Getting a dose of Nigerian medicine, Juju shrine of trash and other observations

For every bad experience there is a good one. Last weekend Chantal and I went to my favorite beach, Tarkwa Bay, for a relaxing day. Instead we came up against a rather large dose of unfriendliness, not to say racism. Once we disembarked after our boatride to the beach, we discovered two characters on the landing, who had barricaded off the jetty and were now selling ‘entrance tickets’ to the beach, which is normally free. When queried they quickly got agitated and said there was a show on the beach, so we had to pay. I still refused, arguing that sea and sand are free and anyway we were not interested in any show (both me and them knew there was never going to be one). During our interchange the locals kept passing the barricade without having to pay so soon enough Chantal and I were the only people who they wanted to force payment out of. A girl overheard our discussion and stepped forward to say that we were all friends, visiting her aunt on the island, so none of us should need to pay. Wow, that really set one of the guys off, who now bellowed “you are selling out your black brothers, these whites have money, they come here and eat off our land” etc. etc. The whole thing got nasty and she finally pulled out a 200 naira bill and threw it to the area boys so that we could pass. Jennifer as her name turned out to be was very sweet, 22, and quite a feminist with a lot of strong opinions about Nigeria’s male dominated society. We hung out for a bit on the beach and I forgot about the nasty incident, that is, until I needed to change into my bikini and was showed to a deserted bamboo shed by Jennifer’s sister. As I came out of the shed a livid man was shouting incessantly in Yoruba, showing that well-known gesture of arm extended, palm open: give money. I have often wondered how come that these beach managers and shed proprietors never manage to appear before one unknowingly utilizes their services, but pop up out of nowhere to demand payment for something that a minute ago seemed entirely free. Nevermind, the old geezer was waved off with a few Yoruba phrases (courtesy of Jennifer’s sister, not me) but continued to follow us all the way, muttering, probably cursing me for seven generations onward. We ignored him, as I have now learnt to do very effectively, to get rid of hawkers, beggars, windowcleaners and future husbands. I have noticed that as part of my acclimatization I no longer suffer from the loud cacophony in markets and motorparks and have no problem with being followed by 10 kids shouting after me. In fact it is quite a fun game to listen to the various slogans of streetsellers. Usually they just repeat “oyibo, what do you want to buy” or something along those lines, but today in Ife an enterprising Haussa vendor (presumably well-versed in the mysteries of the cyber world and the new opportunities that eBusiness could provide for his muslim hats) was chanting “How are you, dubyou dubyou dot”.

My conquest of Nigeria continues and I visited Port Harcourt in the Niger delta last week as well as Kabba in Kogi state this weekend. Both places are high on the ‘don’t go there’ list – Port because of the oil-fuelled (xcuse the pun) rebel activities (they shot a western oil exec there just a week before) and Kabba because of its access roads being notorious for armed robberies. While Nigeria does not have any sights to speak of per-se, instead it offers endless opportunities for those wanting to practice the extreme sport ‘staying alive’. OK, slight exaggeration, but I did end up in a bad way in Port Harcourt. Unfortunately it was nothing as glamorous as getting kidnapped – I just had a bad egg sandwich on Virgin Nigeria. If this had happened in the US I could have sued the airline, or at least demanded a free ticket, but it being Nigeria no such luck. Indeed, one of my friend’s cousins, who is a bit of a personality in the Lagos tabloids and has a long-term boyfriend in the UK, has been falsely accused by the papers of having an illicit affair with an engaged guy. The fact that there is no truth to the story and no basis for it seems not to matter much and when I suggested she sues for slander I was outright laughed at.

My egg sandwich afforded me a good opportunity to get the lowdown on the crème de la crème of Nigeria’s healthcare. It just so happened that we were at a negotiation with Shell about a prospective project when I fell ill. Throughout the budget discussions I was feeling hunky-dory - it was when we were about to wrap up and wanted to see a bit of Port Harcourt that my nausea set in. So, our counterparts in the negotiations being doctors, I asked their advice on what to do and one of the nice physicians took me to their inhouse clinic (Port Harcourt is Shell’s HQ in Nigeria and they have a veritable town in their camp, with their own power turbines, hospital and staff accomodation) and I had to give all sorts of samples to determine what was wrong with me and got injected with something that made me dizzy for the rest of the day. They aren’t big on telling you what medication you are getting and in my foul state I was too weak to resist, even though I had promised myself I would never get an injection in Nigeria, let alone one that I had no need for.

So for the rest of the day I was feeling like a zombie and spending 2 hours in a hot and humid airport lounge without aircon and with fever and nausea was really awful. Little did I know that I would soon get home to find my generator broken down so that I had to instruct security on what to do in my feverish state. There are times when having friends and family around really becomes important – this would have been one of them. I started fearing that I had malaria – it is the most over-diagnosed illness in the tropics and as soon as fever is involved that is the first suspicion. And even though malaria is wide-spread some people have no idea how you get it – a common misconcepion is that it is caught from another person, like a cold, and has nothing to do with mosquitoes. As I am writing this an HIV/AIDS public service announcement came on the radio – there is a lot of them, some of them quite good, attempting to give the disease a ‘human face’, to try and reduce the stigma and discrimination against those affected. This is all good and well, but going back to malaria, there is not at all the same focus on educating people and preventing other killer diseases. HIV/AIDS is where a lot of the health-funding is and so the rest of the huge healthcare problems in Nigeria, e.g. Africa’s highest child mortality rates, are being ignored.

And now a funny little anecdote: Our compound has been engaged in trench (stench) warfare with the neighbour who put his trash next to our fence the whole time. Finally someone in our office came up with a creative solution and we decided to put up a bamboo partition around the smelly dustbin to shield it from visitors’ eyes. But law and behold, instead of praise we got a proper piece of mr. Neighour’s mind. He tore down the partition and accused us of juju, saying the bamboo fence looked like a shrine and we were trying to unleash evil spirits. By the way 80% of Nollywood productions are on the topic of juju (equivalent of voodoo) and have a corrupted heroine who is possessed by the evil spirits. Lying in my boss’ office I discovered another Nollywood film called ‘the Aids patient’. It is about a young girl contracting HIV and how this affects everyone around her. This is all good: development messaging in a commercial film, but then shockingly in the end she gets cured by the grace of god. I find this a very dangerous message. Religion is an extremely strong influence in Nigerian culture and many actually believe in miracles and may take the whole thing literally and as an excuse to not protect themselves.

I am about to go and eat some popo (papaya) so that I don’t take my Lariam on an empty stomach and have vivid nightmares. I never thought papaya would become one of my favourite fruits: back in Cuba, where it is called fruta bomba, I used to regard it as the poor man’s mango but now I love it. Dodo (fried plantain) is another favourite and to my delight corn season has started so when stuck in traffic I often get corn on the cob. Oh, and before I forget, I got some lovely shrimps from the beach last weekend and was cooking them with garlick, lime and pepe tonight. Now you are probably thinking that I am turning into a Nigerian Nigella, but unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth. It is so easy to get into bad habits here. For example, I am drinking a lot of soft drinks (minerals) because I don’t trust the water they boil in the office so whenever I get thirsty from eating the peppery stew for lunch I flush it down with a coke. And I still have not found any good way to keep fit, which is important as it is impossible to walk anywhere, so I end up doing very little physical exercise. I may try the airport hotel pool for swimming before work, which means getting there very early and going to bed basically asap. So goodnight and over and out from Lagos, Nigeria, Africacacacaca……