Beautiful babies and clean villages

This Saturday Hope for the Village Child held their annual clean village and beautiful baby contest. It was an amazing sight, each of the communities HVC works with was represented, with mothers, children and fathers all there to support their entrants.

Whilst the judging was going on each community performed a song or dance. One village surpassed them all, a group from Pantaki performed a traditional Bagi dance, so good that the audience threw money at them.



The idea behind the beautiful baby competition is to encourage mothers to have their children immunised as soon as possible. HVC provide vaccinations to communities through the roving clinic which visits villages monthly, and monitors the health of mothers and children. Here's one of the winning babies, looking a bit hot in his fluffy outfit, and of course very beautiful.



The cleanest village competition is a way to promote the importance of hygiene and sanitation to communities. The judging happens throughout the year, and communities are not informed when their village will be judged. Some families have built their own latrines since the competition began two years ago. This year the winning village was Kaso Mission, who received a giant cheque for 20,000 Naira (about £100) to spend on their community.

Everyone had dressed up for the special occasion in brightly coloured outfits with incredible prints and designs, and I felt I had to compete... so I had my first Nigerian style outfit made. This is me with Elizabeth, one of the HVC nurses.



It drew many comments from all sides, particularly when I went to the market later that day, and even more funny looks when people saw the oyibo on a motorcycle with a helmet and a Nigerian outfit - will try and get a photo of that next time.

Buses, dust and goats

My new work routine has started in earnest, the toughest part so far is the morning commute – I get up at 6am and take an okada (motorbike) followed by a bus designed for eight people which usually takes twelve (like the tube, but more sweaty), then the staff Land Rover. The bus journeys are often very entertaining, one morning I was talking to the man next to me when his son leaned over to ask him something in Hausa, which was translated to me as ‘Are you a woman?’. Not many Nigerian women wear trousers and no jewellery – perhaps I should be making more effort?!

Last week I spent four days visiting communities with the education and health teams from HVC. HVC have built latrines for the schools, and were teaching the children the importance of hand washing, with a song and role play, which all the children found very entertaining. Here are some of the children from Pabawn village, who were very interested in me.



I woke up on Friday to a world covered in a grey haze, which means the harmattan has descended on Kaduna. The dust is visible everywhere, surfaces don’t stay clean for long, and the bike drivers wear covers on their faces to stop them breathing in the dust. The only benefit of all this is that the temperature has dropped to a very pleasant 28 degrees, which reduces the need for three showers a day.

This weekend was very chilled out,I mostly slept. Ruth, my colleague from HVC came over on Saturday to teach me to make Nigerian fried rice, she did most of the cooking, whilst I frantically tried to write down each stage. I also visited another volunteer whose cat has just had kittens, they are tiny!



I’m writing this from my office, where there’s a goat tethered to a tree in the middle of our compound which was a gift from one of the villages HVC work with. It’s been bleating away all day, and when I asked what would happen to it, I was told it would be eaten... no wonder it’s upset!

New house, new job, new city

I arrived in Kaduna on Wednesday, after saying goodbye to the 17 other volunteers who were heading to placements across Nigeria. Apart from those who were meant to be going to Jos, who are staying in Abuja, all VSO’s are currently banned from going to Jos, or the vicinity, and it’s very far away from Kaduna, so don’t worry about me! It’s very sad news though, and a frequent topic of conversation here.
My new house is in the centre of Kaduna, close to a three other VSO volunteers, and I'm sharing with another VSO called Richard. The house is pretty basic but comfortable, with water most of the time, and electricity irregularly. Here's a photo of the living room for my mum on Mothers Day:

An unfortunate consequence of being in such close proximity to the Kaduna River is that we are sometimes visited by rats, but since three were killed by Richard's proficiency with the trap I bought from the UK there haven't been any others. And there's been no need to practice killing cockroaches with flip flops yet, but watch this space...
I went into the offices of Hope for the Village Child for a couple of days last week, all the staff were very friendly and welcoming. On my first day we went to one of the communities HVC work with, Kaso Sarki, which was about an hour journey on very bumpy roads in a Land Rover, to score them for the HVC 'cleanest village' competition. Whilst there I managed to make a small child cry because they'd never seen a white person before - this has happened a couple of times since then and will probably stop being funny soon, but not yet.
My first few weeks at HVC will involve more visits to communities, and time spent talking to the staff, to make sure I understand how they work, and how I'll fit in.
We visited the large market in Kaduna yesterday, and I practiced my haggling with limited success, accidentally stumbled across the meat section which contained lots of parts of animals that I’d never seen before (goats feet seemed popular) and bought a few things for the house.
Yesterday afternoon I met up with more VSOs and after a picnic in the park we tried out some of Kaduna’s bars. So far Kaduna seems like a great city, its hot (currently 32 degrees inside the house, much hotter in the sun), and that makes it hard to do as much as I’d like to, things have to be taken slowly, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
Thanks for your comments on this blog, and all your emails, it's great to hear from you.

Kano

After a mere three days of training in the 'Happy Hall' at the Crystal Palace Hotel in Abuja, during which we covered the history and politics of Nigeria (complex), advice on how to stay healthy, and some basic greetings in Hausa, VSO decided it was time to send their 18 new volunteers into the big wide world to learn to look after themselves.

So on Thursday I set off for Kano, a predominantly Muslim city in the north of Nigeria. Four of us were crammed into the back of a VW Golf for the six hour journey, with a crazy driver who averaged around 140km an hour, and liked to overtake on blind corners, at one point he nearly knocked over a motorcyclist, who then tailed us for about a mile, before trying to smash the car window with his elbow... welcome to road transport in Nigeria.

Patience, a Ugandan volunteer, and I were staying with Sophie, a volunteer in the education programme who lives in Sabuwar Kofar, close to the city centre. Her house is a large compound with mango trees, and hammocks, and lots of wildlife, including lizards, birds, and cockroaches.

There are a lot of children who often play outside Sophie's house, and as Patience and I returned on Friday afternoon we were surrounded by cute kids who were very interested in us, and wanted to know who the new baturia (white person) was. One of them was so curious that she leaned towards me, took a deep breath, and sniffed me! Rather her than me, it's pretty hot in Kano.

We spent a fascinating three days touring the city, on the back of motorbikes or 'achabas' as they're called in the North. We saw Kano's famous dye pits, I bought some amazing fabric in Kori market, and we visited Dalla Hill from where we could see all of Kano.

As the idea was to learn, I thought I'd write down all the things I discovered thanks to Sophie and Patience, most of which Patience was amazed I'd never done before:

- To put my motorcycle helmet on - it's harder than you'd think with glasses
- How to ride pillion on a motorbike - my knuckles were white from holding on with both hands, whilst Patience was on the phone, not even holding on!
- How to put up a mosquito net
- The best way to kill a cockroach.... with a flip flop in case you wondered
- How to shower when there's been no running water for two days - sachets of water called pure water were pretty useful for this.
- That you can open red wine with only a sharp knife and no corkscrew - good team work on that one.
- How to make toast in a frying pan.
- How to eat sugar cane - I think Patience found this one the funniest.

So week one in Nigeria has been a steep and fascinating learning curve for me, let's hope it continues this way!