Tis the season to be jolly

Well it’s supposed to be the season to be jolly and all that other Christmas related stuff but frankly it has felt anything other than Christmassy this December. It’s not for a want of people being lovely and sending Christmas things from home (thanks mum and Rachel and those of you that tried to send snow even though it’s potentially hazardous!) and I even had a lovely Christmas Day with some friends I met at the British Village but it just didn’t feel like Christmas this year. Was it because it was too hot? There was a major lack of family of friends to celebrate with? The decorations were weird/non-existent? There was no Christmas music on repeat driving you bonkers? There was no crazy busy high street to do battle with? There was no Christmas works do to go to and get totally trashed at? Or all of the above? I have to admit it has been nice not to have the stress of Christmas to deal with but I actually missed Christmas more than I thought, even the music on repeat, I mean where’s Noddy Holder when you need him?

Here in Nigeria they are obviously either not interested at all or big on the religious side of things. Bizarrely at midnight there were loads of fireworks going off just like there is at home for new years and everyone was stood outside watching, even the kids. Makes it hard for Father Christmas to come and deliver the presents I suspect and probably scares the reindeer, poor things.

It was incredibly sad to wake up on Christmas Day to news of more bombings in Nigeria, the people here are finding it increasingly hard to understand why this is happening and the tensions seem to be rising. Security is increasing around the city, but what can police in cars do against determined terrorists with explosives?  

The increased risk of living here makes me feel more relieved that in just a few days I will be returning home. It is not the reason that I have decided to come home early, my family and friends will already be aware of my reasons and of my impending return but I have to be honest and say I probably will feel more at ease once I’ve touched down at Heathrow. It’s not that I walk around in a constant state of fear, but there are the reminders that there is a very real threat, roadblocks, cars being searched in the city near important buildings and now churches, police and army vehicles outside the National Mosque. Armoured vehicles and armed men are a sight that I’ve just got used to. As I sit here on New Year’s Eve reflecting on what 2011 has brought for me in terms of lessons and changes to my life and thinking about what now lies ahead in 2012 I can’t help but wonder about what lies ahead for Nigeria, sadly I think it will be in the world news next year more frequently than it has been this year.

That seems like a very gloomy note to leave this blog post on, so I will finish by wishing everyone a Happy New Year, I hope that 2012 is good to you all.

Nigerians behind the lens

A rather amazing set of photos I found on the BBC website today

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16053483

A very happy visit to the Kaduna Demonstration School for Deaf Children

On Tuesday of this week I found myself on the way to Kaduna, a city about three hours north of Abuja. I was visiting a school for Deaf Children carrying out a needs analysis for a placement on behalf of VSO before a new volunteer is due to arrive in February next year. I had been asked to do the visit by the Education Program Manager as the placement was very similar to mine and quite different to the normal placements in the Education Program area. A great way to utilise volunteers in country if you ask me.

To say that I enjoyed the day is somewhat of an understatement. The school was amazing, the principal Victoria was so motivated and inspiring and meeting those children in that environment was really lovely. I haven’t seen such happy and hardworking children since I’ve been here, the teachers were brilliant, it was all about child centred learning and you could see how much it has impacted these very lucky children. They were proud of their work, they wanted to show it to me and ask me if they were doing it right. Their work was on the walls along with affirmations and posters, it was a lovely environment for them to learn in.

The school however is run as a charity and it desperately needs funds to keep running and to become self-sustaining, hence a volunteer is now going to be placed there to help with fundraising. I can’t deny I was jealous of this new volunteer, theirs will be such a rewarding placement, getting to work in the school and learn sign language (I managed to learn good morning, how are you and thank you) so that you can communicate properly with the children and directly see the impact that your efforts are having in helping to keep the school running. Without this school these children would have nowhere to go, there isn’t the provision for disability like there is back home and it’s not taken into consideration in mainstream education meaning children like this are excluded. Here they can enter the school at nursery age where they can learn sign language so they can communicate from an early age and get an education like any other child. They even offer signing lessons to the parents at weekends so that they are able to communicate with their children.

I can only sum up by saying I loved, loved, loved my day there and that I wish all the schools here could implement teaching and learning like this.

Nursery 1: Half the class work the teacher

Whilst the other half read, then they swap!

Nursery 3: Half of the class doing some writing work

Some maths in the Primary classes

Here the teacher was asking the children to demonstrate different types of movement, they took it in turns to have a go.

A science lesson in Junior Secondary

The alarming incident of the cockroach in the night time

Cockroaches have made an appearance my blog before, in a slightly bizarre was I losing my mind in having a conversation with one fashion. This time I was not having a conversation with a cockroach, I was being rudely awoken by one on a night where I was not getting much sleep anyway. Normally my fan is on at night (power allowing) and as such I probably sleep on blissfully unaware of the beasties that prowl around in the dark but because it’s cold at night due to harmattan at the moment my fan is off so you can hear every little noise.

Anyway there I was finally drifting off to sleep somewhere around 4am when a nasty scuttling noise brought me back round like a flash, then it got a bit closer to my bed, then it sounded like it was actually in my bed!? No surely not, but I was sat up in a panic with my reading light in hand when I realised that a roach was climbing up my mosquito net, I made a funny sort of a ‘meeehhh’ noise and tried to bat it off from the inside with said light. Hardy little buggers though aren’t they and he took a few bashes before he fell between the bed and the wall and quick as a flash (or a Kash) I was out of the netting the other side and reaching for the can of raid. My lungs may not have thanked me but I was ever so relieved when he came to a sort of half dead stop, just close enough to the edge of the bed for me scoop it up with a hastily devised cockroach scooping device (Notebook and old plastic bowl for catching leaks in rainy season). Not bad for four in the morning eh?

I don’t think I have ever been so pleased for my mosquito net, apart from maybe that first night in Calabar. After disposing of the interloper I obsessively checked to make sure the net was tucked in very securely just in case there were any more lurking around waiting for me to turn the light off before striking and got myself back into bed. Weirdly I managed to sleep. Maybe it was the high concentration of Raid in the room?

Harmattan

Something very strange happened last night, so strange that for a brief moment I thought I had somehow been transported back home. I was cold, not just a little bit chilly but properly cold. We had gone out to meet some other VSOs for a drink and were sat in an outside bar called ‘Circle Gardens’ in Maitama. There we were enjoying our drinks (shockingly in my case a sprite) and it was like being at home in the summer when you’re in a beer garden on an evening and the sun has long since disappeared and you really should go inside the pub because everyone is shivering but damn it you're British and this is summer so you suffer on. It’s the first time since leaving home that I’ve been properly cold, even with air con in the office.

There is an explanation for the cold which is that currently we are experiencing the Harmattan a wind from the Sahara that means it’s hot in the day but cools down quite a bit at night. I should point out however that it was probably still in the mid-twenties temperature wise so not exactly freezing . I’m going to actually FREEZE in January and I can’t wait!

Abuja Carnival

This weekend it was the annual Abuja carnival, the bradt guidebook tells us that this has been an annual event since 2005 but that there is little information to inform people about the events and that this might get better with time. No, no it hasn’t. The information online told us that the parade started at 7am and the opening ceremony at 4pm. We (rightly) suspected the 7am start time to be false and so after seeking some guidance from a friend as to where we might watch the parade turned up around 12.30 to find it still hadn’t started. It didn’t actually reach us for another couple of hours but had probably set off from its start point around 1ish. Apparently they were still putting their costumes on at 12.30.

I feel I should actually have titled this post 'The day Sam (my housemate) had the words ‘Please come and snap me’ written on her forehead'. It became very amusing for the rest of us but less so for her as she was repeatedly asked if she would be snapped with various random strangers and members of the carnival as the day wore on. We almost got roped into the carnival at one point quite early on, we were looking for some minerals (drinks) to cool us down as it was on the bloomin hot side of hot and we ended up in a random car park buying our drinks where we were approached by the staff of a lone carnival float promoting the Igbo Youth Movement. They wanted us to wear t-shirts and have photos taken with them, I managed to duck out of this and stay behind the camera but I present Sam looking very ‘happy’ about getting involved.

Sam hoping someone else will get involved

Looking thrilled to be a member of the team

They managed to recruit Jenny as well

After managing to avoid being put on the back of the float as they waited for the carnival to arrive so they could join in with the parade we found some shade to sit in and wait for the parade to come to us. Bless them, by the time they did get to us they had walked for some time (still had a fair distance to go it turns out) in the blazing sunshine in some of the most weird and wonderful outfits I’ve seen. Most of them were still giving it some to the Naija beats but you could also spot the ones who had clearly lost the will to shake it like a goodun a couple of miles back, either way much respect due to don some of those costumes in that heat deserves an A for effort anyway.

We think it was a drum

Still going strong

Best bum wiggler of the day

I'm not sure what to say about this

or this...

Portable drums

Some fatigue showing

We're not sure Bauchi state have giraffes

What's that approaching?

Of course it's the Benue Dove of One Love

that appears to be on fire

loved the dancing sweetcorn

Please can we snap you?

I really have no idea what is going on with this?!?!

Loving the snapping

Some Fulani snapping

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Apparently it's an eagle fish. Of course.

Excellent signage on this float

Of Course Shrek and Ben ten are very Nigerian

As are these two!



Errrrrr what’s that I spy?

OK when you leave your home country for a totally new and alien culture you do expect that you will see some sights that will leave you a bit open mouthed from time to time. This morning however I did not expect to see a dead cow on its back being burned in the middle of the pavement. It might not sound like that crazy a thing to some people but given this is a city and a residential area it was TOTALLY unexpected.  People often burn their rubbish here because rubbish collection is something of a novelty, although it’s not too bad round our way, we have a wheelie bin and everything!

Anyway I digress, so there I was strolling down the street on my way to get some veg from the dudes behind the fence before it go too hot to go out and I spied the fire in the middle of the pavement, I just assumed that someone was burning their rubbish until I spotted four hooves in the air just above the flames. I did a double take and then realised it was in fact the carcass of a rather large cow that was being burned, an extreme method of cooking if you ask me. No one was ‘tending’ the cow it was just there on fire, on the pavement. I even questioned whether I had imagined it but no there it was hooves akimbo burning away as I passed by on my way back up the hill. Bonkers (or maybe I am).