Caboose

I’m not in Cameroon.

Nigerian immigration changed their procedure for NGOs applying for re-entry visas for their staff, without any notice. So something that used to take two days is now taking weeks, all applications have to be processed by the National Planning Commission before being passed to immigration.

The VSO programme office staff have been spending a lot of time going back and forth trying to speed things up, but without any success. On Friday we were told that the visas definitely wouldn’t be ready before Tuesday, so we had to cancel the trip to Cameroon.

This is a bit of a disappointment and I’m really quite annoyed with the local bureacracy.

On the bright side it meant that we could go to Bob’s party at the Irish embassy on Saturday. We’ve also decided to go to the Osun Festival in Oshogbo later this week.

My mobile phone is currently unwell (this is related to the party at the Irish embassy), so until I either fix it or replace it you wont be able to call me and I can’t read text messages.

I’m hoping to head off on a trip to Cameroon tomorrow. It may be delayed by recent changes to immigration procedures here which mean that requests for re-entry visas have to go through both immigration and the National Planning Commission. All this for a bit of paper to say that I’m allowed back into a country I’m legally allowed to be in!

Anyway, assuming all goes well I’ll be back in Abuja around the 12th of August.

Jo’s leaving today, so she wanted to make one last trip to Kabba and took Mary, Marebec and I along.

After an uneventful journey on Friday afternoon we arrived and received the usual warm welcome from Father Noel, then had a few drinks. The little plastic toy on Mary’s shoulder in the first picture is Nunzilla, she used to spit fire but since she was dropped on her head she’d not been the same.

Saturday started slowly as people gradually crawled out of bed and had breakfast, we then watched a couple of films and went for a walk up the nearby hill (which houses the local TV transmitter). The hill you can see in the picture is “juju hill”, a local religious site, outsiders are forbidden to climb it.

Bob, Ronan and Dave arrived on Saturday afternoon, so the drinking started again.

A horribly early start to catch the bus back to Abuja, getting dressed and taking machines to the bus station before it was light. For once the bus wasn’t horribly overloaded, so we had a fairly comfortable ride from Eket to Uyo, where we had to hang about while the bus for the next stage of the journey filled. We used the time to get some breakfast (rice and stew) and buy biscuits.
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On Sunday morning we had a leisurely start to the day, Kay and Jenny went to church while Mary and Pete took Marebec and I on a walk to Opobo II, a new town being built nearby. On the way we passed a crane that had been brought in to build the road/causeway between Opobo and Opobo II, which had sunk into the swampy ground. We were also shown the huts built to fool this year’s census into thinking the population of Opobo is higher than it is. The picture below right shows Peter, Henry and Mary (with the obligatory umbrella).

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The plan for Saturday was to take a boat across the river to a village called Ekereborokiri and walk through the jungle to another village, where we’d be picked up. We started the day with a breakfast of Indomie and egg at Lady B’s, in the rain:

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Bit of an early start to catch the boat back to Yenagoa, with Ebenezer, Timi, Amy and Ine waving us off at the jetty.

We had a much smoother ride on the speedboat this time, don’t know whether this was due to a better driver or just better weather conditions. On arrival at Yenagoa we were greeted by an immigration official, who insisted on seeing our papers. He didn’t notice that my entry visa expired several months ago, I hadn’t fished the copy of my extension stamp out of my wallet. Maybe he was just hoping for a dash.
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The main planned activity for the day was a trip to the beach, with Pete, Mary and Ine. First we walked to the AKWA school, to see the nursery and primary classes.

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Another slow start to the day, with a leisurely breakfast and then a pleasant walk along to the market. It’s quite a small market and most of the produce comes in on the “market boat” (the big one in the picture below left).

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After a good night’s rest at Amy’s house we had a late breakfast and Amy took us for a walk round Akassa. Although it was quite cloudy and damp (being rainy season) Akassa is a beautiful place, so we had frequent stops to take pictures. We also stopped along the way so that Amy could check for messages on her phone. Coverage is very poor so you have to stand on a jetty and hold your phone up in the air to have any chance of getting a signal.

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