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.

Weekend in Abuja

There is little in this world that makes me happier than driving through Abuja in a taxi at night. For anyone who has grown up in Northern Europe, the combination of warm air and a dark sky is just magical. And there’s something about a twinkling foreign city (albeit one whose full quota of lights will never all be twinkling at the same time) which adds to that magic. So speeding along, with a warm breeze in my hair, a beer or two in my belly and the city rushing past my window, I think I’m the happiest I could ever be.

This weekend in Abuja was a strange one. Simon flew to Enugu (a state in the South of Nigeria) for two weeks on Sunday, and needed to be in the Abuja office on Friday to have a meeting prior to this. Since I was only going to be doing work which could be done in any office, and since there was a space in Simon’s car, I went with him so that we could spend the weekend together. I’m always nervous when I do something like this: I know that, rationally, I’m not costing anyone any money and I’m still getting the same amount of work done, but I still feel guilty for getting the luxury of a weekend in Abuja when I don’t really have a justification for being there. I also don’t like the idea that colleagues will see me coming down with Simon and think that we’re joined at the hip: far from it – the main reason I joined him this weekend was so that we would have an extra couple of days together in a six-week period where five are being spent apart.

It is a huge benefit of our placements that we are working with a large funded programme, and that we have the luxury of travelling with their air-conditioned vehicles and staying in their lovely guesthouses when we are on their business. We have glimpses into what it must be like to be an international development consultant: not having to worry about how to get from A to B, having all your arrangements made for you, having someone else judge what’s safe and what’s not. In a way, it feels like it must be liberating – simply to be able to get on with enjoying being somewhere and focus on the task in hand without having to concern yourself with the peripheral minutiae. But when we put one foot into that world, far from being liberating, it actually feels quite stifling. To lose all control over what you do and where you go, to rely on your employer for absolutely everything, to have to wait for a driver to turn up, accepting that you’re going to miss your flight, rather than be able to find alternative routes to the airport: it can be infuriating. Not to mention the fact that, since arrangements for both work and personal life are both in the lap of your employer, there ceases to be a line between the two and it’s very hard to know when you’re on the clock and when you’re on your own time: weekend and evening meetings are commonplace.

On Saturday, we decided to try to find the Salamander Café – an establishment lauded in both the guidebook and Time Out, and one which apparently sells real coffee (a rarity out here). We wrote down the address and headed out in a taxi to find it. The driver didn’t know the place, but did know the road, so we drove up and down this very long street trying to find the café. Remarkably, there were actually house numbers on many of the buildings so we were able to pinpoint exactly where this café should be. Of course, it wasn’t there. Instead, there was a run down building which looked like it hadn’t been open for some time. So instead we trawled back to a sign we’d noticed, with the unlikely claim that it belonged to an Italian restaurant and delicatessen.

So from one place we thought should have existed and didn’t, to another which we thought would never exist but, it turns out, does. Sure enough, up ‘Da Maria’s’ wrought iron staircase was an a bona fide Italian restaurant, with fine china, large wine glasses and bread baskets, and a delicatessen, selling artichoke hearts, mozzarella and wine. Unbelievable! We enjoyed an extravagant and surreal meal of antipasti, lasagne, Chianti, coffee and dessert with a consultant and another volunteer, all of us pausing every so often to say “I just can’t believe I’m in Nigeria!”.

Oh, and by the way – I had malaria last week. Yes, I know. Again. It seems pointless to blog about it any more, but thought I’d let you know. For the record.

Havoc and Happiness

They’re rebuilding the wall.  And in the spirit of omelette making and obligatory egg cracking, it seems there needs to be a whole lot more destruction and chaos before it can be rebuilt. Our compound is full of rubble, sand, broken wall and plants that have been pulled up and either thrown onto a pile or – and this actually shocked me a little – re-planted into pretty faux terracotta pots.

I just walked outside to sit on our porch and noticed that there is a water pipe – which used to connect to the outside tap in the wall and is now exposed – leaking constantly and steadily. And my first thought wasn’t “What a waste” or “That’s annoying – I wonder how long that will be left like that”, but instead I thought “How nice – it’s like we’ve got a water feature!”. I think the Nigerian eternal optimism is rubbing off on me.

I’ve realised, through living out here, that everything’s perception. When things go wrong – and they almost always do – you can either get angry about it, or go with the flow. When there’s no NEPA, you can either seethe about the lack of light and the noise from other people’s generators, or you can revel in having to live more simply and romantically by candlelight. And when your husband has to travel for work for a couple of weeks, you can either feel sad and lonely, or enjoy the fact that you will have the house to yourself to listen to the Glee soundtrack and paint your nails.

Obviously, to change one’s perception is easier said than done. And actually, I’m not sure this romanticised view of the world is the foundation of Nigerian optimism. I don’t’ find Nigerians, in general, to be very romantic people. I think it’s simply not in the culture to get angry about things like meetings starting late or NEPA suddenly disappearing. It’s like the whole noise thing: while we oyibos (white people) get increasingly annoyed by the sound of generators or music blaring out from a neighbour’s house, our Nigerian friends don’t even seem to hear it – it’s like it doesn’t register with them at all, and they just carry on as if it’s not there.

Despite the difficult conditions here, every Nigerian is convinced that he’s going to become a millionaire with every new venture he starts. In general, people are constantly looking for opportunities to better their lives, to bring in more money for their family, to move up in the world – and they are optimistic that they will achieve this. Recently I heard a Nigerian explain the more secular society of Britain by the fact that we in the UK have less to be hopeful about. It took me a while to deconstruct that sentence, but I don’t think he meant that our future is any less bright than Nigeria’s; instead, he meant that we already have so much going for us that our list of things left to hope for is so much smaller, and therefore we don’t need prayer in the same way that Nigerians do.

Whatever it is, international surveys would have us believe that Nigerians are the happiest people on the planet, and there is certainly a great deal of laughter here, so they must be onto something.

All Quiet on the Kada* Front

*Kada is Hausa for crocodile and is the origin of the name Kaduna


Having spent the last four days in Abuja to avoid any potential trouble around inauguration day, I’m now back in Kaduna which has remained, thankfully, peaceful. The same can’t be said for the whole country: there have been bombs in Bauchi, just outside Abuja and in nearby Zaria, and probably more.

I’m relieved that Kaduna has passed this final election hurdle without trouble and am hoping, naturally, that it will continue.

We were lucky to be out of the country during the main troubles in Kaduna. But I’m afraid to admit that part of me feels a little disappointed, a little like I missed the opportunity to survive something: like I’m a wimp for enjoying the fact that circumstances took me out of the situation. Let’s not pretend that there isn’t a badge of honour among backpackers and volunteers which is handed round the campfire or the plastic bar table and finally bestowed on he who has endured the greatest hardship or seen the most extreme danger and lived to tell the tale.

What a disgusting luxury to be able to see those experiences as notches on the tent-pole rather than the horrendous misfortune they are.  And how awful that I allow myself to fall into that competition with others, that I compare my experience with other people’s to work out whether I’ve really ‘done’ the Nigeria thing.

The more I think about it, the more I think about the wide range of volunteers in Nigeria, the more I realise that everybody’s experience is completely individual. Why should I worry about whether I’ve been to all the places past volunteers have recommended? What does it matter that I get a lift with my employer when I can, instead of taking potentially lethal public transport? What does it matter that I’m glad I didn’t have to be cowering in a corner of my house while the rioting was happening in other parts of the city?

I’m enjoying the realisation that this is just my life out here: it doesn’t have to be this isolated experience which I package up into stories to tell my children, but can just be me, being me, living in a different place. Like as if I’d moved to Norwich or something. I’m the most risk averse person I know back home, so why would I be any braver out here? I like spending my weekends drinking coffee with my husband, listening to Radio 4 and doing Thomas Eaton’s quiz, whether I’m in London or Lagos. Sure, there are things I have added to my life out here – fresh mangoes, making my own granola, reading more books, sunshine – but that doesn’t have to mean losing the things that made me me. I just have to keep telling myself that.