TRAVELS w/P: Tales of Adventure Here & There

10/03/2013 – Sunday in Calabar

Waken just after 9:00. The fans are at a standstill. No power. Pop outdoors to say good morning to Collins. Manage to get my big plastic bucket filled with water. Invite Collins to visit,“have some watermelon and mango.” Before accepting he shares that thieves stole his motorbike last night.
“My house is far from here, it is hard now to get to work.”
“Well, come sit and rest. Let’s talk about it.”

As we chat I learn he has two sons ages 4 and 18 months. His earnings are 30,000 a month and his wife works when she can as a seamstress. Here am I worrying about living on 36,000 as a single person and this family of four lives on the same, with housing, utility and daily transportation costs on top of it all. As we look through pictures of Canada I mention how the bed and bedroom here are much larger than what I have at home.“That is a family bed. I have one. All my family, my wife and two sons, we sleep very well together.”

 I also learn Collins is a gardener. He tells me it’s important that he keep the gardens tidy otherwise“there will be many snakes.” We tour the grounds, looking at mounds of dirt and manure. Green vines growing from these piles indicate yams are growing healthily underground. He points out different green plants – some are peanut greens others bitter leaf and others, their names escape me. He shows me his pumpkin patch remarkably growing on top of the compound wall near the front entrance. Beneath, a delicate plant flourishes bearing yellow aubergine; he calls them garden eggs. Banana trees run along the back wall behind my house. They’ve begun to produce fruit but aren’t quite ready. Last, a beautiful fushia flowering tree. As we look, I spot an utterly exquisite humming bird; it’s throat ruby red, it’s coat sapphire blue.

All this time, church music is coming from somewhere nearby I think it’s the walls pealing, windows broken, looks abandoned church around the corner. We passed it yesterday on the way to market No wonder folk like to go to service; the music is a danceable cross between reggae and gospel.

Anyhow I’m going to take Lola for a walk, although silly me, it’s11:22 and probably reaching the zenith heat index of the day. Let’s see how long I last.

12:31 – Well I didn’t get very far. For the longest time I couldn’t find Collins to tell him I was going out, and just as we were discussing this, Oussman (sp) the office Big Boss showed up in a shiny black SUV, with kids in tow.

“I heard from Christine that you have no water?”

“Actually Collins filled a container for me today, but there is no water running in the house.”
“No water in the house?”
“No, there’s a leak that’s causing problems.”
“Oh yes, the leak, we will have that looked after on Monday.”
“I was wondering too about Internet. There is no service after the office shuts down?”
“Yes, that is correct. The Internet is connected to office power. You need to use the small generator. Or you can buy a USB stick.”
“And how much is a USB stick and service?”
“I think I bought the stick for 10 or 15. And the service is 5000 a month.”
“5,000?!”
“That is how much I use to download documents. You can get it at 2000 a month or maybe 500. I will get the information for you tomorrow.”
“Okay, thanks. I was thinking of hiring a taxi today to get an idea of this place, see the water, that sort of thing. Do you have any idea what I should pay?”
“I wish I had known. I could have arranged a driver for you. I am not sure what it is here. In Abuja I pay 1000 an hour. It might be cheaper here.”
“Alrighty, that’s good to know”
“It is good that you want to know this place. When we meet on Monday we will make plans. It will be part of your induction.”
“That’s fantastic. I’d like that very much. By the way, is the market open on Sundays?”
“No, it is not. But the supermarkets are open after 5.”
“Supermarkets?! I would like to see a supermarket.”
“We are going today. I will come and take you with us.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes. I can drive you around a little bit too, if you would like.”
“That would be wonderful. All I really want to see right now is the water, to get my bearings.”
“Okay, we will come for you at five. With my children.
“And your wife?”
“ I do not know. We will see if she would like to come.”
“Okay, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much.”
“Later?”
“Later.”

At the time, I didn’t know it was Oussman. There are so many knew faces to register. To be honest, I thought he was one of the program managers, or one of the logistics team. After all these are operational matters so it makes sense to dispatch a logistics person. Only thing, the large new SUV didn’t fit that picture. So now I feel a tad foolish for being so direct with the organization’s figurehead. How to redeem myself?

3:31pm

Hand laundered some clothes. They’re hanging on a line, but how will they possibly dry in this humidity?

Collins saunters over and leads me to another part of the garden I hadn’t yet seen. A dove sits nesting in one of the trees. “I would like to catch it,” he says.

“But what would you do with it?”naivety showing.
“They are a sweet meat. Good eating.”
Earlier, when we spotted the humming bird he told me when he was as young as five he’d use a sling shot to bring down birds – hummingbirds included – for roasting up.

Oh kaaay.

I’ve decided to make a few resident lizards unofficial pets. My favourite is a biggish one with predominant blue colouration. He’s BlueBel. There’s another brown one with a red stripe running down its back. He darts up the wall in the oddest manner. Scamper” seems a good name.

8:13

What a delightful outing. Head to the market; turn right down Marian Road, left at Frieda’s Fries (just beyond the supermarket) over to the Highway. Turn right and follow the highway a distance, past the stadium, and right again towards Marina Resort.

Here we visit the Museum of Slavery. I’m aghast, not to mention self-conscious being the stand out white person. Barbaric is a generous description of the practises used by U.S. and British forefathers. Branding flesh. Putting plugs into mouths to prevent talking or tasting sugar cane during harvest. To prove African culture existed long before colonization, the museum tour guide draws attention to displays of exquisite artifacts – carvings and stoneware and jewellery. It’s shocking that these items are on display unprotected, within touch of visitors. Oussman’s eldest son, XXX, reaches out at one point to caress a vessel. It’s also shocking that African’s need to remind themselves of their storied and cultured existence life before slavery. How is history taught here?

Sidebar: at the museum power goes out at least half a dozen times, casting us into blackness. Nimiya, Oussman’s six-year-old daughter, calls out to her father. Fear and playfulness in her sweet young voice.

From the museum we stroll along the edge of Cross Rivers. Murky sludge-brown waters move down the coast and around the bend, out towards the ocean. Only two boats putter by during the few hours there. This is a marina?

As we walk, I ask about snakes.

“Where you live there aren’t many. Cobras. Pythons. That’s about it. They’re small”
“How small is small?”
“Around here they grow to a meter. I’ve seen them other places, in the bush, much larger.”
How much larger? Oh two or three meters he answers nonchalantly.
I’m afraid to ask about spiders and scorpions.

 

09/03.2013 – Saturday in Calabar
Rested well, only getting up after Angela (8am) and Collins (10am) call out to me from the front door. “Ma’am?”

“Yep, I’m up. Give me some time to freshen.”

Armed with towel and cloth, soap and shampoo, a quick turn of the faucet brings trickles from the tap then nothing. No water to bathe. Oops. Angela was to have filled a brand new plastic garbage can with water for me, yesterday, just in case. Had I known this could be a problem, that container would have been out in the rain with me last night. Lesson learned. H2o is a precious commodity, especially when the water tank is leaking, forming ugly cess pools behind the office. Electricity is another luxury. It’s more off than on, which means cooling fans don’t work. Nor do electrical outlets to charge phones, or Internet to connect computers, or lights to read and write by.

Sidebar: on the flight from Abujato Calabar Christine tells how her neighbourhood has been without electricity for weeks. Generator fuel costs are eating into the family budget so much so that she and her husband, a psychiatrist who works at the area’s federal hospital, fret for a real-soon resolution. Oussman says it’s not uncommon for these hydro outages to drag on six months or longer.

Someone was thinking when they designed the rechargeable LED reading lamp I bought today at market. What an adventure that was weaving deeper and deeper into an amazing maze of wonderful and weird. “Periwinkles” that look like prickly, blackened pinkie fingers wriggle and writhe alongside baskets of large snails. Stall after stall, aisle after aisle offer goods that don’t look all that good, at least, not yet. Dried fish heads. Smoked whole fish formed into donut shapes, head facing tail. Mounds of offensively stinky plug-your-nose-or-lose-your-cookies dried shrimp. Hunks of unknown animal flesh carted in wheel barrows. Aside from fruit and veg and grains, the only thing that looks reasonably palatable to this foodie newcomer is peach-sized clams.

It’s going to be a whole new cooking experience. Foodstuffs don’t keep well in this heat and fridges are only as reliable as the electricity that powers them.