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.