Caboose

One of the ways people deal with all the irritations of life in Nigeria is through humour. Not a lot of it is written down, most is just between people or live on stage.

Here’s a little story about the Nigerian space programme: Apollo 4-1-9. You might need the help of this Pidgin dictionary, see how much you can understand.

A few notes to help:

1. frovlem = problem — Hausa f and v are made with both lips and often sound like p and b respectively. When they’re speaking English many people don’t distinguish between the two.
2. NTA is the Nigerian Television Authority — the government TV station.
3. estacode — is civil service jargon for travelling expenses.

Speaking of irritations, the children from the junior staff quarters have recently started coming to collect water from the tap at the side of my house. This is because the rain hasn’t started properly yet and their wells are empty. The only problem is that they start early in the morning and have usually completely drained the tank by the time I want a shower.