TRAVELS w/P: Tales of Adventure Here & There

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.