Heather in Nigeria

Sai wata rana

2011-06-06T21:07:00.000+01:00

As most of you know by now, I’m HOME! And thought it was about time to write a bit about Nigeria, the elections and how I feel about being home.

My last few weeks in Nigeria were pretty hectic, hence the supreme lack of blogging. I had a lovely good bye party from Hope for the Village Child, and the VSOs, friends and neighbours gave me a great farewell at Sea Breeze, our local bar. Then I packed up and travelled over land to Ghana with Richard another volunteer based in Lafia, who has conveniently written a fairly detailed blog of our trip, meaning I don’t have to! See www.monkeyatemyfish.com

With my HVC colleagues on my last day.

It feels really good to be home, the reverse culture shock hasn’t been as bad as I’d prepared myself for, supermarkets and crowded bars are still a bit overwhelming, but I’m generally enjoying London living again.

There are a few things that I’ve found new and exciting at home: kettles with upwards on switches (just weird), Crabbies ginger beer (amazing), Groupon (a bit confusing), and some amazing life changes, friends have bought houses, got engaged and have new jobs.

I’ve managed to get some temporary work in my old department at the Red Cross, which is great, and I’m enjoying the double takes I get from people who thought I was still in Nigeria.

The Nigerian elections...

Some of you will have heard about the violence which hit Northern Nigeria during the election, when Goodluck Jonathon was reelected. Some groups in the north of Nigeria rioted claiming the northern Muslim candidate Buhari should have been the president, to continue the north/south power sharing agreement of the main political party the PDP. There are estimates that up to 500 people died, and Kaduna was one of the worst affected areas. Our colleague, Shuaibu, the driver at Hope for the Village Child lost his house, and other colleagues struggled to get home through mobs running street patrols, burning tyres and attacking people. There was an almost immediate 24 hour curfew, and the VSO volunteers were evacuated a couple of days later, but the curfew was still on a month later, and people’s lives cannot be repaired easily. The sad part is that the violence affected the poorest people the most, those who lack opportunities, employment and money and have nothing to lose and so turn on their neighbours who have just as little. The destruction is heart breaking, and it wasn’t just in Kaduna, it happened in Kano, Bauchi and across the north. There’s not much I can really write about it, except to express optimism, that the elections were widely considered the freest and fairest in since Nigeria became a democracy again in 1999, and hope that the people affected will get help to rebuild their lives.

Writing this blog, reflecting on the last year, looking at my photos, and reading the blogs of VSOs still in Nigeria, has made me realise how much I miss it. The year was an incredible experience, challenging, inspiring and overwhelming at all times. I made some amazing friends, who I miss a lot, learnt a hell of a lot about the challenges faced by NGOs working in developing countries, and was exactly where I hoped I’d be, in a passionate organisation that is really making a difference to the lives of isolated rural communities.

My connection with Hope for the Village Child and Kaduna doesn’t end there, I’m now a trustee of Hope for the African Village Child, the British partner charity of HVC. This way I’ll be able to help HVC through fundraising in the future! Recently I lived on £1 a day for five days to raise money for HAVC, and if you’d like to sponsor me, and support HVC’s work with communities who face difficulties accessing health care, education and overcoming poverty in Nigeria, your donations would be very greatly appreciated through: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/charities/hopeforafricanvillagechild

Thanks for reading for the last year, and for your support, in Nigeria and at home.

Sai wata rana.

A few outfits

2011-02-20T19:24:00.000+01:00

Part of the joy of living in Nigeria is the ability to design (or in my case attempt to design) your own clothes. There are small tailors workshops on every street, and fabric can be bought in even the tiniest market for as little as £4. The colours and prints range from bold bright traditional West African prints, to more subtle colours and designs. The cheapest fabric, sold in six or twelve yards amounts called wrappers, is made in China and the most expensive is Dutch. To get a top and skirt made with a head tie to match is usually around £4, and small dresses just £3, who needs Primark.

I was so taken aback by the colours, designs and quantity of fabric available when I first arrived that I found it difficult to choose fabrics that suited me, and would go for the boldest and brightest patterns which caught my eye. More recently I've been trying to get things made which I can wear at home, so I've moved on to more subtle colours and simpler patterns.

My tailor,the talented Doris. No your eyes do not deceive
you, that is a singer sewing machine.

Here are a selection of my outfits, some are staying in Nigeria, and others making the long journey home with me.... please excuse my inability to arrange them properly.

Akwei malaria

2011-02-03T15:05:00.000+01:00

When I arrived in Nigeria, I was told about a volunteer in Lagos who'd had malaria six times. I was astonished, and wondered how on earth someone could be so careless, surely they must not be using a mosquito net and never wearing mosquito repellent, let alone taking anti malarial tablets.

On Monday I equalled her record. And yes I sleep under a mosquito net, wear mosquito repellent in the evenings and take doxyclicline as an anti malarial. Yet Richard, who lived in the same house, and took far fewer precautions than I do, didn't get malaria once.Some people just seem more prone to malaria than others, I'm O positive, if that helps anyone with their blood type theories on malaria susceptibility.

It's not a pleasant experience, but not really as awful as the word malaria makes you imagine. I usually start by feeling fragile, often with a fever, or exhaustion or aches and pains, just like flu. With the worst bout I woke up at 3am with vomiting and diarrhoea, and the mildest, I just felt fuzzy so went for a test at work, lucky for me Hope for the Village Child has a clinic on site. More recently I've been going to the VSO's partner hospital in Kaduna where I'll be immediately seen by a doctor, but then have to wait 1.5 hours for the blood test results to confirm malaria. I've never been not diagnosed, which almost tempts me to self medicate.

Malaria comes in different levels, I usually get plus one, which is very mild, but a child once came into the HVC clinic recently with plus four malaria, and if he hadn't received treatment could have died. It's a serious disease, worst for those who cannot afford the drugs or mosquito nets which they need to prevent it, a mild flu for the rest, yet still six times in a year is enough for me. Time to go home. .

A poem

2011-01-20T13:32:00.001+01:00

As my last post was so extensive I held back on including my wonderful poem from secret santa, but thought I'd add it in as I think it's a work of poetic genius. In the Dutch tradition each present came with a poem, whose author should remain nameless, but my secret santa gave the game away a bit here...

Nobody leave the room,
Everyone listen to me
There is a young lady here called Heather,
Who is a good friend to me.

I first me her on the streets,
She was showing a friend the sights,
We then went to Sea Breeze,
Drank Harp and enjoyed the night.

She fell in love in Nigeria,
To an English man,
They braved the floods together,
He left in harmattan.

The amazing Kano Durbar,
Was really lots of fun,
Sanusi's village, horse parades, Government House,
All under the hot sun.

A dangerous journey to Dutse,
Her parents bravely made,
To relax and enjoy The Palace,
And the police station in the shade!

We shared a bed at Chida,
Heather finally met our team,
I stole her croissants for breakfast,
Then left her with her hangover and dreams.

And last but obviously not least,
Obudu, Afi and Calabar,
A Christmas holiday of a lifetime,
Arranged by Heather - what a star!

Heather is leaving soon,
And that makes me sad,
If it was somebody else,
It wouldn't be so bad!

With my English man, Richard.

We're all going on a, Christmas holiday

2011-01-17T18:12:00.002+01:00

Happy New Year! And happy harmattan, currently in Kaduna it's averaging a chilly 21 degrees in the shade, and my colleagues are wearing ski jackets, hats and gloves to fight off the “cold”. Although a hardy Brit, even I can’t cope with the cold and have found myself wishing I had some socks and shoes instead of only one pair of sandals!

I arrived back in Kaduna last weekend, after an incredible Christmas and New Year travelling in southern Nigeria and Cameroon. I traveled with eight volunteers over the three weeks, five of us set off from Abuja on our way to Lafia, adventure number one, get five people in a VW golf, without paying too high an oyibo/pre Christmas price, and without mishap. Done. Three hours later we arrived in Lafia, and were treated to an incredible Indian meal by Teddy and Shreela, and Richard III even gave up his bed to me and Lucy, what a gent!

The next day the serious adventures began, as we headed to Makurdi, and from there got a bush taxi to Obudu town, from where our host, Abebe, had arranged a car to take us to our destination, Obudu Cattle Ranch.

Ready for the journey to Obudu.

Abebe's lodge is the poor man's cattle ranch accommodation, for an affordable 5,500 naira (£26) per night, we could stay right next to the cattle ranch proper, where rooms are a staggering 20,000 naira per night! Abebe's Lodge, for those who are interested can be called on 08036242192. Here our food was 300 naira a plate, instead of 3,000, and even the very questionable bush meat we were served came in a decent egusi stew. The only downside was the our hot water on the first night, which had to be heated on a wood fire, took about 3 hours to arrive.

Obudu cattle ranch is famous across

Nigeria

as a place of outstanding natural beauty, it’s high up on a plateau, which makes the temperature cool and refreshing. So refreshing that for the first time in Nigeria, I was cold!

The hut I stayed in at Afi.

Whilst at Obudu, we visited the first of two canopy walkways, took a demanding trek down to a waterfall, and to a mountain view point, from where we could see Cameroon, it looked just like Nigeria! The cable car, fyi, is closed on Tuesdays for maintenance, although of course no one mentioned this to us on Monday. But on our departure we were able to take a trip down in the cable car to the water park, slides included, before we set off to Afi.

Our next stop was Afi drill monkey sanctuary, deep in the rainforest in Cross River state, which has the largest population of captive drill monkeys in the world. All rescued from the bush meat trade, which is an incredibly lucrative business in Nigeria and West Africa, chimp meat was described to us as ‘sweet’ by people we met in Cameroon. The accommodation at Afi is huts in the forest, surrounding by mosquito netting. The sounds of the jungle lull you to sleep, and screaming chimps and drills wake you up bright and early.

The phone eating toilet at Afi.

The toilet facilities are reminiscent of Glastonbury, long drop toilets without the barrier to stop your own wee coming back at you, leading to much contortion on the part of ladies without a she wee. Just like the loos at glasto, these toilets eat mobile phones. Beth’s phone was a victim on our first day, and each morning the alarm went off at 7am, despite being immersed in 10 feet of poo!

Secret santa/sinterklaas.

At Afi we were treated to another, much more impressive canopy walkway, high up in the trees, followed by another waterfall (have you spotted the pattern yet?).

Christmas day was spent in the village of Akpap Okoyong, also in Cross River state, home of the famous missionary Mary Slessor, and VSO Sarah! Secret santa got me a wonderful necklace and earrings, and in honour of Sarah, the Dutch vso, everyone had written each other a poem in the Dutch sinterklaas tradition. Later we had a delightful dinner of fish and chips around 11pm, after not really realizing that the fish weren’t gutted, and in true Nigerian style, running out of water mid preparation. I just peeled spuds, so couldn’t claim any credit at all.

Calabar carnival was mildly entertaining, not quite as efficiently organized as Notting Hill, with the police’s preferred method of crowd control being whips and sticks, there were some pretty good costumes though!

Calabar carnival.

We crossed over to

Cameroon

by ferry, told to arrive at 4am at the port, and turned up at 5, only to wait until 9 for the ferry to leave. Standard practice. We were interviewed by ‘Femi’ the friendly local Nigerian secret service agent, who wanted to know where we worked, names of our employers, and what we were doing in Nigeria, and then wangled us an upgrade to 1^st class!

Mt Cameroon, obligatory summit victory photo.

Our first stop in Limbe was delicious grilled fish and plantain on the sea front, followed by the trip to Buea, at the base of Mount Cameroon.

Exhausted walking through a volcanic
crater late on day 2, yes, that's me, the old man. With the stick.

The trek up and down Mount Cameroon, West Africa's highest mountain, at 4,095 metres, took three days. We trekked for six hours the first day, eleven the next, and seven on the last day. It's an active volcano, which last erupted in 2000, and we walked through craters, and across lava flows, with the smell of sulphur in the air. The view was worth the walk, although it was exhausting, we were lucky none of us suffered from altitude sickness. George, our guide had claimed he didn’t think Emily would make It up the mountain, being so ‘heavy’, she proved him very wrong! Thereafter any sentence beginning ‘George said… ‘ was discounted. It turned out to be me who suffered the most on the way down, and I blame it all on this terrible blister. Sympathy please, not expressions of disgust.

We got back down to Limbe in time for New Years Eve, and stayed in the definitely disheveled Atlantic Beach Hotel, with an incredible view from our balcony. In true vso style we fitted four in a room and made the most of the pool to clean off the volcanic ash from mount Cameroon, and flooded the bathroom. They loved us. New Years eve in Limbe consisted of amazing pizza at Emilia’s pizza place - not the real name, and beer at the street side bar, Las Vegas, where new years eve was announced on true African time, about five minutes late!

After two days on the volcanic ash beaches at Limbe, Emily and Karen went back to Nigeria, whilst Rich III and I headed down south to Kribi, home of white sand beaches and one of few waterfalls in the world which flows directly into the sea, and lots more fish and beer. Cameroonians drink more beer per head than any other African country.

What is a capacity building advisor?

2010-12-08T13:11:00.000+01:00

I’ve realised that I haven’t really explained my role at Hope for the Village Child since I started this blog, so here goes...


Children at Ungwan Asiliko school are without desks

First a bit on Hope for the Village Child (HVC from now on), it’s a rural development NGO that works with thirty rural communities southeast of Kaduna city, which has been operating for 15 years. They focus on poor rural communities who don’t have access to adequate health care, education or even water and sanitation, and helps them attain these basic necessities to improve their health and lives.

As the name suggests, the focus is on children, but HVC works with all members of a community to improve the lives of children. The office is split into different sections that each carry out different activities, these are health, education, women, secure livelihoods, rickets and children with disabilities. To give you a proper understanding of what each section does would take a while, but the HVC website gives a good summary with photos: www.hopeforthevillagechild.org

I’m not a specialist in any of the areas listed above, so how do I fit in?

The teacher uses the wall as there is no blackboard.

My job title is ‘Capacity building advisor’ and the reason for my post is to support the organisational development (OD) process at HVC. I don’t have community development experience, but I have spent time working in offices, and big organisations, so I understand how they work. The OD process is a way of making the organisation more efficient, in its policies, systems and the skills of staff, so that they can do their work as effectively as possible. The idea behind VSO is the motto ‘Sharing Skills, Changing Lives’ so I’m sharing my knowledge and skills with HVC to help their organisation improve. It doesn’t make sense for me to give immunisations (if I could) or to teach school children, because there are Nigerians who are qualified to do those things, the idea of a capacity builder is to improve the skills of those who will stay in the country, leaving behind a sustainable change in the form of people.

Still following? Ok, so what does that really mean... ?

The OD process was begun the year before I arrived by another VSO volunteer who left in January. I’ve had to pick up from where he left off, which was a challenge in itself. Although he’d left all the documents I needed to work with, no one seemed to know which direction the OD process needed to take next, as there was no specific written plan for OD. We’ve now written a five year plan to guide the organisation forward, and I’m working with an OD committee who will be responsible for implementing the plan in the future.

As part of the OD process the last volunteer undertook an assessment of the capacities of the organisation. The staff identified areas they wanted to improve which were focused around involving communities in planning, monitoring and evaluation of programmes, as well as advocacy and their strategic plan, which doesn’t exist. They also carried out document and IT audits, which identified that HVC staff needed more IT training, and better documentation, including written policies for things like HR, finance etc.

Since I arrived in February I’ve been helping to develop an HR and financial policy, and before I arrived they had already completed child safeguarding, IT, and community expenses policies.

An activity from the PM&E workshop

I also attended a training on participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) from VSO with my counterpart from HVC. PM&E is a way of including all sections of a community to make sure you get as much input and involvement as possible from all the people who might benefit from a project or programme. This will in turn lead to better projects. E.g. If a community has identified that they need a well, then you should use a participatory process to plan the location, so that it is useful for all members of the community.

In August, I, my counterpart and another colleague ran a three day training for HVC staff in participatory M&E, and at our retreat in September the staff were able to practice these tools with one of the focal communities. This was my biggest achievement to date, and it felt like I was really sharing skills. Plans for the next few months include helping with the annual planning process, developing the planning templates, working with each section to plan their monitoring and evaluation for the year and doing some research into strategic planning.

In my first few months at HVC, whilst I was finding my way on the OD process I tended to fall back onto what I know best... fundraising. But that’s an entirely different blog post.

Church Naija style

2010-11-23T13:17:00.000+01:00

When I arrived in Nigeria, I was told the apocryphal story of a previous volunteer who had agreed to go to church with an acquaintance, and after an exhausting four hour service in a hot church, had said something which indicated she had enjoyed herself. She was then woken at 6am to attend church for the next four successive Sundays until she plucked up the courage to say she didn't want to go...

With this in story in mind, and knowing full well that services here are not usually less than four hours long, I have always approached invitations to attend church with trepidation.

The steeple of the national Christian centre,
Abuja.

Those services I've been brave enough (or too weak to refuse) to attend have ranged in size and length, and craziness of the preaching, but have been endlessly surprising.

My first service was at the Assemblies of God church in Kaduna, a giant building able to hold up to a thousand people. Richard had been accosted by one of the many church pastors whilst at the barbers, and despite his insistence to the man that we were Buddhist, managed to commit to attending one Sunday at 8am! We arrived at 8.20, and were promptly split up, I to attend a ladies bible class, and he a mens. I was handed a white handkerchief, which I assumed was on account of the heat, and used it to mop my brow. I was then handed another, and politely asked to use it to cover my hair... mightily embarrassed I complied. Once the service proper began, we were seated at the front of the church, with all the other new worshippers, where were able to enjoy the service. I didn't recognise any of the songs, but the dancing and enthusiasm in the service was infectious, and the women's outfits of shiny large head wraps, sparkly tops and wrappers made for an incredible view, especially the two large groups which had on matching outfits in honour of the women's day at the church.. We left after 3 and a half hours, with at least three collections, lots of songs and dancing, but before the sermon, which may have been another hour! We crept out of a side door, with the excuse we had to visit some friends but I'm sure our exit didn't go unnoticed!

Some of the amazing outfits worn by Nigerian ladies to church.

My second visit to church in Nigeria was a complete juxtaposition to the first. My colleague Monday had asked me to attend a service for the children's day at his church, in Ungwan Romi, a surburb towards the less well off end of town where I work. This church was much smaller, with only space for up to 100 people, it was sparsely decorated, with plastic chairs and a low altar, much less fancy and golden than the Assemblies of God. The children's day performances were wonderful, there were plays, dances, songs and children reading passages from the bible from memory. Some of the readings were very cute, small children around five had learnt just sentences, whereas older ones had whole passages off pat. I realised how so many Nigerians are confident at public speaking, those who couldn't remember their lines were laughed off stage, I'm sure an experience like that at the age of eight would've hardened me up a bit! I'd arrived at 9, and by the time the performances were over it was 12, when the pastor proceeded to give his usual one hour long sermon. Just as he was warming to his theme 'giving your daughter a phone will turn her into a harlot', around 45 minutes into his sermon, I made my excuses to Monday and crept out the back. Unfortunately my escape was much more obvious this time as Monday's brother revved his motorcycle to take me back to the bus stop and quite a few people were distracted (unsurprisingly) from the sermon.

My next attendance at church came through my neighbour, Oscar, he is an aspiring pastor, and had set up a Friday night fellowship, which he had asked Richard and I to attend every time he saw us, and we did our best to come up with a variety of excuses not to. He finally lured us there with the promise of a preacher from the British High Commission. Our curiosity got the better of us, and we found ourselves spending our Friday evening in a sparse function room, with a band, and about ten other people singing, dancing and praying very loudly. The preacher herself went on for around 2 hours, she was a fan of old testament fire and brimstone, and managed to move from one point to another, and back without ever really making any sense to me. After arriving at 6, we got home at 9, from where we proceeded to the pub to try and salvage our evening. Unfortunately for Oscar I don't think the fellowship meetings ever became sustainable because the hire of the hall was quite expensive. So they have now moved to his home, from where every Friday I'm serenaded by loud exclamations and prayers and shouts for forgiveness, thankfully he hasn't invited me for a while.

Innocent & Dorcas at the alter.

The most recent church services I've attended have been decidedly better than the first three. Last weekend I attended the wedding of my friend Innocent in Katari, a small village between Kaduna and Abuja. The advertised start time was 10am, so the service started around 10.45, it was in a Catholic church and lasted a mere two hours! It was a breath of fresh air compared to the other services, with people reading from the bible, and a sermon that related to peoples everyday lives, and talked about love and marriage. For more details about the service, my friend Beth has written a brilliant blog which sums up the service and the party aftwerwards. http://bethharrison.me.uk/?p=120 It was at the reception that I had my first taste of palm wine in Nigeria, which was disappointing to say the least.

The final church service came about through an Irish family connection, it seems no matter how far I travel in the world there's no escaping them. The bishop of Clogher, (Irish family connection: he's the local bishop for my Grandad's cousin in northern Ireland, who also knows my great uncle in Waterford), was visiting Kaduna to support the Jacaranda project run by the Anglican church, on the farm next door to Hope for the Village Child. So on Sunday I found myself at St Paul's Anglican church, Kakuri, where the bishop gave his longest sermon ever, a mere 30 minutes! The only problem I found is that after listening to too many terrible sermons in Nigeria, I've developed a tactic of planning holidays and general day dreaming during church services, so when quizzed by the bishop of Kaduna's wife after the service, I couldn't remember what he'd said! That aside, the service itself was an amazing mix of traditional Nigerian and British hymns, with a thanksgiving section where families bless marriages, new babies, and one group even brought three live goats to the alter. There was a section where visitors were asked to stand so that they could be welcomed, and I was bombarded by hand shakes, smiles, and welcomes from all directions, some people were amazed that I'd arrived with the bishop, but wasn't his daughter, and actually lived in Kaduna.

Overall I've found church in Nigeria colourful, different and full of beautiful outfits music and dancing, I'm not sure how I'll feel being back in our cold church for Christmas next year, with a few people trying to sing louder than the cassette playing the backing music... but sometimes when I'm stuck in a four hour service here, that's all I wish for.

Family holiday in Naija

2010-11-12T11:24:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago Mummy and Daddy Saunders came to Nigeria, and I'm pleased to say... they survived! They found Nigeria, hot, dusty and pretty overwhelming at times, but had probably one of the most unique holidays they've ever had. They left full of praise, and plenty of 'When we were in Nigeria' stories to entertain you folks at home, finally replacing the stories about Uzbekistan.

When I work out how to use Google Earth a bit better, I'll try and post a link to the route we took, but in the absence of that, I'll explain it. They arrived in Abuja on Saturday morning, and were greeted by thunder, rain, and me, arriving on Nigeria time, slightly late.

Afternoon tea at the Hilton

We spent a couple of days in Abuja, where they were accomodated in the splendour of Crystal Palace, which I'd misleadingly described as 'luxury' (because I live in a house with no air conditioning or power, somewhere with both of these is luxury to me!) Whilst in Abuja we went to Wuse Market, where Mum bought some fabric and ordered a skirt, then they spent a lot of time acclimatising by the pool at the British Village. On Sunday we visited the national Christian centre and the national mosque, and later on to afternoon tea at the Hilton. Abuja is a very relaxing introduction to life in Nigeria, or it was, until the first taxi we took had a very near miss with a couple of 4x4s and had to do some formula one style swerving to avoid a crash.

A service at the National Christian Centre, Abuja.

After Abuja, our trip took us toKaduna, Zaria, Kano and Dutse. It was wonderful to see Nigeria through the eyes of tourists, the everyday things, which I'd stopped noticing, like lizards crawling everywhere, women carrying heavy loads on their heads, massive heads of cows for sale in the market and two goats being carried on a motorbike, were novelties for Mum and Dad. They even got some pretty good offers for my hand in marriage, I think 100,000 dollars was the record.

On the way to Kaduna we stopped at Guara falls, where the place I'd picknicked in May was now 6 feet deep in rushing water, which would have swept away the strongest of swimmers. The view was breathtaking and the sound of the thunderous water crashing down the rocks, and sending up clouds of mist was deafening.

Guara Falls.

They had bravely agreed to stay in my house, to get the full Naija experience, not much power and limited running water, and they coped well, dad even made his famous lasagne for six, cooking in the dark with only a headtorch!

We visited my NGO, Hope for the Village Child, as mum and dad had brought my old laptop with them for the health section - the section's existing laptop required a key inserted in the power switch to turn on, and needed constant power to work, which isn't so efficient in no power Nigeria- it was received with delight by the nurses, and is now in daily use. Whilst at HVC, we visited the community of Telele, where they were able to see for themselves the village school, built with HVC's support, with it's bare minimum of resources, which is actually well off compared to some schools where children sit on the floor.

Telele primary school.

From Kaduna we headed to Zaria, where we were greeted by my friend Hamza, who showed us around the Emir's palace and explained some of it's ancient history including the fearsome Queen Amina, who used to take men to her bed and kill them when she had finished with them!

Outside the Emir's palace, Zaria.

We arrived in Kano at another VSO house, where the compound was an oasis of calm after the fumes, dust and horns of the city. The next day Yusuf proceeded to take us on a whirlwind tour of the dye pits, Dala Hill and Kurmi Market, Kano's ancient market where slaves had been traded across the sahara. After a brief rest for lunch we carried on to the museum, Emir's palace and camel market, before collapsing into Annie's Place for some dinner.

The next day we took a trip outside Kano, to a reservoir, where we were able to take a trip in a dug out canoe, paddled by fishermen. After this we went to a village where we were able to see traditional weaving in action, and tried rather less successfully ourselves.

Writing all this has made me realise just how much we did in only two weeks, and this is the half way stage! Things slowed down a bit from here, as I realised we'd rushed around a bit too much in the heat. So we took it easy on our trip to Dutse, relaxing in Lucy's palatial house, and generally trying not to overheat. Here we saw our third Emir's palace, by far the most intricate and beautiful, and climbed 'the' tower for a view over the countryside, and an idea of just how small Dutse is.

On our way back to Kano we stopped to take photos of the brightly coloured pots for sale by the roadside, and only bought a few. Our journey back to Abuja was broken up in Kano and Kaduna, and back in Abuja their reward for so many nights without air conditioning or running water was two nights in the Sheraton! It was really special to be able to show my family where I live, what I'm doing here, and how supportive all the other VSOs are. I think they've relaxed knowing I'm here, except for the road travel, too many near misses and frustrating check points may have marred the trip. But overall I was reminded of the potential of Nigeria as a tourist destination, with beautiful Emir's palaces, amazing landscapes and friendly people, there are so many reasons to come here. It makes the things which are stopping tourists -the difficulty of planning anything in advance, low level corruption at check points, and by petty police officers -even more frustrating.

Nigeria at 50

2010-10-26T12:42:00.000+01:00

The astute among you will notice that this post is about two weeks late. I got somewhat distracted by my parents visiting Nigeria, preceded by my third, and worst, bout of malaria. But here goes.

Nearly a month ago, Friday 1^st October saw Nigeria celebrate fifty years of independence, fifty years since the end of British colonial rule.

There’s an interesting article on the bbc website called Nigeria: Still standing, but standing still. It's an overview of the challenges which

Nigeria

faces as a country today, and how these contrast starkly with people’s optimistic hopes for the country at independence.

One of the major issues facing Nigeria was illustrated on anniversary of independence, when two car bombs were detonated during the celebrations in Abuja and twelve people were killed. Militants from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) claimed responsibility for the attack. Nigeria’s oil wealth is huge, most oil comes from the delta and the revenues basically keep many areas of the country going, paying for education, health services and other government responsibilities, in the absence of any significant tax collection by the government. MEND militants are demanding a more equal distribution of these oil revenues, and the attack today was a sign that despite a truce signed last year, things are not all well in the Delta.

The bombs put a dampener on some of the celebrations, but in Kaduna most people were unaware until they got home that there’d been an attack. We were at the main square, watching the military parade and governor’s speech. After the army, navy and airforce paraded past, there were the boys brigade, scouts, primary schools, immigration, customs officers, the Nigerian vigilante group (aka the neighbourhood watch) and the Nigerian Red Cross (they get everywhere!). The highlight of the parade was when one group veered off script and their leader marched in a clearly well practiced drill up the red carpet and offered his hand to the governor of Kaduna to shake, the crowd cheered when the governor responded, and the announcer spent the rest of the parade urging the pupils to move on and not do any other showing off!

The governor arriving at the Kaduna parade, accompanied by
horsemen very similar to those who would have paraded 50 years ago.

Once the news spread about the explosions in Abuja the celebratory spirit was dampened. But before then there was definitely a sense of optimism around the fiftieth anniversary. I hope this optimism can be turned into a brighter future for the many residents of this country who still struggle to survive and live in poverty, in the delta and elsewhere.

All creatures great and small

2010-10-05T12:36:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I love my office for the utterly random things which occur here, it's unlike any other place I've worked before. There are usually at least two small children and a lot of animals roaming around, be it kittens, goats, chickens or just the usual lizards.

Today the animal level increased fifty fold, as the GHR programme (that's the name of the funder, no one knows what it stands for!) brought rabbits and day old chicks to distribute to communities as part of the secure livelihoods programme. The idea is that each community gets two rabbits and some chicks, which then grow, the chicks lay eggs, and the rabbits procreate. Once fully grown the community sell their products and or their offspring and use the money for the community, they can keep it going as an income generating programme or use the money to support a community development project.

So, here's the sight which greeted me at the office today, hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Kano Durbar

2010-09-18T16:22:00.001+01:00

Last weekend I returned to Kano or, as I like to think of it, 'the Lagos of the north'. Not that I've been to Lagos yet, but Kano is big, 9 million people live there, each of whom seems to own a car or a motorbike as the roads are thick with traffic and pollution. Riding on a motorbike through the traffic is as stressful as I imagine the chaos of Lagos will be when I get there.

Kano holds a durbar celebration twice a year, to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid and the end of Ramadan. During the festival each of the 46 local government areas sends their local leader, and a group of horsemen to greet the Emir (king) of Kano at his palace, apparently this began as a way to boost the armies of the emir, but today it's a fantastic spectacle and draws visitors from across Nigeria and beyond.

We arrived in Kano on Thursday, to be told that the end of Ramadan was not until Friday, the date is dependant on the moon, so can be hard to predict, but happily the government had declared Thursday and Friday public holidays already, so we had a four day weekend to enjoy. Ten of us were staying with Sophie, who luckily has a very big house, and we spent the first night eating and generally enjoying catching up on news from other VSOs.

On Friday I went with Lucy, a VSO in Jigawa, to visit her colleague Sanussi's village just outside Kano. We met his aunts, step mother, grandmother and mother, as well as his wife Amina and his son. Sanussi's family were all very friendly and welcoming to us, and were delighted to hear us practising our few words of Hausa. The tradition when visiting people during salah is to eat a lot, and we were given a huge meal of meat pies, chicken, cake, stew and randomly some rice krispies, by Amina. We brought gifts of palm oil and ground nut oil, and his family gave us very generous salah gifts of fabric and fans. It was really interesting to visit some Nigerian homes, as despite living here six months, I've spent very little time with Nigerian families in their own homes, outside that of our landlords.

Saturday was durbar day, we had been advised to turn up early to avoid the crowds, so at 2pm we arrived (ticket less) at the Emir's palace. When we said we were from VSO we were let straight in, but I think this was more to do with being baturi (white people) than the guards having ever heard of VSO. We sat in the stands to watch the procession of horses, dancers, musicians, and finely dressed local leaders. The horses and riders were all elaborately dressed in gold, silver, sequins and tassles, which are impossible to do justice with words, so here are some of Richard's photos which do a better job than I could of describing the outfits.

One of the younger horse riders
some only looked around 5!

The event ended with horses charging across the parade ground, canon fire and a deafening round of gun shots from the muskets (towards the canon end of the spectrum) fired by the Emir's guards.

The aftermath of a musket shot from the guards.

The next day we went to government house, where in the absence of most of the embassy representatives (they were worried about tensions around 9/11 and that foolish American church) we got the diplomats VIP seats!

Me with my diplomat seat tag. we were sitting behind the Spanish ambassador.

Here we saw the Emir and all the local leaders from the day before arriving on horse back to greet the governor, each local leader bowed to the emir as they entered the chamber. Then the Emir and governor each gave a speech before everyone ate from the take away boxes by each seat. After this we went back outside where we were up close to the horses, even I was able to take some pretty impressive photos on my phone!

The whole weekend was a wonderful spectacle, and the atmosphere in Kano was incredible, every one was dressed in their finest clothes and greeted everyone they met with 'barka de salah' (happy salah). We saw lots of families wearing matching brightly coloured kaftans, and girls in fancy dresses, it really felt like a celebration, as it should be, fasting during the day for a whole month is no mean feat.

Six months in Naija and a strike

2010-08-30T16:28:00.001+01:00

Six months ago on Saturday I stepped off the plane at 6am into a warm dawn in Abuja. Since then I’ve survived a journey through the Delta, a flood on my street, had malaria twice, avoided a baby trying to wee on me, made plenty of other babies cry, travelled to Bauchi, Kano, Calabar and Abuja, attended workshops, run my own workshops and generally settled into work and living in Nigeria. This feeling at home didn’t come easily, and the other VSOs, my colleagues and neighbours have really helped the process . However I wouldn’t say I’ve achieved much work wise in six months, so the next six will be critical in ensuring I’ve really achieved something and made a difference at Hope for the Village Child when I leave at the end of February next year. Watch this space for more information on what I’m actually doing at work, and what Hope for the Village Child does.

As if to celebrate my mile stone, this week the power company workers went on strike. Nigeria has a population of 150 million people and is one of the world’s largest oil producers, but only creates enough power for a city the size of Bradford. The power company has long been the subject of derision among Nigerians, and most people own generators to cope with the frequent power cuts. Formerly called the National Electric Power Authority, Nigerians fondly referred to it as Never Expect Power Always. Recently it became the Power Holding Company of Nigeria Plc, aka Problem has changed name, please light candle.

We’re quite lucky in the area we live in and we usually get around 7 hours of power a day, more in rainy season because much of the power is hydro electric so more is created. Although I’m writing this in the dark, we’ve had power all day, and I’m hoping it will come back this evening. But even when there is power the levels can be unpredictable, earlier in the year my laptop charger was destroyed by a high voltage surge at 5am.

As a result of their general inability to create power, when the workers went on strike last week, most people didn’t notice for about 24 hours! I was working at home, and used up two laptop batteries, one phone battery and two power monkey/gorilla charging devices before I started to wonder if there was a problem. When I arrived at work the next day with all my devices ready to be charged from the generator I was told there was a strike. The thing I hadn’t realised was that if there’s no power, there’s also no water, as power is needed to pump water into each house. This was actually more of a problem than no power, flushing the toilet takes up a lot of water, and I had a mountain of clothes which needed to be washed let alone washing myself. Luckily my land lord has large buckets full of water for these kind of situations and I was able to borrow from him for the three days it took the water to return. To help the shortage I tried to eat out as much as possible to avoid washing up, which was a very effective solution for me.

In total we didn’t have power for around 48 hours, and water for about 3 days, I can’t imagine what would happen if there were no water and no power at home for that long, but here everyone is completely prepared for it because they’re used to getting poor public services. Luckily now we’re back to normal ad hoc power and water levels again, so to celebrate I’m watching season 1 of glee in the wrong order! (That’s the way the dvd came).

When it rains, it pours.

2010-08-27T16:38:00.000+01:00

The months from June to September are rainy season in Nigeria. The rain here is hard to describe until you have experienced it. No one leaves home when it’s raining, there are no okadas on the streets and car drivers often pull over because their wipers aren’t strong enough to cope with the downpour. Saying you’re late to work because it rained is a very acceptable excuse.

The word ‘torrential’ goes some way to describing the storms in rainy season, but doesn’t explain the noise you hear when sat inside a small house with a tin roof during a storm. The rain drops are as hard as hail stones and when they are hammering on the roof they sound like they will break through at any moment. When this sound is accompanied by the knowledge that the street I live on floods every year in August, it creates a strange sensation which I like to refer to as PANIC.

My road is well known for flooding; ever since I arrived people have looked at me slightly oddly when I’ve told them where I live. This look is followed by a statement along the lines of “don’t you know it floods there?!”. We live right next to the river and when it rises the only place for it to go is into people’s homes, which is exactly what happened two weeks ago.

The river on Friday afternoon.

The river back to its normal level after the flood

During the week the intensity of the rain had increased consistently, until on Friday evening the drainage ditches along the main road were filled to the brim after a particularly heavy storm, and the river was at the highest I’d seen it since arriving.

The river on Saturday morning, the photo
from Friday was taken by the
furthest away building.

I woke up on Saturday morning to find the end of my road impassable. The water was up to the roof of some houses and the street behind was the only way out for cars and pedestrians without a canoe.

Despite having no rain for three days the river continued to rise, getting closer and closer to my house. There was a constant huddle of people around the edge of the water, holding debates on how high it would rise, making use of the problem by washing their motorbikes, and generally happy to hold forth on their opinions about the river to anyone who would listen. The Nigerian Red Cross even turned up at one point, suspiciously timed for when the tv crews came to visit. They had an inflatable boat, and a couple of volunteers, but no one offered me any psychosocial support!

The Red Cross make an appearance.

Okada drivers taking the opportunity to wash their bikes in
the flood water.

When I woke up on Monday morning the flood had reached the outside of our compound gate. This was the point at which we decided to leave, unfortunately, it was a little too late. The road behind the house had been passable by cars the day before but the water was up to peoples chests when they waded through it. The only way out of our area was through a hole in the wall of an empty compound - only big enough for pedestrians - which was thoughtfully created by a crowd of shouting men at around 6am.

I had forewarned my counterpart at the office on Sunday that we may need to leave in a hurry and luckily HVC has quite a few Land Rovers, so they sent the cavalry - our driver Shuaibu and a colleague Ruth. Unfortunately, the cavalry got stuck....they’d seen a Toyota hilux pass through the water and assumed a Land Rover could too, but the water overcame the engine and they called me to say they were stuck in the water.

Luckily with a combination of skilful driving from Shuaibu and luck they escaped the river and got through to us, only to have to repeat the journey to get us out again!

A Hilux navigates the flood on the street behind ours, the
day before we were rescued.

I spent the next week staying with two other volunteers in their nice dry house far away from the river, and came back to my house a week later to find everything dry, the water hadn't risen any higher than the compound gate... and there were ants in my peanut butter.

Calabar - worth the trip.

2010-08-14T17:38:00.002+01:00

After my stressful journey I finally made it to the beautiful city of Calabar. With its wide streets and actual pavements designed for pedestrians (these don’t exist in Kaduna) it was a really relaxing place to visit.

The VSO workshop I was invited to was about ‘Market Development’, an approach to development which sees NGOs engaging with all levels of a supply chain (referred to as a value chain) to help the most vulnerable in the chain (usually the small farmers) to get more money for their products and hard work thus creating a way out of poverty. It works through ensuring better information flows throughout the supply chain and working with all ‘actors’ in the chain. I found it an interesting approach, and because HVC work with rural farmers it could be a useful tool for us as an NGO.

Our workshop group, mostly representing NGOs in
Calabar, and government members.

Part of the workshop involved a field trip to interview some of the actors from the palm oil value chain. Palm oil is produced from the fruit of the palm tree, it is a distinctive bright red colour and the most commonly used oil in many Nigerian dishes. My group visited a local market to interview a palm oil seller and practice our research skills, on the basis that we might be carrying out research into other value chains such as rice, ground nuts, etc at a later point. It gave a really interesting insight into the process the small scale retailers go through and how low their profit margins are.

This monkey was very interested in defending her partner
from the visitors.

The workshop ran for three days, and at the end of each day Mercy and I did our best to see the sights of Calabar. On the first day we went to the CERCOPAN monkey sanctuary. CERCOPAN rescue monkeys from the bush meat trade, and look after others which have been mistakenly kept as pets. The plan is to rehabilitate them and return them to the wild, and in the meantime they work with communities living near their habitats to prevent them from hunting them for bush meat which can be sold for high profits.

On the Wednesday evening four of us visited Tinapa (right), a new development designed to attract tourists to the region. It is a duty free zone, with space for two thousand cars, but when we arrived it was strangely desolate, and we were practically the only visitors. It was still interesting to visit the massive T mart shop which priced all its goods in dollars, and seemed like a Nigerian version of TK Maxx, I could even have bought some Clark’s shoes if I wanted to! Mercy bought a bag and managed to get two Naira change, this might be the only shop in Nigeria which offers Naira coins, before then the smallest amount I’d seen was a five Naira note.

On the Thursday most of the other participants from outside Calabar travelled home, but I stayed an extra day to see more of of the city. I spent a very relaxing day visiting the sights.

I started my day at the Drill monkey sanctuary in the north of the city. The drill monkey population is extremely endangered in Nigeria, because they are hunted for bush meat, and kept as exotic pets. The people who set up the sanctuary began with one monkey, but some have been born there, and others donated by hunters or people who have owned them as pets. The sanctuary is linked to the Afi Drill monkey ranch, in the bush in Cross River State where the monkeys are taken to be closer to their natural environment, so that they can be released into the wild in the future. The sanctuary also has other animals which they have been given, including two small crocodiles and a deer which tried to eat my lunch.

I then got a bus into town, and wandered around the Duke Town area of the city which has the first primary school in West Africa, and an old church built in 1904. as I was about to take a photo of one of the older looking buildings I was spotted by Smruti, a fellow VSO who arrived at the same time as me (turns out the building was her office) and joined her for lunch which was lovely. I met her colleagues and some of the children her NGO works with, one of who came and gave me a big hug!

The friendly children at Smruti's office.

Smruti's office.

Next I moved on to the Calabar museum, where I was told to ‘read fast, because the generator is on’ I didn’t quite understand the instruction until I was plunged into darkness half way through the exhibition. Apparently my 100 naira (40p) entrance fee only provided ten minutes of light. The parts I was able to see gave an interesting history of Calabar and the influence of the palm oil trade and the slave trade on the region. The building was a beautiful colonial structure, and in the grounds stood a dilapidated British telephone box! Another sign of British involvement in the region.

After my trip to the museum I strolled down the hill to the marina resort on the river front, where I had a soft drink and tried to recover my energy for the journey back to the hotel.

At the hotel I met up with Sunita, another VSO who was my host for the night at her place in the south of the city. She made me an incredible Indian feast from scratch, and in the dark, then I had a very early night as I was exhausted from my day of trekking across the city. All in all I had a wonderful day in Calabar, and I can definitely see why it’s got a reputation for being a tourist destination they have a big carnival there at Christmas, so that may prompt a return.

My week ended in a similar way to how it began. The journey back to Abuja the next day took 14 hours, as the bus broke down and had to be repaired along the way. Luckily I was with Abdul, a friend who works for VSO and was at the workshop too, so we were able to laugh (later) about the length of our journey. And this time we were very far away from the Delta, so I was able to see a different part of Nigeria which had far less check points and made for interesting sights all over again.

First Nigerian road trip

2010-08-02T21:41:00.000+01:00

In July I was invited to a VSO market development workshop in Calabar. I was quite interested in the workshop, but even more curious about Calabar, the capital city of Cross River state in the far south of Nigeria, which is close to the border with Cameroon. How naive of me to think that the most exciting part of the week would be the city itself, I'd forgotten the excitement of getting there!

My adventure began on the journey to Calabar from Kaduna which I undertook with my colleague Mercy. We had been assured that one of the best bus companies in Nigeria, Cross Country, ran a service from Kaduna to Calabar, which left at 7am on Sunday morning. We arrived at the motor park at 6.30am and purchasing our tickets we waited for a while for the bus to fill up... before at 7.45 being told that we were the only two going to Calabar, so they’d take us to their ‘other park’ across town where we could get a bus to Calabar. On arriving at Akwa Ibon Transport Company (not another park, a completely different company), we discovered the bus was 500N cheaper, and about ten times less comfortable than the Cross Country bus. Still reassured we were on the only bus leaving Kaduna for Calabar that day we hopped aboard and tried to find the most comfortable way to sit for the next 12 hours.

Driving across Nigeria is a hair raising experience at the best of times, and this was my first journey south of Abuja, where there is a remarkable difference in the quality of the roads compared to the north. At some points the main road turns into a mud track, more designed for a Land Rover than a minibus, and at others it is so full of potholes that drivers drive on the wrong sides of the road to avoid them, swerving only at the last minute. Our speed of travel averaged around 140 km per hour, and involved plenty of overtaking lorries on hills whilst being on the wrong side of the road to avoid pot holes. As a result of being unable to tear my eyes away from the road in case it caused us to crash (no logic, just fear) I didn’t get much sleep. This wasn’t too bad as the scenery was spectacular, the south is much wetter than the north, with dense forests, and the landscape is much more rolling which gives spectacular views.

We passed through Lokoja and where the road crosses over the confluence of the rivers Niger and Benue, which is the widest river I’ve ever seen, and an impressive sight. This photo shows the river Benue at another point, imagine about triple this size for the confluence of both rivers, it can’t be captured on camera from a moving vehicle which is my excuse for not trying...

As we got further south, Mercy told me we might be going to Uyo - the capital of Akwa Ibom state – and not Calabar. This was confusing, as we’d been clearly told the bus was going to Calabar, and also slightly worrying, as VSO’s are warned on a weekly basis not to visit any Niger Delta states, due to their well known reputation as locations for kidnappings. At this stage I wasn’t really sure if Akwa Ibom was considered officially in the Niger Delta, or just next to it, and we couldn’t get another bus anyway so I just continued to follow our journey on my map with rising concern. We were passing through a police or army checkpoint roughly every 15 minutes, and it was when the second soldier asked our driver (jokingly) if he had kidnapped me with the memorable phrase “You no go say you done kidnap dis oyibo” that I was pretty sure we were in the Delta. It seemed only me who actually laughed at the joke, and whilst tempted to say yes, I thought Mercy might get angry with me, and so I refrained.

After a ten hour journey, we ended up in Uyo in the gathering dusk, still two hours from Calabar, and in the Niger Delta. Although at this point I was still blissfully ignorant (if vaguely suspicious) of my newly found VSO rule breaking status, even I realised that travelling in the dark is not very safe, so I was glad when Mercy was able to persuade our driver to take us on to Calabar. After another two hours of overtaking at breakneck speeds, in the dark on single carriageway roads, we made it to Calabar at 9pm, 13 hours after we set out. The hotel was worth the wait, there were huge rooms, hot showers, CNN and good food. Here's Mercy enjoying her hard earned garri and stew.

My learning from this journey... don’t try and travel from Kaduna to Calabar in one day, and I've since learned all the Niger Delta states off by heart, just in case.

I’ll add another post on the beauty of Calabar and what market development actually means soon.

World Cup Fever

2010-06-23T10:14:00.000+01:00

Even when the world cup isn't on, the first question asked of someone from the UK visiting Nigeria is often "Which football team do you support?". Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United are all very popular among Nigerians, and on our street you can watch the most obscure British football games that probably wouldn't even be shown on tv in the UK. (This is probably something to do with rights... showing my ignorance of football here).

The excitement and momentousness of the first world cup held on African soil is not lost on Nigerians and the spirit here is very much one of 'Africa United'. Unfortunately last night Nigeria lost to South Korea, which means they haven't made it through the first round. But they will continue to support other African teams. When the opening match between South Africa and Mexico started I was in a workshop in Abuja, and the facilitator asked us to go outside and gather stones for an activity. This turned out to be an error as quite a few participants never made it back after being distracted by the match!

Nigeria and England's first games were both on the same day, and I watched the Nigeria game against Argentina in a crowded bar in Abuja, the room was filled with green shirts, plenty of passion and a few oyibos... here Bash refuses to take his eyes off the screen for a photo.

Unfortunately Nigeria lost, the general consesus was 'they done try-o', and there was plenty of hope for the other games.

After the game we hot footed it across town to the British Village (residence of the High Commission staff, and generously free for poor VSOs to use the pool) where they'd invited half the American embassy staff to watch the game. We scored - the Brits cheered, they scored - the Americans cheered LOUDER. Still they didn't have a baby dressed in an England flag, or this many flags... we even had party poopers with the England flag on thanks to Richard the third (there are three VSO Richards,, numbered in order of arrival).

We couldn't watch the last 10 minutes of the game due to poor tv reception, but as much as we hoped England might score when we weren't looking it wasn't to be. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for our game in five hours.

In other news, there are four new volunteers arriving in Kaduna soon, and a new Abuja volunteer visited us last weekend to learn about how to live in Nigeria - we spent most of the time watching football, which I think she found very useful!

I also had malaria but am now fully recovered - it's just like having flu here, but felt much scarier than that to me. Luckily Hope for the Village Child have a clinic and I was tested as soon as I felt ill, so I was able to take the treatment straight away and only suffered a bad fever on the first night.

Have been feeling very nostalgic about Glastonbury this week and wishing I was there. More news of my house mate dancing at the Hausa theatre and earning his keep to follow soon...

ABC, easy as 123...

2010-06-05T14:37:00.007+01:00

May was a hectic month at Hope for the Village Child. Most people were busy visiting communities before the roads become impassable in rainy season. I was occupied with writing a fundraising proposal, and helping with fundraising visits in preparation for the reading festival which took place last Saturday. The reading festival was definitely the highlight of the month for me, and is the reason for this post.

The story of the reading festival

A couple of years ago HVC received a donation of hundreds of books from a bookshop which was closing down. They were mostly good quality children’s story books of the kind most children from poor rural communities would never see. HVC’s education coordinator Faith and a VSO volunteer sorted the books into categories, and created libraries for 16 schools in rural communities.

When I first heard this, I wasn’t that impressed, until I realised that these schools would otherwise have no story books at all - the schools have some text books from the government, and some from HVC but pupils are mostly taught by copying the teacher’s notes from the board – to really inspire children to enjoy learning these kind of books are vital.

When the libraries were constructed, the key objective was to encourage the students to use them, and this was the inspiration for the reading festival, which is now in its second year. It is a reading competition; each school with a library had one representative from year one to six. The youngest children only had to read letters of the alphabet chosen at random, but the older students had to read sections of their favourite book chosen by the judges (in order to prevent children memorising their books, although this does happen).

My role for the day was to be a judge on a panel of four, including Monique, a teacher from the Netherlands, Lynne and Sadiq.Here's the judging panel choosing a page for one student.

And a student from Panja reading her book.

The children were incredibly confident and clear, even those who were flummoxed when told to read from a page that they hadn’t memorised! Whilst most year one and two students could recognise letters of the alphabet, the level of reading done by year six students was much lower than I’d expected, reflecting the large class sizes and teaching by rote which they have to contend with in rural schools when learning to read.
The photo below shows children in the year one class at Panja school, one of the best performing schools in the competition. I've included this to give you an idea of the class sizes, note the number of pupils per desk.

The winning students from each year were given a prize of a new book; interestingly most of the winners were girls. Overall the day was a great success, and a way to encourage parents to support their children’s’ education. Monique said the overall standard had improved a lot from the year before, which was a really positive comment to end the day with and shows the impact which the libraries and HVC's education support to schools has made so far.

In other news from May, I attended my first Nigerian traditional wedding,here's me in my outfit with my colleague Stephen. Weddings here often have colours for family and friends to wear, for this one the choices were cream, lemon green or gold.

The wedding was swiftly followed by a roast dinner at the residence of the British High Commission in Kaduna. The kind of cultural juxtaposition faced only by VSO volunteers!

Public holidays and political events

2010-05-07T17:20:00.009+01:00

This will be a memorable week for those with an interest in British or Nigerian politics. On Wednesday night the Nigerian President, Umaru Yar’Adua died, after a long illness, and on Thursday the acting president Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in as President. Whilst in the UK election was held yesterday, and at the time of writing has given us an unusual result, and no government as yet.

The momentous events in Nigeria prompted a public holiday, closing schools, government offices and some NGOs, like VSO, but not my organisation, HVC. The random thing about public holidays here is that they’re not announced until the very last minute... I only found out when on the bus into work (the downside of not owning a TV), and a colleague’s school children arrived at their school and were sent home again. Monday was also a public holiday here, known as workers day, similar to our May day at home, but again it was only confirmed as a public holiday in the middle of last week!

Although the title of this blog post suggests political speculation, I’m actually more interested in the public holidays. I spent the beginning of last weekend in Abuja, on Friday I went to a party held at the Hilton by the Dutch embassy in celebration of their Queen’s birthday. It was a very swanky event, with plenty of free wine, and more importantly all the cheese I could eat! On Saturday I went to the Guara waterfalls just outside Abuja for a picnic with some other volunteers and friends.

After spending the weekend in Abuja it was nice to have an unexpected extra day off on Monday. Richard, Elizabeth, Bertine and I went to the neighbouring city of Zaria to do some sightseeing. Zaria is an ancient city, which used to be a trading centre for goods from across the Sahara. Today it contains the fascinating Emir’s palace which is still in use by the current Emir of Zaria, and the crumbling remains of the city walls.

Here's the front of the emir's palace...

We weren’t able to meet the Emir at his palace, but we were allowed to sit in his visitor’s chairs and pretend we were guests of honour!

Following our visit to the palace, we went to what had been described in our guide book as ‘Zaria’s dye pits’. The use of the plural was somewhat misleading. It was a one man one slightly disused dye pit operation, and I’m pretty sure the crowd of twenty small children who surrounded us to stare had more fun than we did! Nonetheless the dye pit ‘Baba’ (father) spared the time to explain the dyeing process to us, and showed us a sample of his work. Meeting this charming elderly man more than made up for not seeing the dyeing process at work.

This week has been a busier one at work, I’ve got a big funding proposal to work on, and when not deciding who to vote by proxy for I’ve also been helping to fill the solar fruit dryer with mangoes and trying not to eat them all in the process. We’ve named the kitten Zippy, and he’s slowly becoming much calmer and less likely to bite my toes.

Kitty the kitten

2010-04-19T11:48:00.012+01:00

This is Kitty, the newest resident of my household. He's a lean mean rat killing machine... or at least that's what we hoped for.

When we first collected him in his plastic basket from another VSO volunteer, he faced a very scary journey from the north of Kaduna to the middle. First in a bus full of chickens (none of the animals were happy about the situation) followed by an okada ride in his basket. Sadly we couldn't find a cat sized motorbike helmet.

Having survived the journey - despite his howling suggesting he might have a heart attack - he soon settled in to life at number 18 and made himself very much at home. He has a particular fondness for mosquito nets, having destroyed one so far, Kitty also likes to chew on toes, fingers, and worryingly electricity cables, I also bear the scars from the time he tried to climb my leg when I was wearing shorts. Other than his occasional violence, he is quite cute, and seems to be keeping the rats away which is great.

He does need a more exciting name than 'kitty' though, so if you have any suggestions let me know, the best suggestion will receive a letter of thanks signed by kitty from Nigeria.... in around 6 months.

In other news work is good, last week I went out to the village of Pambawa with the HVC roving clinic. I was trusted to weigh the babies and take their temperatures (hard to get wrong). When I put one of the babies on the scales, and stepped back to read his weight, I was followed by a trail of wee! Luckily for me I'd stepped back far enough to avoid getting wet, and everyone in the room was very entertained.

This weekend I went to Abuja for a VSO workshop, staying in a hotel with air conditioning and CNN was a real luxury. I also managed to fit in an afternoon of swimming at the British Village, which has a very nice pool that VSOs can use for free. I was amazed to see CNN's coverage of the flights chaos, hope no one reading this is stuck anywhere.

Easter and elephants*

2010-04-06T12:41:00.002+01:00

Over Easter weekend I travelled across some of northern Nigeria with two other VSO volunteers Richard and Elizabeth. We left Kaduna on Friday afternoon - with an odd assortment of luggage items including a bottle of gin, motorcycle helmet and a kitten and returned on Easter Monday minus all said items, with some fun stories to tell.

On Friday night we stayed in Kano with Sophie, where we safely delivered the kitten and bottle of gin, in return for dinner (not of the kitten) mangoes and gin & tonics. Here's the kitten in it's basket on arrival, with a crowd of fascinated children...and Richard.

On Saturday we travelled to Bauchi, where we stayed with the fabulous Bauchi Boys, aka Father Leo and Noel, Irish priests who run a youth project and have been in Nigeria for 25 years. They have guest rooms where they put up (with) penniless VSOs... and kindly provided cold beer and plenty of amusing hats a few of which are modelled here...

On Easter Sunday we visited Yankari National Park, which contains a small population of lions, elephants, antelope and other animals. We took a safari tour, even though we’d been warned beforehand not to expect to see many animals. So we were very surprised to see a lioness and two of her cubs strolling through the bush! Sadly I can’t prove this with photographic evidence, as most of my photos are of bushes which may or may not have animals inside them. On the same trip we also saw waterbucks, antelops, warthogs, and western herdbeasts. Here's one of the antelopes.

Another highlight of the day at Yankari were the Wikki Warm Springs, stunning natural springs which are 31 degrees year round, and lovely to relax in.

The return on Monday was topped off by collecting our own kitten, brother to the one we took to Kano... photos will follow soon. Happy belated Easter to all!

*The title of this blog post is a little misleading, I gave into the alliteration... we didn’t see any elephants

Beautiful babies and clean villages

2010-03-29T10:18:00.000+01:00

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

2010-03-22T10:51:00.000+01:00

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

2010-03-14T11:05:00.000+01:00

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

2010-03-07T20:50:00.000+01:00

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!

Abuja, the arrival

2010-02-28T17:26:00.000+01:00

I arrived at Abuja international airport at 6.30am this morning, with three other equally sleepy British volunteers. The wall of heat that hit us when we stepped off the plane was a sign of things to come, it was 30 degrees first thing, and it has only got hotter!

We were greeted in the arrivals hall by three smiling VSO volunteers and staff and whisked to the Crystal Palace Hotel, in the centre of Abuja - it has aircon, free internet and hot showers - luxury! So far we've seen a few sights, including the national mosque and the national ecumenical church in the centre of the city and Aso rock, the government buildings, in the distance.

I've changed my pounds into Naira, the Nigerian currency, which has given me a big stack of notes to look after and left me feeling very rich. I was nearly even richer as the teller originally gave me double the amount I was owed!

More volunteers are arriving from India and the US tonight to add to those already here from Kenya, Uganda and Canada, and our training starts first thing tomorrow, til then I'm enjoying the food - it's spicy but good!