Panniland

Renaissance man of Africa

2007-06-10T14:27:00.000-07:00

It is well! Last month saw a lot of firsts – first time I had eba (pounded cassava), first time I drank pure water from a plastic bag, first time I ate fresh cashew fruit straight from the tree, first time I had audience with a traditional ruler and first time I met the Leonardo da Vinci of Africa, dr. Oluyombo Awojobi of Eruwa, Oyo State, Nigeria.

CFC is co-producing a documentary on the extraordinary doctor, Dr. Awojobi, in the small rural townof Eruwa and I spent a few days on the shoot in May and got a fix of tranquility and renewed hope in humankind, so I felt I needed to share this story...

Being in Eruwa reminded me of the Africa I had pictured in my mind’s eyes before I set out on my Nigerian adventure: cool, quiet mornings with the cock crowing and the distant sound of voices and domestic activity. Rural Nigeria is oh so different from crazy-busy Lagos. The fences are low, no burglar proof on windows, people greet and smile without expecting a dash for directions. There are endless vistas of palm groves and lush ground vegetation, where you see flocks of white birds take off … and the farmers growing yam are colourful little patterned dots in the green expanse of farm fields. Life is hard but honest… far from the shifty business mindedness and never ending hustle of the city.

Dr. Awojobi came to Eruwa in the 80ies as a young surgeon in training. He was meant to stay for one month to provide surgical service to the community but he returned to Eruwa upon finishing his qualifications and after a few years in government service set up his clinic, ACE - designed by him from scratch and funded without any external support.

ACE is no ordinary hospital. There is no sign of computers or copy machines but records of the 107,000 patients, that have been seen here throughout the years, are neatly kept on paper registration cards in the archive all the same. There is no fancy ambulance with sirens, instead a tricycle with a roof, inspired by the tuk-tuks of India shuttle the patients efficiently.

All around the clinic examples of rudimentary yet life-saving solutions abound. The operation table utilises a car jack to lever up the patients and the distiller and autoclave in the back, made out of domestic cooking gas cylinders, are powered by corn cobs given to the clinic by farmers who use part of the clinic’s land to grow their produce. ACE gets access to bio-fuel and the farmers get rid of waste.

Another recycling solution is simple but perfect: rainwater during rainy season is collected in large reservoir tanks and is lead through the pipe system to showers and from there used for flushing the toilets. It is only during the dry season there is a need to use the six wells drilled on the premises. In fact, a nearby school is also using ACE’s distilled water for performing experiments in their chemistry lab and Awojobi’s locally made distiller won an award from the Natural Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure.

Speaking of labs, the centrifuge in Awojobi’s lab that separates the blood from other bodily fluids is another practical invention that does not rely on erratic Nigerian power supply from NEPA (colloquially called Never Expect Power Always). The machine was fabricated out of the back wheel of a bicycle and is manually operated when there is no light. The home-grown inverter is running on car batteries to charge the solar-power fridge in the lab. These are only some of the many ingenious solutions the clinic, or rather its champion, the doctor, has come up with. He is an inventor as much as he is a surgeon, a man with a true philanthropic outlook.

Dr. Awojobi is not interested in patenting the inventions he created, rather he would love to see other people follow in his footsteps and use such equipment to aid rural healthcare delivery. Having been invited to the UK for a 6-month training, he declined, saying that his patients can’t go without him for that long and only visited Britain for 2 weeks.

There was a deliberate decision behind not training abroad but rather in Nigeria during his residency training. Dr Awojobi’s decision was based on the “implicit confidence that all my teachers at Ibadan were world renowned and could train their kind in Nigeria”. He is a firm believer of Nigerians solving their problems themselves, rather than waiting for foreign expertise or help and he is certainly leading by example!

Hassle and flow (T.I.L)

2007-04-14T00:15:00.001-07:00

Another curfew beckons! It is election time in Nigeria and the race is really heating up. Gubernatorial elections are happening this weekend and presidential the next. The radio is full of jingles for the candidates - I particularly like Babatunde Fashola’s who has ripped off the tune ‘We are the World’ and sprinkled it with some subtle slogan like ‘We Love Fashola’. Last minute a public holiday was announced for Thursday and Friday even though Saturday is the voting day. Many claim this was to effectively bar the courts from ruling, thereby throwing out the cases of those who wanted to appeal to the courts regarding their contested candidacies, and in particular this refers to vice president Atiku, whom incumbent Obasanjo has not really been in favour of lately.

So the strong man in the running right now for Nigeria’s next president is Yaradua, a Northern man who is Katsina’s governor and one of the few aspirants that does not have a file with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and actually did not run up a debt for his state during his governance. Then again a suspicious Southerner the other day dismissed Yaradua saying the only reason there is no dirt on him is because the Northerners keep these things hush hush and bribe their constituency with a few handouts while pocketing the rest.

In any case his victory may be imminent – one of the style magazines has already started running features on Yaradua’s presidential fashion sense. I particularly enjoyed seeing him wearing party-branded, PDP (People’s Democratic Party) shoes to lighten up his Sharia attire. Oh, and the other main contender is ex-dictator Buhari... I know which one I’d vote for…

So anyway everyone has been preparing for the elections, noone quite knows if there will be riots, dead calm or perhaps a discrete coup. Just in case, I have been asked by my boss to bunker up with money, phone credit, food and water, diesel and a full tank of petrol for all eventualities. Saturday, actual election day, will be spent indoors, one is only supposed to go and vote and then back home and I definitely ain’t going to try walking anywhere after my last brush with the law… I can’t help but wonder why every time this nation has to vote or be counted or perform any other large scale civic duty, the only way to solve it is to shut people into their homes and threaten to arrest them if they do otherwise.

I am continuing my story today the morning of election day, 14^th of April 2007. The day before yesterday there were riots outside the governor’s house on Bourdillon, they wanted to set fire to the residence and apparently there were shootings too. Then last night rumours were rife that there would be a curfew from 8pm onwards since election day is today. By the way, Nigeria is always full of unverifiable rumours – concerning the elections there was one that said Yaradua was dead, another one saying they’d kidnapped one of the gubernatorial candidates and now this latest one concerning house-arrest.

Temi and I needed to go out and buy something last minute so we risked it and found out by default that no curfew was going on – or if there was half of Lagos would get arrested as there were cars everywhere around Falomo… and you know that when the majority is going against the law here, there will be no enforcement, so we could rest assured. Later at night though, we had the pleasure of repeating the exercise as diesel ran out after midnight just as we were watching a film (with Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac, I say no more). This meant all lights off, beeping UPSs and total darkness in Temi’s house, even though she had hours earlier given money to one of the drivers to go and buy diesel for the gen. It now turned out that the guy couldn’t get any – there is a new shortage going on – and instead of telling her this and give back the money, he just took off and was not answering his phone. Nothing new there, happens all the time, but really irritating especially the night before curfew, knowing there will be no NEPA for the whole next day and lots of sweating indoors.

Consequently we got on the road again at half past midnight on election night, with a jerry can in the boot of the car, and woke up a friend to borrow diesel. This time around the same roads we crisscrossed hours before, heaving with activity, were completely deserted and only a few shady characters – the odd hustler, prostitute or chewing gum seller – were still out there. If we saw a car on the roadside we just drove past quickly – in Lagos chances are it might be armed robbers getting ready to strike, especially on the eve of some big event or holiday.

This is because armed robbers know that there is a lot of money changing hands in the run-up to elections (or round Christmas when everyone has saved up to buy presents for their loved ones or finance their trip home) so hitting a political person’s house could give a lucrative bounty if they can get their hands on the campaign funds or money allocated for community relations (bribes to get votes, money earmarked for hiring thugs to instigate unrest or even kill a certain candidate or party supporters). Even the usually money-hungry road police, who stop you every five yards on Awolowo road to demand ‘anyting for di weekend, ma?’, were missing and it gave the street an uncharacteristic, eerie atmosphere. Though everyone knows they are not there to uphold order or serve and protect they are just such an integral part of the night landscape of Lagos, something seems to be up when their presence is void.

All the hangout spots on Awolowo road were shut-down and dark, another first on a Friday night, as the place is generally buzzing with touts, beggars and self-appointed car-park attendants obstructing the way, running up and down the lanes to waive a car into some gutter-side ad-hoc parking spot. At this point we discovered Temi’s tank was on empty, so a not-so-attractive prospect was that we might run out of petrol on the way back to her house. (Again, her driver (another one this time) drove the car all day and happily went home without even telling her she’d need to fuel her car, let alone actually fill it up as would be part of his job description). As luck would have it, we ran into one of the last guests of CocoNut Grove, a friend of Temi’s, so we asked him to follow us by car back to her place to be on standby rescue if our own car stopped.

I am telling all of this in such detail to give a flavour for what every single routine thing in this town entails – there is so much brain power and effort that goes into the simplest undertaking and disruptions are everywhere, there’s always a need for a plan Z as all others will have fallen through and you can never rely on someone else to do what they are supposed to cause chances are they won’t, leaving you stranded at midnight the night before a curfew.

These things are starting to get to me. In the mornings I half-expect to be woken up by support staff reporting some emergency, asking for direction on what to do: ‘‘the generator has broken down’’, ‘‘there is no more diesel’’, ‘‘can I have the office key’’, ‘‘the driver came back drunk and started abusing the security guards, can you come out?’’, ‘‘the light is on in the resource centre – I need key to switch it off’’, ‘‘only one of the two security guards turned up to work, I want to report them’’. But hey, as Leonardo di Caprio eloquently put it in Blood Diamond “T.I.A.”, a.k.a. this is Africa… and he hadn’t even been to Lagos!

I fought the law...

2007-02-15T01:33:00.000-08:00

Just when I thought I had run out of inspiration for my Nigeria blog and it seemed I’d become too blaze to describe the little everyday wonders that happen to me, the long arm of the law came to the rescue.

On the last Saturday morning of January I found myself walking around my estate to clear my head and shake a red wine hangover from the previous night. The streets were nice and quiet as everyone is supposed to stay indoors during ‘Environmental’ - the 3h cleaning exercise that takes place on the last Saturday of each month - and during which no cars or pedestrians are allowed and Lagos is meant to become squeaky clean. From my walk I called Yemisi and during our chat suggested that maybe rather than wasting my credit I should come over to hers, after all she only lives a few hundred meters from me. ‘Just be careful so you don’t get arrested’ were her final words to me and laughingly we hung up and I set out to go see her.

As I was approaching the main road, there was no sign of any cleaning going on, but I did see a yellow danfo slow down and 3 policemen hop out of it to greet me. In my mushy head I was still not reacting and I smilingly said hello to them, when they asked if I knew what day it was. At first they were friendly, then grew harsher, surrounded me and insisted I go with them in the police car to the station. I tried to plead, beg, ask for understanding but in the end when they started pulling my arm and pushing me into the van, I decided it was better if I went of my free will. Nigerian police are something else, not very friendly and certainly not very honest or law abiding. If I had only had some money on me I could have ‘reasoned it out’ with them then and there but stupid girl as I was I didn’t take my wallet, only my mobile phone, thank god.

So when it became evident that we were cruising the streets of Ikeja for more law offenders to rip off and our journey would lead to the jailhouse at the local government court I decided it was time to phone Yemisi to tell her I probably wouldn’t make it to hers . . .what’s more I’d need her to come bail me out urgently. But at this point, I am still sitting in the police danfo, with 10 police around me, the closest one to me with one glass eye suspisously mustering me and all of them cradling their batons, talking strategy as they see other ‘criminals’ out in the streets: ‘you get off here, two of you round the back of the van, circle him, get him!’ And the good old Lagosians, used to battling the police, would argue, shout, beg and finally try to fight their way back to freedom rather than entering the car. I kept thinking, ‘this is not happening to me’ – at times marveling at the absurdity of the situation, at times chuckling to myself at the hilarity of it and at times wondering how intimidating it would get for a white girl in a Nigerian prison.

Finally we arrived to the police station, everyone was offloaded and after more pushing and shoving and intense Yoruba cursing, locked up in a communal cell with about 26 unlucky souls. People were getting quite agitated: ‘In my own state, this is how I am treated!’ and ‘You people only want money, that’s why you are doing this!’ were some of the comments made to the police. I kept to myself and fought the urge to pick up my mobile when I kept getting calls and texts about what I was up to that Saturday. I could hardly answer the phone and say ‘sorry can’t meet you for coffee, am in jail right now’. I attracted a fair bit of interest: ‘Oyibo, what did you do?’ was a common question and soon enough we were sharing tales of how we’d gotten captured and what we were ‘doing time for’ A police woman took our names down on a list – this was so that we could be summoned for our pending court proceedings. She offended one of the jailbirds somehow and the guy started to complain about her to another policeman. Rather than showing solidarity the police guy just said ‘don’t you have a wife? you know how women are, now’ and that seemed to settle the problem. Meanwhile, some of my new made friends wanted to take my number and even one police man tried chatting me up from the other side of the barred windows. I suppose [Nigerian] men will be men no matter the circumstance. . .

After 1.5h when I was finally wondering if I’d have to start sampling Nigerian prison toilets too, Yemisi and her not at all amused brother in law arrived. I could see them through the bars, outside our cell and I waved over the police woman so Yemisi could talk to her. The woman outlined the proceedings – I would have to wait for the trial, when the magistrate would gather, they would ask me if I was innocent or guilty and I would have to plead guilty, then they would give their verdict and I would have to couhgh up the dough for my penalty or rot in jail forever. This could take the whole day. Yemisi, the problem solver, said plainly, we don’t have all day so lets just sort it out and proceeded to explain ‘see na dis gerl, she no get motor, she treck in Ikeja, how many oyibo people you go see in Ikeja on di road, they all go VI in their big cars. Dis one, eh, is working for development self, she no get money’.

Well, the police woman had apparently not thought of it like that, so she responded ‘Eyyah, na true, maybe we give her staff price!’ So after some negotiation, I got 1000naira off, was fasttracked in the proceedings and somehow once the money had changed hands didn’t even need a court proceeding to get the hell out. I was taken out the back way and took my first glorious breath of fresh air after 3h of stale prison, feeling giddy from the excitement of being back out in freedom. I had never ‘seen’ my street Adeniyi Jones, now all of a sudden it looked beautiful and I was marveling at the people, the sights the dusty roadside shacks, feeling a weird intense joy!

We went to Yemisi’s house and I got treated to some akara and was laughed at by quite a number of people upon telling my story. Even Bimbo, who is now in Switzerland, was texting Yemisi, asking how ‘operation rescue Panni’ was going. To wash off my experience I had a swim in her pool and it was divine. That night, I almost felt like someone out of Goodfellas, we were a big group of people, everyone welcomed me as if I had just gotten out and there were plenty of jokes about me getting prison tattoos etc. It occurred to me that this has happened almost on the day of my 1^st year anniversary in Nigeria and I s’pose I did managed to commemorate it in true Naija style!

When keeping it real goes wrong

2006-10-30T01:30:00.000-08:00

On the 23rd of October Ramadan ended and was celebrated with a 2-day public holiday following on the weekend. In true Nigerian government communications stylee, people were kept in the dark until the very last minute about whether we would get one or two days off, effectively preventing anyone from planning to travel on the bank holiday. But, taking my chances I decided I would bank on having Monday and Tuesday off and got myself a visa to Benin to visit over the weekend. I convinced Yemisi and Bimbo to come and to keep it real – crossing the Nigeria-Benin border on foot.

Yemisi’s driver Chimeze dropped us at the border and we embarked on our adventure. We crossed at Seme and even before we got to the actual checkpoint (if one can talk of such a thing) we were greeted by a chaotic, shoddy-looking hub of activity with hawkers, okadas and taxi drivers, blackmarket money-changers and thousands of bizibodies with unidentifiable purpose milling around the place. It was so disorientating that we almost missed the first set of passport controllers as they melted perfectly into the muddy mess of the whole place and if they had not dragged their clunky mobile border control barriers (in the shape of a modified rake) with them to block our way, we would have strolled past unknowingly. After these guys we got to the real checkpoint, which was nothing like I’ve ever seen: it was a long series of desks by the side of the road so you had to make a special detour to get there – again if Bimbo would not have shepherded us that way I would just have kept on walking straight ahead on the road and into Benin. The officials – some of them in uniform, some of them plainclothes – were chilling behind their desks, surrounded by characters who only god knows if they were their colleagues or friends, with nothing better to do on the long weekend than spend some time at border control.

The first desk checked our yellow fever certificates. To the officials’ dismay mine was in order, even though they had stern words regarding my name not being on the cover of my certificate, only inside the document. Moving on to Yemisi and Bimbo the thorough inspection paid off – they both had some data missing from their certificates, which were then declared invalid. Ah, how would such a situation be remedied – could they get new emergency vaccinations on site? No! Should they be turned away at the border? Of course not! In return for some monetary compensation they were promptly issued with new yellow fever certificates containing the missing dates for immunization, which miraculously materialized out of thin air. This was the point I realized that anyone carrying any old disease can cross Nigerian borders as long as they have the cash to bribe the officials.

Then we came to a new desk and the questioning began: why are we going to Benin, what is our occupation?... and so on. When Yemisi and I answered we work for a non government organization, the officials started to really lay into us ‘Nawow, you people must have lot of money… NGOs are a business… maybe I come work for you... what can you do to develop me?’ As it often does, the conversation started on a provoking note, but as we were speaking, took on a jokier tone and in the end the same official who started picking on us signaled to his colleague at the next desk to wave us through without even showing our passports. Well, it was about time to get some preferential treatment as all the while we were being quizzed about our purpose to enter Benin less than respectable characters were waltzing through the checkpoint, just nodding to the officials. No passport, no yellow fever certificate, no nothing. And the bread sellers and okadas were never once stopped by anybody, crossing the border innumerable times in a day. Lesson number two: crossing Nigerian borders has nothing to do with having your documents in order.

A few more desks, a few more forms to fill and a few more 200 naira notes silently slipped to the officials and we were through the Nigerian check. Now passport control on the Benin side. People were calmer, there was none of the milling and buzzing of shady characters around, but there was one similarity with the Nigerian border control: the officials on the Benin side also had to be bribed to process our passports. I suppose sitting two feet away from their Nigerian counterparts had taught them a thing or two. This is how corruption breeds – it really spreads like a disease taking over the minds and souls of people, going from one person to another, from one nation to the next.

But I digress… We quickly found a cab and our French-Yoruba driver, Michael, whose Yoruba Yemisi and Bimbo could hardly decipher and whose French also had such a thick Benin accent that it was impossible to make out. Anyway, we hired him to take us to Grand Popo, a 2h drive outside Cotonou. I had done the not very thorough due diligence on our destination. I found a website but it didn’t really have an address or directions on how to get to the auberge, but I reckoned it would be somehow obvious.

Michael did indeed say he knew Grand Popo and it wasn’t until Yemisi double-checked with him on where we were going that he started to squirm. We had spent over 1.5h on the road at this time. He said we’d already passed the Grand Popo he was thinking of and this place wherever we were going was much further away, so he needed to be paid more than the agreed fare. We got down from his car, found a business centre and I tried calling the auberge to figure out whether we should indeed turn back and to get some proper directions. Phone engaged. With my nonexistent French I enquired if the proprietor knew where Grand Popo was. We somehow established it was 12 km further on and I trusted him more than our shady cabbie so we continued. And yes indeed, finally we spotted the signs to our village and drove through a deserted holiday town with Caribbean looking sheds and swaying palms.

After our border ordeal and uncertain cab ride arriving was pure bliss. The auberge was in a to-die-for setting: the house was a colonial structure reminiscent of an old hacienda, the grounds were shaded by big trees, the terrace overlook miles of uninhabited stretch of beach. They were playing Fela in the speakers and we had a fantastic meal accompanied by rose wine. The environment was so peaceful and meditative and stressfree, we instantly relaxed and loved every minute of it, I don’t think I’ve slept so well since in Nigeria as in my breezy, aircon free room with no TV or other modernities.

We explored the area, strolled on the beach and found a little rasta village close to our auberge. There was a cute rotunda that served as a beach bar, with reggae choons blasting out from it and the owner Francois served us a carbonated fruit juice called Fizzy, which quickly became a Grand Popo favourite. We came back to his place for dinner – he had one type of food on the menu, shrimp, but cooked in a variety of ways and we had it with couscous and rice and it was divine. The wine was from a carton and we sat under the stars chatting, making friends with Francois’ cute dog Jude. It appeared (with Yemisi doing most of the talking and translating) that Francois was an orphan who’d worked as a guide in the whole of west Africa, had spent bits of time in Spain, France, Germany (mainly through girlfriends he’d met on his trips) and would have liked to go back to Europe but he’d been refused visa too many times to want to try again. So he found this little plot on the beach and set up his rasta bar and lived in the back with his artist friends in a commune. One of them was a painter and textile artist and I particularly loved his textiles, which apparently are going to go on exhibition in Helsinki later on this year. Francois talked of the locals suspicion towards rastas, his place had been raided by 14 police with guns and he said women were too much wahalla, wanting him to cut his hear, give up smoking etc. We started talking about our border experience and it turned out he knew a lot about crossing borders illegally in West Africa to get to the desired destination, Europe. He had been following the same route and had filmed some of the refugees experiences.

Our days passed quickly and before we knew it our cabbie (we had traded up from shifty-Michael to rasta-Jildas) was waiting for us in his multi-coloured taxi with Marley’s head painted on the doors to whisk us back to Cotonou and the much-dreaded border. On the way back I paid more attention to the road and the settlements we passed. All in all it was not too different from Nigeria. People in native, carrying loads on their heads, riding okadas… but the distinction was still clear. The roads were not as crowded, traffic was orderly and honking was not the done thing. Okada drivers were wearing uniforms, little kiddies on their way back from school were accompanied by grownups, the roadside outdoor stands selling things were not makeshift sheds, but extensions to the shops behind them. It looked poor, but more organized, neater, cleaner… And I loved watching the women carrying French sticks on their heads and the fat-bellied massive containers of oil sold on stands everywhere and the ever-recognizable green cross of French pharmacies constituting a common landmark. This was Francophone West Africa.

So we came back to the border and this time around I was made to wait at one of the desks by an official who decided the oyibo would have to pay no matter what. He kept ignoring me while everyone else was attended to, using my passport as his elbow rest. Once again people were everywhere, confusion, shouting, begging, new passports landing on the desk, whispering between officials… and the eternal wait. And then, all of a sudden before I realized a guy had rushed off with my passport, noone knew if he was an official or some tout and I freaked out. Seme is so big and once someone disappears, they disappear. Would I be stuck in nomansland between Benin and Nigeria? I was informed by the mean desk official that my passport had been taken to the other side to check what the problem was with it. What would be the problem – I had all the visas and certificates needed. He could not answer this, but anyway it was beside the point. Once he had sufficiently demonstrated his power and my helplessness he summoned me to the desk saying that I had to leave a gift in my passport for him. Say no more, at this point I silently obeyed, no point to try anything however wrong or corrupt the guy, I wanted to just get through. I gave the bribe discretely only to get from his fellow official ‘You have not been talking to me, only my colleague’ meaning I should pay him off too. I gave my usual ‘but you are brothers, you should share now’ and somehow in the end got the necessary stamp to pass. Yemisi told me she’d never come to Benin with me again but this was before we got stopped by the narcotics guys who ripped her apart instead…

By the time we found Chimeze and the car on the Nigerian side we were haggard and dying for a wee, but happy to be sitting in a car heading back towards Lagos. Unfortunately, there were over 10 checkpoints still to negotiate by car before being able to breathe a final sigh of relief. And as luck would have it the narcotics police didn’t have much to do that day so they decided to stop us and take us to their little roadside checkpoint in the bush. One man was leisurely sucking on a grass straw, with his feet up on a desk under a tree, the others were attending to us. Our main official was polite at first but soon started his intimidating questioning as he was checking our bags through, ripping out my underwear. Yemisi had to go to the bathroom and this raised their suspicion immensely and they made a big deal out of how she may have wanted to dispose of whatever drug she had using the bush, so they sent an inspector to the ‘scene of the crime’ to check. Of course he found nothing there. Then he started his interrogation saying ‘I know a smoker when I see one. I want you to answer me have you ever smoked? And if you answer no I will take you back to Seme border and have you do a marijuana test in our lab’ In the end I think what saved us was that they found out Bimbo was a lawyer and he had his inhaler with him. As a little side-insult the big oga under the tree pulled me aside to look at what magazines I had with me. I showed him and he said disappointedly ‘Oh, I thought it was phonography’ I said I didn’t know what phonography was just to provoke a response out of him and then asked him ‘Why do you insult me like this, Sir’ which finally shut him up. It was probably not the wisest and most diplomatic approach but there’s only so much hassle you can take.

When we finally joined the throng of cars negotiating the massive afternoon go-slow towards Ikeja, our dignity bruised but relieved and savouring the sweet memory of chilled Grand Popo, we concluded this was a clearcut case of ‘when keeping it real goes wrong’!

Lagos – Centre of Excellence

2006-10-30T01:26:00.000-08:00

It is past 2 o’clock on a Thursday night and I should be tucked up in bed attending to my beauty sleep. Instead, I am wide-awake, having just gotten home from a bar across on VI where the beautiful people of Lagos fraternize. But this is certainly not what gave me second wind, nor was it the ride across the dark mainland bridge with my newfound friend the cab driver mr. T.O. who possesses one of the most rickety car wrecks in town… oh no, the source of my adrenaline rush was the sight of a giant cockroach in my bedroom. Despite spending the night in a lounge full of Lagos big men, the only taker for sharing my bedspace ended up being a cockroach - now that is pretty ironic. Having said that, judging from its sheer size, it could loosely be called a Lagos big boy of sorts, so I won’t complain.

Besides, I intend to analyze a beast of a different kind tonight, in fact why not throw the whole of Lagos under a magnifying glass and dissect. Yesterday the city experienced one of its world-famous go-slows, whereby it took one of my colleagues 5 hours to go from the mainland to Lekki. The reason was a political rally around the national stadium and this caused the whole city to clog up and spend their night honking their horns at other cars at a standstill in powerless exasperation. Now that election time is coming closer there will be more of this type of entertainment I am sure. In the end, even the most refined Lagosians had to give up their air-conditioned SUVs with drivers and brave the pavement, or god forbid take an okada, to somehow get home.

Speaking of okadas, there is a new law in Lagos that bikes must not be seen out after 7pm or before 7am. This means everyone is rushing to get home before the curfew as the machines however irritating and dangerous are a vital mode of transport - most people take them once they get off their bus stop to get close to where they live. This new measure is meant to improve safety at night – apparently there were a lot of okada robberies, i.e. people on bikes robbing cars and pedestrians – but a side effect of the regulation is that the already impossible traffic situation has just got even more unbearable: the whole of Lagos trying to get to work or home at the same time.

Today people were joking that probably even the LASTMA officials (traffic police), the okadas’ biggest enemies, were getting on bikes to get home yesterday night. And rumour has it LASTMA is really taking its task of fining the offenders seriously by never missing a chance to stop an erring driver and demand a dash to let them go. It is growing into a fine side business for the officials who can complement their measly salaries with this new source of windfall, the only slight problem being that like most regulatory initiatives it will just open up yet another avenue for corruption rather than be enforced and create order in the chaos of this disintegrated metropolis, whose tagline btw. is Lagos – centre of excellence.

And although Lagos may at first glance not strike you as a centre of excellence in any shape or form it has actually been appreciated by none other than the granddaddy of modern urban architecture, Rem Kolhaas. He took his Harvard students to Lagos on a series of research trips to study this urban phenomenon and concluded that Lagos may stand as a model for the urban development of mega-cities in the future - pioneering a sort of needs-based urbanism where ad-hoc marketplaces are created as and when a mass of people spontaneously congregate in a go-slow, and dissolve as soon as the bottleneck disappears.

And excellence can manifest itself in many different ways, for example I believe that Nigerians are very enterprising indeed - for every new obstacle presented to them, they’ll find a loophole or a way to capitalize on their little corner of influence. If there were legitimate possibilities abound in this country so much creative potential could be harnessed, but as it is, a lot of it is sadly converted into schemes and scams instead. Nevertheless, it does take true survivalists to cope in good old Naija, with no welfare systems or safety nets for its citizens, it is amazing that people get by and continue their daily struggle with a smile.

Reflections in the rain

2006-09-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

Merciless downpour drenching the pavement, …changing roads into muddy pools, causing massive go-slows, corrupting phone lines and bringing the whole city to a halt. The sun is hidden by heavy clouds and the smattering of the rain overpowers even the sound of generators. Then, by night the air is cool, the cicadas sing their songs and the dark silhouettes of palm trees are swaying gently in the wind. It is rainy season.

I sit out on my porch and slowly drink a glass of wine, taking in the mellow evening. On an overcast Sunday I wake up to the bombastic preaching of the next-door redeemed church of Christ (their generator never seems to give up while mine has as a pastime to flake on me particularly on weekends) and don’t bother to go out because of the rain, spending the day reading, settling down in the afternoon to the distant prayers of an imam.

But this is on a lazy day – I do indulge in more energetic activities too! Like for example walking… to the nearest fastfood restaurant for some jollof rice and dodo. The walk is about 2-300 meters but is quite a novelty since everyone’s inclination is to take the car wherever you go. I have started jogging within our estate and am doing exercise in the garden after the run, much to the amusement of our security guards, I am sure. The only problem with jogging (apart from the fact that timing has to be chosen carefully: it should still be light for the sake of personal safety and there should also be NEPA so that I don’t have to take heavy breaths of generator exhaust while trying to keep fit - and believe me these two conditions almost hardly coincide) is all the spectators in the street who encourage me with hollers like ‘welldone’ and ‘good for your body’.

Since coming back to Nigeria from my holiday I have started to sample the Lagos nightlife again, even though a resolution as an outcome of my vacation reflections was to live healthily (hence the exercise) and cut down on alcohol and late nights. But the sad truth is, in this environment there is a very strong urge to ‘unwind’. Plus, my darling friend Bisola is going back to England this weekend so I’ve wanted to take the opportunity to hang with her as much as possible before she disappears. Already after 6 months here many of the faces in the bars and clubs are the same and predictability is definitely setting in. There will be groups of Lagos big boys living it up with champagne, with a bunch of hangers-on around their table, everyone crowding upstairs in the VIP lounge of the ultimate hangout, Bacchus (noone wants to admit they like it but everyone winds [up] there eventually) eagerly scoaping the dance floor for babes.

One of the most cited statistics is that there are 3 or 4 girls to every guy in Lagos. I have no idea if this is true but it would definitely explain a lot when it comes to pulling. Here’s a bit of amateur behavioural psychology for you: there is an alternative moral code developing in Nigeria, whereby those who do not cheat on their wives or girlfriends are the ones to feel left out and a man of stature is expected to have multiple girlfriends, and conversely, the more girlfriends the higher the status of someone. If you ask any Nigerian man he will vehemently deny this and claim that it has nothing to do with Nigeria: all men all over the world are the same. However, here apart from the demographic imbalance the role of socio-economic factors also boost infidelity – polygamy is still widely spread and women are economically dependent on their husbands, making them less likely to go their own way just because the man is unfaithful. And the strong religious and family-oriented outlook Nigerians have means that filing for a divorce is a bigger scandal than putting up with a man who has a taste for extramarital activities (or a woman for that matter). Naturally, there are exceptions, but where would the fun of outrageous postulations go if I tried to be nuanced in my analysis?

So instead, let me be even more obnoxious. A big reason for guys being players and all this cheating is that there are some very wealthy people around, with too much money and time on their hands. There is a shortage of leisurely activities and hobbies to pursue, so the default is creating excitement in an otherwise monotonous lifestyle by having an affair. And since many are more concerned by earning money from oil and gas contracts and impressing on ladies, they may be more interested in the looks of said ladies rather than their personalities, which is why women are treated as materialistic objects to desire, pursue, then exchange/upgrade once acquired.

I totally expect to receive hate mail after this rant, but if I do get some I’ll just feel vindicated that I’ve hit the nail on the head, so please don’t bother :).

Living dangerously

2006-07-13T08:08:00.001-07:00

Finally, I am sitting here typing in my first locally sown dress: having difficulty to breathe, while displaying unhealthy amounts of breast – in short my idea to get a Nigerian tailor to make a western-style dress of my own design has failed. The tailor, Bayo, a young man who was recommended by a friend from Akwanga, stormed into my life and disappeared without a trace just as quickly. He came to Lagos to work for a lady here and I was to be one of his first clients. He called me as soon as he arrived to town and I invited him to the office to discuss the makings of my dress. On his second visit he took my measurements and a week later, when he was supposed to come with the finished goods, having failed to show up for our arranged appointment, decided to come a day after without calling, at which time I was in Ikoyi. Finally we fixed another date for him to deliver my dress and it just so happened I needed to go to a meeting out of the office so when he arrived I was not there. By the time I got back in the late afternoon, having expected him to have left, I found out that he had become urgently ill, puking all over our reception area and had to be rushed to a clinic. He got the usual treatment: pills of different colours in little plastic bags, that noone knew what they were, probably an injection or two, no diagnosis and a large bill to pay. He had no money so our admin officer lent the cash from our pettycash and I decided he should stay in our spare room in the boys’ quarters for the night as he still had fever. He then told me the story of having had to walk everywhere for the past week as his job at this lady’s workshop didn’t materialize and he’d had no money even for public transport. He had showed up at his prospective employer’s place and found out she had been shot. I know it sounds like an unbelievable story but I think people here do live from hand to mouth and there are absolutely no safety nets so when disaster strikes, it strikes hard. The next day, he looked better, I tried the dress on and it was too big so we decided he was going to adjust it. He was so grateful for us at the office taking care of him, he said he would make me a few adire attires as a gift. I told him he could just sow some more stuff for me and I would cover his hospital bill. After this he went off and I texted him a week later without getting a response. Then his brother showed up with my dress and said Bayo had left for Abuja and was still ill. So this is the story of my too tight dress.

Speaking of hospital visits – Temi, Bisola and I went to the Lekki forest reserve on my initiative, as a different thing to do on the weekend. It was wonderful to be walking in the rainforest on a wooden walkway, with monkeys overhead and peace… most importantly peace and quiet, the biggest scarcity in this town. Unfortunately, the bliss ended with Temi treading on a rotten plank and badly hurting her leg. She was bleeding and we took her to the entrance, where the attendant had conveniently disappeared and the gateman proved utterly useless. Of course there was no first aid kit, off course he wanted to wash the wound with contaminated water and of course there was no possibility to get a refund. So our adventure ended up in a clinic with Temi promising to write an article in the new edition of ‘Whatsnew?’ (Lagos’ equivalent of Time Out that her brother runs) about the appaling state of the forest reserve. The response we got from many when telling the story was ‘What did you go and do in that forest in the first place?’ I am noticing a lot of people don’t explore at all and are perfectly happy doing the same things over and over again. When I ask people (and I mean young, educated, well-off) about what they get up to in the weekends, they answer ‘go out on Friday, go clubbing on the Island on Saturday’, not even thinking that I may be asking what they do during the day. The answer is nothing special. No wonder the National Theatre is just an empty relic, and the only cinemas in this country are in Lagos (there are none in Abuja!) people just don’t crave cultural stimuli. They go to church, visit friends, go to engagements and weddings and watch TV. I suppose I should modify this statement – the culture here is all of the above and just very different from what I associate with culture.

Recently I arranged a recruitment day at the office because we are sourcing for a new finance officer and all the CVs had under hobby: meeting people and watching TV… or occasionally reading, but when prompted people could not really answer the last book they had read, so I think it was just put in to be original. Shopping at an air-conditioned mall is another favorite pastime and one I have started enjoying as well. Today I went to Citymall for lunch with Yemisi, my favorite so far, it has a coffeshop where you can get panini and lattes (unfortunately not with soft foam, but I don’t want to push my luck anyway) and then we looked at some bling (tacky whitegold and precious stone jewelry ) at the jewelry store run by a friend of hers, who turns out to be the brother of one of Temi’s friends who used to be married to the wife of another friend of Temi’s, who I also know… This is not an unusual setup, I am only now beginning to realize how small Lagos is, even though big, and everyone knows everything about everyone else… even I can start making the connections after a few months here.

Workwise I have been absolutely swamped, as Yemisi was away for 3 weeks and Bolaji, the other senior person in the office was off sick with typhoid and malaria. So I was having to deal with everything from writing proposals, managing our financials, running two projects, overseeing the electrician’s or generator repair man’s work, to consulting with the architect on how to best fortify our compound. The reason for this is that we were robbed in broad daylight by two men dressed up as carpenters last week. They eventually managed to walk off with 2 laptops and a mobile phone even though we have a security guard standing by our gate. I always knew these security guys were just for show but this really demonstrated it. So as a consequence the executive director put me in beautiful hotel for 5 nights and did a security overhaul, resulting in stringent procedures and the poor guard who let the carpenters walk off with our stuff is now querying staff as they enter the compound about what they have in their bags. We also employed a malam, however that’s spelled, basically a guy from up north, who is supposed to be patrolling our premises. In the general confusion of the last days, they forgot to introduce him to me and one eve I just saw a guy in shorts walking around the compound. I can’t say it made me feel more safe. There is another guy who sleeps in the spare room (Bayo’s sick room) for now so the place is crawling with new faces and I get phonecalls at 5am about what to do with the key to the spare room or whether I have an umbrella… So I certainly don’t feel alone anymore.

Lagos can be an unsafe place but if you give in to that notion you end up never leaving your compound. Last weekend we didn’t managed to go out in VI because the guys we were with did not feel at ease with driving across the Third Mainland bridge at night, having heard of too many incidents of people (of fair skin colour) getting shot, robbed and kidnapped of late. Ironically enough, later that night Yousef (Syrian friend) got a phonecall that armed robbers were in his street in Ikeja. And I gotta admit staying in the nice hotel in Ikoyi was lovely. I felt much more unrestricted there, I could get on an okada and be at Temi’s in 5 minutes, we could spontaneously go to the cinema on a weeknight or have a drink… the island is much more geared towards the lifestyle I am used to than the mainland, but I guess I can console myself that I am keeping it real and I am tougher than all these ‘ajebottas’ (Yoruba for people born with a silverspoon in their mouth).

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

2006-06-09T03:14:00.000-07:00

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……

Sampling local delights: palmwine and suya

2006-05-17T01:30:00.000-07:00

After a weekend that felt very very short, I am all exhausted and I have just spent 3 hours in my steamy little kitchen – instigating a marathon cooking session to set me up for the week. It was about time: today I had to resort to eating one of Nigeria’s favourite foods apart from pounded yam: Indomie. It is basically instant noodles sprinkled with MSG and they are doing very well for themselves, just like Nestle and Cadbury. In fact the only ads I see along the expressway from Ikeja to VI is corporations advertising Maggie cubes or Guinness or some other fast food product. Another frequent feature is whole buildings painted entirely with Vmobile’s or Friesland Food’s colours and logo. These houses are at least bright among all the derelict buildings and sheds that just look dirt-coloured, so they are a welcome addition to the cityscape.

But the culture of bad eating is soon about to vanish from the surface of Nigeria forever! Our NGO is doing short films on healthy eating habits to kids of two different age brackets. It is really exciting: we are shooting a film set on a football pitch for 7 to 10 year olds, depicting a match between the Healthy Kicks and Junkfood Kings, where the players represent different foods. Naturally Healthy Kicks kick ass and Junkfood Kings underperform and loose as they have been eating bad foods. And the other filmlet is a music video showing two teenagers leading parallel lives – one is eating and doing the right thing and excels in school, while the other is not up to his daily tasks because of bad nutrition and eventually flunks out. The production company that works on the Big Brother Nigeria show is producing the video and we have some really cool rap lyrics to pull the teenagers in.

Another project we are doing is on slumdwellers – I went with my boss and the director of the production to one of Lagos’ slums: Ajigunle where our guy lives. It was very interesting, depressing and hopeful at the same time. What struck me most is that Ajigunle did not actually seem that much worse than other parts of Lagos, so I guess the term slum is relative. Our guy is a nice man, he is an artist and lives behind this huge football pitch (named Maracana after the field in Rio) in Ajegunle where apparently all the star Nigerian football players have been discovered. I tried to memorise their names to appeal to any football fans who may be reading but failed. Uwa (our slumdweller) in Ajegunle paints landscapes even though he is in the middle of an urban ghetto where the closest he comes to ‘greenery’ is the colour of sewage water. In fact the whole of the beachfront that his quarters face are littered with empty water bottles, used plastic packaging and god know what other trash. There is no running water and they sleep six in a room (husband and wife, three kids and sister in law), their bathroom is a shed built on stilts on the waterfront and the health clinic is an even more dubious-looking shed next to the bathroom. The BBC World service was blasting out of the radio, which reminded me of all those times I was riding in NYC taxis and the immigrant cab drivers were listening to the BBC.

Work is really crazy and I have felt the need to escape or at least switch off as much as possible on the weekends. I went to Oshogbo, one of the creative hubs of Nigeria, two weekends ago to meet up with Tammie. Together we had a lovely weekend, looking at crafts, visiting the fertility shrine of Osun in the jungle by the river, where monkeys were climbing in the canopy and tilapia was stirring in the water, and chilling with palm wine and nice conversation. These are things you cannot really do in Lagos, it is either rough or super exclusive and hidden gems are hard to find. Having said that, this weekend I ended up in a beach bar with an awesome view and a stylish design, with coloured calabashes hanging from the ceiling of the thatched roof shacks. And another wonderful discovery is the suya! I did not think I would really like beef in Nigeria, but the suya I’ve had in Ikeja is really yummy, basically bits of beef fried on open fire and generously rubbed in chili and dried peanuts. Quite a treat by the poolside at the Airport hotel…

Not so slow in the go-slow

2006-04-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

I just arrived back from a week of adventure –I did a roadtrip up north, visiting Kaduna, Jos and Ilorin before heading back to Lagos. I took a few days off around the holidays and got Roseanne, Tammie and Simon from VSO along to crash another volunteer organization’s, CUSO’s, Easter break in Jos: they were going to hike in Shere Hills and a hike after being stuck in the urban jungle for quite a while sounded like the perfect antidote to me.

So I set out bright and early last Wednesday at 5.30 am. My first task was to get to Yaba, where all the bus companies have their depots – a dubious spot during the day, even more so at the crack of dawn. But I made it successfully and queued up nicely at the ‘Crosscountry’ counter to get my ticket to Kaduna. I have learnt that in most cases it is best not to use logic, but just follow what the crowd is doing in new situations. So even though I put my name down on the passenger list I remained pressed in the line, since everyone else did too. It turns out in Nigeria you first queue up to sign up for your ticket, you then queue again to actually pay for it. Why kill two birds with one stone when you can complicate things?

Nevertheless I was very pleased to get the last seat on the very first bus to Kaduna. That is until I realized the last seat was the middle front seat in the bus, i.e. being squeezed between the driver and another passenger and virtually sitting on top of the gear box. In the general commotion at the motor park – several buses getting washed or emptied of dirty socks displayed behind the windshield and onions on the front seat, as the case may be; and drivers arguing, joking, gesticulating fiercely while conversing in Yoruba or Haussa; all the while loud music booming from an unidentifiable car stereo – my eyes caught a driver in particular: young, toned, carelessly spitting out the cola nuts he’d been chewing on and grooving to the beat. In short, this was a Nigerian hipster… and he was to be our driver! Already an hour late for our scheduled departure, we finally started the engine and drove…to the gas station next door. Drivers only fuel their cars once they have filled them with passengers. This is a cash-only society where the sole proof of getting paid is to actually hold the money in your hands. Landlords require 1 year’s rent in advance from their tenants and our IT supplier will not go out and buy new equipment until we have paid 100% upfront. Needless to say there is no insurance against landlords or suppliers going bankrupt once they have accepted payment.

As we were fuelling, a pastor hopped onboard and started praying for us (later on I decided this was the thing that saved us from many potential near-crashes) with a bombastic voice – he prayed for our home lives, business lives, children’s lives and added that lots of money should come our way – obviously Jesus had not given him the latest on VSO allowances. To follow the theme our driver put on some tune with women chanting Hosianna to African drums and we discovered that our tire was flat and needed exchanging. This triggered a lot of head scratching and wild talking among a group of drivers who had quickly gathered around the bus. A half an hour of Hosianna went by in 40-degree heat in a minibus packed with 12 passengers and no aircon. Finally the tire was exchanged and we joined the crammed road, filled to the brim with Lagos’ yellow buses, honking our way happily into the crowd. That did not last long either – someone bumped the minibus and Mr. Hipster yanked a hunting knife from the glove compartment and jumped out of the car to set the other driver straight. We had by this time done a loop around the car depot, so were back to our original starting point after 2 hours of preparations.

No worries though, our driver was determined to make time so he proceeded to drive at breakneck speed on bad roads with huge potholes. We spent more time in the opposite lane than our own, overtaking oil trucks with signs saying ‘highly inflammable’ on them, transporting Nigeria’s black gold. As this was not challenging enough for the driver, he would decide to change tapes in the middle of curves, releasing the wheel entirely and dancing to the beat. We reached our destination in 8 hours, instead of the projected 12. We drove through numerous biggish, towns, small towns and villages, all looking more or less the same: corrugated iron sheds, people selling spare car parts, tires, fruit, garbage scattered around everywhere. When we reached Niger state, I got a good glimpse of the Niger river – a first – and noticed that our environs started to look even poorer than before. The land was dry and even the sky had a shade of pink from the ubiquitous red dust. I saw settlements of mudhuts or round thatched huts with neat little thatched fences and piles of firewood stacked up outside them. These rudimentary settlements were so much more well-organized than the urbanized cities we’d just passed, where people hurl garbage out of car windows without a care in the world and drop their waste wherever they feel like it.

We stopped at another gas station and I foolishly asked for a bathroom. There was none. What there was, was a cement platform with a waist-high wall built around it on three sides. I felt rather self-conscious when I went for a pee, as 90% of the passengers were men and even if they did not look, it didn’t take much for them to spot the open-air toilet performance. Moving on swiftly… a new stop took us to a chophouse, where everyone got out for some obligatory pounded yam. I had packed lunch so I decided to stay in the bus. Big mistake. First of all, I had not realized that the African sun would dissolve all forms of food into liquid: my tomatoes were juicified, my papaya had fermented and the bananas were brown and mushy and had started to leak. A crowd of beggars instantly gathered around me so I wound up the window to try and ignore them. They were not deterred, but I was completely soaked in sweat as a consequence. They made eating gestures and repeated the same phrase over and over again. My thumb rule is not to give money to beggars who are able bodied and also not to give when there is a whole crowd, because then they would just be more encouraged. So I tried drinking my food and pretended not to have noticed them. When they started pressing their faces against and knocking on the bus window, I felt like an animal at the zoo, but then again I am conscious that what I have is so much more than they ever will, no wonder they would like some crumbs from the rich man’s table.

I arrived in Kaduna and Simon, who works at the demonstration deaf school, came to the motorpark to pick me up. Being white has its advantages – it was very easy to spot him among the crowd, a fellow oyibo. So we went back to his place and he cooked a nice meal and told me the tale of the ‘crisis’ in Kaduna: the violence in 2000 and 2002 when Christians and Muslims clashed and many were killed. Apparently the place used to be much nicer before the crisis, but even so I really enjoyed the days that followed in Kaduna. The streets are leafy and they actually have some buildings, not just sheds. We went to the museum and saw a dance performance. It was nice sitting under a tree watching the not-very co-ordinated, unfocused dancers. The show really wasn’t all that, but the atmosphere was relaxed and we had lovely yellow dates (unripe, with a less sweet, nutty flavour) that an ambulating street vendor was carrying around on his head. Then a play performed in Haussa was up next. I asked Simon for a translation. He does not speak Haussa but as he has been to other shows, he explained that the storyline is usually about someone getting married, preferably to someone unsuitable. As a rule there also has to be a character that is a business man. And true enough, in strolls a man in traditional attire with a battered brief case. During the course of the drama I saw the briefcase being used as a footrest while the marriage negotiations proceeded, otherwise it did not seem to have much relevance. At one point the phrase ‘fuck you’ was uttered, and Simon translated the greetings - the rest of the plot was left open to our interpretation. So we decided to leave the drama to its fate and went to a bushbar instead. Apart from being pestered by a drunk prostitute we had a nice time.

We went to swim at the hotel pool and thanks to previously schmoozing with the pool ‘manager’, who subsequently turned out to be the pool boy, I got everyone a discount on the entrance fee. They were supposed to have a talent show by the pool that day and were therefore going to charge us more. In the end, none of the contestants showed up but instead there was a DJ who played my two favorite choons in Nigeria over and over again: ‘Burn it up’ and ‘Busy Body'. Since my iPod doesn’t work I listen to Rhythm 93.7 FM all the time and all they play is R Kelly and other rap/R&B artists.

Next up was Jos – another cramped ride in a Peugeot 504 on bumpy roads, with everyone sleeping on each other’s arms or shoulders. We went for food and discovered an eatery where they had, yess!, frothy latte, my first in Nigeria! It was a bit watery, but who cares. We loved this place so much, we made 4 visits to it in 2 days. We went to another cultural performance and did some shopping. The real highlight though was our next day in Jos, when the CUSO volunteers took us along on the lovely hike, to Shere Hills, guided by the director of an environmental NGO. He is into solar technology and has some good ideas that unfortunately are unlikely to take off. He took us up the boulders, to the peak, and there we had a picnic and some of the guides started playing the bongo. In our vehicle, on the way back to town, we passed a huge, half-finished structure. This was supposed to be the Jos demonstration hospital, but it was never finished. The funds had been used up and there was no more money, so the skeleton is just standing there, reminding of the sad state of affairs in Nigeria, where money is being chopped on all government levels so that there is never enough to actually fulfill planned projects on the ground. Another VSO, Janita’s experience is a case in point. She works at the Centre for Nomadic Education in Kaduna. The teachers have lots of ideas and are very motivated, but the funding for their center has got ‘lost’ in the general process of being handed out. They cannot ask for any more funding as they apparently have gotten their fair share and no international sponsors want to aid government projects, as they are aware of the corruption that is going on. So it is a catch 22 – no money reaches good aims due to corruption and due to corruption no new money can be secured for good aims.

I decided to head back to Ilorin with Tammie on my way back to split up my journey. The bus I took this morning from Ilorin was the worst I have been on so far, very rickety and I was one of 4 sardines in the back. My fellow passengers were sweet, making it everyone’s business that I had to drop at a certain place in Lagos and they nominated a lady to take me to the correct bus stop. As we were pulling out of the depot the conductor handed me his phone number – in case there would be a vacancy with my organization I should contact him. People are reaching for any small possibility of a better life – and as I am white I symbolize that opportunity. I borrowed an old Cosmo from Tammie and was reading in the bus with a young Muslim man peering over my shoulder. I honestly hope he could not understand much of it – a Cosmo packed with saucy tales seems very inappropriate in pious Nigeria (even though there is a lot of promiscuous behaviour under the surface), and I had almost forgotten about the unfolding celebrity romances... So if anyone cares to update me on what is going on with Brad and Angelina or Kate and Tom, I am looking forward to it!

Metamorphosis - a.k.a responding to the environment

2006-04-09T06:53:00.000-07:00

It is a momentous day today: after a month and a half in Lagos my television is finally supposed to be fixed tomorrow and ready to entertain me with Nollywood dramas! I reckon it’s about time, particularly since I am way down on electronic gadgets that actually work as they have chosen to join the ranks of items I in my evil moments call ‘of Nigerian quality’. My iPod has packed up and my flash memory stick has become corrupted (this I think is particularly hilarious – I do hope it is making big buxx out of defrauding Nigeria out of its oil wealth or sending 419 letters to gullible Internet users) and my darling laptop’s wireless slot is no longer responding. I cannot help but wonder – is it so that these electronics are trying to adjust to their new circumstance just like me and sort of don’t want to stick out too much from the general level of quality? Like for example, I bought some light bulbs that exploded the first thing they did as I unpacked them, screwed them into the fixture and tried turning the light on. I have also learnt about fake ink toners you can buy, which look like the real thing, but certainly ain’t, so they mess up good printers (this happened in the office) and lets not even start on the generator that has a new life-threatening condition every day.

Then again, maybe it is just what my darling friend Liz used to say “It’s mercury retrograde”, which I still don’t know what it means… Was it something to do with my aura causing havoc in whatever it gets close to? Liz feel free to comment on this. By the way, I received an email from Liz yesterday and she just returned from her honeymoon! Gosh, it seems like yesterday we practiced our rusty driving skills on the one-way streets of San Francisco (course going the wrong way) and now you are married with kittens – and I am in Nigeria. Dearest Liz, congratulations to you and Martin – I really wish I could have been at your wedding, sporting a frilly, lacey Nigerian creation with headtie and all!

I do like the Nigerian fabrics and dresses. And secretly I giggle at the patriarchal ogas who are all so macho but proudly wear layers of pink gowns, mostly reminiscent of festive curtains or wedding cakes. The loose kaftans are my favourite: they are ideal to potter around the house in. And what of the beautiful ever-imaginative hairdos! Shock and horror, they are oh-so-fake. This to me was complete news. The fact that women and men use hair supplements and extensions, if not wigs, for their elaborate hair creations may have been obvious to others but I completely missed it. And yet another hair-raising fact! Afros are really hard to maintain and super hard work, whereas I in my ignorance thought it was the default hairdo.

Lately there’s been quite a few recreational and culture highlights: I attended a networking event for young professionals where the crème de la crème of Lagos’ well-heeled entrepreneurs caught up with each other, saw a fantastic play on apartheid at the Muson Center and went to a film screening about one of Fela’s album cover designer’s trip to New York. The artist was present at the screening and gave a very vibrant talk on his work life philosophy, and his relationship with the granddaddy of afrobeat. Unfortunately the Q&A part of the event was hijacked by two pretentious art-wannabees who proceeded to have a monologue about their own achievements. On the way to VI I got the lowdown from my colleagues on the meaning of ‘shakara’, the title of one of Fela’s songs and the Yoruba word for a wannabe, con-artist, wise-guy… Well apparently there is no proper translation, shakara is just shakara. Fair enough – I love the word anyway. And I think Yoruba is a very beautiful language. Tongue twisting, very hard to remember, but beautiful. Here’s a sample of Yoruba names: Foyinsola, Abimbola, Ombolaji, Temitope, Olaotan, Olayinka, and Bisola. I have been told I have a good pronunciation, but that could just be the Nigerian friendliness.

Oooh, and the real highlight (or lowlight depending on which way you look at it) was the solar eclipse! I missed it a few years back in London and I would have put it down as an annoying tropical storm with the sky going dark if it was not for the whole office running out into our garden to peer up towards the cloud-enshrouded sun. It was spectacular. A sort of apocalyptical dark light emerged and large, sinister black clouds hovered around the dish of the sun, obstructing but from time to time scattering to reveal the brightest of sun slivers. Pictures will be on Flickr soon.

Tomorrow I am going to a hardcore market on Lagos Island with a new acquaintance, Zyna. It is going to be an adventure. We met at the bank: she complemented my self-made earrings and it turned out she was a striving jewelry designer and now she is taking me to the labyrinth of bead sellers buried in the most chaotic of West African markets. I better get some sleep to be fit for fight in the morning.

Conflicted

2006-03-25T05:21:00.000-08:00

A week or so ago Lagos showed another facet of its personality. It was a British Council film screening and it showcased the outcome of a project bringing West African amateur documentary makers together with UK film makers. They all made documentaries about aspects of African or UK life.

The one that struck me the most was a beautiful short film about a young man and a 101-year old in Sierra Leone, the poorest country in the world. A simple story, two main characters, stills of Freetown, accompanied by soulful tunes and stunning scenery, the way poverty and decay can look scenic [only] on camera. The protagonists told touching tales in pigeon of the hardships they experienced during the civil war that tore up their nation. They had both lost their loved ones – the old man was looking for support from the wall he always sat by, it had become his only companion and family; and the young man, intelligent and ambitious but unemployed and without any possibilities to get work, told of the desire of many of his countrymen to go abroad. He himself was conflicted about the prospects of a better life in the west: “Who would take care of my country if everyone left to go to another man’s land?”

There was another interesting film about a young inventor in Kano who worked on developing technologies that utilize solar energy, but lack of funds had put his project on hold. Those that did approach him were all interested in getting the blueprint of his invention, not to contribute investment so that he could develop his ideas. He highlighted the huge impact of no electricity on people’s productivity and ultimately their way of life. And it is true: the power goes (several times a day) and at once all industries come to a standstill. Machines will not work, computers stop functioning and people, for lack of options, just go to sleep in their shops or offices or loiter around to pass time. Once you get into the habit, it is hard to get out of it. Amidst these conditions there is so much talent that gets wasted. It may be a development agency slogan, but capacity building and funding really is key, we are just so privileged in our well-organised North, never having to battle against institutional and infrastructural barriers of such magnitude.

I have a thing for outdoor cinema and the fact that the films were shown outside, in the shady garden of the British Council, far away from the smells and sounds of the street made it a very relaxing evening… But I think I was getting ahead of myself! Later I found out that both CFC’s drivers were rounded up by the police when they were on their way home after having driven us back to the office. Emanuel, the poor thing, was even arrested, for no reason whatsoever and Chichi, one of my colleagues at the office, was woken up at 5am in the morning by the police saying “Madame, we need money.”. It is that blatant - when they are running low on cash, they just detain as many people as they can and hold them till they pay up! Outrageous! And Yemisi had a few stories to add about police corruption. When one of her security guards drowned in their pool, the police came out to investigate and tried every trick in the book to squeeze money out of them, upon seeing their big house. They even had her husband, who is a lawyer, and her 60-year old mother in-law locked up in a cell, on the grounds of suspicion of murder. It is only after a few phone calls to various high officials the family knew, that they got released without having to pay bail!

Connections is a must to get anything done in Nigeria. Getting a land line installed or a new electricity meter from NEPA can go in a blink of an eye, but only if you make the right phone calls. Otherwise they ‘419’ you, as they say – an expression for cheating and scamming. And this cuts across all segments of society. We recently found out, the mechanic CFC always has used, has for years charged triple the actual price of some car spare part. Well, he was not in my good books anyway since the clutch story but apparently they are all the same, so the attitude is ‘better the devil you know’.

I have just returned from a lavish holiday to the Niger Delta. 5 days of relaxation while Nigeria was counted… I went with Temi, a cool girl who’s lived all over the world and has been travelling in Central America for the past few months. We swam in the river, had good food, chilled on the grounds, rode bikes and visited some of my friends from VSO, Roseanne and Simon, in Umutu, a nearby village. The trip showed the Africa I had dreamt of: lush scenery, crystal waters, the sounds of nature surrounding you. But it is only granted for a precious few, those who can afford it. Generally Nigeria is full of noise and people and the notion of privacy is non-existent. For example when we visited Roseanne, we found out that the other neighbours of her compound just come and gather round her telly every day, 4-5 people popping in and out, they make themselves comfortable and keep her company whether she needs it or not. One of the guys in fact diverted all his calls to her phone because his was charging and he expected to be in her place anyway. I think I am lucky to live alone, even if it does get quiet at times.

Speaking of the sounds and creatures of nature – Nigeria may not have the zebra herds or buffaloes of Kenya, but it certainly is not lacking in wildlife! I have seen the largest cockroaches ever... unfortunately a bit too close… one was on my skirt, and I lost my cool and spilled all the wine I had out onto the tablecloth trying to shake it off. And just the night before I got a proper scare. We were sitting by the riverside and Roseanne said “Don’t move, there is a big black spider near you” I froze and imagined it crawling somewhere on my body. Then she said “It’s got black fangs, maybe it is poisonous” In my head I could already see the headlines ‘Girl stung by lethal spider in the delta, ends up dead’. As it turned out, the ‘spider’ was a black scorpion, so certainly poisonous, but at least it was not on my body, just crawling under my chair. The gate man at the river resort killed it with a stick and the next morning I took a close look at it once I was sure it was dead. I told the story to some of Roseanne’s musketeers and they laughed it off saying, it will only swell a little if they sting you. I think not! But there is a laissez fair attitude to personal safety on all levels. Like when someone just left their luggage in the waiting lounge and wandered off at the airport in Warri yesterday. As Warri is a hotspot for kidnappings, rebel activity etc. it is not all too impossible to imagine that someone would like to blow up the airport, where a lot of oil execs transit, into bits. But the security guards were not fazed by our request to locate the owner of the bags and even other passengers thought we were ridiculous because held our ground. Eventually a very frustrated lady appeared to claim her bags - she could not believe why the oyibo was stressing. But little by little I will change Nigeria, believe you me :)

A month-old in Nigeria

2006-03-07T10:07:00.000-08:00

Time must be flying because I realized I have been in Nigeria for a month now. On Friday I had my first beer by night in Lagos. Not as exotic as one might have hoped – a visit to a pub called the Londoner in Ikeja GRA. This is the nice part of Ikeja, where government officials’ housing used to be, but now well-to-do Nigerians irrespective of profession live here. The GRA has a few bars and clubs but most of the nightlife action seems to be in VI, which means an hour’s drive on the notorious bridge. Looks like I will have to make friends with some VI expats, so I can spend the night if out late.

Not the original, but the current-day, Shrine is in Ikeja, and so is Lagbaja’s club Motherlan’. Fela’s son, Femi Kuti, apparently plays at the Shrine when he is in Lagos and that is a definite must. On Saturday Chantal stayed at my place and we cooked and had a meal in the garden. The weather was balmy and there was lovely music floating around in the air till late. It sounded more like calypso or some other Caribbean type of rhythm and I got so curious, I found a ladder in the garden and leaned it towards the fence to climb up and try and see where the music was coming from. I couldn’t locate the sound, but got talking to the neighbours and they said Kingstine Joe was the bar hosting the performance. If Kingstine is meant to be Kingston, as in Kingston Town, then it even makes sense. Chantal and I decided we would investigate further next weekend and do a bar crawl in Ikeja.

The secret ingredient to making this plan come true is finding a local musketeer to accompany us – it is not entirely relaxing to go out just two white girls to bars or clubs. I will have to ask one of my colleagues. But they are mostly married and sadly during the time I have been here two of the staff’s close relatives have passed away - one’s father and another’s sister - so naturally this further restricts the pool of interested people for a night out. They bore their grief with such dignity and both colleagues came into the office same day they got the news to make sure nothing was left at a loose end. Already a few days later they were back working. I think faith is an important factor in the grieving process here. There is a deeprooted acceptance in the ‘lord giveth and he taketh’ spirit. Noone mentions what the cause of death is when someone has passed away. But a lot of things go through one’s mind, pondering the fragility of life. So many die prematurely here for all sorts of reasons.

Today I was talking to a Ugandan VSO, Julius, who works with HIV/AIDS awareness raising and testing and he confirms that the disease is very stigmatized. Officially 5% of Nigerians are infected, which makes them one of the most affected countries in the world. However, the truth may be much much more chocking than that. Julius’ organization finds that 22% of those tested are actually HIV positive. In some subsegments of society HIV is carried by the majority – for example young mechanics is a huge target group. They often have money and, sadly, buying sex is a well-entrenched custom, as is having many girlfriends on the side, even though married. As the most populous country in Africa this has devastating consequences, yet funding available to combat the disease is only a drop in the sea and cultural barriers and ignorance continue to stand in the way for proper prevention.

Poverty strikes on so many levels – lack of education translates into ignorance about vital issues concerning health, sanitation or the environment. And to make things worse people have become jaded and cynical, distrustful of the establishment. In fact a big dilemma in Nigeria today is how to reach the most vulnerable groups. Lagos, not unlike Rio, has some of the largest and most notorious slums in the world. Patrolled by ‘area boys’ they are dangerous to enter and this makes outreach and advocacy almost impossible.

CFC is in the starting phase of getting involved in a project that would entail empowering slum dwellers to document the issues they face living in such poor conditions. To tell the story their own way, they would get a camera and help with editing their shots into a 20-minute documentary, which will be shown at a UN-backed conference in Canada. This sounds like such an exciting project, but the challenges to find someone who is willing to open up and who wants to affect social change are enormous. Most people who have had contacts with this segment of society warn that youth in the slums want money for any kind of participation, even if it is meant to benefit their own situation. And why should they not be disillusioned and callous? Time after time society has let them down or forgotten about them. To a large extent this is the problem in the Niger Delta as well. The locals feel that they are being stripped of their main resource without any investment going back into the local community and they perceive that the rest of Nigeria and the world are reaping the fruits of their hard labour.

Now back to my micro cosmos. Earlier in the week I visited Chantal in Ojota, a neighbourhood not too far from me by Lagos standards. In the morning I tested getting to work by public. Ojota bus stop is a rowdy place. By now I am quite used to the shouting and staring, but in Ojota they were pulling and grabbing me and that is not on. I was under the impression there was a riot, even though nothing out of the ordinary was going on. The crowd was huge and spilled into the road, having very little regard for the ruthless traffic. I have often wondered how come not more people are run over or bump each other. But I think the whole organized chaos of Lagos works on some sort of fragile equilibrium, where pedestrians and cars perform an intricate dance: people ducking away in the last minute or cars screachily coming to a halt seconds before they actually bulldozer you down. All the while beggars and streetsellers are zigzagging between the vehicles, making it impossible to concentrate on what is going on in the traffic. The number of people with deformities is unbelievable, and they push themselves around amidst traffic on little skateboard-type constructions: invalids with deformed limbs, stumps instead of legs, humps on their backs, twisted, crooked extremities. The walking bridges over expressways are a favored spot for them to beg as they are quite narrow and it is hard to get past. But what can one do? There is a new invalid/blind person/malnourished child at every corner and I am already noticing that I am beginning to become immune to all these people in great need.

I went to Lekki market with Chantal on Saturday to find the film, City of God. I wanted to put on a screening at the office to kickstart the slum dweller project. To my disappointment they did not have City of God in the pirated DVD stalls – however they did have about a 1000 copies of White Chicks… and most of the other blockbuster American movies that are being released on the other side of the pond. The pirate releases of these films often concur with the actual US premiere - if there is one thing Nigerian’s have mastered it is how to get fake anything, from DVDs to computers to passports. Nevertheless the market was good fun and I ended up buying lots of things I don’t really need: little brass pendants from Ghana, peanuts and earrings.

And today the shopping spree continued. We went to the beach, Tarkwa Bay, which is a 25min boat ride from VI. I was hoping for a quiet day on the beach but the beach sellers decided otherwise and in the end it was quite fun to bargain from the comfort of a beach chair and be presented with jewelry, sarongs, cold drinks, fruits and handcrafts. I bought a flowy batik dress and a turquoise sarong for a total of 600 Naira, which is less than $5. Then a funny but a bit too persistent sand shark insisted on buying me some bracelets and a necklace so I came back to the mainland with quite a bounty.

And the list of well-doers continued. I got on a bus that ended up going somewhere different than my destination. So a bossy African madame, who basically got everyone on the bus involved, told off the conductor for not dropping the white woman at the right spot and she ended up taking me along in her taxi and would not let me pay. She was wonderful – as soon as she got into the bus, she asked one man for 20 Naira because she needed to pay the street vendor who’d sold her some yam, another was told to hold her shopping bags while she was rearranging her head tie. It did not occur to anyone to disobey her, and eventually all her ‘assistants’ were all rewarded with a “Godbless”. Who says Africans are patriarchal? Some women certainly are calling the shots.

I finally had to take a bike from the bus stop to my house and the okada driver said he recognized me from the neighbourhood. He said ‘I see you every day around Allen Avenue. Like you I am a foreigner as well, so I cannot accept any payment’. Isn’t that something? Nigeria has such a bad reputation for dishonesty and people trying to squeeze money out of foreigners every step of the way, and then I meet all this hospitality and generosity, from people who do not have much themselves. I think we should all remember not to give in to stereotypes and generalizations: there are good, competent, clever, warm-hearted people everywhere in the world irrespective of nationality.

On Africa’s longest bridge… with a faulty clutch

2006-02-25T04:58:00.000-08:00

Hot and humid, constantly honking horns, the skyline shrouded in red dust, hords of people - in cars, on okadas, hanging out of taxis, by foot - gesticulating, shouting, trying to sell phonecards, mats, mops and bananas while you are stuck in traffic. Everywhere locals calling out oyibo (meaning white person) and hissing to get attention.

Lagos, baby, Lagos! When I was in Abuja people would ask “So where will you be working?” And the others and me would list our various destinations: Kaduna, Delta, Lagos… The invariable response we got was “Ah, Kaduna, beautiful place, you’ll like Kaduna… and you, you will get used to Lagos”. Needless to say this was not the response I was looking for, especially having read Martin Amis’ reference to Lagos as ‘hell on earth’.

And by some definitions he is right. Lagos is rough. It is the prime example of urban decay as well as of what hugely unevenly distributed wealth can do to a city: skyrises crowding with shantytowns, businessmen in chaffour driven Mercedeses rubbing shoulders with Lagosians living on $1 a day. Well, not really rubbing shoulders, in fact, there is a tendency to lock the car when on the bridge, just so that no street beggars or sellers will get the idea to come too close and personal.

So far most of my time in Lagos has been spent in the office or in a car. I live in Ikeja, a part of mainland Lagos, that is quite hectic and industrialized, not upmarket in the same way as Victoria Island or Ikoyi, the two main destinations for big corporations and expats. My housing is actually behind the office, in the same compound, and this has both its benefits and drawbacks. I don’t have a long commute to work, just walk across the lawn actually, and I don’t have to battle the morning rush hour, but then again I do get visits from misguided office care takers at 6-7am in the morning, shouting “Auntie Panni” at the top of their lungs to pick up the keys to the office (even though I have arranged to only give it to the receptionist) or calls from security telling me some useless detail about the generator situation. Unfortunately I am quite convinced that they would be of no help at all in a real emergency as I already seem to know more about how to put on the generator then they do, even though this is the only real task they have apart from opening the gate when a car arrives.

Some of the conversations with support staff are quite surreal, because I don’t understand what they want and they don’t understand my English. No point saying, yes please, etc. If you want something done, shout out the order or simply say “Oga, I beg, put generator on”. They will still probably do the opposite. There are many examples of the good citizens of Nigeria following their intuition rather than doing as requested: I order a coke in a hotel and the waiter comes with Fanta, saying that since I am a girl an orange drink will be more suitable… I ask them to turn off the generator after 12am at night and the light gets switched off inexplicably at 10.30pm in the evening… we are having car trouble on the motorway and the driver gets clear directions to take the car straight to the garage but he still wants to drive it back to the office instead… actually there is a whole story connected to this last event:

On my second day in Lagos, my very nice new boss, Yemisi, arranged with the office driver to take me to Victoria Island to see a bit more of Lagos. When we started our journey back to Ikeja it was already getting dark, and we had just come onto Africa’s longest bridge connecting VI with the mainland, when the clutch just decided to give up. We were in gear four and there was no way of switching gears or slowing down because then the car would just stop.

To make matters worse, it had started to rain and traffic was crazy, all the cars whizzing by, honking aggressively rather than slowing down. I now understand why Nigerians are such fans of praying and blessings – when nothing is working that is your only lifeline. So I reverted to the local habit, and due to lack of other solutions, also prayed: that the traffic lights would be green and for no turns to come up so we could continue our lethal journey in gear four.

But of course there came a turn, and we had to do it in gear four, and the engine sounded like a dying donkey. The vehicle started to spasm on the road, and I reached over to put on the hazards, a feeble attempt to reduce the risk of someone bumping us in our desperate try to get the speed back up.

And the engine died. Stuck on the bridge, in the dark and rain. Of course I had heard the stories of robberies that always happen on the bridge after dark, because armed robbers can easily seal off the expressway with their vans. So again, I prayed. I have to praise the lord though, because Emanuel, the driver, somehow managed to yank the switchgear to one and with great difficulty got the car to start, coughing and spewing but slowly reaching its destination, the garage (after having had to beg him to just do as Yemisi suggested rather than taking matters into his own hand and continue our pained journey across town).

I realized then that Yemisi must be one hell of a woman because she commanded the mechanic to come to his workshop on a Saturday, after hours, and he actually did. This is probably as close to a miracle as I will get in life. Seeing the garage was a sight to behold in itself: a dusty yard with some sheds with scattered bits of exhaust pipes and tires haphazardly thrown around them. There were some kerosene lamps that unsuccessfully attempted to serve as source of light in the pitch dark and I am not even sure how we got back from the workshop in the pouring rain but we made it in one piece in the end.

Tonight I had to go through another trial – walking back from the internet café after darkness had fallen. I had consulted a female colleague about whether it was a good idea or not, moving around in the evening, and she said that in the immediate neighbourhood this should be fine. I guess even though I am unaware of all the faces looking at me curiously, they have memorized the oyibo in the neighbourhood. There is just no way to make yourself invisible. One day I was walking down Allen Avenue and once it got too hot and hassly decided to turn back, only to hear a street vendor asking “Madame, is there a problem, you come back?”. My little stroll did not go unnoticed it seems. The problem is all the machines come very close because the drivers want to take a good look at the whitie and they find it appropriate to honk and shout whilst they are literally sweeping you off the street. The options are either to be hit by a motor or to jump into live sewage. I persevered though and was rewarded by a much quiteter stretch of street once I passed the first security gate leading into my crescent, good old Aba Johnson. In that moment I saw a beautiful thing – a girl whose contour was lit up by a generator powered street lamp, her gracious posture illuminated. Girls have a certain something here, I think it is the way they have to carry those heavy baskets on their heads. You have to be balanced, straight and aware of your movements to pull it off. Perhaps I should start practicing with my waterfilter or something.

I haven’t talked about work yet. It is early days, but it seems that it will be busy and the expectations and nature of the work have nothing Nigerian about them - totally western standard (only the salary is not). The tempo is very hectic and I have already worked late several nights to finish grant proposals and budget that need to be detailed and precise to get potential donors onboard. CFC basically produces documentaries and short films about development issues and works with freelancers to shoot the productions and civil society groups to ensure that the advocacy work continues beyond the airing of an awareness raising programme. They have done work on HIV-AIDS, female circumcision, demeaning widow practices, debt relief for Africa and women entrepreneurs, just to name a few. The executive director is very passionate about development and has an understanding of the issues and really wants to affect change, not just make a glossy production and move on. It is inspiring and I am looking forward to learning more about the area and contribute to something that is all about positive change!

To conclude I have to brag a bit. I have managed to get CFC back online. Our Internet at the office had been down ever since I started and I tried a few tricks to reset the modem and it worked! I am getting my head around all the IT problems in the office since this is after all a developing country and standards are very different. For example one has to deal with the power going off constantly, which not only can cause power surges that damage the hardware, but makes it impossible to work when systems go down. So it is an intricate solution with inverters, USPs and generators having to interact. And then there is the issue of pirated software – it is more customary than not to have ripoffs of MS Office applications and OSs – and ironically computer equipment is much more expensive here than in the West. I just found out that a wireless card is double the price of what you get it for in the US.

To get this epistle posted online I wandered off to the cyber café just to find out that they had run out of diesel for their generator and therefore could not run the computers. On my way back, I did get a proposal, from one of my neighbours to become his partner. I kindly declined. Still, even if you don’t find Internet you can always find a suitor in friendly Nigeria :)

Me I no be gentleman at a-all, me I be Africa man original!

2006-02-18T05:34:00.000-08:00

To the tunes of Fela off we went into the bush, or rather to Akwanga, a small town in Nassarawa state, some 2 hours journey from Abuja. This was to be our placement visit – to get an idea of a VSOs daily life and surroundings.

The trip was preceded by some commotion – the same day as we got our placement visit destinations from VSO, the news appeared on BBC that the bird flue virus had been found in Nigeria and more specifically in Kaduna state.

As fate would have it I was going to go to Kaduna to visit a volunteer who lived in a compound with about 30 chickens. Granted, the head mistress of the school had texted him that they were going to slaughter the chicken, but knowing how seriously Nigerians seem to take the threat of the potential pandemic, somehow this did not reassure me. It has been all over the news that Nigeria is failing to contain the disease: farmers are not getting enough compensation for slaughtering the birds, their livelihood, so instead they rush to sell them on local markets before officials get there. Naturally, those I have talked to within Nigeria have great faith in their officials and say that the virus will be contained because people have a high awareness.

I am not so sure about this. People in general have very little idea about the importance of hygiene in order to prevent disease or stop it from spreading. A not uncommon sight on the markets are traders in dirty clothes resting on their goods, or relieving themselves right in front of their market stall, be it a meat or vegetable stand. People eat their pounded yam with their hands, and greeting is of huge importance so they will often take your hands and hold them, shake them warmly, this way also effectively passing on potential germs and virus.

It is not surprising that such a blaze attitude prevails regarding the bird flue. Life in Nigeria is full of in-your-face, instant risks, and people are just used to it. The threat of an epidemic, that has not taken any human life as of yet, is just simply not scary enough when thousands are dying of AIDS and malaria, and that is a fact. Taking precautions and planning for the future is also not a mindset shared by most Nigerians. How could it be, when most of them do not have a pension or any kind of insurance? This is also why one sees abandoned cars by the roadside - if they stop working, they will just be left there, no point trying to fix them as it will cost more than getting the next road-unworthy vehicle.

But back to our trip… I raised the bird flue issue with a nurse at the British High Commission clinic and she advised everyone who was supposed to visit Kaduna to go somewhere else given that there are no testing facilities in Nigeria and certainly no available stocks of Tamiflu. So this is how I ended up in Akwanga, together with Roseanne and Monique, a Kenyan and a Dutch volunteer. We visited Karin, also Dutch, who works for the College of Education. Her counterparts were very enthusiastic about the work she is doing, conducting teacher training, and one of her colleagues, Mr. Sharia, became our self-appointed guide, taking as all around the college to show us the lecture halls, offices etc.

The building containing administrative offices was very well maintained, air-conditioned and had lots of people around that did not seem to do much apart from being gate keepers to higher ranking admin staff. We got to see the provost, the leader of the college and that was interesting. The staff kneeled down to him when addressing him and his room was huge with his gigantic desk at one end and plush armchairs all the way at the other. He had a golden sign listing all his different titles centrally placed on the table and various women were summoned to get us drinks, as the provost himself would obviously not stand up from his desk to serve us. Sitting right at the other end of the room we felt like we were in front of a judge and we took turns to approach the provost when summoned. Mr. Sharia, who had been jovial and relaxed up to this point, now started in on a long and officious speech about how great the provost was and may he serve the college for a long time.

Next, we got to see the main conference hall, empty, with all the chairs still in plastic and every table with microphones on it. It looked unused (apart from the adjacent bathrooms that were the only decent ones around the college) especially when compared to the basic buildings where the lectures were held, with students crowding outside of the class rooms due to lack of space. On campus there were a few unfinished buildings, but these had already been taken up for lectures as well – at one point one student fell out of a wall-less first floor lecture room and for a while they stopped this practice, but as the memory of the accident faded they’d started occupying the hazardous buildings for classes once again. Karin told us that in many administrative offices there were big TV sets, totally pointless, or even counter-productive in a college, but this was apparently a favoured purchase to spend sparse college funds on. Talk about priorities!

I am quite intrigued by the phenomenon so here is another excrement-related observation – walking from the staff quarters to the college campus one pretty soon hit the shit belt, basically a stretch just by the main road where students frequently relieved themselves. The sight of people pooing just wherever is quite common, in fact in central Abuja, which is rather well organized, I saw three perpetrators during the same taxi ride through town.

We also had the opportunity to visit a demonstration primary school. There were a lot of kids and I was impressed that that the teachers managed to keep such order during assembly… but that got its explanation once I saw the staff breaking off twigs from a nearby tree and enforcing their power through spanking the children who did not conform. I started taking some pictures and pretty soon I was surrounded by a crowd of giggling boys and girls shouting “Auntie, snap me, snap me”. So I obliged and tried to get them all in the picture only to realize that more and more youngsters started pushing in, excited by the prospect of being photographed.

We sat in on a Maths class and observed some interesting teaching methods: The teacher asked “How much is one times one?” And got the answer “Two”. So she repeated the question and asked almost everyone in the class. The children got bolder and bolder and cried “Two” more and more confidently. In the end the teacher gave up and proclaimed “Shame to you” and gave the right answer. I wonder how pedagogic this approach is… I suppose Karin does have her work cut out for her.

I did want to spend some time, talking about all the nice food I bought and cooked, but now three days and an ongoing diarrhea later I am not as poised any more. I was very excited at the time to buy garden eggs in the market, which are like light green aubergines, slightly more bitter… to find basil, called curry leaves over here… and to realize that melon seeds are very similar to pumpkin seeds and if you roast them they make en excellent salad topping. I was also proud and pleased that we managed to cook some delightful dishes without any running or clean water. And it did work well indeed up until my last day in Akwanga, when I had some eggs and started feeling quite ill. Luckily, I only had to endure a 2-hour drive back to Abuja, squeezed into a Peugeot with 11 other people! Because of my stomach I missed out on another school visit, to a more rustic country school than the demonstration school earlier in the day. But the others went… and returned with a huge papaya that was presented to them as a gift from the school. Africans and Nigerians really are hospitable and generous even when they barely have anything to eat themselves. And they are very helpful and concerned. I think in the end everyone at the hotel knew about me being sick and one of the porters even called up to my room to enquire about my health.

I have to admit though, being ill brought my spirits down -I envisioned not being able to eat anything for the next two years and the thought of rice and stew just made my stomach turn. In my darker moments I also fretted over the disorganized state of things in Nigeria: how when you go to a store or chop shop and you order you get one thing out of three and then they take ages with the rest, how in the motor park there are no scheduled departures to any destination, you just have to wait until a Peugeot fills up and then you haggle about the price, how it is never quite sure whether the taxi you booked actually does arrive or not… Eventually, all these things do get sorted out, but not in an efficient way and after wasting quite a lot of time. I guess this is what they call ‘Nigerian’ time. So to all of you who have in the past called me a time optimist, I dare say I have been outclassed.

I'll be back with a Lagos update soon! And there will be new pics on Flickr...

2006-02-07T15:49:00.000-08:00

Gosh, it is really hard work to include pictures with a dial-up connection that has the average speed of 3.5kb. But here comes a link instead to Flickr!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51078277@N00/

Welcome to Nigeria!

2006-02-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

Finally I've arrived to Abuja, capital of Nigeria! I had many preconceived ideas.

But guess what!? Rather than a rickety airport and potholes on the road into town I was greeted by a very modern and clean airport facility, efficient immigration and customs and a shining pickup truck that wizzed us to the hotel on large, well-maintained roads. We paraded past the seemingly biggest sights in town: a humanguous Christian church sturcture (unfinished) and an equally impressive but in style minimalist mosque, apart from its golden dome that is. These two monuments aside there were many concrete structures reminiscent of Communist buildings everywhere in the world, containing government offices and banks. No real centre to speak of and certainly no pedestrian areas - this is not a town to explore on foot.

A striking feature of Abuja is vast areas where half-demolished buildings stand or that are entirely without any architecture. This due to the Nigerian governments crack-down on illegal housing, or rather buildings built without a permit. They are now all destined to go, leaving thousands of Abujans homeless. And real estate is expensive in the capital so poorer people are as a result pushed out to adjacent shanty towns, turning Abuja into an upmarket yet soul-less copy of western capitals. Actually the process is quite reminiscent of mayor Giuliani's project to clean up New York, transferring poverty and crime to the boroughts of Brooklyn and Queens instead.

On my first day, after some rest that only made me very groggy, I decided to shake some vigour back into my battered body and joined some serving VSO girls for an African dance class. And WOW! I am so thrilled I did. We ended up under an African-style palapa in the garden of a cultural centre and had a 2-hour intense booty-shake, courtesy of our teachers Didi and Chinedu. This was the real thing: barefoot, sweating in the heat, trying to keep up with the beat of the live drummers and wondering if one would have to reincarnate as an African in order to get those moves and grooves in. What body control, gracious yet powerful movements, muscles playing under ivory black skin - when it comes to dancing they really are in a whole different league...

Nevertheless, I got complimented on my dancing (can you believe how chuffed I was) and after a conversation with the teacher we decided that I will try to get some other people (VSOs and expats)interested in taking classes, and if I could get a few together the teacher would come to Lagos and carry on instructing us. This may never happen of course, but it was a fun start to my adventures and a surreal experience. Certainly beats practicing tribal moves in a basement gym in the West!

Nigerians have a funny way of using pidgin English - sometimes it is confusing, like when they talk about using the machine, which basically means the motorbike. Rudimentary restaurants are chop shops and soft drinks minerals and a mobile network is called a line. Pretty simple, if you know how to decipher these expressions that is! The food here has been a pleasant surprise - some of it is tasty and certainly very spicy. Especially the fruit has been a blessing: sweet melon and pineapple as well as papaya. I have not yet been to a market, as most meals we have eaten in the hotel and there is nowhere to cook until I get to Lagos on the 16th, but I am very much looking forward to sampling the local produce, as I have heard that it is now mango season and they also have fresh ginger and avocadoes. I think I will be able to cook quite nicely for myself and hopefully vary the diet a bit more, as it is very very starchy right now. Pounded yam, cassava, polenta, rice and beans, plantain, these constitute the main fare, especially for a skeptical meat eater such as myself. I did have some catfish though and I have also tried the egusi soup made out of melon seeds. The seeds actually look nothing what you'd imagine but have a consistency and colour of scrambled eggs!

Quite an experience so far - stay tuned for some more news from Panniland.