Caboose

Got an email from the VSO programme office on Thursday, to tell us that one of the VSO drivers, Tadjudeen, had been killed in a car accident. I didn’t know him but he certainly seems to have been well liked by both programme staff and volunteers. He leaves a wife and five children.

There was some good news in the email. Kayode, one of the programme managers, was also in the car but escaped with cracked ribs and bruising.

People at home worry about illnesses, coups and other dramatic problems but travelling on the roads is the most dangerous thing we do here.

Since we moved into the house I’ve been worried about the amount of water we’ve been getting through. Even if no taps are on if I left the valve from the tank open the whole tank (several hundred litres) would empty in less than an hour.

The most obvious problem was that both toilets had faulty float valves, so they never stopped filling. The plumber came round to fix that yesterday and it became obvious that there was another problem elsewhere. I went for a wander round the back of the house this morning and noticed this:

I’m amazed that I hadn’t noticed this before, a pipe sticking out into mid-air with water pouring out of it! The electricians were working round the back yesterday, so it’s possible that they moved something that was previously covering the pipe. On the other hand, maybe I was just being really stupid.

Once this is fixed we should have higher water pressure so the showers might even start working!

The other week I decided I needed some more shirts, so that I could actually make it through a week without having to do washing. I wandered off down to the Area 7 Shopping Centre (just down the road), bought some fabric and found a tailor. So for ₦700 (£2.70) he sewed the fabric up into a very nice shirt.

He did such a good job that I asked him to make up some other fabric into a traditional Nigerian outfit, I went and collected it yesterday:

You can’t really see the embroidery in the picture, men really seem to go in for fancy fabrics and lots of ornamentation on their clothes here.

The outfit is all very loose and comfortable, in fact it feels more like pyjamas than something you’d wear to go out. Now I just need an occasion to wear it…

I spent the weekend up in Kaduna, a couple of hours north of Abuja. We were visiting Paul, a Canadian volunteer who has been training teachers at the school for the deaf there. He’s finishing soon so he had organised a leaving party. Here’s a picture of Paul in his house and a random street scene from Kaduna.

Mary and I set off on Friday afternoon, took a taxi out to Jabi motor park and quickly found a bush taxi going to Kaduna. It was a pretty comfortable journey, they only put three of us in the middle row of seats rather than the usual four. As we approached Kaduna one of the windscreen wipers broke (it was raining a bit), so the driver switched them off and obviously couldn’t see very well. When Mary complained his solution was to speed up so the water was blown off the windscreen.

Paul met us at the bus stop and walked us back to the school, where he is living in a converted office. Tracy (from Gindri) and Karen (from Jos) arrived shortly after us.

Friday night was quite relaxed, we headed out to a bar called PDP (the same as Nigeria’s dominant political party, not sure why), had very spicy fish and chips and washed it down with a few beers. At the bar we met up with various other people, including Joanne (formerly VSO with FRCN, now with the BBC in Kaduna) and Henrietta (working with Marebec at FRCN).

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Although we’re not allowed pets there are quite a few animals around our compound, mostly lizards but a few chickens as well. In side the house we have geckos:

I quite like the geckos and lizards, Marebec is not so impressed. The other night I had to evict a lizard from her bedroom windowsill and a gecko from her bathroom. I was quite surprised when the gecko tried to bite me, although they don’t seem to have much in the way of teeth.

Attempts to persuade Marebec that geckos are quite cute and are performing the useful service of eating flies don’t seem to be working…

Just in case anyone is thinking of coming out to visit me here in Nigeria I’ve added a page with some advice.

Let me know if there’s any other information you think should be on that page.

Karen (from Jos) and Jenny (from Akwanga) stayed over at our house after the Queen’s birthday reception at the British High Commission on Friday.

On Saturday morning we were sitting around the house after breakfast when Karen suggested we all go back to Jos with her. As the alternative was a day of washing and shopping we decided to go.

We travelled by taxi, bus and motorbike to Karu motor park, to the south-east of Abuja. The left-hand picture shows Karen, Jenny and Marebec at the motor park while we were waiting for our car to fill up. The other picture is a random landscape shot from near Jos.

Jos (short for “Jesus Our Saviour”) is the capital of Plateau State and has quite a pleasant climate due to its altitude (1295m), noticeably cooler than Abuja. Karen has a huge house but a very unreliable electricity supply, although we were quite lucky while we were there. After some shopping at the market, ice cream and a lovely pizza at a local Lebanese-owned restaurant we went back to the house for board games by candlelight.

Back in Abuja I had a huge pile of washing to do and some work to prepare for Monday, as well as the final of the “Paddy Cup” pool competition at the British Village tonight.

I promised some pictures of the house, so here they are.

Today was a public holiday so I spent most of it cleaning my bathroom. After that it was still nice outside so I took some pictures of the house:

To the left you can see one of our two water tanks and behind that the fuel tank for the large generator for Radio House.
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Updated: Added a picture of the rain.

We’re settling in to the house, developing a bit of a routine. We keep thinking of extra things we need to buy and Admin have a list of things that need to be fixed (lights and plumbing mostly) but it’s quite comfortable now.

The weather has been changing recently. It’s still very hot but we’ve had occasional heavy showers, usually accompanied by lightning. Last night I was out pumping water to our upper tank when a cool breeze sprang up, lightning was visible on the horizon and ten minutes later it started to rain. It didn’t last long, we probably caught the edge of heavier rain elsewhere in town. Here’s a picture from my office during one of the downpours:

On the social side of things I’ve been up to the British Village a couple of times to take part in Ronan’s pool competition (the “Paddy Cup”). I got knocked out in my first game but I’m into the semi-finals of the shield competition (for the losers). A couple of people are coming to stay on Friday, all the VSOs seem to have been invited to the celebrations of the Queen’s birthday at the British High Commissioner’s residence. I’m looking forward to a glass of nice red wine.

We’ve finally moved into the house!

On Monday the Director of Administration and Finance told us that the house was ready, so we arranged to move in on Tuesday.

It’s a nice little bungalow behind Radio House, in between it and Army Headquarters. We have a living room (with air con), a reasonably big kitchen with a dual gas-electric cooker and two bedrooms, each with their own bathroom. The bedrooms also have air con, TV and a CD player, all very luxurious.

There have been a few snags.

The main problem has been with our water supply. When we moved in we had a full tank of water, unfortunately it’s the lower tank and the pump that moves water up to the upper tank hadn’t been wired up.

Yesterday the pump was wired up and the upper tank filled, I was so happy I started cleaning the (filthy) kitchen. It turns out that there are some leaks in the water system, a few hours later the tank was empty again. This means waiting for the water company to refill the lower tank, which usually happens during the night.

This morning I worked out that the float valves in both toilet cisterns are faulty, so lots of our water is flowing straight down the drain. In the meantime we have two buckets that we can fill from a tap in the compound, one for flushing toilets and washing and the other for processing into drinking water.

Tonight we’re having a housewarming party, Marebec is spending the afternoon making snacks and we bought two crates of soft drinks (“minerals” here).

I’ll post some pictures of the house once we’ve cleaned it all up and it looks respectable.