Another giant spider

The British Village had a Halloween party on Saturday night and we were excited to go however fancy dress supplies were limited in the VSO flat so we had to use our resourcefulness and make do with what we had in our wardrobes. I took inspiration from the neighbourhood walk earlier on in the day and decided to go as something I knew would be scary, well to me anyway…..

Spot the difference?

We had a fab night, made some new friends took them along to Eddy Vics to go and see Jimi and I finished the night in classic Kasia style by telling the tiny reggae singer that he was indeed tiny but that I didn’t mean it in an offensive way and if he was two feet taller I’d marry him and take him home to England. He didn’t seem to be offended and said he’d still come with me anyway. I’ll just point out I had removed my extra spider legs before we went to Eddy Vics, I’m not sure Nigeria is ready for fancy dress.

A walk around the neighbourhood

My housemate Sue and I took a walk around our neighbourhood this morning. We were actually heading to one of the larger shops to pick up some groceries and decided we would head out early before it got too hot but apparently Abuja doesn’t do early and nothing opens here until 11 on a Saturday. This was a bit of a shame for us as it was only 9.20am. Fail.

So we decided to continue walking rather than head back to the flat and see what we could find, so I present to you in photo form pictures from our walk including some rather surprising finds and for me a rather terrifying one.  This should please those of you that have been asking for more photos and gives me an excuse not to ramble on :D

This is our building and our flat is the one at the top on the far side

Q Palace is our local bar

There is a lot of wealth here as the houses demonstrate

Lizards are a constant hazard when out walking!

As are chickens

Lots of new building going on Abuja

A random stream underneath a huge bridge then I thought I'd left Abuja and was back in Calabar

but thankfully it was just a restaurant sign with some typical Nigerian foods on offer then just up the hill......

I was home in blighty!

An unusually quiet intersection, well if nothing opens until 11 what's the point of going out?

This bad boy was bigger than my palm, note the 'normal' sized 8 legged freak next to him. I am very proud this photo is not blurred from excessive hand shaking and indeed that I did not simply run away on sighting it!

This is Peggy's Pointe the complex the phone box was in front of, we suspect it could be ex-pat housing....

Later we got a taxi to another shop as we had walked quite far, this is my office building inside the grounds of the mosque taken through the taxi window

The mosque and the gate I go through every day for work, with my head scarf on of course!

A good day

Today was a good day, I’d love to tell you of some huge breakthrough at work but the goodness was all thanks to the arrival of four parcels and a postcard. I now suspect that post stacks up the VSO PO Box until someone sends a parcel that has to be signed for as all of us in the flat received post today and the first of my parcels was sent back in August and the last only a couple of weeks ago! So whilst my mum has been worrying about her parcel going astray for weeks it’s been sat in the post office in Abuja. However it was very exciting and I mean VERY exciting to come home to find my post waiting for me, one of my housemates had dropped off my four parcels (and a postcard) on her lunch break. In fact when I got her text to tell me what was waiting at home I actually squealed, it’s amazing how the simplest things can bring such joy!

Four parcels and a postcard



The joy inside!

Warty Towels

It seems to be fairly standard that every office in Nigeria has a TV in it, I can’t really get my head round this as it does nothing to aid the amount of work that gets done and for me is a really annoying distraction. Thankfully in my office it’s in the room next door so I can only hear it.

From what I can hear and what I’ve seen on our little TV at home Nigerian TV is really random in that there is no scheduling like we have at home, i.e. the same thing that was on one time slot won’t appear the next day. It also appears that the person in charge of putting the programs on has a very limited attention span as quite often a program will just stop halfway through and go into something completely different, it’s like I’ve had enough of that now I’m going to put this on, much like most men I know in charge of the remote in fact!

As for the programs well it’s an eclectic mix. They show Nigerian music videos in between programs, there’s a lot of news, various religious offerings, very comedy Nigerian soaps that seem to be mostly about dramatic music and shouting with angry staring from what I can make out, sports reviews, Nollywood films, documentaries about traditional pottery making and such like and then out of the blue today I was sat at my desk typing away when I heard what sounded like the opening credits of Fawlty Towers. Surely not? I had to go and check this out. But yes it was there on the office telly was Basil Fawlty in all his 70’s glory and best of all it was the Episode with the drunk chef and the car bashing . So did I go back to my work or did I stop to watch? Let’s just say I decided to follow the example of my colleagues for half an hour and I’m not afraid to admit it was easily the best bit of my day.

p.s. Just in case anyone is wondering I don’t have Warty Towels. For those of you that aren’t au fait with Fawlty Towers, the sign outside the Hotel at the start of each episode used to change each time and this was the sign for the episode I saw today :D

Introducing Squirt

So we have a new addition in the VSO flat here in Maitama and he is small, fluffy, has four legs and goes by the name of Squirt. He is a very cute and rabid (but not literally according to the vet) kitten rescued by my flatmate Sam. He’d been abandoned after his mum died and was sort of possibly but not really being looked after by a bloke who sits near the man selling eggs over the road who was only too happy to have him taken away. Anyway long story short we now have VSO pet and don’t panic those of you who are wondering what will become of the little dude at the end of placement time Sam is going to take him home with her as the quarantine rules have changed in recent times so this is now not so difficult do. So below I present a series of pictures of our new ward, he is at this very moment trying to chew through my laptop wire!

Utility traumas and finally getting caught in the rain

This week has been pretty rubbish in terms of living conditions in Abuja. I mean that in the sense that we’ve been very lucky here because generally speaking the power is pretty constant, when it does go off it’s usually just for a short time and so my many torches/handy lights haven’t been getting much use and the water is only off at the weekends.

This week however we’ve barely had any power, even less than I was used to in Calabar. There seems to be varying reasons reported for this, a blast at a mine has been blamed for damaging a substation, five power stations have been reportedly been shut down for maintenance and technical problems at a hydro-power station have also been blamed, who’s to know?  The executives of course are spouting on about how they are suffering too it’s not just the people in the communities who are having problems at this time with having no power in their homes but I suspect that the executives can afford to have a generator or two to sort there power issues out. Living where we do in a nicer part of the city there are plenty of people around us who can afford generators so it’s very noisy when the power is out and somewhat rubs our noses in it too as of course we don’t have a generator.

Then the water has been off for most of the week as well. We are used to it being off at weekends and spend a fair amount of time on a Monday evening refilling our water containers so that we have water for the next weekend and indeed should the water randomly go off at any other time in the week as it very occasionally does. Well this week it came back on on Monday for a brief time and that was pretty much it. We think it’s because some people in the building haven’t paid their bills and there’s only one meter for our entire building, this happened last month too but got resolved pretty quickly. It doesn’t make for much fun when you live on the top floor and the only other source of water is in the giant water butts on the ground floor. There is however one alternative which is the handy dudes who sit around with huge wheelbarrows full of jerry cans at 10n a pop, you can signal to them that you want water and they’ll bring it up to you. Despite that I predict that the British Village will see a lot of us over the next few days, Sue and I called in for dinner last night so we could have a proper shower, I did have a swim too but I am not beneath rocking up purely for a shower as I have done in the past!

On our way back home we then had our second shower of the evening. Almost as soon as we left the gates the wind picked up which around here usually only means one thing, it’s about to bucket down. Sure enough just a couple of minutes later it started raining, ever so gently at first and then it got biblical, really biblical. We decided to brave it because it was warm and hey we’re crazy white people who trek when we could get a taxi so we might as well be really crazy white people who trek in the rain. It got pretty hysterical at one point, the rain was so hard I think I said something like “oh good rain that hurts” and then inevitably I started singing the only song you can sing when you being drowned in the rain, well not singing so much as laughing the words to “we’re singing in the rain”. I literally may as well have jumped in the pool again I was that wet, it had to happen at some point though right? I’m just amazed that it took over three months and technically it’s not even really the rainy season anymore!! I should point out that our walk home takes us a good half hour and we really should have had the sense to get a drop but both of us decided we didn’t mind a ‘bit’ of rain. If it happens again over the weekend we might just take our shampoo outside with us.

The dancing traffic cop

Does every city have one (my you tube investigations tell me so)?  At the weekend we found Abuja’s dancing traffic cop, I was unable to get my camera out and video the brilliance but I’m pretty sure I’ve found him though the wonder of you tube and someone else who clearly thought he was worthy of being captured on film. There’s no way there’s two dudes who direct traffic like this in one city it was a sight to behold, one that made us all laugh including the taxi driver. So whilst this might not be my video it is a good representation of what we witnessed whilst sitting in traffic and waiting our turn and I had to share with you a little Abuja craziness…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUh6a2F5TSE

Some random thoughts…..

I don’t blog for ages and then it’s twice in a day, what’s gotten into me?! Who knows but there I was on my journey to the meeting under the mango tree and indeed on the way back and I was noticing lots of things as I do every time I travel here and it struck me that there are lots of sights that have become so much a part of the fabric if you like, that I don’t really pay much heed to them anymore but when I first arrived I used to look goggle eyed at them. Things like (and this not an exhaustive list….)

·         The mobile shops i.e. people carrying their wares on their heads, everything you can imagine like bananas, groundnuts, cooked products etc. Then you have the people with literal mobile shops selling a bit of everything with huge containers on their heads full of toothbrushes, toilet paper, noodles, sachets of various powdered drinks, a kind of mobile corner shop on someone’s head. You also have people on bikes with drinks and I’ve also seen mobile ice cream sellers on bikes too that play a tune just like at home and people with wheelbarrows usually full of sugar cane.

·         Roadside signs, might not sound very fascinating but they are everywhere and for everything. You get dizzy looking at them and you would be surprised at the services on offer in the strangest of places. Nestled in amongst signs for various churches and schools you’ll see ‘Ultrasound and x-ray here’ and you’re looking down a tiny lane of huts thinking, really?! Or perhaps a sign for ‘God’s own business centre’ next to a shop selling tyres and kerosene.

·         Motorbikes and their amazing array of passengers and cargo. Motorbikes are used here as taxis (although not in the city of Abuja itself) and you can see anything up to 4 passengers squeezed on, this will usually include some children and a baby strapped to the back of its mother looking totally nonplussed as to its mode of transport on a frighteningly busy road. Then there's the passengers carrying brilliant varieties of cargo, maybe a jerry can of kerosene in each hand, live animals, dead animals, 6ft sections of fencing which they balance precariously on the handle bars so the driver has to put his hand through them in order to actually drive the motorbike and my favourite sight so far a huge section of glass windows with both the driver and passenger having their heads sticking out of one of the windows with it slid down, the words horror crash and decapitation flitting through my mind. All of this whilst they weave in out of the traffic like they are just the motorbike and nothing else.

·         The children’s plaything layby just outside of Abuja. The first time I saw it I really thought it was so odd but now I just sort of nod at the parents shopping there. Imagine a huge layby just by the motorway filled with everything made of plastic a child could ever want ranging from small toys right up to giant playhouses and swing sets. It’s not the concept of buying toys for kids it was more the fact that you went to a layby by a really busy expressway to do it. Why not in a shop or at least not by the side of a road which leads me to my next point.

·         Roadside shopping. I’ve mentioned this before I know but actually this week I did have a surprise from the roadside shopping. On our way back to Abuja I must have dozed off as we came into the city and woke up to find a giant stuffed wolf at my window. My reaction was not great in a car full of muslims but thankfully they were too busy talking to hear my shocked ‘sweet baby Jesus!’ utterance. I’m not sure why I said it, the wolf looked nothing like Jesus after all. That is by far the most unusual thing I have seen for sale in amongst the traffic in Abuja but I have seen the same wolf (or maybe it’s his brother) sat on an armchair on one of the routes home the taxis take me. I was never sure what was being advertised the wolf or the chair or both?

So there you go some things that I have stopped taking proper notice of, but I will now be on guard for the wolf as I am beginning to think he might be stalking me. I really must try to get some photos of these things, I just keep telling myself I’m here for such a long time that I’ve got ages before I need to worry about getting photos but I will forget that these things were ever worth snapping if I’m not careful, especially if a man on the back of a motorbike with a window on his head doesn’t even cause me to bat an eyelid.

The meeting under the mango tree

Yesterday I attended the most interesting meeting of my life, if you’re of the opinion that meetings can be interesting that is. It took place under the welcome shade of a large mango tree by the school in Gaski and Cheta, you may remember I blogged about my visit there a few weeks ago. Well we had returned to meet with the community leaders and various members of the PTA to discuss the work that was to be carried out to renovate the buildings thanks to grant from Friends of Nigeria that had been secured by the previous VSO volunteer at my organisation.

I’m not sure why the tree was chosen as the meeting venue, perhaps it was decided it was too dangerous to sit in the school itself given it might collapse at any moment but there we were, five of us from USI and just one representative from the community perched on large rocks under the tree. Then the ‘others’ came (don’t worry not like in lost where they were kidnapped and made to drag cuddly toys around on bits of string), people turned up on motorbikes, in cars and on foot and soon there was nearly twenty of us sat under the tree.

I was informed that the meeting would take place in the local community language so I would be briefed at intervals as to what was happening. It was actually quite interesting not being able to understand what was being said, especially when the second chief turned up and threw a spanner in the works. I could tell things had gone a bit off course when he arrived late and waited for chairs to be brought especially for him and his assistant (?) instead of sitting on a bench like everyone else (or a rock like me) and he then proceeded to gesture to another building way off in the distance and everyone else looked really annoyed. Watching body language because you haven’t a clue what’s going on is fascinating. I did understand when the ‘Bature’ was suddenly being referred to and indeed pointed at, that’s me by the way. Bature is the Hausa word for white person.  I wondered how the first chief felt (the one I’d met on my previous visit) as he was only sat on a bench, was this a bit of deliberate one-upmanship on the part of the other dude? Isn’t there a saying about too many chiefs? Or is that too many chefs? Well the same analogy just might apply here.

Apparently he wanted money to be spent on another building that was half finished but everyone else wanted the school to be renovated (what the grant was intended for) and so after some convincing everything was fine we managed to return to the original purpose of the discussion. I’m still not sure why I was involved in the conversation, just nod and smile Kasia, nod and smile. My only contribution was to point out that the grant was approved for the school buildings and that any change of plan even if they intended to use it for a school would need to be approved by the donor.

After it was agreed which buildings we were working on, thankfully the school, some of the men started disappearing on their motorbikes apparently to go and get quotes for the materials needed. In return for providing the blocks, cement etc. the community had agreed they would do the work on the school themselves as most of them are labourers. So back came the men with prices it was all written down if it was agreed to be a fair price and then the first instalment of money was handed over, signed for and they went off to purchase the materials to start work straight away. There was apparently a joke about the treasurer of the PTA now having enough money for a second wife, which everyone else laughed at and he just looked mightily cross. We took a photo to commemorate the occasion and that was that.

For a country where supposedly it takes forever to get things done, corruption is rife and funds never reach the communities they are intended for it was really quite amazing to witness such a lot achieved in such a short space of time. The meeting did get a tiny bit heated at one point and it did also seem like we were going round in circles as well but we got there in the end, in under two hours in fact. Can you imagine trying to achieve anything like that back home in the UK? Think of the hoops you’d have to jump through, the procurement guidelines, the quotes, the tenders the sheer amount of time you would waste with paperwork and getting everyone’s approval. I know there’s something to be said for our system but I have to say I much prefer holding my meetings under a mango tree with an outcome like this where work starts before you’ve even driven away.