Caboose

I got back to Nigeria on Sunday night and it’s actually good to be back.

Arrival at Abuja was relatively trouble-free, a longish queue at immigration but nothing too bad. Some random airport employee demanded that I let him see what was in my bags, so I checked his ID, established that he wasn’t a customs officer and said no. The real customs guys greeted me, peered in the top of my rucksack (mostly full of socks) and waved me on.

It was quite pleasant wandering about Abuja on Monday, Harmattan has come earlier this year and all the dust in the air reduces the heat a bit.

I immediately felt at home, but then that tends to happen wherever I am.

Back in Kaduna it’s almost like I was never away. The weather has obviously changed, it’s now cold enough at night that I need a blanket. I picked up an electronic thermometer at Schiphol, so I’ll have to update this with the current max/min temperatures.

I spent most of yesterday wandering around NTI handing out presents (lots of nice National Trust calendars) and greeting everyone. Everyone was asking about my family and expressing horror when I told them about the cold and darkness in Scotland at this time of year.

Anyway, I’ll stick up some pictures from my trip back home once I’ve got round to downloading them from the camera.

It’s always interesting coming home from overseas, to see what you notice as being different and what ‘everyday’ things seem strange.

Things are going OK on my holiday, although I’m finding it a bit weird to be in places where almost everyone is white! I went down to London last week for a lunch at the Tallow Chandlers’, who are sponsoring my VSO placement.

London was quite overwhelming, although it was fairly quiet. It seemed so inhuman and unfriendly. Wandering the streets of a Nigerian city it’s impossible to feel isolated from other people because people are so friendly, in London you might as well be invisible. This could just be part of having to get used to not being noticeable because of the colour of my skin but I think it’s also related to cultural differences.

Back home in Stirling things are less strange, I’m enjoying spending some time relaxing and visiting friends and family in the area.

I’m still on holiday back in the UK. Lots of friends and relatives ask how life is in Nigeria and are surprised when I tell them that I enjoy living there. The difficult part is explaining why. It’s easy to list all the bad things about the country, but much harder to describe what it is that makes up for them all.

This article on the BBC website tries to explain.

The best way is to come to Nigeria and experience it for yourself.

After arriving back in Scotland and spending a couple of days with my family (including Dad’s 60th birthday) I’m now down in Cambridge visiting old friends there.

It’s slightly weird to be back in Cambridge. I’m not having any serious culture shock or anything, just a kind of mild bewilderment. One of the oddest parts was flying down to Birmingham and collecting a hire car, it’s a while since I last drove and British roads now seem incredibly orderly to me!

Everyone has been talking about what a mild October it is, while I’m feeling the cold.

On Wednesday evening I’ll be heading through to Norfolk to visit my grandparents.

After more than 18 months in Nigeria I’m going on my first holiday back home.

I’ll be flying out of Abuja later today, arriving in Edinburgh tomorrow, coming back to Nigeria in about six weeks time.

It’s kind of a strange feeling, even though I’m not going away for long I’m feeling sad to be leaving Nigeria as well as excited about seeing family and friends after such a long time.

Abuja’s a bit strange too now, since the okada ban (BBC news) there are many more people walking.

Some big buses have appeared, but they only serve the satellite towns, passing through the city on their way. There are no routes within the city itself. Taxi prices have shot up and there are rumours that the ordinary taxis will be banned soon, leaving only the expensive Abuja “green cabs”. One ride in a green taxi costs slightly more than half a day’s VSO allowance, for many people here it’s much more than they earn in a day.

Just imagine if all public transport in London was banned, leaving only black cabs that cost more than you earn in a day. That’s the situation in Abuja now. Of course the people who make these decisions never used public transport, riding around in air-conditioned cars paid for by the government, with police escorts ensuring that they’re not even bothered by inconveniences such as traffic lights.

One of the things I’ve been enjoying a lot in Nigeria is the music, even if a few songs do get played just a little bit too much.

On Wednesday we were all (that’s all the VSOs attending the workshop) having dinner in a very busy local chophouse, I noticed a poster for a concert at the NAF Club in Kaduna. It was to be the launch of a local band’s first album but what caught my eye was that Zule-Zoo were playing (they’re one of my favourite Nigerian groups).
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I’m organising a workshop on library services with NTI and VSO. It’s challenging to get the NTI side of things organised when everything has to be approved, passed up through directors to the chief executive and then back down. Most of the directors spend most of their time in Abuja, in meetings with the Ministry of Education.

Just to make things even more fun because of Ramadan working hours are 8am to 3pm, or 1.30pm on Fridays. And Monday is a public holiday (for Independence Day, which is actually the first), although this wasn’t announced until a couple of days ago.

I just got back from a trip to visit Aine in Minna. Tammie is now on her farewell tour, so I thought I’d catch up with her there in case I don’t manage to see her elsewhere.

Minna is in Niger state (that’s Niger state, Nigeria, not the Niger Republic, they’re pronounced differently), one of the shari’a states and coincidentally also fairly backward. In fact Minna is also home to former dictator Ibrahim Badamasi “I organised the fairest election Nigeria’s ever had but didn’t like the result, so I cancelled it” Babangida, who is probably going to stand for president next year. He can certainly afford to buy his way into the presidency with all the money he stole while in power.

On the way back today I went to the motor park in Minna and joined a bush taxi there. One seat remained to be filled. The first sign of trouble was when the car had to be moved to the other side of the motor park so that the last passenger could order people to load his luggage for him.
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Apart from yoghurt there’s not a lot of dairy produce around in Nigeria. Milk comes as powder or condensed/evaporated in a tin, butter is only found in expensive supermarkets and cheese is something that comes in little triangular foil packages.

Blue Band margarine is very popular, but I don’t entirely trust a food product that doesn’t go off when kept in a warm cupboard for a year. My suspicion is that Blue Band is actually a form of spreadable plastic.

This post was triggered by me treating myself to a bottle of milk today. Two hundred and eighty Naira for one litre, so a bottle of milk costs more than a bottle of beer! I also passed by Baker’s Delight supermarket to get some imported Kerrygold butter. Nigerians really don’t understand the European fondness for dairy products (neither do Filipinos).

At first this seemed a bit odd to me, after all the country is full of cows. However the Fulani’s cows don’t produce much milk, certainly not up to the standard of European cows raised on special hormones and produced by centuries of selective breeding.

There is a cooperative dairy just up the road from NTI. On the right day they might even have something to sell. Last time I went there I bought butter, but they only sell kilogram tubs (400 Naira, much cheaper than the Kerrygold). After weeks of cooking with butter instead of oil, having bread, butter and jam for breakfast and even making shortbread I still had some left to throw away today.

I’m looking forward to cheese when I’m back home on holiday next month…

I was just struck by the thought that I haven’t heard a fire alarm in a long time.

Some Nigerian buildings have fire alarms (NTI does) but I’ve seldom seen one that showed any signs of actually working.

In fact about the only time you hear sirens or hooters here is when some big man is passing by on the road and his police escort want you to get out of the way. It’s quite noticeable that the Nigerian police don’t waste their sirens on trivial things like getting to the scenes of crimes quickly.