, I’m thinking “well, if it’s here, it should work”.

As one moves up this ‘prosperity ladder’, it seems to me that there is no easy route back down. With the exception of making a deliberate choice to sacrifice certain luxuries (as in VSO), once one has a certain standard of living, one becomes reliant on it (even addicted to it) and quickly forgets how it was possible to be happy with less.

This recent experience, for me, is a timely reminder: a reminder that I need to try to hold onto what I have learnt and experienced here, even when I return to the hustle, bustle and affluence of the UK. I have loved living with fewer conveniences and material possessions over here: this, combined with a much better work-life balance than I had at home, has made me happier than I ever remember being in recent years. As I start to look for jobs for after my return to the UK, and as I begin to experience this illogical frustration with broken appliances I don’t need and was happy without, I can begin to see how easy it would be to slip back into a frantic life of ‘things’ – and, frankly, of greed – and to forget completely how blissfully happy one can be, sitting and thinking by candlelight.

Moving House

A few weeks ago, when I got sick for the millionth time over here, we decided we couldn’t just keep going like that: I had to put my health first, and another four months of being ill every two weeks wasn’t going to leave my body in a great state when I got back to the UK. So we agreed to monitor my health for the month of August: if I managed to stay well for those few weeks, we would carry on, stay until the end of our placement in December; if I continued to come down with something every couple of weeks, we would cut our placements short.

When we spoke to our partner organisations about this, the funder came back to us to ask whether we thought a change of environment might help to improve my health, and they offered us a move to their guest house compound in the north of Kaduna. It was a genuinely difficult decision: although the guest house offers considerably more comfort (air conditioning, a generator, constant running water, a television, swimming pool etc), we have grown to love our life in Kigo Road. To leave our neighbours, the children who come in to play every day, the community of people who greet us on our way home from work, the bars which have become our locals, the friendly couple and their baby who run the little shop across the road and order in diet pepsi especially for me… The guest house is more isolated, in a richer area of the city with fewer little corner shops, and offers a more ex-pat style of life – not the life volunteers generally want, and not what we had come here to experience.

In the end, we decided it would be churlish not to accept this generous offer: living in the guest house affords me the greatest chance of being able to stick around until the end of my placement, which is the most important thing (I really don’t want to leave Nigeria at all, let alone early!), and I didn’t want to end up in a situation where I got sick again and had to explain to my colleagues that I was going home without having given this a shot.

So, with Simon out of town for work, I spent most of Thursday and Friday packing up our home. Although we’ve managed to acquire quite a bit over here, we really don’t have that much stuff, but somehow it was still a huge job to pack it all and I was totally exhausted by the time Simon arrived home to find a pile of packed bags and boxes on Friday evening. But no time to rest – we’d promised some other volunteers that we would show them a bar which they hadn’t been to yet (the Rugby Club), so off we went for beer and some dinner. Somehow, we ended up back on Kigo Road and in a nightclub.

The next morning was not pretty. In a fug of hangover, I somehow managed to help with the packing of the truck. And then, with a goodbye to the kids from next door and our neighbour Tony, we were off – Simon and I crammed into the front passenger seat together, clutching a sculpture of a Yoruba goddess and a bottle of vodka with an ill-fitting cap (our two most delicate possessions) and hoping I wouldn’t vomit before we arrived.

Anyway, the move went fine in the end – nothing broken, no vomit – and now we’re in the new place. It’s very nice: patio doors opening out onto the swimming pool, a television with satellite channels, a spiral staircase up to a mezzanine bedroom level with an en suite bathroom. On the other hand, the electrics are highly dodgy. One socket in the kitchen is blackened and has obviously, at some point, been on fire. On our first night, the air conditioning unit upstairs stopped working and when I went to investigate, I found that the plug had started to melt and the socket was very hot and turning black: so that doesn’t work now. When the second air con unit didn’t seem to be having much effect, I went to check out why it wasn’t working properly and I found that it was plugged into the only working socket in the kitchen. However, as well as powering this unit, a multi-socket extension lead (powering the fridge, kettle etc) is connected by wires round the back of the actual socket (which has been pulled slightly away form the wall), and a second ad hoc socket had also been connected by wires round the back of the main socket fitting, into which was plugged the microwave. None of this seems very safe. So we’re having to turn everything off, including the fridge, when we go to bed, for fear of a fire while we’re sleeping.

There are things to get used to – new things that don’t work, things which didn’t used to work in our old home which we now have access to. We even have access to a washing machine, but trying to figure out how to get it to work when the NEPA was going off every 30 minutes or so was a challenge which kept Simon busy more or less all day yesterday! I think we’ll be sticking to handwashing. We still have to work out where our local shop is, and finding a local bar is going to be challenging in this richer, predominantly Muslim area.

Oh, and we have been visited twice by a large lizard which, somehow manages to get itself inside even when all the doors are closed, and then flip flops around frantically at the patio doors, trying to get out. The second time, I tried to let it out, but it ran back into the house and under the sofa. It has never come out and doesn’t seem to be stuck anywhere inside – a mystery.

Totally Powerless

I am sitting in the funder’s office – I came here today to print off a whole heap of documents to give out to people at the government body (since they don’t have working printers or photocopies that work there). There is no Nepa. The generator has been broken for two days now. So I can’t print anything. With no power, there is also no wireless internet here. I have my dongle with me, but that hasn’t worked all day for no apparent reason. When the electricity does come back on for a few minutes at a time, for some reason it only powers half of the building; of course, the wireless router and the printers are in the half that isn’t powered. There is lukewarm water in the water cooler, but I can’t make myself a cup of tea until we have power. Since there is no power, the boss has gone back to his home to work. Since there is no power and the boss is not around, all of my Nigerian colleagues seem to have disappeared. The way to get lunch around here – in an area where there aren’t really any shops – is to ask one of the admin staff to go and get it for you (from the magical places only she seems to be able to access) or to ask her to cook something for you; but she’s not around and I doubt she’d be able to prepare anything without electricity anyway.

It’s raining, and since my mode of transport is okada, I can’t go anywhere until it has finished and the bikes all come out to play again. So I can’t go home, and I can’t go and get myself some food.

I’m onto my second laptop battery, having already exhausted the first one. I have under 2 hours left until this one dies, in which time I need to finish off the documents that I will then not be able to email or print anyway. We have had almost no NEPA at home for the past week, so it’s unlikely I will be able to charge them up overnight. There is rarely NEPA at the government building, and when the generator’s on we get power for the lights and the fan but the sockets don’t work. So, even if I go to the other office tomorrow, I won’t be able to charge anything up.

This is all most frustrating. I am powerless – in more than one sense – to do anything at all*, other than sit in a dark office and drink lukewarm water, waiting. Waiting for either power to return or the rain to stop.

*Including publishing this post - this actually happened several days ago.

London's burning

It was very surreal, last week, to be in Nigeria – a country where I have frequently feared, and now come to expect, unrest – and to be reading reports of riots, looting and general chaos on the streets of the UK. If a similar thing were to happen over here (and there have been various small incidents while we have been here, not to mention the widespread election violence while we were out of the country), I would panic, frankly. Information would be shared quickly with the organisations we are working with, security advice would be issued, people would be evacuated or advised to stay at home all day to avoid any potential trouble (although the Nigerians tend, largely, to go about their business as usual).

And yet, here I was reading about events in my own country, and reading Facebook updates describing how friends and family were having to go about their own lives amid the chaos, worrying about their commuter route taking them through planned riots, walking past looters in broad daylight on their high streets, trying to be safely tucked up at home by dinner time. I can’t imagine how I would have reacted to experiencing a breakdown of law and order in my own country – it’s something I think I had compartmentalised to my life in Nigeria.

This isn’t a political blog, but I can’t not comment on the situation in my own country as I see it from over here. And frankly, from what I have been able to read on the internet, I am deeply saddened by the reaction to the riots and looting.

I am appalled by the Prime Minister’s official response to the events of last week. To divide the country into ‘them and us’, to say that “Those thugs…do not represent us, nor do they represent our young people – and they will not drag us down” is to further alienate those people who already feel they have so little part to play in society that they feel no shame in taking what they can get with little thought for how it might affect others.

In one video of looting in Clapham, I watched teenage girls carrying boxes out of Currys. The Sky News journalist filming it on his phone asks “Why are you doing this?”; their answer: “We’re getting our taxes back.” Now, I don’t know if those girls pay taxes or not, and I think we can be pretty sure that their argument hasn’t been thought through in terms of what taxes are for, how they are spent and whether stealing a telly from a high street store will in any way reclaim the money that has been taken out of their pay packet. But if you de-code that statement, I think the message is clear: “Society has done f**ck all for us, so we’re taking what we can when we can get”.

As an individual, I want to be someone who, as a first instinct, looks kindly on other people and their behaviour and feels compassion. I want to be someone who has empathy with others, rather than condemning. I want to be someone who, when faced with a difficulty with another human being, looks first to myself and asks whether I am the cause of the problem and/or whether I can do anything to help the situation, regardless of blame. And that’s the kind of society I want to live in.

Even as a non-parent, I know that if a child misbehaves, you don’t immediately withdraw all of its privileges, because then the child has no incentive to cease the bad behaviour – they have nothing left to lose. And so it is with those members of our society who feel they have nothing and who have taken the chance to act out. If we respond to this behaviour by cutting their benefits, evicting their parents (has Cameron gone totally insane?!?) and further shutting them out of society, what motivation will they have to in any way uphold the social contract? It can only serve to further alienate these groups and to make matters worse. It’s the political equivalent of saying “Well, if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.” – “Well, if you’ve got so little stake in society that you’re actively destroying law and order, we’ll make you even less a part of society. So there.”

Now, I’m not saying that looters should be rewarded or put into highly funded school-holiday schemes to distract them from the trainers in Foot Locker, but what I am saying is this: to dismiss and hold in disdain these people as “evil” or “scum”, and to distance ourselves from them is only going to make matters worse. If we believe in society, then we’re all in it together – the good, the bad and the ugly. When people do wrong, we have a system of penalties and – to some extent – reform. We believe that people can change with the right support. We believe that people are not inherently good or bad, but that we all perform actions which fall into both categories. Society is about trying to create a context in which people can thrive, in which we support each other to do well, in which we accept that people are different from us and will behave differently; it’s not about judging people on individual actions and throwing them away when they do not perform to our own exacting standards. In fact, the only time when we really remove someone from our society is when we believe them to be so psychologically disturbed that they are a danger to themselves and/or others – mass murderers, and the like. (Don’t even get me started on the current movement to bring back the death penalty.)

Isn’t it a bit like a marriage? (Of which Mr Cameron is such a fan.) You don’t rush to the divorce lawyer as soon as your spouse does something you don’t like – you made a commitment, you signed a contract, and you’re in it for the long-haul. Together. You find ways to work things out, to live with each other, to accept each other’s differences; you forgive, you try to empathise, you try to see both sides rather than seeing things in black and white. In short, you take each other for better or worse, flaws and all, the whole package, and you accept that the other person isn’t always going to do things you like, but that those elements are part of what makes the whole person you married.

These “thugs” are part of our society whether we like it or not. As well as making sure our criminal justice system is in healthy, working order (not something we can be sure of right now) and able to deal with the penalties which need to be paid, we also need to accept these people, to try to empathise with them and to work out what has caused them to behave in this way. The Prime Minister himself ended his recent speech by saying “There is no them and us – there is us. We are all in this together”; unfortunately, he was talking about the government and the citizens – he still clearly believes that this new united ‘us’ is firmly pitched against the evil ‘them’ who haven’t behaved as we would have like them to.

Osogbo

I heart Osogbo. I think I could quite happily live there.

Getting around is easy and the people are friendly. Tiny, bright blue minibuses make their way up and down the main roads (of which there aren’t many). There are so many of them, and they are so small, that they don’t try to cram too many people in, and the fare is rarely more than N20 to go anywhere in this little town. On two occasions, I’m pretty sure they altered their route, just so we could go to the exact place we were trying to get to! And not only the buses – there are also bright blue drops (= taxis)! These are exclusively very battered, scrapyard-defying old cars with drivers who speak very limited English, but a real luxury to those of us who live in places where there are no taxis.

Away from the handful of main roads, the town is mainly sleepy, potholed streets lined with small shops, two story homes, and people just sitting, hanging out and saying hi to you as you pass. Osogbo felt different from the West we had experienced in Lagos and Benin City – we never felt threatened, no-one tried to steal from us, and the people were without exception friendly and helpful. The children of the shopkeepers who lined the street leading up to our hotel, would smile and wave and chant ‘oyibo peppe’ at us whenever we walked by, and their parents would smile and wave too. (Apparently, ‘oyibo peppe’ – which means ‘white man chilli’ – comes from a common rhyme which Yoruba children like to sing, and the full thing goes “Oyibo peppe, American shine shine, blacky shadow”!!) There are a surprising number of mosques here, as well as the expected churches and the evidence of a thriving traditional religion in the occasional shrine and the slightly scary juju section in the market. Someone told us that Osogbo is an incredibly liberal and tolerant place and, while I know everyone here likes to brag about their home town being better than other places, I can believe that’s true just from the happy co-existence of these three religions and the fact that we felt so welcomed.

Osogbo is the centre of Nigerian art. It is still home to Chief Jimoh Buraimoh – a significant artist whose works are mainly brightly coloured, beaded paintings, and after whom a street has been named (the street on which he has his home and gallery). We stayed in a hotel owned by him (Hotel Heritage), and, after a visit to his gallery, were privileged to meet him and share a beer in the hotel bar. A very interesting, generous man, who arranged for someone to come and pick us up the next day and take us around the Sacred Forest.

The forest is one of only two UNESCO World Heritage sites in Nigeria. It contains a shrine to Osun, the river goddess, who is central to the Yoruba traditional religion, and whom a group of young men were worshipping when we arrived on a mid-week morning. It’s a beautiful and very peaceful place: seemingly endless trees, the river flowing through it and full of sculptures and small structures which were created by Susanne Wenger. Wenger was an Austrian artist who came to Osogbo in the 1960’s (and was part of kickstarting the movement which Buraimoh was a part of), converted to the Yoruba religion, and spent the rest of her life living there and creating stunning sculptures around the Sacred Forest. Her “workshop” – also within the forest – is an enchanting building, which really belongs in a myth or fairytale: sloping, curved walls; tiny passageways; low roofs; enclosed spaces; chairs carved from the same stone as the walls; and a generally very surrealist feel. It’s incredible; and also incredibly difficult to imagine how it could have served as her “workshop” – you can barely walk through it, let alone sculpt in it. Apparently, she is buried there.

After the visit to the forest, we were taken to see her home: a beautifully decaying four storey house, with carved pillars, a wooden staircase, a winding, twisting, ancient vine climbing up the front wall, sculpted doors, mosaiced floors – everything about it is stunning in its artistic detail. Being in Osogbo, where there is such a thriving art scene, I realised that I was relieved and overjoyed to find that there were things that had been built/planned/created with aesthetics in mind. So much of life, architecture, invention in Nigeria is functional (understandably so) – I’d forgotten just how much I missed things being intentionally beautiful, how wonderful it is when you come across something that is there just to be nice to look at. That’s one of the things that I loved about this town – there are sculptures and pictures around every corner, the buildings are interesting and sometimes beautiful, and there are numerous galleries and artists’ workshops (and Buraimoh is currently building an ‘Artists’ Village’ on the outskirts of the forest to foster young talent in the area). The place just has an artistic buzz.

While we were there, we visited another gallery owned by Nike Davies-Okundaye (whom we had met in Lagos) and finally found a piece of hers we could afford: a small batik, dyed with the indigo which is common in Nigeria and also her trademark. We also bought a very large piece of batik by one of her students, but using Nike’s style and geographical designs. We actually came away from Osogbo with considerably lighter wallets and considerably more luggage, ending up with those two batiks, a wooden sculpture of the goddess Osun, carved by one of Susanne Wenger’s students in her style, and a simply gorgeous indigo quilt, by one of Buraimoh’s protégés, who had batiked, dyed and stitched the whole thing by hand. It was a relief to find some mementoes of our time here which are actually, in and of themselves, really beautiful objects.

The only downside to our stay in Osogbo was trying to get out of the place. Knowing we had to travel by road to Ilorin, then from Ilorin to Ilorin airport before 11.30am (our flight was at 12.30pm and there wasn’t another until 2 days later!), we were a bit nervous about things going wrong and so started out early. As we were walking out of the hotel at 7am, one of the staff mentioned to us that it was a sanitation day. No, no, we said, that was last week. Oh no – apparently in Osun state, they do it EVERY SATURDAY. So no-one can travel anywhere between 7 and 10am EVERY WEEK! We bolted out of the hotel and managed to flag one of the few remaining buses down and persuade him to take us quickly to the motor park. We leapt out of the bus, grabbed the first driver we found and agreed a price to take us directly to the airport, if we could leave immediately. Ok ok – all good. We threw our stuff into the car, got in and – of course – the driver was nowhere to be seen. Much shouting and screaming later (much to the amusement of the gathered crowd of men), he finally came over to the car and we left. On our way out of Osun state we met no fewer than 7 roadblocks by sanitation enforcers, and 3 normal security roadblocks. At each one, the driver had to get out of the car and go and plead with the officials to let us through, while we smiled and saluted and rubbed our hands together in a begging action – anything to try to make it smoother. Of course, several of them wanted bribes but, surprisingly, even though I think we were at the stage of considering it just so we wouldn’t miss our plane, our driver categorically refused to bribe anyone (very unlike all other drivers we’ve come across, and very impressive). Of course, we got through each block eventually: there were never more than one or two other cars stopped there, so clearly earlier cars had been let through. And of course, we were at the airport far too early and our plane was delayed by over an hour. This sanitation thing is just so infuriating – what’s it even for? If it’s that important, why did they let us through? Why don’t they have a couple of signs up telling people when sanitation is?! And why does one state decide to do it EVERY WEEK?!!

However, our troubled exit aside, Osogbo’s just a lovely, friendly, fairly sleepy place with a buzzing art scene and attention to beauty, and, if it weren’t for my apparent and incapacitating allergy to Nigeria, I would seriously be considering living there. 

Benin City

We were very excited about going to Benin City – centre of the ancient Benin kingdom, lots of history, lots of culture and art, including bronze casters whose work we had seen across Nigeria in galleries and shops. What we got, however, was a bit of a disappointment.

The roads to and around Benin are pretty bad, and also hugely busy with traffic. If you’re ever in the area, do all you can to avoid a place called Ore. It’s probably impossible to avoid, because it’s on the main expressway from Lagos to Benin and at the junction to the road to Ife and Ibadan, so wherever you’re travelling around here, you’re likely to have to go through it. But it’s a horrible mess of muddy, bumpy roads, many of which are less road and more HGV graveyards. Long go-slows are around every corner, either because yet another tanker has broken down in a hugely inconvenient place or, as in the most terrifying of the hold ups we experienced yesterday on our way out of Benin, because there isn’t actually a road – just a huge mess of mud and sludge which cars and lorries are still driving through, making it worse with every vehicle that passes. At one point I actually had to close my eyes as our battered old Peugeot station wagon skidded over a swamp, with the brand new Toyota pick up truck in front clearly struggling and spraying mud onto our (cracked) windscreen (The car in front is a Toyota…so you haven’t got a hope.) One man in our car said that they had been repairing the road for 7 years in that spot, and it still wasn’t finished. You can’t help but think that allowing huge great oil tankers to drive over your unfinished road every day isn’t the quickest way to get it finished; you also can’t help noticing just how much the local economy is flourishing with stationary car-loads of travellers buying food and drink from hawkers who roam the go-slows, and wondering whether it actually isn’t in Ore’s interest to keep that road unfinished.

Anyway, after a long and bumpy journey in a –thankfully – air-conditioned minibus from Lagos, we arrived in Benin City and paid a little extra for the bus to take us right to the Hotel door. The Hotel is surprisingly nice (the Motel Benin Plaza) – rooms are a little grubby and basic (“shabby splendour”, as Simon called it), but the lobby and bar are lovely and you can sit drinking beer and eating suya by their “Olympic sized swimming pool” (that was the way the brochure in our room described what was, at most, a 10m pool in an angular kidney shape).

The next morning, we headed for the street of the bronze casters, crossing busy roads and walking alongside the (permanently rush hour) traffic on yet more pavements. En route we passed a very interesting building with carvings and statues, and as we stood looking up at it, a man arrived and introduced himself as Patrick, the King of Benin’s first cousin. He took some time to explain some of the area’s history and told us that the building we were in front of was the home of the King’s High Priest. That was pretty cool.

A little further along the main road we came to the bronze casters, proudly announced as a World Heritage Site (it’s not, although UNESCO did support a project to revive this all but forgotten craft) by a huge arch at the start of the street. That was about as good as it got. Far from being the authentic street of craftsmen which the guidebook promised, with workers who are unused to visitors and don’t hassle you, it was instead the most touristy place I have seen in Nigeria. We were constantly hissed and shouted at by pushy sales people trying to force us into their shops. When we did enter a few shops, the work was largely poor and obviously for a tourist market, and – the most frustrating thing – was clearly made from brass rather than bronze! The one interesting thing we saw was an old man – the only person actually crafting that we could see – who was making the small wax models which are then covered in clay to form a relief mould into which the metal is poured. That, too, was pretty cool. But all in all, disappointing – definitely not worth schlepping all this way for.

From here we went up to Benin’s National Museum – a striking round orange building, much more attractive than the run down Lagos museum. It has three floors containing some very interesting (and very old) artefacts, though there’s very little information about them and it’s poorly lit (when I complained I couldn’t see inside one of the display cases where the light was broken, an attendant gave me her mobile phone with a torch on it so I could look!). The really difficult part, though, is getting to the museum. It’s set in the middle of a huge roundabout with no walkway or crossings at all – so you have to negotiate the5 or 6 lanes of chaotic traffic if you want to get in! When we asked some official looking types in high-viz jackets if they could help us cross, they kept saying “The entrance is over there. You go in over there” and pointing to the museum gate in the middle of the island. “It’s not finding the gate that’s the problem, it’s crossing the road!!” They didn’t seem to understand, so we just went for it. Benin is not a place for the faint-hearted pedestrian.

We decided to give the Oba’s (King’s) Palace a miss, since it sounded like you could only walk around the “grounds” (i.e. car parks and forecourts) and couldn’t actually see inside, and instead we walked to the other end of the main road to look at an ancient house. This mud building is from the time of Old Benin (so anywhere from the 15^th century onwards) and was the only structure to survive a huge fire started by the British to destroy Benin in the 19^th century (because it wouldn’t agree to the trade rules that we wanted to impose). Once we got into the inner courtyards, it looked like people were still living in parts of it, so we didn’t pry too far, but did manage to see some amazing traditional shrines, complete with feathers, blood stains and jaw bones.

So that was our day in Benin. A couple of really cool moments, but the main attraction – the bronze workers – was a huge disappointment and generally it just felt like a busy, noisy city, with little to charm us. 

Lagos

Our whirlwind tour of the West took us first to Lagos by plane. Obviously, nothing is easy. The flight for which we had booked tickets was due to leave Kaduna airport at 9am; so, having haggled hard, we had booked a driver to pick us up at 6.30am to get us to the airport in plenty of time. Of course, on the Friday, the State government announced that there would be a “sanitation day” in Kaduna on the Saturday – meaning that there can be no traffic on the roads between 7am and 10am (perhaps ostensibly to reduce air pollution, or maybe to allow for roads to be cleaned ; probably, in honesty, something to do with ticking the boxes for some international environmental grant or other). So we rearranged the driver for 6am to be sure that we would be at the airport before the roads ground to a halt. Then we received a text  message later that night from the airline: the flight had been rescheduled for 11am “due to sanitation”. Now, actually, this meant that everything was made hugely more difficult: we still had to leave before the no movement began, but now we would have a 4.5 hour wait at the airport. Brilliant.

So, that’s what we did. And with the obligatory 1 hour delay in taking off, we had been up and about for 6 hours before we even took off. Thankfully the flight landed at the nicer of the two domestic terminals in Lagos (the nastier one has an incredibly short baggage conveyor belt, against a wall so there’s only one side to stand, and surrounded by loud, elbowy Lagos women. We had booked with a hotel called The @venue - a bargain for the mid-range traveller, which is quite a rare find in Lagos, where everything is either very high-end business accommodation or scratty little hostels in the middle of nowhere.The @venue is on the ex-pat territory of Victoria Island, in walking distance of Bar Beach, within a short bus ride of most other things we wanted to see, and they had thrown in a free airport pick-up, so that part was relatively easy.

That afternoon, we attempted to visit the house and gallery of Nike Davies-Okundaye – a famous Nigerian artist who exhibits all over the world, including in MoMA in New York. I was extremely proud of us for managing to work out the buses, getting off at the right stop and walking for quite a way until we found the place: only to find that they had moved since the guide book was published. Hm. We were taken for a ride (literally and figuratively) by a taxi driver who took us to the new location round the corner for a whopping N1,500, all the time chuckling and – as he turned up the A/C and put a new CD into the player – saying “You enjoy your money!”.

The long and misled journey was worth it. We were welcomed by Nike and her family who were eating dinner in the forecourt of the gallery, and spent a while looking round the four floors of art work – some of it really very good. Once we’d finished, we had our arms twisted into drinking glass of red wine on them, which turned into two glasses and some fried plantain. All very lovely.

Dinner was a selection of suya (grilled meat) bought from some Hausa men at the side of the road – it was ridiculously comforting to find people who spoke Hausa, like we had found old friends. I have to say, I have noticed a big difference between people of the North (generally Hausa people) and the people we have met in the West. For example, down here, people seem to laugh more at us than with us. Where on a bus journey in Kaduna, people are generally happy to see foreigners, pleased to see when they know a bit of the lingo and generally joyful that you’re trying out their local ways, here in the West, people seem to just laugh at you for even trying and for getting pronunciation slightly wrong.

Another big difference is that we have been cheated out of money twice. The first time was on our very first bus ride. The driver told us the fare was N200 each, which seemed extortionate to us, but since we didn’t know Lagos prices, we turned to a woman sitting next to us, who nodded and said “Yes, that’s the price – it’s because of fuel prices”; so we paid it, only to find out the return journey – which was even slightly longer that the outward journey – was only N70 each. Sneaky.

The second time was when we were leaving Lagos to travel to Benin City, and were getting onto a bus at the motor park. The guy selling tickets told us one seat cost N1,700. So we paid up and took our seats, asking whether it would be ok with the luggage and being told “No problem, no problem”. We were waiting for quite a while for the bus to fill, and at some point I happened to notice how much someone was paying and realised that it wasn’t a multiple of N1,700, so I asked a woman in front of us how much she had paid: N1,500 came the answer. When I challenged the ticket guy, he swore blind that she was getting off earlier that us, and that was why she was paying less. It was only when I asked another guy to get involved and he checked with the woman that we were able to get the extra money back. And after all that, he had the cheek to try to cheat us out of some more money “for the luggage” – a totally spurious charge that no-one else was paying.

Now I know that this is what you expect when you’re travelling: seasoned travellers will think nothing of this. But the point is, that it doesn’t happen in the Nigeria I know (namely, the North). When we first arrived in country, of course I was used to checking with local people on buses how much they had paid, to make sure we hadn’t been swindled. But after a few times, I started to be embarrassed by the fact that I was asking – the answer invariably came back as the same as we had been charged, and the quizzical looks I was getting just confirmed to me that I was being paranoid, and I felt ashamed to even be doubting it. As far as I know, I have only ever been cheated out of N10 on transport in the North (= c.5p). But down here, I’ve had to recalibrate my mindset – I have to wear my “traveller’s” hat rather than my “Nigerian” hat.

Also, on at least three occasions down here in the West, we’ve been followed by children around a town or market, presumably with the intent of stealing something from us. I say “at least three”, because on those occasions it was painfully obvious what was happening – it may have happened many more times but more subtley. Genuinely, I don’t think this has ever happened to me in the North, and I have been round many markets and crowded city centres. It’s upsetting to have to readjust my view of a country I thought I knew, to be more suspicious and cynical about those around me.

On the other hand, there have been many people down here who have been as helpful and lovely as I have come to expect from Nigerians, and Lagos itself I found very enjoyable. There are pavements (very exciting), KFC and even the occasional pedestrian crossing with a green man – all mod cons. And I can’t tell you just how proud I am that we managed to work out the buses (hell, I’m proud enough when I work them out in Sheffield, let alone in crazy mega-city Lagos) – it gave us such a sense of satisfaction to be travelling in a ‘normal’ way around the city and not be forking out thousands of Naira for taxis.

On the second day, we walked through an old and busy part of town on Lagos Island, kind of like a sprawling market. Through alleyways and backstreets, we wandered through people’s daily lives (a little uncomfortable, and people here are definitely less happy for you to do that than we’re used to – we didn’t even take the camera out of the bag for fear of upsetting people), through rows of shops, under washing lines, past children playing football in the street, or using paper and balls of foil as a makeshift pool table, or a large plank of wood as a table tennis table with a breeze block for a net. There were lots of shouts of ‘Oyibo!’ (=white person) – some friendly, some less so; some children were clearly a little perturbed by us, others ran after us, shook our hands and beamed with delight as they proudly strutted back to their friends.

After a trip to the National Museum (a lot better  than I expected, and I actually think I learnt something about Nigeria’s history), we headed out to spend our last evening on Bar Beach. The write-up in the guidebook suggests this is really quite a nasty place, so we were pleasantly surprised to find clean water, clean sands and a busy row of tables and chairs where we were served beer and offered grilled fish and all manner of touristy knick-knacks. A beautiful place to watch the sun set on our brief time in Lagos.

It's been a while

Another break in transmission. My apologies.

After the operation, it took me a while to get back on my feet again (both literally and figuratively). Gradually, the trauma of it sunk in, and I struggled emotionally for a week or so. Physically, it also took some time for me to heal and to get back to doing normal things like climbing bikes (as Nigerian English would have it) and drinking (once I’d finished taking the drugs)!

I got the all clear from the doctor at my final check up 2 weeks ago – the operation had been a success. Then shortly after that, I had a week of a very dodgy tummy and an ear infection. Having just recovered from that, I had to go back to the doctor today to check on what I thought was an infection at the operation scar. According to him, it wasn’t and all is fine. But it’s just the last of a long line of ailments – it seems I can’t go for more than a fortnight without contracting something new. It’s frustrating, depressing and a little bit scary.

Meanwhile, though, Mum and Dad have arrived for a three and a half week visit, which is great. We went down to Abuja to meet them from the airport, stayed overnight and then brought them up to Kaduna on public transport. Since then we’ve been very busy – letting them try the different forms of transport (including okadas!), different types of food and, of course, our very finest bars. And so far they’re loving it. It’s great to see Nigeria through someone else’s eyes and to remember which of the day-to-day things in our lives now were once magical and strange.

On Saturday we fly to Lagos, and from there we have a week of adventure, travelling by road to the various treasures of the South West (including the bronze casters of Benin City, the ancient town of Ife and the sacred forest of Oshogbo), before coming back to Kaduna for one more week of fun. All good stuff.

Operation

This week, I have been mainly having a minor operation and recovering from it. This is not something I thought I would have to do in Nigeria.

I won’t go into the physiological details, but suffice to say, I was in a lot of pain and the doctor whom I went to see decided that I needed to have an emergency surgical procedure. He had been recommended to me by a colleague, and seemed like a really good doctor, so I have to say I was both relieved – that someone who knew what they were doing was going to take some action to put an end to the pain I was suffering – and terrified, that I was going to have to go under the knife, in a Nigerian hospital, alone (Simon is still away with work).

He offered me a general anaesthetic but, given no-one really knew where I was, and general anaesthetics aren’t 100% safe wherever you are, I opted for local. As I sat on a cold steel bench in a corridor, waiting to be taken up to theatre, I hurriedly texted Simon: “I need to have a small surgical procedure under local anaesthetic. I feel OK about it – he seems like a really good doctor. I’ll call you in a couple of hours. Don’t worry.”. Then, remembering that no-one knew where I was, I sent him another text: “Turning phone off now. In case you need to know, it’s Dr Ankama at Jowako Hospital, Jos Road.”. And I turned off my phone.

A nurse came to take me up to theatre. As the doctor himself remarked, when he came in a little later, “This isn’t like your hospitals, is it?”. I can’t explain why, but for some reason the room reminded me of medical rooms in concentration camps I’ve visited, or – is there a medical room in the museum on Ellis Island? That’s what came to mind, anyway. White tiled walls. A ceiling fan. An ornate analogue wall clock. Ceiling lights that I had to turn on myself, and a plastic classroom style chair to sit on while I waited for the doctor. Three old-fashioned looking hospital beds, like you see in war-time costume dramas. The one in the middle – which was to be mine – had leather-style covers in dark grey, and two pillows, both in off-white leather covers, with dark red stains on them. “No, it isn’t,” I laughed in response. “But it is clean though, right?” He assured me it was, and unfolded a large grey plastic sheet with which he covered the entire bed, including the blood-stained pillows.

First, he explained, he was going to give me an opiate injection – he said something about it helping to numb the pain. He injected it into the back of my hand and I quickly felt quite woozy: kind of like a general anaesthetic that doesn’t quite knock you out, I suppose.

The next twenty minutes (and I know how long it was, because I was watching the ornate wall clock) were filled with injections, incisions and stitches, all of which I could feel, many of which were excruciatingly painful. I screamed and cried in pain for most of it, leading the doctor to plead with me to let him put me under. I don’t know if it was the pain or the effects of the opiate, but for a while my hands felt tingly and started to spasm.

His mobile rang frequently (several times he answered it) and people seemed to keep coming in and out. At one point, a man – who I assume was a doctor, but I couldn’t see him because he was behind my head – came in to ask my doctor’s advice about a patient of his. I cried out so loudly while he was there, that he said “Doctor! Can’t you please give her something?!” “She’s refusing!!” he replied. Call me old fashioned, but I thought a local anaesthetic was supposed to numb the area so you couldn’t feel the scalpel going in.

Once it was done, and he’d cleaned me down, he asked me to get down from the bed. The bloody aftermath of the procedure was still sitting on the grey plastic sheet for me to see. We then walked down to his office, me clinging onto the walls because my head was still spinning from that injection, and he talked me through payment, medication I needed to take, etc, and that was that. I wobbled out to the car park where I’d asked the hire car to wait for me, and we drove home (via a Lebanese supermarket where I bought copious amounts of imported chocolate).

It was certainly one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, and there’s no doubt that, to someone who’s used to UK hospitals, the conditions were a little discomfiting. But nonetheless, I think he was a good doctor and – so far so good – he seems to have performed the procedure well. He said something to me when we first met: “Some of us choose not to take the opportunity to go to the UK or US: we prefer to stay here to try to make some small difference.” And I am so grateful that that is the case. No matter how hard you work to protect yourself and to ensure that you have as little contact with hospitals out here as you can, sometimes emergencies happen and you need a first rate doctor there and then, regardless of what kind of an operating theatre he has available to him.

Team Meeting

As this morning’s meeting wore on, I wished that I was videoing it to show people at home, or maybe to show to future volunteers as a – well, not a warning exactly, but to manage their expectations.

The team meeting was arranged for 10am. This in itself, I was excited about:  team meetings don’t happen very often. Just before ten, I went into the Director’s office, where he told me that he had to rush into another meeting with the Chairman first so we would be starting a little late. It’s fruitless to try to persuade anyone here to keep a work diary and to prioritise and schedule their workload – hierarchy rules everything and nothing is planned in advance, so it’s constantly a case of deciding in the moment which demand is from the more senior person and doing that one.

I walked over to the room where the meeting was to be held. A majority of staff were around, which was encouraging, and at about 10.20 they started to get themselves ready for the meeting. My heart sank: the chairs were arranged (presumably as they are always arranged for these meetings) in a tight semi-circle, all facing a desk, behind which was a large wheely chair for the Director. So much for working with staff at their level, to everyone working together as part of the team: Nigerian hierarchy will not go away without a fight.

We managed to get started by about 10.45, and following an opening prayer, the Director began with some opening remarks: a monologue lasting around 15 minutes. Some of these remarks were encouraging: “Everybody needs to divide their work and personal lives”; “Everyone needs to hold a mirror up to themselves sometimes”; “If you don’t understand, ask”; “Be creative – take initiative”. But others harshly reminded me that there is a long way to go.

It’s unfortunate that the senior management did not attend a workshop I ran recently on delegation. The result is that we have staff who are raring to go, ready to take responsibility and initiative, and managers who aren’t so much on board with that. It’s also unfortunate that there are contradictions in what staff are being told. On the one hand, they are being told the take the initiative and be creative, and on the other they’re being told “Just do what I tell you and ask questions later”. With one breath they’re hearing “Just simply follow my instructions”, and with the next they’re being berated for not taking the initiative to go beyond the instructions they were given. They are told off for not asking questions to clarify things, but when they ask something, they’re equally told off for not knowing the answer already.

The staff are really trying (as Nigerians would say). It’s like watching children trying to please their parents, but being confused by the conflicting messages they’re receiving. They have taken on board what we worked on in the delegation workshop and are trying to see it through, which makes me really proud. But then as soon as, today, I asked a member of staff to support me with something, the Director’s straight in there, telling me that he is going to do it himself to ensure it’s done effectively, totally undermining the spirit of delegation and that member of staff’s self-esteem.

I think the most demoralising thing for me this morning, was the discussion about annual leave. As part of the workshop, the staff had drawn up a Charter which laid out the team’s purpose, its values and – most importantly – a number of pledges which staff had made. Very basic stuff – like turning up to work on time, not spending time on personal errands during work hours etc. – but it really felt like the first step to making this department functional. I was really pleased that one member of the team had requested that we add a pledge about enjoying annual leave and break times, so that we can stay focused when we are at work.

So in today’s meeting, a member of staff raised her hand and asked the Director to clarify for her when their official break times were and what the procedure for annual leave was. Firstly, the Director laughed and said he never took any breaks (implication: so neither should you). Secondly, he stated that there was no official annual leave process: that it’s not an employee’s right under Nigerian law and that the HR department still hadn’t worked out a procedure. There then followed a lengthy and passionate speech from the Director about how, if someone was sick, or had a relative who had died, or another legitimate excuse like that, then of course he would grant them time to attend to the matter (implication: but not in any other circumstances). That if someone booked leave, but then the Director decided when it came around that he needed them in the office, of course they would have to stay, and they should feel grateful that he values them so highly. That he had only taken leave three times in the 17 years he’s been working for this organisation – twice for Hajj and once when he had to lie to the Chairman about somebody having died, just so he could rest for a few days.

My heart sank. Frankly, if that was the set-up I was facing, I too would be coming to work late, running personal errands during work hours, taking time off whenever anyone I knew was sick or had died. I can’t blame them. And it seems not only futile but cruel to push them to be focused only on work, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, when there is no end in sight for any of them.

I’m not blaming the Director. He’s actually one of the better Directors in the organisation and I’m enjoying working with him. There are many things – culturally, politically, organisationally – which are out of his control and which he has to battle against. I’m merely trying to provide a snapshot of the painfully slow “progress” a VSO volunteer can hope to make – the highs and the lows.

The meeting closed, finally, at 1.45pm. Everybody was exhausted, hungry and thirsty. I had laughed at someone’s earlier suggestion that the Director should have provided tea for them (it’s just a staff meeting!), but by the end I was wishing I’d supported the request.