Caboose

I spent the weekend up in Kaduna, a couple of hours north of Abuja. We were visiting Paul, a Canadian volunteer who has been training teachers at the school for the deaf there. He’s finishing soon so he had organised a leaving party. Here’s a picture of Paul in his house and a random street scene from Kaduna.

Mary and I set off on Friday afternoon, took a taxi out to Jabi motor park and quickly found a bush taxi going to Kaduna. It was a pretty comfortable journey, they only put three of us in the middle row of seats rather than the usual four. As we approached Kaduna one of the windscreen wipers broke (it was raining a bit), so the driver switched them off and obviously couldn’t see very well. When Mary complained his solution was to speed up so the water was blown off the windscreen.

Paul met us at the bus stop and walked us back to the school, where he is living in a converted office. Tracy (from Gindri) and Karen (from Jos) arrived shortly after us.

Friday night was quite relaxed, we headed out to a bar called PDP (the same as Nigeria’s dominant political party, not sure why), had very spicy fish and chips and washed it down with a few beers. At the bar we met up with various other people, including Joanne (formerly VSO with FRCN, now with the BBC in Kaduna) and Henrietta (working with Marebec at FRCN).

On Saturday morning Tracy cooked breakfast and we then went into town to find an internet cafe. After that we had ice cream at a fast food place featuring the world’s worst customer service, the woman at the counter told us that she had no change and then just sat there looking sullen and holding on to our money until we insisted that she go and get some change.

Here are some more pictures from around Kaduna, it’s much more green and pleasant than I was expecting. The first one shows some of the many roadside stalls, the second is a roadside nursery selling various plants. The third pictures shows (from left) Karen, Ilse and Mary negotiating with the motorbike taxi (okada) drivers.

In the afternoon there was Paul’s official leaving party with the staff and board of the school. Us extra VSOs hanging around were also invited and we were made to feel very welcome.

The next picture shows Paul receiving his leaving presents from the board, as you can see we got fed as well.

After that we hung around the house as lots more people started to arrive for the evening party. As the sun set there was a brief shower of rain, which cooled the air nicely. I met some VSOs from the South I hadn’t come across before and had another pleasant night drinking beer and Gordon’s Spark.

All in all a very pleasant weekend, although my washing was waiting for me when I got back!