28/04/2013 Another steamy Sunday

Much of this week is consumed with personal and professional matters. There’s no running away from responsibilities and commitments. It’s incredibly stressful trying to manage issues continents and time zones away. Technology expectations versus realities muck things up even more. Rogers, for instance, wants me to call them about my concerns re inappropriate cell phone roaming charges. Doesn’t that involve incurring more international roaming charges to get through? Nigeria’s MTN wireless supplier is useless. And forget online service. Won’t work from here. Banking matters are another altogether different issue. ‘Nuf said.

Office occupies me with blogging about the recent open defecation triggering exercise and pulling together a comprehensive communications plan for the global sanitation fund initiative. That comm plan is taking up the bulk of my time and will continue to do so for a while yet.

Friday comes fast. So fast in fact that I think it's Thursday. Holy moly. Aishat, Sarah and I are going to a Nollywood red carpet debut of the film “Red Hot.”  Sarah, by the by, is a mid-30s HR and Organizational Development professional from the UK. It’s 4:45 and the event starts at 6:00. I scramble forgetting about Nigerian time.  Of course the premiere doesn’t start until well after 7:00. The film is a who-dunnit/soft-porn/comedy with a pretty basic storyline. Wealthy fat housewife hires a young studly to help her conceive cuz her “husband’s seed is dead”; while in the throes of the task, Mr oil baron husband comes home; murder ensues; enter comic relief cop character who sucks and chews on a toothpick annoyingly loud. Story ends in a twist of unethical proportions.

As we leave Sarah takes a snap of me chatting with Mr studly star – Uti somebody. He’s the only Nigerian man I’ve seen with hair on his head. Everyone else shaves bald. Uti tells me he’s starred in five flicks now (he’s clearly happy to take time with an oyibo – good PR angle).  Other cameras are on us in an instant.

Aishat drops home, Sarah and I kick back at my place until a call comes in from another of her friends inviting us to go clubbing at Channel View Hotel. What the hell. I’m in for an adventure even if it is after 11:00pm. The club is near empty. Leather couches and chairs cluster around light-pulsing box tables, each with a bottle or two of unopened whiskey. Sarah’s boyfriend manages the club. He delivers a complimentary bottle of red. Hyper-beat music hammers one tune after the next. Bodies heave in rhythmic gyrating motions in a way us white folk can only envy. I ask a couple of young girls to show me their provocative moves, moving them to laugher when I try to mimic their steps. By 1:30 the club is a sea of writhing bodies and it’s a good time for me to leave.

Saturday Sarah and I meet up at Crispy Chicken for lunch. Think Kentucky Fried. Meh.

 

On my way to meet Sarah I pass the local garbage area clean up.

And this oxymoronic poster, yes?

 

We walk to shops Sarah’s come to know over her six months in Calabar, places that carry exotic things like black Greek olives, rose water, smoked oysters and on the spot fresh made milk shakes. I pick up a small bottle of baking soda. Maybe it will absorb the stale fridge odor that comes with frequent energy failures. 

Skin whitening creams fill shelves and shelves and shelves.

We check out clothing shops. Most everything is nylon rather than cotton. Baffling, that. Prices are ridiculous too. N6000 ($40) for a blouse we wouldn’t pay more than $20 for in Canada. No wonder used clothing stalls are so popular around here.  

Is your old t-shirt hurting African economies?

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/12/business/second-hand-clothes-africa/index.html

I visit Sarah’s office, headquarters for Girls Power Initiative (GPI), one of the institutions I’d considered. GPI works to empower young women through education and discussion around topics like female genital mutilation, domestic abuse, rape, HIV/AIDs and the right to self-determine sexual/human reproductive matters. Facilities are big and clean, owned outright thanks to generous wealthy patrons and a giving community.

An event to send off a handful of UK 18 to 25 year old GPI volunteers gets off to a typical Nigerian start, delayed by some two hours. I meet the founder who is sadly in the early days of Alzheimer but does not realize it. She refuses to address the matter of succession planning. In her professional capacity, and personally too, Sarah is concerned, big time.  She’s tabled a report outlining organizational concerns and identifying solutions. The founder doesn’t get it and the Board so far remains hushed.

As I write this, it’s a steamy hot hot hot early afternoon Sunday. My body is glazed like a turkey.

 

Time to launder, sweep away unwanted house guests, wash floors, and read a little or a lot. (That's a Canadian beaver nickle and a Nigerian house cockroach).

Tired and cranky

Saturday 20/04/2013

Lecherous security guy Bassey, opportunistically drops by for a visit knowing I'm back from travel, Wearing a sickly sweet grin-ace, he hovers. “What did you bring me?” he oozes in his signature off-putting way.  “My splendid self Bassey. What did you bring me?” 

It’s now coming on 7pm and security guard Joe is no-show. Collins put in over 13 hours today. He’s lucky to get the occasional Sunday off. This kind and generous man needs his downtime. Seemingly Joe’s on his way.  Whether that means he’s actually on route or is just leaving wherever he happens to be is another matter. You have to ask, specifically, “what are you doing now?” to really know (an expat/indigene talking point).  I walk Collins towards the gate. He shuts off the big gen. The compound dims and flickers to black. He lets himself out. I bolt the door at top and bottom, behind him.

Twice over the next hour and a half local neighbours come hammering at the door. I tell them to keep an eye out for Joe, that I won’t be opening the gates for them or anyone anytime soon. By 8.30, fed up with no-show-Joe I contact Aishat, Finance and Admin Manager. Next thing, the dogs are barking. I grab a torch and head to the gates, stopping dead still at the sight of a shadowy figure in the compound. It’s Joe. “How did you get in?” I demand. “Show me!” This is not cool. Nor am I.
 

21/04/2013 Sunday Evening
Ewww. Bassey just came to the door, let himself in and stood in the hall looking at me with that icky smarmy grin. "Good evening…."

“Can I help you? I ask.
"No."
“Okay, then out you go.” I open the door and usher him out.
That guy is just plain creepy. Simple maybe? Etiquette challenged for sure. He should not be stepping into this house unless invited. Or anyone else's. It was made emphatically clear to me before I even arrived that no one should or would take that kind of liberty Another something to take up with Aishat.  In the meantime I’ve locked up for the night and am calling it a day.

 

our wee home at Afi mtn

Mr Dominant drill monkey comes to check me out

...and decides I get a thumbs up

Bet ya can't guess this wee owl's name?! 

another personal fave - puff ball on jungle tree

Kim cools off where water pools in the ruts of the mudslide

machete man Chris attacked by sweat bees

Kim and I try to shield ourselves from sweat bees

My "Afi Mountain" children - Chris, Kim and Ozan.

Monday pm 15/04/2013

Given the early morning ahead I should go to sleep but too may disturbing things have been heard today that need unburdening. You hear these stories and accept them with tablespoons of salt. Actually you don’t accept them at all, truthfully. But they keep coming up; different versions from different people. I’m finally realizing these aren’t mere urban legends. They’re the underbelly ugly of Nigeria. Today my colleague Stella, who works as program manager for gender and human rights projects tells me about human trafficking, especially of children. “They disappear, never to be known of again.”  Say what? “Yes, especially babies. Doctors are paid N2million to provide babies for ritual sacrifice. They give a needle in the infant’s neck. The parents think it is dead but it is not. It is used for ritual killing. It happens here in Calabar, in Cross River State.”

At the bush bar farewell send-off for Kim this evening, I meet the infamous Peter, founder of Drill Monkey Sanctuary and 25 year Nigerian expat. This American once upon a time hippie has quite the reputation. He travels in an elite circle of government and big money players, and heads a state environmental commission whose members are heavily armed with AK47s among other artillery. This wild gentleman’s militia team hunt down poachers and unlawful timber barons with nary a hint of mercy. Threats on his life are a daily occurrence. “I’ve seen people parted,” he tells me matter of factly. Parted? “Yes, they start with the fingers, one by one, cutting away body parts bit by bit until there’s nothing really left other than the torso.” Wtf?  “I’ve seen men shackled and cuffed and shot in the knees. When I asked my police friend what that was all about he said it was an escape attempt. Shackled and cuffed? Okay. These things are unbelievable. When you tell people about this stuff, people who have never experienced Nigeria, they think you’re making it up. But it’s fucked up here. It happens. And when you start to understand and accept that it’s true, every bit of it, that’s when you fuck up.  My best friend, a man high placed in the justice system told me to never, ever, trust a single Nigerian. Not even you? I asked. What did I just tell you?! He was incensed. Angry that he had to admit that about himself and the country he loved.”

Frankly I’m still in disbelief. I can’t fathom such barbarism exists in this day and age among people who look just like you and me.

Sidebar: I’m gonna miss Kim. What a great travel partner and friend. Wonder where in the world we might meet up to travel again? Wishing her a good next life chapter or two or three….

 

16/04/2013 Tuesday

On the road by 8:30, driver Patrick, Christine and I stop at Tony’s to pick him up. Nice place. Tasteful. Fab carpenter-commissioned dining room chairs. His daughter is a real cutie petutie. We drive along the highway up through Ikom stopping at the surplus store where I top up on banana gum from Iran and lemon/lime gum from France. Then beyond Afi Mountain, through Wula and on to Obudu. We check four different construction sites under Christine’s care: a medical clinic just outside the entrance to Obudu Cattle Ranch, a four-room school addition in xxx, another four room school addition in Akorshi-Oweh-Bendi and a second medical clinic in xxx. Funny thing, just down the road from the final construction site on our agenda I spot an already established clinic. “Good observation,” Christine says, confused.  We talk too about the lesson spied on a classroom blackboard in Bendi

 

All of these facilities are being constructed because of need. Extreme need. The poverty is mind numbing. But like most poor, life carries on. Children fetch heavy pails of water from rivers that are probably used further upstream by other villages for bathing and toileting. Barefoot boys and men shovel cement into brick molds, heave them when packed and turn them out to dry in the sun.

 

Women launder and lay clothes on patches of grass to dry – patches where larvae climb into the fabric and then into the skin. These same women toil over open fires cooking whatever foods are grown locally to fill the belly. Their nutritionally deprived sons and daughters play in open gritty fields oblivious to their life condition.

 

We finally pull into Ogoja, Cross River State’s main northern centre, just after 7:00. Ikom, I learn is the State’s mid-point city and Calabar, the southern point.

Anyhow I’m pretty weary. Travelling these rutted roads gives one a sense of ongoing movement after the fact. Sort of like wobbly sea legs on land, except more like being tossed around like a kernel of popcorn in a hot air machine. If I haven’t already mentioned it, by the by, we travel in air conditioned 4x4 Toyota Hiluxes. Not shabby.

17-18-19/04/2013 Global Sanitation Fund “Triggering a Community” Training

Wednesday: Training starts off slowly. Participants are quiet. During a “fear and expectations” segment an attendee anonymously lists remuneration as an expected outcome. Murmurs concur around the room.

After tea break as facilitator Patrick talks about effective teaching methods for adults, I spot a raisin slowly moving across the tile floor. Even ants are hungry opportunists.

Inadequate sanitation is a major case of disease world-wide, Cholera among them. Improving sanitation is known to have significant beneficial impact on health in both households and across communities. We discuss how to trigger a community into changing behaviours. The Ignition Moment is the moment of collective realization that “due to open defecation we are all ingesting each other’s shit.”  What's the trigger factor for facility users in the building where these training sessions are taking place?

 

Wednesday 3:50: We’re at the lunch break part of our agenda, a break that does not involve food. Thank heavens I picked up some bananas and peanuts and bread for breakfast earlier. As a meeting intended to teach participants how to facilitate meetings, this fails on two key fronts:

*Time Management? What time management?
* Participatory approach is best. Then why is so much of today’s learning around power point presentations and speechifying?

Thursday:  My observation over the course of this course is that to trigger change you have to personalize the reason for change. With open defecation the whole idea is to trigger personal shame and disgust. With mangrove forest conservation the whole idea is to trigger personal fear of lost income.

Shit calculation is an important triggering tool. Community members use their own measures for calculating the amount of shit per person/per household/per community over a day/week/month/year.  Ask a volunteer participant from the community to scoop soil into a heap to represent the size of his shit each day. Then have the same community volunteer scoop this amount six more times (to represent a week). Mound that amount together. Ask community members to give an alternative measurement “Hmmm is big like a big cassava?” Acknowledge. Applaud (they love to be applauded). Then have community volunteer scoop out that same larger amount three more times (to represent a month). Mound that amount together. Ask community members how many cassava that looks to be? “Four cassava, mmh, yes.” And how many months in a year? “Twelve.” Okay, so 12 months times four cassava equals 48 cassavas you shit in a year yes? “Yes.”  Very good. Let us give ourselves applause!  And chief, I beg, how many people in your village live? “One hundred and fifty.” Okay, so if 150 people shit 48 cassavas each month... You get the picture.

8:45 pm: Third consecutive white bread breakfast, banana & peanut lunch and white rice with tomato stew (sauce) dinner. I’m carb-starched out.  Christine is fending off a bout of malaria. Her body aches, her voice is weak. Driving home after dinner we talk about how malaria is a normal part of Nigerian life. Everyone in the truck has had it too many times to count. “Children get it before five, no, earlier. And it takes more children than AIDs,” Tony volunteers. But does he cover his daughter’s bed with netting? No, she sweats too much at night. Does Christine cover her sons’ beds? Or her own? It’s much too hot. No.

Friday: Villagers poo-poo open defecation

Today’s community visit proves successful: mission triggering accomplished.

Some 250 men, women and children from a remote rural settlement gather beneath the shade of fruit-bearing mango trees. His Royal Highness, the Village Chief, takes his place plum in the midst of his elders council who in turn situate themselves in the midst of their people.  Our dog and pony show is a welcomed source of entertainment. Song and dance kick off proceedings, drawing more to the circle. Spontaneous musical outbursts continue to burst from the crowds and our facilitators over the next couple of hours; religious odes and cultural anthems sung in traditional tongue (think Paul Simon’s Graceland). We introduce ourselves. “Me, I be Patricia.” 

I’m the only iyobo (white person) in a small entourage representing the local government of Bekwarra in the State of Cross River, the Federal Government of Nigeria, and Concern Universal, the Coordinating Agency behind a newly launched Global Sanitation Fund project. This is the project’s debut outing.

Upon permission from His Royal Highness, facilitators move children to another area for their own triggering exercises. And so it begins.

It’s fascinating to watch the villagers create a map of their settlement; something they’ve never conceived before. They’re timid at first, but excitement and enthusiasm builds as they jostle to identify the location of their family compounds, their churches and forests, school and stream – using sticks and leaves and stones and coloured bits of paper on the ground beneath the trees.

Facilitators invite those more outspoken than others, “the natural leaders” to describe the layout of their homes… kitchen facilities…toilets? A couple of them try to claim toilet amenities, but their neighbours scoff. We eventually discern of the sixty-some compounds, two have latrines.

Facilitators invite a woman to the centre of the circle. They ask her to describe a typical day in her life, making sure she includes going toilet in her scenario. 

“Thank you sister; everyone let’s give her applause!”
 Another is invited to the circle centre.
“Where is your house?” 
She points it out. 
“And where do you shit?”
She blanches.
The village’s youth leader, an assertive gent, hollers out in her defence. “We all shit in the bushes. That is what we do here. We go in the bushes.” 

One thing leads to another and the group is in a repeat frenzied clamour grabbing handfuls of sawdust to mark their shit spots on the village map.

A facilitator continues, “Let me ask us, when it rains, where does all this shit go?”

 “It washes into the stream.”
“Into the stream enh-henh? And how do we use this stream?”
 “We use it for drinking.”
Silence. Pause. Embarrassed laughter.  Someone offers timidly, “We drink our shit?”
“We drink our shit, don’t be so?!”

Faces fall in disgust and shame.

Another few things lead to one very heated discussion about latrines. Donor dependency syndrome seeps into the conversation.

“It is too expensive, we cannot take on this cost! What will you do for us? What will our government do for us?”

Taking exception to the buck-passing, an elder rises from his seat. “It is a personal matter. You must do for yourself.” 

As if on cue the children’s group comes marching back into the fold singing a catchy repetitive tune they’ve only just made up in their dialect “Abre nyabung kri bu fere” loosely translated to mean: “We will not shit in the bush again."

These bright eyed youngsters, many barefoot, most in worn tattered clothes, present suggestions to their Chief. Mothers listen with pride. Fathers nod in solemn agreement. The children reach into the hearts and souls of those who can make a difference. Triggering is a success.
 

“We must find a way of doing it much properly,” says one elder.
Action plans are formulated. The Chief decrees dig and bury measures start immediately, to be followed over the next month by the construction of simple pit latrines at every single compound. And so it seems a new open-defecation-free community is officially in the works. One down; hundreds of thousands to go.

Sidebar: It’s raining heavily this evening. I can’t help but wonder what the villagers will do tomorrow when it comes time to fetch their drinking water from the steam.

15/04/2013 Monday

I wake to a violent storm this morning. Lightening cracks into the room in flashes of blinding light making me think it struck and travelled through the house’s electric circuitry. Thunder booms and shudders moments later like an angry drummer pounding next to my bed. Watery pools in the parlour reveal the saggy stained ceiling’s weaknesses. It’s the 15^th of April. Driver Daniel had said the rainy season would officially arrive mid month.  And so it seems.

Seems too I’m travelling with my CU colleagues this week to  Ogoja in Ebonyi State for a three day training session about water, sanitation and hygiene. Two days are in-class, day three takes us to a village to trigger the first community awareness initiative associated with the Global Sanitation Fund. We leave Tuesday. Training runs Wednesday-Thursday-Friday, home Saturday.  Will generous per diems be paid out again? It sure would be helpful after the N18000 laptop repair coming on top of adventure travel. Alas my body is suffering from those travels. A honking big yellow bruise covers most of my left knee from falling up the mudslide at Afi Mountain. Legs, arms and back are dotted with itsy bitsy ever so itchy sand fly bites, compliments of Kwa Falls. No evidence, though of the prawn pinches that startled each of us at different times and places during our swim.  Hope that’s it, that’s all. I’ve been reading Bradt’s Guide to Nigeria, Edition Three and gotta say the Health section is full of eww squirm material.

14/04/2013 No Nepa Sunday

Am I getting used to the heat or is it actually cooling? A bit of both most likely.

 

Today is a quiet day of sleep-in til 9:00; read until eyes blur, hand launder a few garments, sweep and mop floors. A much needed reprieve after Akamkpa Okyong, Easter Sunday, Afi Mountain and Drill Ranch, Obudu Plateau and yesterday’s journey to Kwa Falls. Call it location scouting for much welcomed! genuinely encouraged! visitors from afar. Yes, that means you.

Kwa Falls is another stunningly gorgeous location a short and easy hour from Calabar (and 30km from the Cameroon border). Framed by towering palm trees and stands of bamboo, vine and jungle brush, the water bubbles and froths and falls in not too threatening end-of-dry-season rapids. It’s a good swimming workout; the current gives some resistance. But it’s the company that makes this adventure especially entertaining. Kim invites her colleague Ally, an Australian who manages day-today operations at Pandrillus Monkey Sanctuary, the Afi/Drill Mountain headquarters located just down the street and around the corner from my place. In turn, Ally invites her friend Ivor, an eccentric 50-something academic anthropologist from Massachusetts, USA.

Ivor is researching the Leopard People (?) a group on his radar for decades. This interest spawned in Cuba where he somehow learned long-ago ancestors arrived on slave trade ships from Nigeria. You can still find their kind in the Nigerian outback, described by Ivor as a simple ritualistic practicing people. Incredibly some of their shamanism reveals itself to us on our outing.

As we head to the falls, Ivor, on spying a couple of unusual flags, commands our driver to stop! Behind the bamboo flagpoles sits a small street front building plastered in Pidgin English biblical quotes; gloomy-doomy excerpts about blood and redemption. While we’re looking at this in stunned awe, villagers gather, giggling. A man comes toward us from the other side of the street. “This is mine,” he beams, eyes gleaming like a crazed evangelist. His name is “Mose’s Son.” Come, come inside he says as he unlocks and opens the door to an even more bizarre interior. Everything is coated in red or blue paint with white or black inscriptions and drawings. A prevalent message reads: “Woman cannot with pants go here.”  I’m the only woman wearing pants.  “No no, is okay. No problem. Come, come.” Like the others I squeeze through a narrow slot into a third cavern-like chamber, passing an unusual sculpture, if you can call it that, made of salvaged metal bits, candles, painted boulders and plastic water bottles. “Holy water!” Mose’s Son asserts. A worn and tattered bible rests on a small alter. It’s dank, dark and warming up with body heat. Our host wants to put on his religious vestments and share insights. We thank him graciously and beat it out of there as fast as we can. Villagers run alongside our cab, waving and smiling. Juju voodoo and Christianity sure make quite the pair. 

                                                                                                                                                       
“Best to stop in at the chief’s home,” Ivor recommends. The news of three oyibo women in town is big news and we must pay our respects. He’s vaguely familiar with this area, having done some research here in past. We pull over at the chief’s home. Turns out he’s travelling, away. Next door is a building roped off; strands of gathered palm fronds dangle from the rope, here and there. “They’re a warning from the Leopard People,” Ivor explains. He asks our driver, Friday, to go look inside the house and tell us what he sees. Gripping the driving wheel and shaking his head, Friday says “No, no! That is not possible. It is not good to go there.” Point proven.

We drive a little further then stop at the edge of a collection of mud, tin and thatched roof houses. “Come, I want you to see this,” Ivor says, taking lead. We come to a group of men wearing top hats and bowler hats and traditional patterned knee-length shirts and loose fitting pants. After an exchange we’re led into a house just across the way. An elder sits in a beat up upholstered chair flattened with time and wear. Following Ivor’s suit I cup my hands and hold them up to the bloodshot, jaundiced eyed elder. He blows into my hands…once…twice…a third time. I lift my hands to my chest to acknowledge and accept his blessing. Ivor talks with the elder about ancient maps. The two promise to meet again sometime in the future. Maybe these maps will be shared then. Maybe they won’t.

Refreshed after hours of bobbing at the falls, we head homeward. “Driver you remember I show you road we pass?” Ivor asks in Pidgin. He wants us to taste the finest palm wine, ever, “from a real Nigerian man who lives the real Nigerian farming life.” We find ourselves jostling down a rutted road and pulling into a poor farm house in the middle of compact jungle. The man of the house comes forward immediately with a huge smile and ready laughter. He grabs a bunch of plastic chairs, seats us under the shade of an umbrella tree, then disappears into the bush to tap a palm tree. Nigeria’s version of maple syrup I guess. While he’s gone his daughter Eunice brings out a bottle of kai-kai; distilled palm wine roughly described as homemade gin. She pours and downs the first shot to prove it’s not poisonous. Ivor goes next, then me, Ally and Kim.  Holy crap this stuff is real firewater! It burns all the way down to my belly.

Mr Host returns within fifteen minutes sloshing a 20 litre plastic container full of fresh tapped wine. Like Eunice, he pours and drinks the first cup. We use empty gourds as our drinking vessels. The cloudy liquid smells wretched but the taste is sweet and smooth.  Mmmmm. It’s rather good. I have a second cup then settle into the late afternoon in mellow mindlessness. All is good.

Frustrated. Internet problems are driving me nuts. Patience here is not a virtue, it’s a necessity.

Nigeria is definitely a world of its own. North Korean conflict?  News is nothing if it's not about Nigeria. Thanks to those of you keeping me in the news loop!

05/04/2013 Friday Morning at Afi Mountain Drill Ranch
It feels like we’re on the set of Jurassic Park waiting for a towering reptile to step into the clearing at the base of an enormous buttress-root tree. Our home is a wooden screened hut on cement block stilts. Unknown-to-me birds trill and sing. Insects buzz and hum. Occasionally chimpanzees hoot and holler over something of interest or alarm. Their calls echo through the rainforest. In the distance a group of drill monkeys climb down from their tree nests and gather, waiting for the day’s first feeding. Some black winged moth keeps dive bombing my head as I spy the action.

Earlier, happening upon a second group of drills, I crouch staying still and silent. A big male, I’m guessing the dominant one of this clan, saunters over to check me out. I smile. He bares his teeth in a return smile then takes a seat slightly away but in clear view of my whereabouts. I gather his smile signals approval to the others. Curious Georges take turns coming near for a closer look.

Yesterday evening during the last feeding at the chimpanzees’ quarter one especially sly guy gathers up armfuls of bananas and waddles off to enjoy his cache. Others happily sit in the midst of the pile, peeling and eating, nodding in delight, slapping chests for more, lip smacking with a “pop” sound. All of these charges come from domestic pet life. Some prefer human company over their own kind. Their keeper tells us how intelligent they are, one in particular. “She climbed to the top of a tree and stay put for 10 days while her clan suffered through a bout of chicken pox. She stayed clear and stayed healthy.” She also likes to help the keeper sweep and scrub, and is the one who does a lot of lip “popping” during meal time.  If life treats her well this twenty-something primate could survive well into her sixties.

Enclosures here are anywhere from 5 hectares upwards dependent upon the species and number in a group. I must say after seeing this setup, thinking back to the spaces Toronto Zoo animals are given is a travesty. 

Friday late afternoon
Ahhh, phewwww; a contented body sigh after five hours hiking in blistering heat. Our trail-blazing, machete-man Chris, manager of Drill Sanctuary, took us on an adventure par extraordinaire. Into rainforest thickets that haven’t been traversed by others; past gigantic ancient trees; vines thick as thighs others fine as hair; thinner trees cloaked in deep red and soft pink bubble-like flowers, others sprouting hairy puff balls; the ground a thick carpet of decaying leaves, termite condos here and there.

Sweat covers the body. Somehow it’s a soothing sweat that keeps you in the moment. Clambering up and down inclines, tripping over vines that catch and snare, we come out into a clearing decimated by a mud slide during the peak of last year’s rainy season. Red gritty soil slips under foot. Oppressive heat beats with intensity. The journey becomes a test of resilience. Maja P definitely feels her age. Feet and knees and hips remind me I’m not as agile as “my three Afi Mountain children” –  Chris, 32, Seattle Marine Biologist; Kim, 24, Dutch Primate Specialist; and Ozan, 18, Cyprus Bio-med student.

Climbing rivets carved by the mud slide takes time. A wee slice of heaven presents in the form of a trickling stream with just enough pooled water to dunk heads. A few more mammoth boulders and steep, slippy inclines further we head back into rainforest. Chris cuts a swathe through dense vine and undergrowth. The cool of the jungle canopy feels magnificent, momentarily. A few more paces and we step out onto another expansive open space. The mountain vista is breathtaking. So are the swarms of sweat bees. Our salty sweat draws them buzzing into our eyes and ears, mouths and noses. Yup. This is Africa.

It’s in this region that the Nigerian Gorilla once roamed. Not a single one has been spotted in ten years, save for the gorilla killed by a hunter last year. That hunter is now in jail, not likely to see freedom for a long, long time.

Friday dinner
Chris cooks us a traditional Nigerian meal sans fish: Melon Soup. Start with lots of palm oil; cook chopped onion and garlic until limp; add ground melon seed – stir and cook until lightly browned; add chopped greens –mix until wilted. Serve with Ebe (gari – ground cassava - mixed with boiling hot water til it clumps into one big mass).  Use ebe as a utensil, break off mouthful bits, roll, dip, scoop up melon soup and swallow. Chris suggests seasoning soup with other herbs and spices, adding tomatoes and whatever veggies fancied...but know you’re breaking from Nigerian tradition.

After dins we take a night walk with torches (flashlights). Spot a bush baby (teeny tiny night monkey), tree frogs, pale yellow spiders of varying sizes and crickets of the celery green variety. Walking under night darkness reveals nibbled greens not noticed in daylight, and ushers in a magical sense of Mother Nature. 
Bagged, we bed early.

06/04/2013 Saturday morning
We visit a 14 hectare part of the sanctuary Chris is preparing as a new chimp enclosure. The electric fence has been sitting in a container for over a year. Bribe payments are not yet sufficient enough for release. Such is the Nigerian way.

Sharing contact information and hugs, Kim and I bid “ka di” and hop on motorbikes to the town of Wula. Nab a cab from there to the town of Obudu. Do some marketing. Cab on to the foothills of Cattle Ranch. Catch a high-speed chair lift. At the summit we’re picked up by motorbikes and transported deep into cloud cover. Fog is so heavy you can barely see three feet ahead. The cool temperate air brings skin to a goose bump salute. Ahhh, it feels so very, very good.

Saturday afternoon
Abebe Lodge, our home for the next few days is a shabby rundown disaster. Broken bathroom tiles, exposed water damaged walls, dirty blankets, grey pillows and shoddily finished electrical work reveal and conceal things we’d rather not think about (bed bugs and cockroaches for starters). It’s frightful.

Meanwhile, next door stands a mammoth gated home with exquisite floral patterned fencing. It isn’t too long before us oboyo (white women) are invited indoors for a tour, by the architect no less.  Elated and oh so proud, 29 year young James Atoki takes us through the generous main floor sitting room (duplicated on the second floor as well) boasting mega sound system and giant flat screen TV, followed by the dining room, kitchen, library and five bedrooms one more garishly furnished than the next. Each ensuite bathroom features sci-fi tub and shower enclosures with ambient music and lighting systems. The piece du resistance is the master bedroom. Strands of glitter rope bind plum-size black and white pompom balls into a carpet that defies taste. A gauche white leather Victorian-esque daybed inlaid with bits and pieces of this and that matches a super-size-me bed and ticky-tacky mirrored vanity. The geometric black leather couch with no aesthetic connection to the rest sits smack dab in the centre of it all.

Kim and I are suitably gobsmacked by the indoor pillars, 15 foot high ceilings and sandstone/suede walls flecked with sparkle. Utterly everything has taken inhumane manual toil, from digging the foundation to mixing and pouring concrete. The furnishings purchased and shipped from Malaysia by the owner, however, are tasteless to the extreme. Nouveau wealth tends to give itself away. Architect James tells us the home cost N40million to build. The owner? A civil servant with the Nigerian National Petroleum Commission. Hah. Tell me there’s no siphoning going on here. Meant to be officially occupied today, work pressures keep owner and family in Abuja while festivities carry on in absentia. We chat and sip non-alcohol malt beer, dance and have a jolly good time.

Could go on with other highlights from the day, but for brevity’s sake:
• The driver of my motorbike from Afi Mountain to Wula tells stories of witchcraft, visions, sickness and death as we zip along at 60km/h
• Prepping dinner at what appears to be Abebe/Obudu community centre; some 20 or more people gather on a beat up old sectional couch watching TV Nollywood soaps and playing cards; the kitchen in rear of this room is gut wrenching filthy. Glad it’s just Eme noodles tonite.
• Talking with owner, Victor Abebe, about the unfaithful practise of Nigerian men he tells us typically a man will have his house wife and three or four girlfriends from different villages. “A good wife will let him bring his girlfriend from another village into his home." Really now.
• Learning that Abebe Lodge is actually part of a family compound, as is the mammoth gated house next door, and the tidy bungalow across the street owned by Mrs. Florence the honey seller. Everyone is brother, sister, uncle or aunty.

07/04/2013 Sunday
Definitely not a day of rest, we rise early to cook omelettes for breakfast. Kim lifts a fry pan down from the cupboard to find if coated in oily goo. My appetite vanishes. No cloths, no dish detergent, not a towel in sight, Kim uses a chunk of palm soap and her hands to wash away the grime. I use a dot of palm oil to coat the pan for our fry up and cook over a small gas container. We eat in the community TV room, watching people come and go from different parts of the house, rubbing sleep from eyes. At one point the local drunk sways through clutching an empty beer bottle. Children fill deep buckets with water from the kitchen tap, heft them high to rest on their head and trek out.

By 8:30 we’re on the first leg of our journey: a walk to Igagu Falls. We pass through a settlement with hairy spotted pigs, baying sheep, shoeless children, red-eyed women and a dilapidated communal latrine.  “Spying on this bit of heaven” to quote a local, doesn’t come easy, that is – not until the cloud cover lifts to reveal stunning rolling mountains dotted with every now and then lonesome trees. Farming, ignorance and disregard for conservation has deforested what was once lush canopy jungle. 

Our gentle meandering walk quickly turns into a rough terrain hike. Jarring pains shoot through my feet up to my knees with each descending step. I can hear the waterfall. I can see it way way down in a valley crevice. But I have to listen to my body. If going downhill is this arduous, the return climb will be triply so. I find myself a rock, watch the others move onward, then settle into a lovely long “sit” while long-horned cows and herds of grazing sheep keep company.

Journey two we walk back through the sewttlement to the Bechere Reserve. It’s noon now. Our bodies are telling us we’re pushing the limit, but the moss draped temperate rainforest is SO beautiful we’re drawn deeper and deeper into its cool darkness. We spot Green Turcottes in flight – large birds with vibrant red under wings, enormous brown grasshoppers, orange and yellow and patterned butterflies mostly small, a few monarch size. One settles at path’s edge. I snap a pic of its heart-shaped print.

We walk and walk and walk and walk and walk nearing exhaustion, hoping around the next bend we’ll find a place to rest and lunch. We daren’t sit just anywhere. Nasty biting red ant colonies and snake holes don’t make for hospitable picnicking. We spot a bridge up ahead, then a clearing with half a dozen picnic benches. Fortune smiles on us. Under a canopy of moss and vine we spread fresh avocado on hunks of bread and finish off with mango. I lie out on a bench, Kim stretches across the bridge and we chillax. It’s probably the first and last time we’ll be sitting under Nigerian sun in comfort. Fortified, we decide to carry on to the “canopy walk.” Force of habit, I tap my shoes against the ground before putting them back on. A butterfly flutters out of one – another perfect moment.

The canopy walk brings a good giggle when we cross paths with two Nigerian couples; the women are gussied up in snug club wear – one of them is wearing an outrageously high pair of heels. They snap our pics, we snap theirs.

Journey three we meet our Abebe Lodge guide at the reserve entrance and walk to the playground resort of Nigeria’s rich and famous. It’s only then that we realize we’re at the site of the annual Mountain Race. It takes place every November. Olympic calibre athletes race each other from the base of the mountain up Intestine Road (the cross back) to the summit finish in 45 short minutes.
Abebe Lodge bound, we wander by a few other small settlements.  A group of children dig holes roadside. On closer look we discover they’re digging up grubs for dinner. Ohhh. Heavy sigh. Six or eight military trucks carrying heavily armed soldiers pass by. When we turn up our laneway a short time later we realize they’re all staying at the same rundown lodge as us. Yikes!

08/04/2013 Monday
Home sweet home. Weary. Happy.
Abebe Lodge was too dodgy. Two nights suffice. We catch a ride homeward bound with Mrs Florence, the honey seller we met at the grand house. She’s headed to Calabar to sell 20 litres of Nigeria’s finest. We taxi to Obudu proper, transfer to another cab and head out for Calabar sometime around 11:00. Spot a couple of Harpies in flight en route. Six hours later we arrive in town covered in grit, hot and frazzled. Our maniacal driver takes the road like an Indie track, then turns haughty and hostile at destination ignoring his passengers’ instructions to stop and drop. Kim’s lucky, she manages to get out first. The young student running late for a school seminar is near tears; Mr Driver has no change for his N1000 and won’t stop to let him try to break the note. I fork over part of his fare to help the poor kid out.  Then it’s my turn. Mr Driver and I end up in a yelling match. Mrs Florence sits in the passenger seat uncertain what to make of the commotion. I refuse to pay until he drops me in an area where I can catch another drop ride. Trust the good ol’ Nigerian system: money trumps all.

30/03/2013 Saturday Satisfaction

Wow, wow, WOW~!

Christine and Efiom come visiting Thursday night; we grab a cheap bite from Apples, come home and watch a flick with sub-titles.

Saturday we meet Kim at the “Highway Mobile” at noon and catch a taxi to Akamkpa Okyong a good 60 minutes away. We pit stop to see a baby monkey whose mother was killed by hunters for bush meat and is now an unwitting family pet. Kim despairs.

 Getting as far as we can by taxi we hop on motorbikes. Kim, me and our driver make three. Christine and Efiom have their own.

Dropping bags at Christine’s place, we change into bathing suits, hop back on bikes and take a wild ride through heavily creviced foot paths. Stopping at a village house to hire a fisherman and his boat, word spreads about our appearance; those living nearby come to to check out the three white women. Children with bloated bellies run about bare foot and naked. Men fetch beautiful yellow tubular flowers and red hibiscus after I make a casual comment about their beauty.

We venture on, deeper and deeper into dense growth, passing rubber trees and enormous stands of bamboo. Finally we stop, dismount and take a footpath to the edge of a grossly-ooey-gooey-looking river bed and a high-and-dry dugout canoe. On instruction from Efiom we toss our flip flops into the dugout and begin a barefoot wade. Sometimes we sink up to our knees in icky muck. Christine, who has done this umpteen times before, screams out every now and again; Kim and I try to keep our cool, fearing a croc or gator attack. Thankfully it’s fallen mangrove limbs or sharp-edged palm fronds causing Christine’s distress.  After rounding a corner, we stop and wait. Off in the distance four ripped young men wrestle a dugout through ankle deep water and muck. They join us then lead the way through a good half hour more of mucking about. I had hoped to see mangrove but hadn’t anticipated it would be in this fashion.

Just as Kim and I begin doubting we’ll be able to float this boat, we hit waist deep water and clamber aboard. Within minutes we’re paddled out of the thicket into Calabar River. It’s stunningly quiet save for trilling birds and whining insects. And it’s gorgeous.  We feel like we’re in the pages of a national geographic feature. One moment after the next is simple sublime perfection. This experience can’t possibly be improved, Kim and I concur. Wrong. Next thing our boat is anchored and we’re jumping into the brown currents to look for fresh clams. Forget the clams. I’m blissed out by the cool water and exceptional situation in which I find myself. A couple of the boys pull out huge doobies and chillax in the afternoon sun, bobbing and toking and smiling like kids. I raise my hand with imaginary glass to toast family far, far away on this unconventional Good Friday.

Come late-afternoon currents pick up with the rising tide. We paddle back through the mangrove thicket, a lush tropical canopy alive with butterflies and birds. We paddle through the same places that were only navigable by foot hours earlier. We paddle to where other boats are moored, to the end of our adventure. Trekking back on the footpath we cross paths with a gun-toting man on the hunt for bush meat, specifically, monkey. Mortified Kim learns a piece of monkey flesh can fetch N2000. How many Naira does this hunter earn from a whole monkey? And what does he do if there are any babies? He sells the babies. The whole/how much query remains unanswered.

Evening finds us sitting roadside in plastic chairs munching on deep friend yams with tomato stew dipping sauce and the spiciest Bbq chicken, ever.

Saturday morning brings neighbourhood children to play outside Christine’s door. Petite May-may wears the same tattered burgundy shirt (dress?) she wore yesterday. She and her brother, who has a large appendage sticking from his belly-button, come running for hugs. At least a half dozen more children follow suit. I gather May-may up in my arms and hold her close. The night before Christine shared how emaciated May-may has been and how deeply she yearns for affection, getting none from home. May-may holds on with a gentle tenderness and earnest craving. It is so very hard to set her back down.

 We walk to Mary Slessor church an institution paying tribute to the pioneering Scott who put a halt to the barbaric tribal practice of killing twins. Centuries later, tribalism and strange rituals are still very much alive in these parts. Christine attended the “coming out” event marking the recovery of an 18 year young woman from her recent female circumcision.  Efiom talks about child witches with unquestioning conviction.

Somehow (actually again by virtue of skin colour), Kim, Christine and I find ourselves sitting at the “high table” of the Okoyong Council of Rulers and Chiefs in Akamkpa, Okoyong, Odukpani. Attendees are festooned in garments and costumes ranging from extraordinary to outrageous. Top hats, garish walking sticks, bead and needle-point shoes, long tunics and wrap skirts decorate the men; form-fitting traditional dresses and complimentary head-wraps wrap the women. Heavy heaped layers of colourful cloth encase spirited spirit-mimics. Tribal dancers drum and rattle, snap whips and move with a ferocity intended to scare.  Bottles of booze sit at the head table for the libation part of the agenda we don’t stick around to see. Two tedious speeches into the ceremonies we exit, stage right. It’s the 45 minute diatribe about restoring the nation of Okoyong to its former days of glory that does me in; tribalism at its rudimentary divisional worst.

Back in Calabar Kim invites me to tour Cercopan Monkey Sanctuary. No wonder she’s leaving. The “sanctuary” looks like a living hell for its charges. Cages are filthy, rusted and in disrepair. Some monkeys reach out for touch, some bare their teeth in aggression, some coo, others turn to show their bums in submissive friendship.