TRAVELS w/P: Tales of Adventure Here & There

27/03/2013 Wednesday while waiting

Welcome. Good morning.

Welcome. Good afternoon.

Welcome. Good evening.

Such are Nigeria’s friendly, well-schooled greetings.

Suppose I might as well multi-task while waiting for the Internet to do its thing. In conversation with a Concern Universal communications colleague based at the organization’s UK headquarters I ask if they might do some online research for us. What will take weeks here can probably be done in a few days there. Consider this: Google landing page takes about five to ten minutes to upload.  Ditto that time for sending, opening or filing a simple email without attachments, logging onto Facebook, opening a favourite news website, or hunting for and –then– opening research resources. Skype is about the only thing that’s reasonably fast. Can you imagine what it will take to research government ministries/departments for contact names at local, state and federal levels to build a stakeholder database?

Mid-afternoon, on instruction of our Finance Manager, I’m escorted by Angela and chauffeured to the bank by our driver, Johnston, so that I can cash a personal cheque for N18,600 (monies to do with Makurdi accommodations). We’re hurried past door security and ushered upstairs to the manager’s office. He extends his hand, calls me by name and asks if he can get me a drink. I’m taken aback. What’s etiquette?  Why such overt customer service? I agree only if he and Angela join me. We select our beverage from his office fridge and settle in for small talk. Banking the Nigerian way is nasty. Savings accounts pay 3 to 4% interest. Mortgages can be had for 18% and personal loans for a mere 24%.  “I make my money on the spread,” Mr Big Boss banker beams. And he IS big. A healthy belly sags over his belt. It’s so very lovely and cool in his air conditioned office.  Fifteen minutes later monies are brought to the office by an assistant. She hands a stack of N1000s to Mr Banker who hands them over to me. No counting. More pleasantries exchange, a few more sips of pop and we take our leave. Under Angela’s “go quick!” insistence we dash from the bank’s front door to the car.

6:30pm:  Poor Bluebelle  When I first moved into this house I spotted a lizard dart under the cooker. Collins and I did a cursory room check and all seemed clear. Until today.  There on the kitchen floor when I came home from work, sat Bluebelle. It scampered under the cupboard just far enough in to maybe feel like it was hidden. I got a great snap of its telling tail and wedged body. Eventually Collins coaxed it out with a broom handle and pushed it to the door. Sidebar: damn it - 6:45 and napa’s out already?!  Anyhow, the poor thing perished in the garden. I suspect it was a combination of no food or water for weeks (months?) and a good broom whack during the height of its capture and release. Lizards are to Nigeria as squirrels are to Canada: plentiful, cute and largely ignored. At least they eat insects rather than carry them. 

What lizards, insects and other weird and wonderful things will present this weekend and next? Adventures are populating the social calendar. First stop: Akpap. It’s the remote village seasoned VSO’er and Calabar colleague, Christine, calls home; the place where mangrove forests thrive and the river is swimmable.  Check out this Concern Universal vid for a visual sense:

http://www.concern-universal.org/saving_nigeria039s_mangroves

 A new friend is coming along for the ride. Kim, 26 years young, hails from Holland. We learned of each other through Calabar’s informal Diaspora network of western women. In this town if you’re white you’re an instant friend. We met yesterday for dins, enjoyed Nigerian BBQ and quaffed pop. This baby girl is amazing! She’s a primate specialist.  The club scene is not her gig as much as the "let's go hiking" thing. SOoooo. We're going on a journey. We leave next Thursday, April 4^th for the Afi Mountains where one of Africa’s most endangered primates, the Drill Monkey, can be found. We’re there till Saturday then travel to the rainforests of Obudu and Cattle Ranch Resort for Sat-Sun-Mon. Travel back the 9th. Return to our offices Wednesday the 10th.  She’s booked our accommodations. I’m looking into transportation with Concern’s drivers and trucks.

I can't think of a better companion to be visiting monkey territory with!  For her Master’s Degree Kim spent a year deep in old growth forests of Borneo, Malaysia tracking orangutangs. Her research was part of a brand new international study examining the vocalization habits of these fascinating creatures. Base camp was a good 20 km inside an area unscathed by modern man. Her days would often start at three in the morning so that she could be at the nest before the group stirred. She’d track her subjects through swamp land, emerging covered in leaches, and up over climbable mountains. Kim drank from crystal clear waterfalls, encountered a wild cat and her kittens, lived in primitive conditions and loved every minute of it. To say the people, politics and conditions of the primate sanctuary she signed on to manage here in Calabar for two years is a disappointment, is a gross understatement. After just three months she’s tendered her resignation. The organization hasn’t even bothered to ask her why. Huh that?

I don't expect our travel to be half as extreme as Kim’s Borneo adventure. Regardless, I need to equip myself with a pair of high cut runners from the market. Hiking boots would be ideal but they’re impossible to find. Funny thing, the clothes and shoes piled in heaps for sale at market are used items. It donned on me when I saw a woman washing a pair of shoes (?!) They were lathered with soap - being scrubbed clean for resale. This is one truly mind-twisting world.