O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL

Wednesday December 23

Nigeria is said to have one of the highest populations of fervent faithful. Even the crows wear priest collars, a band of white at their throat.

As I write this carollers stroll just beyond the compound wall. Their voices rise in delicious harmony: “We wish you…a merry Christmas.” I love the subtle pause, a slight but noticeable difference from back home renditions.

The festive season here is not the same as the accepted norm in Canada. A couple of market stalls carry tacky plastic trinkets for kids, castoff toys that never made it under North American or European xmas trees and will probably break after a few hours of play. But I don’t see shoppers clambering for these things. Preferred gifts, if any are given, are the likes of yams and groundnuts and new cloth to dress women and children fineO.

At this time of year families gather in huge numbers. Most of the Nigerians I’ve come to know are one of five or seven or ten plus siblings. Add in extended families and you’ve got a major brood. Christmas day is all about going to church for three or more hours of halleluiahs and hymns, then for some hosting guests or for most carrying on with the daily grind. I’m surprised to learn vendors in my neighbourhood expect to be open by mid-afternoon the 25^th though I’m told items will be four-fold the regular price.

The real festivities come towards the New Year when masses board public buses or pile into beat up Audis and Peugots or sparkling new Mercedes and Prado SUVs to head to their homestead villages. It’s here that storytelling revives around outdoor kitchen fires. Traditions and memories regale children, songs are sung, praises are given to the Lord Jesus Amen! and thanks offered up for whole roasted goats and bowls of egasi soup. Gallons of palm wine and cases of Malta wash it all down.

As a voyeur, it’s refreshing.  Crude commercialism has long worn away any enamour of Christmas getting, giving way instead to relishing the season the way it’s celebrated Nigerian style: surrounded by family, close friends and delicious foods. Though I’m far away from my daja’s Leah and Kaleigh, my parents, my brothers and their families, and my kinship sisters Elaine, Leah (with a soft e) and Pat their spirits transcend oceans and time zones to buoy my own.

In a handful of days five guests will arrive from Illorin, Lagos and Abuja. Plastic cones of fresh roasted cashews bought roadside in Benue state are wrapped as gifts for each. I’ve decorated with cuttings from plants I can’t name. The house sparkles after spending much of the weekend mopping concrete floors with bleach and leftover laundry water, wiping grime and dust from shelves, kitchen counters, toilet and sinks, and scrubbing away bits of this and that from the fridge.

Tomorrow it’s to the hairdresser for braiding. I’m going blue. Not old lady blue but Carnival-colourful blue. “When in Rome….”

Signing off and not be back until Internet resumes or on return from adventures in Uganda and Rwanda.  Christmas loving xxxooo

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Saturday, December 1, 2013

Umbrellas are a rain or shine accessory. Today the sun is strong and it’s just the other side of dawn. Women walk the shoulder of the highway with babies slung across backs, carrying umbrellas to shield heat and beating rays. Driver Patrick is taking me as far as Ogoja, four and some hours north of Calabar, much of it on those ugly roads. Then it’s a transfer to driver Eja for another three to four hours into Benue’s capital, Makurdi. Tomorrow we take another three hour journey north west from there to Agatu. This destination is the sketchiest place yet. It’s a centre of violent clashes between nomadic Fulani cattle herders and the Idomah  people. Anger surges when the Fulani let their herds graze onto farmland, trampling everything under hoof.  At one point the violence and bloodshed spun so out of control we debated yanking the GSF project from this area and awarding it to an alternate local government.  But peace settled in, albeit through the force of armed patrolmen.  Now the area is just coming out of a recent cholera outbreak, so I’ve packed my own food and a case of water.

Armatan season has arrived in Makurdi, its haze visible in the far distance.  Ega tells me “it came yesterday. It brings cool air. When it clears, the heat comes. Mangoes grow.”

Ega loves music. He skats to Fela Kuti, grins and nods to high music, sighs when a voice or lyric or rift sounds just right. He reminds me of a kid in a big body. A naïve gentle giant.  New tunes have been uploaded onto my phone so that we can enjoy and chillax together. And to be candid, I’ve sat through his gospel music CD so many times I can’t bear to hear it once more.  Unfortunately my phone powers out and we listen to that tape run through three full times before I ask if we can please turn it off and just enjoy some silence.

Sunday December 15

Agatu is as remote as it gets. We turn onto a washed out dirt road better travelled by motorbike than Hillux.  We pass a stagnant pond where women and girls have come to collect water. Brush fires burn where men and boys have come to flush out and trap rats for good eating. Some 40 minutes later we arrive in town and are directed to the home of the Council Chairman. As we step through the threshold, women scatter and disappear. Our host through his man servants offers beverages. We sit staring at a mounted flat screen TV, eyes glued as if glancing away disrespects his Honour’s personal space.  There’s no exchange. It feels uncomfortable to me. It feels like typical Nigerian hospitality to everyone else.

I’m now sitting under a full moon. Armatan haze clouds its shine. The air is lovely and cool. And it’s silent. So quiet, so tranquil.

 Accommodations are primitive: bed in one corner, plastic chair in another. Stained and chipped walls. Stained concrete floor. No closet or hooks, not even a door handle to hang clothes. Toilet sans seat. No mirror. No sink… just a large bucket filled with murky white water drawn from a nearby well. Cholera or not it’s a no brainer: some of that bottled water is gonna be used for sponge bathing.  No mosquito nets, no window screens.  Looks like eau de insect spray time.  Light flickers and dims. Flickers and disappears.

Dogs are lean, goats are scrawny. Children run around barefoot and dirty. Lots of little boys are shirtless, many shortless - wearing tight fitting gotch. Grounds are littered with plastic refuse. The scrub is dry and brittle. There’s not much work here: men sit or lie beneath mango trees for the better part of the day.  An open defecation site is mere metres from our guest house lodgings.  Children come and go, with a few sheets of toilet tissue in hand. For some reason, like Logo, this place calls out to me. Maybe it’s the raw poverty. Maybe it’s the way people get on with life.

While training is underway I’m called out to meet someone who says he’s head of security. It’s the first time I’m asked to present my passport to authorities. He writes down details, tells me he’ll be sending this information to Abuja. “You’re a VIP and I want to make sure you have a good visit. It is my job to keep you safe. When you leave, I will call ahead to Otukpo. When you arrive there, they will call ahead to Makurdi.”  His concern for VIP me is both reassuring and unsettling.

Ega and I drive into the village centre to pick up fried yam and eggs. As we wait for our food a masquerade terrorizes the villagers. Children run to hide. Born-again Ega urges me to come away from the main road, to take a seat out of sight.  But it’s too late. I’m spotted. The masquerade heads my way. Children and adults follow, watching from a safe distance to see what this costumed spirit will do and to get a closer look at my white skin.  Before the masquerade can make a scene, locals call him off and away.

The tin overhang above our bench is supported by thick tree limbs like the power wires blatantly siphoning energy from the main lines to falling down homes. The charming round huts of the Tiv people are replaced here by basic four-wall block structures, some with windows boarded by sheets of corrugated metal.  A large brown bats sweeps from a tree, then another, and more still.  Fires burn, ground nut oil boils, yams fry. 

More expressions:

“so and so no be there”

“kai”

“wahda”

“so I came quiet”

“how you be now?’

“no problem for that one”

“we’ll follow go now”

“alright, later now”

KEEPER OF SECRETS

December 2, 2013

“Water ebbs and flows. 

We must remember our body is mostly water. 

We ebb and flow too.

Our emotions are in constant movement,

We feel.

As creative souls, when we reach a lull, I think of it as seeds,

the dormant period before new growth.”

So begins a series of perfect moments with Dr. Karen M Wilson-Ama Echefu, Fulbright Research alumni, Professor at Calabar University’s Faculty of Arts, and extraordinary jazz vocalist.

She sings in the parlour of her modest home, scaling heights and depths, evoking my tears; giving voice to poet Gloria Anzaldua.

El camino de la mestiza I The Mestiza Way

“Caught between the sudden contraction, the breath

sucked in and the endless space, the brown woman stands

still, looks at the sky. She decides to go down, digging her

way along the roots of trees. Sifting through the bones, she

shakes them to see if there is any marrow in them. Then,

touching the dirt to her forehead, to her tongue, she takes a

few bones, leaves the rest in their burial place.”

…and Karen’s addition:

“Tell her she’s beautiful”

To be one in an audience of two is such a privilege and joy.

It’s by happenstance that this rare opportunity presents. I stop in on Ivor to wish him well on his three-month sojourn back to heart and home (and to collect pics from our visit with Hindu). He has a parcel for his neighbour, Karen, and thinks we should meet.

Gonna miss that guy, keeper of secrets, living life in a way few will ever know; mining the mysticism of a dimming African culture that thrives in the back alleys of present day Havana. Just as the legacy of French-Canadian foremothers and fathers instils tradition of tongue on generations of Quebecois, Havana’s Efik descendants retain lives and styles ebbing and flowing, transforming with time in the motherland. Havana’s Ekpe High Priest dons white; symbolic perhaps of the purity of unblemished belief. http://www.afrocubaweb.com/ivormiller/ivormiller.htm

Juju magic

THEATRE OF THE ABSURD

Saturday November 22, 2013

It’s all about theatre. Today’s visit to the juju doctor seems a smoke and mirrors scam. Ok, well maybe not smoke and mirrors. The setting is magnificent. We sit under a thatched roof outdoor space. Strips of cloth, bird nests and unfamiliar what’s its hang from the rafters. Each of these  fetishes I’m told, “have their own secret, their own work, their own spirit. They all have purpose.”

Red powder (paint?) lies in strips before the bench where we sit. To the left in front of us is a mermaid carving draped with native beads, splattered with red and grey powder. A small African figure flanked by two small totem-pole-like carvings and wax candle remnants rests at the base of this strange goddess.  Beyond this shrine is a small enclosed room full of unusual things. While Ivor prattles on about nothing special the doctor busies himself with a thick mixture resembling mud. He works it with his hands, adding secret this and thats, forming small balls in a manner that illicits memories of my Italian grandmother making meatballs. “Cleansing soap,” he explains, pointing to a printed poster extolling the magical properties of Hindu’s Good Luck Soap. Hindu is his working nickname, a handle used by all juju practicioners. One of his virgin daughters prepares the mucky muck, he adds in the magical mystical properties.

Eventually he asks what I seek.

“To know where life will take me next.”

“Ah” he nods knowingly.

But my star energy is not clear enough for him to answer. I must bathe to cleanse and brighten my star light.

“At 6:00am you must bathe and pray for good luck. At 12 noon you must bathe to wash away evil.  At 3:00pm you must bathe again and pray for love and romance.  Then, you come back to me.”

He will go to market to purchase the ingredients for this ritual but needs N20,000.

“I cannot pay that. I am just a volunteer. I do not have such money.”

“Okay, then N10,000”

(SorryO. Ain’t gonna happen).

I ask if he can speak to those who have passed on.

“Oh yes. Dead speak. Yes.”

I must make another appointment for that.

The keeper of secrets then goes to the back enclosure and returns with a large gourd flask and a small plastic bottle filled with clear liquid. He uncorks the flask, sprinkles black sooty something into his palm and then into a glass, adds the liquid, takes a sip to prove it’s okay and passes it to us.  This concoction is supposed to energize but quickly subdues. The taste is that of kai-kai and charcoal.  As we react to the burning sensation moving down our gullets to our guts the doctor licks his hands clean of the black soot.

“I have a difficult question for you,” I begin.  “Back in my home country, back in the west, many people suffer from deep sadness (depression). Can you tell me about this?”

“That is a difficult matter. Witches are everywhere. Every country has it. In any family where they have a witch, the family is not safe.”

Translation from Ivor: anti-social behaviour is a sign of witchery, a bad heart.

But what to do about it? The good doctor never says.  I suppose that will require another appointment too.

Some 45 minutes of absurd exchange and N2,000 later I thank him for sharing his time and invite him and his wife to come visiting. “I will cook flavours you have never before tasted.”  This pleases him.

We leave not any the wiser. Ivor shares that he tried the ritual bathing.

“And?”

“I’ve millions in the bank and more beautiful women than I can manage.”

Not

…although there may be something to be said about millions of Naira in the bank (1M naira =$6666 USD) and an inexhaustible supply of Nigerian women seeking the status and company of this oyibo man.

Parallel Thinking

Tuesday November 19/13

Professor I of Epke expertise is back in town offering to introduce me to the world of ju ju, the dead and the power of earthly forces. His contact, a traditional healer in south Calabar will be waiting for us this weekend. Professor I regularly visits this seer for research and personal divination and has seemingly made a positive impression.

“It’ll be interesting to see how he responds to you.”

I think he’ll like my energy, I tell myself.

“He knows his stuff and likes hard liquor.”

 Should I bring him something?  Gin?

“No, pay him N400 and he’ll buy what he likes.” 

Western psychics claim to connect with the spirit world of those gone before us, so there’s a parallel here, no? 

Professor I has never consulted a Western psychic. He reserves comment.

“Just don’t tell the driver where we’re going. Okay? They get freaked.”

Ohhh kaaaAay, I nod, ear plastered to the phone.

Never mind the driver; THIS is going to be a freak’n wild personal adventure. Question is what burning question/s do I want answered?  Note to self:  make sure phone is fully powered to record visit. And o yeah, wear hair tied tight in a smooth pony with no lose strands left behind.

Saturday November 16, 2013

I’m caught in a downpour so fierce today it sweeps the flip flop right off my foot carries it in heavy currents across the road and into the ditch to wherever. I trek single shoe-d til my laundry folk pals give me a plastic bag to wrap my barefoot for the walk across the messy muddy laneway into the compound. Happy to advise: seriously soaked is cooling to skin.

So Many Perfect Moments

Tuesday November 12, 2013

Today’s afternoon training moves outdoors under mango tree shade. A cocky rooster wanders into the triggering practice session, pecks at pseudo piles of shit and leaves a watery poop of its own. Perfect. 

Goats goad and cavort like playful kids. Pigs snort through mounds of garbage. Three barefoot boys come to watch, their legs ashen from soot. Two older boys laze on a nearby bench, entertained by the adult roll-play.  I ask if they live nearby. One has a house directly behind us, a round mud hut with thatch-roof. 

Can I see inside?

“Yes, of course ma, come come.”

It’s a fantastic Bunkie alternative.  Smooth painted walls and floor, electric outlets, queen size bed, posters and comfy cool – not too hot, not too cold, j-u-s-t perfect.

After training and a brutally honest post mortem, Lady L and MistaM take me for a trek. We pass giant pigs passed out in sand, suckling piglets at their belly. Collection upon collection of round houses where smoke wafts from communal fires. Curious children giggle and run when the camera comes out.  Dark descends on dusk while visiting with a woman brewing a batch of beer, “Brukutu.” She uses grains from a wheat that towers 16 feet or higher – known locally as guinea corn. Boils it – but only at night. Pours it into large hand-turned pots and leaves it to ferment in the cool of her round house kitchen, ready for quaffing four days later.  

Dinner is taken on Logo’s main strip, dimly lit by chop house fires. Street eatery sisters Dowaisa and Dowaisi fry yam slices and bean rolls and eggs served with a side of super spicy hot pepe and onion sauce. Mmm yum. The tab is less than 35 cents. Holy moly perfect. A different chop stand brings a chunk of tender fresh stewed catfish while another brings a plate heaped with rice and beans.

Happy bellies later, MistaM, the scarred for life Muslim from north Nigeria leads us to his home compound, the place where he and his eight siblings grew and where he and his brothers and their families live today. We pass the local mosque, meet the Imam and hear the evening call to prayer. We step into the extended family kitchen complete with giant mortar and pestle (to pound yam) alongside gorgeous rakuu style cooking and storage vessels.

Whilst we walk and talk MistaM tells of a friend who lived in Canada.

“He came back because he hit his wife and she complained to the government and he was

afraid of what they would do. Can you believe that? She disrespects him.  She provokes him. So what if he hits her? What is the problem with Canada? There are too many rules against men.”

Teeth bare down on tongue.

He briefly mentions his own wife and two daughters, hastening, “but I will try for a son.”

Why?

“Because you need a son. The girls just go off to their husband’s family when they are married. The man picks his wife, she does not pick him. But a son, he stays with you.  I pray that my wife brings me a son. It is for divorce if the wife does not bring a son.”

Ah ha, but the sperm that comes out of your body, your sperm that meets the egg in your wife’s belly is what decides if it will be a boy or a girl. It is the man, you. Not the wife. That notion brings a belly laugh (and probable silent: yeah, right).

Interesting conversation, finally tasty Nigerian food and the friendly hospitality of people who sport crisp clean whites even though they live in round, thatched roof houses made of mud - how perfect is all that?

Friday November 15 2013

I leave Logo with heavy heart. I’m finally touched.  While I fell in love instantly with India, it’s taken a while for ju ju magic to cast its spell in Nigeria.

 Culture in Logo, Benue State is different. Tiv people are hospitable, caring and real. What you see is what is. Period. Tiv culture is inland far from the sea. The slave trade did not impact these peoples like it did in what is known today as Calabar and Cross River State. And colonization came much later. Tiv culture covers a large geographic area unlike Calabar where cultures and languages change from one street corner to the next. There’s a pureness and richness here.

We visit villages some 45 minutes+ deep into rutted back roads where the children have never seen white skin. Some cry and run away in fear. Others edge closer bit by bit to take a closer stare.  Mothers place their issue upon my lap; an honour for them and their children.  One chubby little guy looks searchingly into my eyes, touches my earrings, stares more and pokes at my skin. I place my sunglasses on his face. He sits quiet. A smile forms. He lifts the glasses from his nose and peers into the sky, places them back over his eyes, lifts again back and forth a few times. Mother stands nearby and clicks her tongue softly  in delight “lulululululululu.”

Before formal triggering gets underway in this community we dance and sing; turns out to be a welcoming song to me. Older children sway and move in a traditional ballet-ish style that defies written word. Limbs contort in slow motion as bodies dip and bow to the ground. Women tongue roll in high pitch unison.”Luululululululululu,” I respond in Tiv “Nsu, nsu,” hand over heart, deep bow. “Thank you. Thank you.”

These people draw filthy murky water from a nearby creek and drink it without boiling. Come dry season there is no water to draw. The creek bed is dry. They travel great distances and use the few Naira they own to buy water from town. I question how the Global Sanitation Fund programme will succeed with hand washing hygiene messages in villages like these where water is such a precious and hard earned commodity.

When it’s time to return to Calabar, Logo local government CSLT trainees bid farewell with hugs. Many present photos taken of us together. More perfect moments among so many.

Driver Eja and I talk about trekking up a craggy small hill near the Benue cloth

weaving spot visited on previous journeys. Mr Patrick overhears our discussion and cautions against it. Ju ju stories begin.

Seemingly this hill takes the lives of those who attempt to climb it. Just recently five young men died after ascending for a night of youthful cavorting. None made it back down. They died one after the next.

 “You will see a man or a woman there and when you look again, they are gone. I do not ever like to speak of such things.  And neither should you. Do not mention it again.”

Pressed further Mr P share a fine ju ju story:

He is travelling with a good friend and his sister-in-law. During travels N25,000 goes missing. Mr P’s mother-in-law is furious and decides to out the thief. She takes them all, her daughter included, to a traditional doctor in a neighboring village.

“There are people who have very big power. This doctor is one. He lays two sticks parallel on the ground. One at a time we are told to place our hands between the sticks. Then we are asked if we stole the money.  If we tell the truth, the sticks move further apart. This medicine man asks me and the sticks move apart. Mother-in-law is asked. The same. Friend is asked. The same. When sister-in-law answers the sticks clamp together over her hand. Yes, she admits it was her who took the money.”

This deep set fear has no seat at the plastic table we gather around outdoors under a bright moon one club night at the hotel. Music blares. Bass shakes the hotel’s tin rooftop. A local police officer joins us with his AK47. Comical exchanges lead to photo ops lead to group dancing. “I like your moves” is the height of any compliment I’ve received thus far in Nigeria. It comes by way of a woman facilitator in our group and reinforced by the rest of our partying entourage. They like MY moves? Hah. Go figure.

In Flanders Field and Logo Land

Monday November 11, 2013

Thinking of (papa) Alf on this date. While we lest not forget in the West, it’s forgotten if not completely unknown here. The date is meaningless.

Training travel continues; hotels I have known part X - Gabriella Guest House in Logo, Benue State.  It’s an utterly enthralling location quite literally down a rain sacked road, smack dab in the middle of a community of mud and thatched-roof houses. Unbelievably those thatched round houses have electricity while this guest inn does not. Room 112 has no running water.  No mirror. A giant TV that doesn’t work. And bug accoutrements for extra ambience. The mattress is comfy but my torso is itchy as all hell. The linens are fresh. But I think I’ll lay out mine just because.  Primitive

Voodoo? Who do?

Continuing car stories. Gotta jot these down before they’re forgotten.

About ju-ju, I begin, how can you be affected if you don’t believe? In unison Mr T and Double-O chorus “I’m Christian, of course I don’t believe,” but then their stories begin.

I don’t believe, but… when I was a child someone was accused of stealing. He denied and denied and denied.  So they tied a rope around his neck and forced him to lie upon the ground. If he was telling the truth, nothing would happen. If he was lying, the rope would pull into the ground.  I saw with my own two eyes, I saw the rope pull into the ground. I was so scared that night I could not sleep.

Een henh, I don’t believe either, but…what they do in my village is they pick these special leaves and they coat them with a mixture, and then another leaf, and more mixture and another leaf, and more mixture.  They ask the person who is in the wrong to answer a question. If that person lies, the leaves go hard.  So they take a long pipe, a bamboo pole and they take some pepe and blow, just like that. They blow. And even though the person is sitting far across, they feel the pepe in their eyes, and they confess.

And then once, I had a headache, a migraine. It was very bad. I was telling someone about it and a girl heard me.  She told me to come, come with her. I followed her to a little boy, maybe two. She tells him my problem. He goes away and comes back with some leaves he picked and he mashes the leaves together in his hands then places the pulp onto my head.  My headache goes away just like that.  I think, “oh I must stay with this boy. He knows.” So I go to bring him a toy. They tell me he is not coming out today. If I want to see him I must go inside.  I see him sitting. Doing nothing. I tell him I have brought a toy. He laughs, “ I know, I saw you buy it from the big lady. I know that you bring a toy.” That frightens me. How does this small boy know? He sees my past and future.

On the plane from Abuja to Uyo my seat mate is Pastor Excellence.  He’s an evangelical zealot who speaks in tongue (I love that! he gushes). The kind who insists women enter marriage “intact. Virginal blood binds the two in a mysterious but undeniable way,” he explains.

So are you encouraging your son to marry as a virgin too? 
No response; he’s in pathological preaching mode. 
His faith, he asserts, is deliverance based; in other words Satan is behind all of life’s foibles and woes. Deliverance based faith is about casting out ju-ju demons to rid life of bad influences. It’s about removing the curses and evil others have brought upon you via the power and magical guidance of traditional healers.

PastorE is the kind who believes the Bible is the one and only true word of God. 

Have you read the q’uoran? What about Judaism acknowledging only early biblical parts?  Have you explored other religions to assert your own conviction? 

“No, I don’t need to.  I know I have the word of God. See how quickly I answer you? That is because I KNOW!”  

But how do you know that without asking questions?  Are you saying your God is different and better than the God of Islam or the God of Judaism?  Silence. 

Uncertainty.

“You ask difficult questions,” he says, slumping slightly into his seat and answering with more of the same blind faith.

For the flight’s duration I listen wearily to his sermonizing, wishing I could sit in quiet meditation reflecting on everything and nothing in my own dogma-free way.

Communication Breakdown.

...never mind breakdown. It's broken.

But first, I digress.

Being held captive in a car forces the kinds of conversations that would never slip off Nigerian tongues in regular spaces. That’s one of the pleasures of these painful five and six and seven plus hour overland drives into rural remoteness. The “dancing road” that rattles bones worse than a mogul run might be rough enough to cause a concussion. Yet brain tossed headaches and travel fatigue are worth the best car-ride stories, ever.

 

We pass and talk about a lone elephant tree that haunts locals who fear the deity that resides within. So they toss  eggs at the enormous enigma for protection from its wrath. A strange offering. Many kilometers later our eyes search a clear cut field where two giant sisters once towered. Handfuls of years ago their lumbering magic safeguarded communities from warring. Bitter feuding and bloodshed now cast a grim shadow in their stead.

Conversation shifts to the Efik culture, a tribal tradition unique to Calabar, southern Cross River state and Cuban descendents of the slave trade from these parts, where the Epke Society remains a force of reckoning. Epke is the Efik name for lion. Fierce, feared.

Centuries before colonization, the Society served as government. It continues in this informal but highly regarded capacity today. Sons, and the eldest daughters of sonless families, are initiated into the Society to ward off potential harm and become recognized members of this governing body. Initiated how? Epke in its masquerade form manifests for four days of food and drink, dance and drama. The parents of child initiates keep watch, helplessly wary.

“All the people in the village cook and serve lots of food, most of it meat. And they think nothing of poisoned food.” Poisoned as in food gone bad or intentional? “Enh intentional! They have witchcraft poisons,” colleague and village chief, Double-O explains. “It’s all about power and jealousy. Why should that boy be better than mine?”

If Efik families switch teams from secret society ju-ju-ism to Christianity, they pay protection dash to Epke village stewards when their unknowing sons or eldest daughters go visiting. Fifty naira…a few hundred…may be thousands depending on financial means.

Most Efik villages cascade outward from the heart homestead of Epke, an uninhabited-by-humans building locked, shuttered, foreboding.  

We talk about the Milky Way and the North Star. Colleagues are incredulous that you can actually see these two things.  I relay a favourite memory: lying on the dock with Leah and Kaleigh, falling asleep under the stars –but only after each of us sights a falling star. "Falling star - what is this, now?" How looking up at the galaxy of pinlight or driving through the Rocky Mountains makes one feel so small. “Oh, so Canadian men are small then?” Ummm, No.

We talk about glow worms,Nigeria’s verions of fireflies on the ground, bats the size of crows, my amazing newly-found-thanks-to-Sarah seamstress, Tina Tailor, and Calabarian December Caravan festivities.

We talk about Nigeria’s problems. It’s not corruption that’s the root cause, I’m told. It’s the institutions. It’s the institutions where nepotism favours friends and family, friends of family and family of friends. It’s the institutions where declaring conflict of interest is in the best interest of no one and is therefore never minded. So the wealthy contractor brother-in-law gets the project without following procurement protocol, because the price is right. Right for who?  Or the daughter of a project manager starts up an NGO and is contracted under her new umbrella façade to consult on that same project because no one else is comparably qualified. According to whom?

It’s about underpaid public servants, like police officers, who stop traffic under the pretence of national or state or local road security to collect illegal dash; money to put food on their tables and pay for their children’s school fees. Just a few days ago as we arrive on the outskirts of Abuja, uncertain of our whereabouts, a police roadblock pulls us over and charges that we've run a red. Mr wiry god-complex police officer, AK47 in hand, threatens to impound the truck immediately without release for two weeks. Eventually this same officer hops into the back seat, instructs us to drive up the road a tad and in between berating, suggests a N50,000 fine will make us mobile again. Forty minutes and N4,000 later, we're on our way. 

It’s about Port Authorities not releasing paid for goods because “shipper fees” remain unsettled, though such fees were never part of the equation in the first place.

It’s about asking for blank receipts from the hotel desk person, filling in a fee higher than the amount actually paid and pocketing the difference when travel accounts are reconciled.

It’s about  empowered local government employees hand-picking colleagues who share friendships or blood lines to attend workshops they’re not qualified to attend but are keene to attend to collect per diems.

It’s about people with connections who go temper ranting to the highest placed ears when funding dollars aren’t channelled through their personal accounts and financial reporting strings come attached.

 

It's about bureacrats asking in masked humour: "What of our allowances?" "What provisions have you made for me?" "What is my entitlement?"

 

It’s about subsistence-living security guards siphoning generator gas to fuel their motorbike ride home.

It’s about greed stained into the very soul of Nigerian culture.

What drives that greed?  Certainly a hungry belly.  But more so, it comes from a hunger for stuff.  Status stuff like jeeps and jewellery, trinkets and bobbles and frivolous things that say, look at me I have more than you, I can buy all these things. Look at me, I am a success. I am a big man.

Women are attracted to men who have the power and money to keep them in the stuff that makes them look fine-o, oyibo men especially. Racist thinking equates white skin with wealth.  The other weekend, sitting poolside at Calabar’s most popular hotel with oyibos, I watch two balding and paunchy middle-aged Spaniards cavort with two exquisitely proportioned Nigerian beauties. Neither is a day over 20.  The men flail and splash like pimply teens, animated and lecherous and boning for hormonal release. The young girls play quiet and subservient.  At another table, a group of brash more-than-middle-aged Americans brag long and loud about their rides. Motorbikes are a big thing among expats here. Probably has something to do with the edgy personalities that come this way and stay. Here too, these largely (read: as in large/super-size-me) unattractive men are accompanied by young Nigerian beauties who sit silent and bored, detached from the conversation, patiently waiting for the dutiful sex and money to come.  Communication of the bodies suffices in these cases.

As I write in the feeble morning light of a hotel room without power, today’s first communication glitch presents.  So I turn to this entry’s original topic: communication breakdown.

Example: Yesterday evening I visit the hotel restaurant to ask that a simple omelette and a cup of coffee be delivered to my room by 8:30am.The time of course passes this morning without room service. After sufficient wait an inquiry at reception brings yesterday’s restaurant gent to my room.

"Your omlette, ma' I prepare it now?"
No. It is passed 8:30. It is late-o. You cancel the order, now. You bring tomorrow on time, yes? So you cook tomorrow at 8 o'clock okay?

Example: Seven months into a 12 month placement someone tells me that sitting with legs crossed is a terrible sign of disrespect. The same goes for tucking hands into pockets.  People who know me know I’m a habitual leg crosser; I’ve clearly disrespected many, many folk many, many times.  Too bad this wasn’t communicated at the outset, no?

Example: Every three months volunteers receive a meagre stipend. I am one of the lucky few with a Nigerian bank account. You’d think that would make transactions easier. Not.  A long-standing VSO finance employee, of Nigerian decent, is politely instructed to make the deposit early in the day given that the transaction is happening on a Friday and Fridays are notoriously chaotic.  He makes a cash deposit at 10:00am. Come 3:30pm after standing in an ATM line up for over an hour, I find out a withdrawal isn’t possible. A bank retail marketing officer says there’s no way he can pull up account details on the computer. Becoming Nigerian, the voice rises with curt condescension.  Results start happening. One phone call leads to another. VSO finance guy runs to the bank where he’d made the cash deposit to find out it hasn’t yet been processed. Cash deposits are reconciled at end of day with all other cash transactions, don’t you know. You’d think he’d have clued into this by now. After all he’s been doing this job for what, ten years. And what’s with bank records not being electronically accessible? Where’s e-communication in this story? Turns out they in fact are. Lazy pulled rank.

Example:  Passive-aggressive behaviour makes for an uncomfortable office environment, especially when the target is you.  The principle perpetrator is respected for business savvy and diplomatic acumen.  I discuss the situation with my oga /slash/boss, tons of Nigerians, expats who might as well be Nigerian, and expats who are just as confounded as me. If there’s one thing we all agree on, it’s that if you can survive the Nigerian work place you can excel just about anywhere else in this world.  So, how to deal with the situation?

* Suggest you have inside knowledge and connections to big people without giving anything away.

* Be evasive

* Allude to your respected value outside of the conventional train of command

* Most of all, be tough. Put the perpetrator's sense of status into question. Use tone and ramp up the volume.

So I do exactly as advised and walk away from a confrontational scene – initiated by the perpetrator no less – a satisfied and for now, respected victor.

 

Yet all these ugly underbelly scars mean nothing in the end. Nigeria, as it turns out, is one of the happiest countries on this wee planet we call home. People are always laughing; the kind of big raucous belly laughs you can’t help but laugh along with.  The same goes for song.  People belt out hymns and pop tunes while working at their desks or crammed into a share taxi with five other passengers. Walk anywhere and you’re greeted by more people than you can count. Tell a Nigerian how this never happens back home and their stunned response stuns you into accepting what impersonal and detached peoples we are in the west. While we warn our children to stay away from strangers, the only strangers to Nigerians are foreigners like me and even at that, the “ MissPat! Auntie!” shouts and hugs and shy waves from children and grown folk alike makes everything right with the universe, at the very least for that moment.

 

Thursday September 19

Here are a few expressions from around these parts.

“We are happy to greet you, in Jesus’ name.” – “Amen!”

“I tell you your name has gone so farO. Well doneO.”

“People finish their dirty jobs anywhere.”

“Glorious exit” (funeral notation)

“A gossip centre for women. A kindO place to exchange stories for men.”

“Mosquitoes settle, breed, and come to attack us.”

“So that we leave you better than we met you.”

“YesO. I pray so.”

“By the special grace of God I bring this message” ..that's from someone with a loudspeaker outside the compound walls at this very moment of writing.

 

SIDEBAR: Good heavens – pun intended – the street preacher is aggravating. Big megaphone voice disrupts neighbourhood normal.

“Jesus Christ!”
Stroll somewhere else brother.
“Remember the story of the ten virgins?”
Ummm, no.

“…Thank you father! Thank you Jesus! Thank you Lord!"

The strolling sermon is over. Halleluiah.

Saturday is Calabar Municipal Election day. Restricted movement will be enforced from 7am to 4pm.  Taxis will not be on roads. Individuals can be arrested if out and about without the specific intent to vote or return home from doing so. Now that’s an interesting sense of democracy. Actually that’s not fair. It’s more a matter of proactive security should the politically engaged become enraged.

 

 

Saturday September 14^th

I attend my first Nigerian wedding and never once see the bride. Go figure.

Some months ago I met the bride’s father while on a mission to replace the stove’s gas canister.  He caught a lift with my driver for a drop off in South Calabar, the sketchiest district in town where posses of frustrated boyz rule after dark.  He’s the chief of Duke Town, a rather large section of Calabar where reminders of British colonization hug the shores of a once-ago slave trade corridor. Chief Duke is modest; I’ve since learned this gentle man has a rich and royal heritage. 

Although today’s bride, Bassey Duke, and her groom, Patrick, both come from royal lineage they opt for a small simple wedding. Small and simple are subjective, yes? Typically Nigerians profess their love in two different ceremonies held on different days. These two decide to economize and do it in one.

I miss the 10am White wedding; a conventional church and princess gown gig that carries on for hours, but arrive at Duke Palace mid-afternoon for the Traditional version.  At least half a dozen canopies provide protection from intermittent sun and rain.  People sit on chairs set in rows under the canopy that bears the name of their social group: Girls Power Initiative (GPI), Women of Active Faith, The Creator’s Family…. 

 

Entertainment comes by way of a lively band and an MC who keeps the crowds laughing. Too bad I don’t speak Efik. 

Surprising to me, lots of guests show up in outfits made from the same cotton print though styles vary as much as the people wearing them.  “They’re uniforms worn by people close to Bassey, She tells you where the cloth can be purchased in the market,” Sarah explains, wearing one herself as one of Bassey’s GPI work colleagues.  Interestingly, the colour theme for the day is blue, again, brides choice – announced on the invite; lots of blue on guests too.

Women carry enormous shallow brass bowls into the palace. They’re filled to the brim with gifts for the bride’s family from the groom’s: dowry 21^st century style.

After an appreciable amount of time, groom Patrick arrives in the thick of a boisterous crowd clapping and dancing, flapping a giant patio umbrella up and down and banging animal skin drums. Mr Groom is wearing a felt top hat and carrying a cane. Can’t see his clothing for the throngs of bodies and poof in an instant he disappears into the palace. 

 

Sidebar: What palace conjures in western minds is far from Nigerian reality. We’re talking a basic one storey concrete building with a door and a couple of windows. C’est tu. That’s all.

 

It’s been a long day for those who have followed festivities from the start.  Fortunately we’re fortified with food…what decent Nigerian gathering doesn’t include feeding? Instead of hiring caterers or ordering off the venue menu, family friends prepare massive quantities of whatever they feel like making. Each food donor is assigned a canopy group. Our potluck draw is fish heads, hunks of meat and spicy jollof rice. I take a pass on the meat. A taste of the dried fish delivers bone slivers, lots. Warm beer chases the heat of the rice.

 

Disappointingly all traditional happenings happen indoors and out of sight for most of us guests. Seemingly the bride and her family are in one room, the groom and his in another. Eventually the bride is presented and turned over to the groom’s family. Gifts received. Payment accepted. Goods sold. We leave before the transaction is complete and the newlyweds are formally presented.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN NIGERIA…

Much has occured since the last blog. Sometime mid-July Amanda, my Geneva-based communications counterpart visited from the UN. Court was held with Benue state's Commissioner responsible for water and sanitation. Media swarmed. Turns out they were paid hefty sums to show up. News coverage, like most everywhere, is propoganda.

 

Road-trip day one also finds us watered and dined at a popular roadside haunt by the head of a local government. Etiquette in these parts is to feed guests well. Not hungry, especially for Nigerian food, I order Edikang Ikong soup - "vegetable" soup with a request for nmeat or fish. Gratefully, the soup, which is actually the consistency of stew, has no crayfish flavouring because we’re inland rather than on the coast. Phew that. Typical ingredients include pumpkin and water leaves cut sliver thin; beef, kanda (dried hunks of animal skin), shaki , periwinkles and dry fish; salt, pepe and ground crayfish to taste; a couple or three boullion cubes and atleast a cup of palm oil - the principle liquid. Pounded yam comes as a side. It’s like one big tasteless ball of playdoh the size of a big man’s fist. Roll it between thumb and fingers, scoop into the soup and swallow. No chewing allowed. Yech.  A plate of bush meat arrives: antelope. Political correctness dictates at least a try. It’s welcomingly tender and tasty. One or two bites later I’m satisfied our host is satisfied.
 

The next day takes us, unannounced, to a certified Open Defecation Free village; the stereotypical African scene with thatch-roofed mud huts.

Tribal scarification marks many faces, two lines etched into each cheek like tears - visible on the face of the woman in blue.

Goats perch atop one of the rounded huts. Chickens free range. Women busy themselves with domestic chores.

 

 

Children shyly follow our entourage.

Family elders lead us to their homes to show off their latrines. Be it hole-in-the-ground squat spots or the N150,000 throne mounted on a concrete pad, collective pride gleams in broad smiles.

 

 

 

 

 

This village is visibly community proud.

It`s a shocking sensory assault to arrive at destination two: a semi-urban location, complete with power and satellite service, on the shores of cross river.

Stepping out of the truck, the stench is so putrid the natural response is to mouth breathe - except I can taste it on the air. We meet with a village elder who pleads for help.  Five minutes along a littered pathway we happen upon a vile scene; a 24 foot long community toilet bench for women on one side of a “privacy” wall, the men’s communal shit space on the other.  Larvae writhe in mounds of feces, blood and piss. Unbelievably, this is the daily morning meeting spot. Women, men and children take a seat, exchange gossip, and piss and shit with nary a hint of modesty; whatever empties from bodies, seeps into the river below and flows downstream to the community just across the way on the opposite shore. 

Wandering back along the littered pathway we see tossed plastic bags concealing dried hunks of shit - a convenient and easy disposal option. Disgusting.

The roads from Benue state back to Cross River state are potted and bone-jarring uncomfortable.  Weavers take advantage of the slow-moving transit corridor by setting up a production and sales site. With arts and crafts seldom available, we stop to take in the scene and make a few purchases.

We pass trucks crammed with people, motorbike-mounted cages crammed with dogs for slaughter, and a market crammed with freshly harvested ground nuts.

 

 

 

 

 

THURSDAY AUGUST 29  (photos to come)

This post finds me half way around the world from Nigeria in the stunningly beautiful pacific coastal place of Vancouver and islands. Suffice it to say it was an unexpected surprise to find myself here, but here I am nonetheless, revelling in the company of my dajas and the splendour of mother earth.

The journey took me by way of Lagos…the good…the bad…and the ugly.

Enormous waves crest and smash over crashed plane remnants. Scavengers pillage the wreckage for metal.

A ghostly white-gauzed prostitute stands in stillness looking out over the angry waves that days earlier cleared the beach of shanty shacks and their bawdy business. On the horizon a line of ocean vessels entice women to sell their sex for funds and food. Some of them never return, immortalized instead in snuff film.

Trade on the beach continues unabated.  Suya-man plies beachgoers with his spice-dusted grilled meats. Children squeal with delighted fear as they summit a man-spun ferris wheel.

On the road leading away from the beach, Lagos, a city of 30 million, lies exposed and real.

Some six-ish flight hours directly north, I back my pack into a pint-sized Yotel space at Heathrow airport,  freshen up and set out for a whirlwind few hours.

Back on the Western Canadian coastline, a romantic getaway for three gets underway on Denman and Hornby islands, British Columbia.

Hornby Island oyster farmer shares secrets.  He and his family build rock walls to prevent oysters from washing onto shore with the tides, inviting them instead, to attach and grow on low heaps of boulders. Being able to keep open to feed on nutrients in the water is what plumps up molluscs. In natural conditions it takes two to three years. In large commercial operations they’re placed on skids and sunk out in waters where levels never fluctuate, reaching edible size within six months. And yes the occasional few do indeed produce pearls.

Vineyard pitstop 

Denby tidal time

Inukshuk for Rose

BIG and beautiful

… and breathtaking

Blindsided b-day surprise: gelato decadence 218 different ways.

Squamish sailing

Kaleigh and Christina arrive in town

Come Labour Day weekend we head into the interior, camping at Silver Lake Provincial Park outside of Hope, BC (Fraser Valley area). Tent mate Ginny gets things started.

Saturday takes us to Ross Lake. This glacier fed reservoir provides water to Seattle. Nestled in the valley of an exquisite mountainous range, the water is surprisingly warm for swimming and pristine clear. It’s the quintessential BC experience, except that – woot woot! we actually picnic on the U.S. side of the lake revelling at the unprotected border marked by a carved out section of trees climbing up mountains either side of us. 

Hidden some 53 kms away from our home camp, along a well-maintained logging road, we take photo op pit stops en route.

Sunday takes us to a series of blasted mountain tunnels long-ago used for railway service.

The tunnels rest above rushing river waters that course and stream through a gorgeous gorge. A path leads us to the river’s edge where we build Inukshuks for Guy, Christina’s cousin Angie, a young woman in her prime who failed to wake from sleep, and Rose. “We were here, you were with us.”

 

Sunday evening Kaleigh decides to lop off her (dread) locks. We take turns using a dull knife to hack through her signature do. A milestone event.