Caboose

Towards the end of my trip to the South-South I think something bit my left little toe. A week or so later it had got a bit painful and seemed to have formed a blister. It got less painful, so I ignored it for a while but it didn’t go away, time for a trip to the Zankli Clinic.

After a little while being ignored at reception I was whisked straight through the busy waiting room, the doctor took one look at my reddened little toe and pronounced that it was infected (she actually informed me that it was cellulitis but eventually relented and explained what that means). After a medical version of the chop-house game where she established which antibiotics they had in the pharmacy she prescribed some tablets and sent me off for the nurse to clean the wound.

There was a slight delay while the nurse was persuaded to actually come and do some work, as a result of which she seemed a little grumpy. In fact the only thing she said to me was “See, pus!” as she tore off bits of scab and delved around in the (tiny) wound. Afterwards she haphazardly stuck on a dressing and got back to the important work of chatting with her colleagues and reading magazines. This was quite a contrast after the very friendly and helpful doctor.

I’m now wearing sandals to work for a while to reduce the pressure on my toe and hoping that the antibiotics will clear it up before my planned trip up Mount Cameroon early next month.

We sat down to watch Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith last night.

I bought a video CD of it at the market on Saturday, getting the guy on the stall to check that both discs played, but failed to notice that the discs were badly scratched and it was too jerky to watch. Marebec managed to get hold of another copy, so we settled down in the dark and hoped the laptop battery would last long enough.

The first annoying thing was the presence of timecode numbers at the top of the screen, but that’s quite common on these pirated CDs. The second was irritation that the video had been very badly encoded, making the whole thing look a bit cartoonish and blocky. The final straw was that the disc kept stopping every once in a while with a “media read error”.

I can put up with the occasional skip but it really started to get annoying having to bring up the media player control panel, start playing the disc again and then find the first point after it had stopped where it would be prepared to continue. This is probably a combination of problems with the disc and bad user interface design in WinDVD.

So, I’m not sure what I think of the film. There didn’t seem to be much character development and the big special effects scenes looked awful with the bad encoding. I’ll have to try watch a better copy of it at some point.

I’m sure various people would say that the problems with the discs are all my own fault for buying pirated Video CDs. This may be true but:

1. On a VSO allowance you can’t afford to buy imported DVDs
2. I don’t even know where I could buy legal DVDs here

There is no cinema in Abuja, in fact I’ve yet to see one in Nigeria (not counting the burned-out shell of the Northern Cinema in Sokoto). Going to the cinema is one of the things I miss from my former life in Cambridge.

Looking back over my website it looks like non-stop holidays and parties, with little mention of work. This is partly because those are more fun to write about than another day sitting in the office and also because writing about work always has the potential for causing problems with employers.

Now that I’m well settled in to my job we’re going to be discussing some of the things I can do while I’m here, where the FRCN people think they need help and where I think I can improve things.

Life at the house is quiet at the moment, largely because there has been no NEPA for two weeks (cause unknown, rumours suggest something to do with unpaid bills at Radio House). With no NEPA we have generator power from around 9am to aroun 5pm on weekdays and no power at night and at weekends. As a result I’ve taken to going to bed around 9pm after cooking in the dark.

We’re currently experimenting with different ways of lighting the house, I bought a rechargable fluorescent light a while ago but being cheap Chinese rubbish it now barely lasts an hour, at the weekend we bought a gas lantern and it seems to be doing quite well. We’ve rejected candles because candlelight is no use for reading and they don’t last long enough, we may yet give Tilley lamps a try.

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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