Barka da Sallah!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Noises Off

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

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

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

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

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

Timekeeping

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

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

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

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

Leadership

Soon after I arrived in my post here, in an attempt to figure out what I could usefully contribute, I conducted 1-2-1s with every member of the team I’m working with to find out what they felt about their role, what they thought needed to change in the department and what made them want to come to work in the mornings. Overwhelmingly, the single clearest message from these meetings was that the motivating factor for all of them was the Head of the department: the fact that he is so busy and works so hard makes them want to do well in their jobs (“If you’re boss isn’t sleeping, you won’t sleep either.”).

I’ve been very fortunate, thus far, to have worked mainly for excellent – and in some cases truly exceptional – leaders, and on the few occasions when I haven’t, it’s completely destroyed my motivation to do any work. So I have to say I’m relieved that that part of the jigsaw is clearly in place here – a good place to start from. Particularly because Nigerian culture is very hierarchical - if the boss tells you to do something, you do it.

Last weekend we had dinner with our boss from the Funder – a huge relief to clarify some things about our roles, why we’re here, what they want us to do, etc. – and it made me realize: all I need to be content in a job is a good leader. If I believe in the person at the top and I know they’re on the ball, I can quite happily put up with a lot of things. But what kind of a person does that make me? The kind of person who goes along with anything so long as the person telling me to has charisma and seems to know what they’re talking about? The kind of person who votes for Tony Blair, that’s who. 

The Simple Life

The thing I love most about living in Nigeria so far is the simplicity of my life out here. It would be naïve, patronizing and almost certainly inaccurate to say that people in developing countries live more simply than we in the West do – having only seen how a handful of Nigerians live, I couldn’t possibly make that judgment. But my life here is far less complicated than it was at home. With frequent loss of power, no television, and a far reduced social life, I have more time to read, and think – and just be. It’s calmer, less frenetic, less guilt-ridden. I don’t have long to-do lists and somehow, even though household tasks should take longer out here (e.g. hand washing), there’s not that same feeling of ‘I really should go and…’every time I sit down.

In large part I suspect that’s to do with my job. I’m not saying volunteering isn’t challenging – far from it. Working within an entirely different culture in an ill-defined role can, at times, be hugely frustrating and confusing. But it’s less hectic; not only because I’m a volunteer and am supposed to be supporting and facilitating rather than jumping in and doing things, but also because the work ethic is very different out here. Added to which, the lack of power and computers means there is no email culture, which in turn means communication takes a LOT longer and slows the decision-making process right down.

I had worried about my health while I‘m volunteering: 18 months without a trip to the dentist, limited fruit and vegetables available, lots of fried food and meat… But actually (malaria aside) I think I was wrong to worry. A lot of ailments back home can be attributed to stress and so I actually feel much healthier here, where I’m not stressed about anything and I’m getting plenty of sleep; since I’ve been out here, for example, I haven’t had a single migraine. The warmth, the sun (when it’s not pelting down with torrential rain), and the joy and laughter of Nigerian people can’t help but make you feel happier and healthier.

I have to say, it makes me a little anxious about returning to the UK. With any luck, out here I’ll learn how to take things slower and not to invest so much emotional energy in my work. But is that even possible in the UK? In a culture where people go to work bleary-eyed and clutching a cup of caffeine, work 8, 10, 12 hour days and then check their blackberry several times that evening, what hope is there of taking things slower? When you’re trying to dress in ironed, sexy-yet-professional (and I’m quoting from Cosmopolitan here) Top Shop clothing and heels, work a 10 hour day making high-powered pitches and winning deals, come home and cook a Nigel Slater ‘quick supper’ for the family, spend an hour playing with the children and putting into practice Supernanny’s naughty-step-and-reward-chart routine and then finally reply to the many messages on Facebook which have accumulated since you were last in front of a computer screen 2 hours ago – where’s the opportunity for taking your foot off the pedal and just enjoying life?

I think we’re back to Maslow again. When you’ve basically got everything you could want, it’s not that you find things to moan about, but when you’re at the top of the pyramid, all you’re concerned about is self-fulfillment (or I think it’s called self-actualisation). You’ve got nowhere else to go, so you just stay there finding more and more ways in which you’re not fulfilled and trying to address them. Whereas, when you’re in sweltering heat and not sure where your next bucket of water is coming from, the range of things to worry about – whilst far more serious – is far narrower and you just focus your attention on finding that water.

Today

Today has been a much better day. I've walked along the railway and busy dusty roads, I've squished myself into the back of a bus, travelled through the busy market, made friends with a wannabe footballer called Kaz, shopped for vegetables at the side of the road and returned home to find a herd of cows on my road. Much more like it.

Fear

Yesterday, I came the closest I’ve come to throwing it all in and going home.

After a week of being in Abuja, of standards of living comparable to the UK, and of taking taxis everywhere, it was always going to be a shock to come back to Kaduna and to taking okadas. I felt a little unsafe on our ride into work (but then I always do – I never feel fully safe on those things), but then the journey home was something else.

For some reason, the main road had far more traffic than we’d ever seen at that time of day, and it was backed up a long way from one of the roundabouts. When okada drivers come to traffic jams (or ‘go slows’ as they’re known here), they try to find ways through them. Or around them. And if there isn’t a way, they invent one. So we found ourselves weaving in and out of tightly packed cars and buses, mounting curbs, humps and bumps to take muddy dirt tracks at the side of the road – onto the road, off the road, back onto the road, each time colliding with the driver and feeling like I was going to come off. Twice I had to slam my hand onto the bonnet of a vehicle – a 4x4 and a bus, both much larger than we were – which was trying to drive into us from the side.

That’s beyond my risk threshold, I’m afraid. I stopped the driver and got off – in the middle of what seemed like an industrial estate, and with no other prospects of getting home for a while since the roads were too crazy to catch a bus or bike and far too busy to consider walking alongside or crossing. After a bit of a walk along quiet side roads, we found a chop house (café) where we sat down for a drink. Weeping into my bitter lemon, I wondered how everyone else does it. Other volunteers seem happy enough to take okadas, or to take shared cars or buses along busy roads at alarming speeds; and Nigerians do it all the time! I’m finding it really hard to know that whatever I want to accomplish today, I’m going to have to take a potentially terrifying and dangerous journey to do it. And it’s exhausting to tense all your muscles and hold your breath for large portions of your commute because you’re worried you’re going to hit that car or come off the bike.

I know the answer to how Nigerians and other volunteers do it – they don’t worry as much as I do. And actually, in the case of many Nigerians, the answer seems to be that, since they believe that God will choose their time to die, they have no control over it and there’s therefore no need to worry about it. I have to say that’s becoming an ever more appealing philosophy. Although, it’s also the reason why no okada drivers wear helmets and presumably the cause of many deaths which could have been avoided.