Caboose

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:

(more…)

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.
(more…)

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.

(more…)

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).

(more…)

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.

(more…)

When I was at the skillshare workshop in Akwanga the other week, Tracey was talking about a trip down to the South-South she had been planning and said she was looking for people to join her. A few weeks later Tracey, Jenny and I met up in Abuja to start the two-day journey to Akassa.

We took the ABC Transport coach to Port Harcourt, much more comfortable than the bush taxis we normally use. The coaches are the same ones most of the companies in Chile used, made in Brazil by Marcopolo, with air conditioning and reclining seats. They even served us a meal on board and showed videos recorded from satellite TV.
(more…)

My colleague Tayo got married to his girlfriend Bisi at the weekend and I was invited to Akure to attend both the traditional engagement and the reception the next day.

One of the staff buses from FRCN picked us up outside Radio House on Friday morning and we all piled in for the (roughly) six-hour journey down to Akure, in Ondo state. The bus was much more comfortable than public transport, we had a seat each and it didn’t get too hot. We even stopped for a while at Lokoja, so I managed to get some fried yam and akara for lunch.

We arrived just in time to get changed into Nigerian traditional dress and walk over to the engagement ceremony with Tayo (the pictures were all taken by Jonah):

(more…)

I went for a walk last week, to try to get some pictures of Abuja. It’s a weird city, lots of big concrete buildings but also large areas of undeveloped land. In this picture you can see a view across one of these areas towards (from left) Le Meridien hotel, the International Conference Centre and Radio House.

Many of the undeveloped plots are being used to grow crops, or have illegal buildings on them. The Federal Capital Development Agency is currently trying to rid the city of these illegal buildings, with a series of demolitions.

Some of the buildings in Abuja have been in progress for some time, such as the National Ecumenical Centre. Many seem to have been abandoned for a while.

When I have a free weekend (not for a while) I’ll go for another walk and take more pictures. It’s not an unattractive city, but very short on any kind of excitement.

The College of Education in Akwanga has three VSOs working there, I’ve visited them before. Sue had organised a two-day workshop for the education volunteers and their counterparts (the Nigerians they work with) to share skills and experiences. I was invited along to provide IT support, producing a CD with all the documents that people had brought along.

Accomodation had been organised for us at the Roma Z guest house in Akwanga and we even had our own armed guard from the (in)famous Mobile Police (Mopol). Tracey did an excellent job of chasing up the staff at Roma Z to make sure everything was OK, especially the water supply.

(more…)

[Requested by Catherine]

0730 Alarm goes off. Get up, shower, dress, make porridge and Milo (using powdered milk) for breakfast. Pour last night’s boiled water into the filter and start boiling some more (using the kettle to get it up to boiling and then ten minutes on the stove to kill the beasties). Fill up plastic bottles with filtered water. Dump the food waste bin contents in the heap at the other end of the compound.

0855 Leave the house and wander over to the office, greeting security guards along the way. Get to office, greet Jonah, Tayo and anyone else who’s around. Plug in the laptop and check email. Research software and hardware needed for various projects, provide advice on technical issues, attend meetings.

1230 Wander back to the house for lunch. Once a week or so go to one of the chop houses at Radio House instead.

1315 Switch on the pump to move water from the bottom tank to the roof tank. Stand by the switch and wait for the tank to overflow, switch off the pump (there’s no other way of telling when the tank is full).

1330 Wander back to the office. Doing the same things as before lunch. Go up to the twelfth floor (location of the newsroom and studios), which involves queueing for some time waiting for whichever of the four lifts are working today.

1730 Pack up laptop, leave the office, walk back to the house. Cook dinner (or do the dishes if it was Marebec’s turn to cook). Pour the morning’s water into the filter, boil more water. Listen to the radio, read, watch TV.

2200 Go to bed. Bedtime is earlier if there is no light.

Of course the times and what I do vary from day to day but that would be a fairly typical day.