The mystery of The Brown Splodge, Part III

So far, no-one and nothing has returned for the final piece of bread. Whatever it was, it seems the poison worked. Until next time...

The mystery of The Brown Splodge, Part II

As I was pottering around at home yesterday afternoon, I found two actual poos: one by the front door, one by the bed, and both as big as those oversized jelly beans you get in liquorice allsorts (torpedoes?). Now I come to think of it, I think they’ve been there a couple of days and I was just in denial, subconsciously convincing myself that they were just bits of dirt from my shoe, or a dead insect or something.

So, I went straight out to find some rat poison. You’d think it would have been easier to get hold of than it was, but nonetheless, I eventually found a shop that sold it and bought 10 packets (I wasn’t taking any chances).

As recommended by the shopkeeper in broken English, I tore a slice of bread into four pieces and placed each on the lid from a jar or tupperware. I then sprinkled two packets of the very, very fine, dark grey powder (who ever thought it would be a good idea to make a poisonous substance so fine that it puffs up into the air so you can breathe it right in?!) over the four pieces. I placed one lid by each of the poo sites, one near the kitchen (figuring it was probably after food) and the final, biggest one by the drainage pipe in the bathroom – the only possible entry point I could identify, unless he was casually strolling in through the open door on a sunny afternoon.

Within half an hour of putting the poison in place, I heard a slight scratching in the bathroom. When I looked in, the entire piece of bread – a piece the size of my palm – had gone! In broad daylight, and while I pottered in the other room with the radio on, the beast had snuck in and stolen a piece of food half the size of his body. 

Now, I don’t like rodents. In fact, that’s a bit of an understatement: ever since a mouse ran out from under my pillow whilst I was in the bed (London mice are the cheekiest, stupidest little creatures), you could say I’ve had a bit of a phobia. But the brilliant thing about being out here and being afraid of everything, is that, it’s helped me to put certain fears into perspective. For most of the things I’m scared of, when I ask myself “What’s the worst that could happen?”, the answer is usually death. So when something comes along that in can’t really hurt me, let alone kill me, I’m actually pretty thankful. Nonetheless, my knees were wobbling a bit.

So I moved two of the other pieces of bread to what I now knew was his entry point, leaving the one in the bedroom in the hope that it would remain untouched and I could convince myself before going to sleep that he didn’t like coming into the bedroom. I went out to meet up with some other volunteers for a couple of hours, and when I came back, the other two pieces in the bathroom had disappeared. 

Assuming that Nigerian rats were considerably smarter and more cunning than London mice (since it was managing to steal large pieces of bread without me even seeing it), I wandered round the house carrying the radio and with heavy footfall to make sure it knew I was back. The bread in the bedroom remained untouched; relieved, I moved it into the bathroom. I jumped straight into bed and tucked the net in extra tight (thank God for mosquito nets!).

This morning, the final piece of bread is still there (a three course bread-and-poison meal is probably enough for any rat), and I can neither see nor smell any signs of dead rat inside the house. And I have to say, I’m pretty proud of myself for dealing with it all on my own and managing to spend the night in a house with a rat.

Of course, there’s a big assumption I’m making here. Having never seen it, and not being an expert on animal droppings, all I know is that something or someone is sharing (and pooing in) my house and it likes bread but can’t manage a fourth piece. Who’s to say it’s actually a rat…?

The mystery of The Brown Splodge

Our transformer still isn't fixed, but apparently we are now sharing one with another line; so we get NEPA one day, and they get it the next, and so on. Obviously, NEPA isn't a continuous concept, so you only get it for part of your allotted day, if you're lucky, but at least this has introduced a degree of predictability which we never had before. Fortuitously, the lovely 'Sea Breeze' (a bar with a garden and gorgeous view of the river. Though not the sea. But there is breeze.) is on the other line, so whenever our fridge is off, their beers should be nice and cold.


This means that many nights are spent in the dark, sweating from the general heat and also that generated by the candles, hoping that the laptop battery will last until the end of whatever episode I'm watching and trying to hear anything other than the whirr of generators (all of our neighbours seem to have them). 


Last night, while watching an episode of Glee in the dark, I closed all doors to the living room to block out some of the noise. And when I opened it again, there on the floor was a small, brown splodge. It was directly underneath the open hatch into the roof, so I looked up to see if I could see or hear anything up there. I couldn't. I got some loo roll, wiped it up and - and I know this is disgusting - sniffed it. It smelled of fish. The only explanation I could think of, was that there was some fish-eating beast with diarrhoea in my home (or somehow, expertly squatting over the side of the hatch to do his/her business, but then I reasoned that if you've got diarrhoea, you probably don't have the strength in your leg muscles to attempt that). 


I didn't look too hard for this beast. Instead, I went to bed, tucking my mosquito net in extra tightly and turning up the volume on my ipod. There was no further evidence this morning. The mystery continues...

7 days and counting...

Today is our 7^th day in a row without NEPA (mains electricity). Apparently the transformer has broken, which means that our whole road has no power (or ‘light’ as Nigerians would say). The volunteers who live on the next road also had no NEPA for a few days and were also told it was something to do with a transformer, but somehow their power is back and ours is still off.

This has meant that most of the food in our fridge has gone off. We had got complacent and started to cook up batches of food to store in there and to buy large amounts of vegetables at the weekend to last us the week; so most of that went off and we’re now back to buying food on a daily basis.

It has also meant that we’ve had to make sure that we take our appliances to work every day (laptop, phone charger, ipods, digital radio/speaker) to charge up. This hasn’t been too hard – I’ve been at a workshop at a hotel for most of the week, and since Nigerians are used to the electricity problem, it’s not thought at all odd to plug in your various things to charge around the workshop room!

It was frustrating at first that we couldn’t have the fans on in the evening – especially since, with no light, we use candles to see by, which only adds to the heat in the house! But I think we’re getting used to it, and the fans really were a luxury in the first place.

I think the main thing I miss when we have no electricity – apart from being able to watch DVDs or email without worrying about the laptop battery – is being able to have a cold drink. We boil and filter our water, and so it always ends up tasting like the filter ‘candles’ which are made out of something chalky; not the worst taste in the world, and when we’re thirsty, we’ll drink it, but so much nicer when it’s cold and you can’t really taste the calcium in it!

I learnt from Facebook that a volunteer elsewhere in Nigeria went without electricity for 20 days. That’s the kind of thing I wish I didn’t know. It’s like when you have hiccups, and you think “It’s ok – they can’t last forever.” And then you remember that woman who got into the Guinness Book of World Records for having hiccups that lasted 29 years. I’m sure this won’t last 29 years. And even if it does, the bar down the road has a generator and a fridge full of beer.

Fear, Part II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's not as Black and White as that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Durbar in Kano

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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