CATCH UP PART I

SorryO. It's been a while thanks to vacation travel, return  to an uber busy schedule back in Calabar, departure to Abuja and onward to Canada.  So, here's catchup in snippits:

Lord of the Dance

Thursday December 26

Have you written it all down?” Dad asks.

No, but I will.

I’ve just had the best, ever! marathon conversation with family.  Mom and Dad are hosting a Boxing Day gathering of merry makers 35 and.  Kaleigh tells me she’s meeting family she never realized she had.  Well doneO.  Connection is what it’s all about. It’s that irrefutable human instinct to be part of something bigger that brings such pleasure.

While family is rekindling continents away, a few of us expats have created our own pseudo xmas family: the group’s designated driver George (Yiorgos) a police attache and Costas a Ph.D IT specialist both from the Greek Embassy in Abuja, Frank (aka Al) a VSO volunteer from the Phillipines, and Esly and Sanne, two Netherlands ladies also here on VSO’s tab. They’re a low key group, easy guests.

Today, our vehicle’s red license plates are spotted by the executive director of Calabar Carnival. We’re escorted through road barriers to VIP parking and front row canopy seats. The State Governor and his entourage take their place beside us. How privileged to watch the cultural parade in such comfort. I feel special. Television and newspaper cameramen shoot and snap away.  Enh. Nothing unusual for us oyibos. A couple of hours into the festivities the MC approaches George to ask if I’m the Ambassador of Greece. Seriously?

The cultural parade features music and dance from the country’s different regions.  There’s lots of drumming. Lots of hollowed cow horn blowing. Lots of intriguing costumes adorned with peacock plumes, animal skin loin cloth and beadwork.  Lots of crowd pleasing River Dance/ Nigerian style foot stomping, accentuated by shell and bell anklets; one troupe wear knee high metal rings. Many dance along the hot asphalt route barefoot. Benue State is the fave for most of us. Sporting Tiv black and white wraps, they dip and weave in a contorted fashion; the children I’d seen dancing similarly in one of our triggering sessions now makes sense. 

Evening finds us on Marion Street at Monic’s bush bar and then the Christmas Market. If anyone asks us, we agree to tell them we’re a delegation from Belarus. Most Nigerian’s won’t have a clue about this country. Our greeting?  “Opah!”We swap names and emulate each other’s personas. Do I really wear my glasses on the tip of my nose, wildly gesticulate and ask deep dark questions?  Ummm hell yeah.

A grand day to be sure, it’s now after 1:00 am and time to call it a night. Morning comes soon.

The morning after the day before

Saturday December 28

All of us are weary. Yesterday’s heat melted away every ounce of energy. Sweat pooled and dripped from behind knees, collected between fingers and toes, soaked clothes that stuck to overheated bodies.

Stoked and sporting festive masks we arrive for the Carnival early enough to buy seats under canopy shade out front of High Quality Bakery. That’s around 10am. The parade is meant to reach us by noon but doesn’t actually get underway until after 5pm. Crowds are thick. We think we’ve situated ourselves at one of the main performance vantage points but disappointingly discover the dancers are spent after doing their thing some yards up the road. They pass without so much as even a wave. The canopy flaps that shield us from sun impede clear sight of passing floats.  After too many hours of sticky skin drenching heat, I seek occasional breezes crossing behind the canopies. Babs and H, two of the bakery’s three principal investors/operators join me. They keep those of my entourage who drink refreshed with complimentary bottles of ice cold Heinken. By 8pm we’re back at the house cooking a fast pasta dinner. We’re told the Carnival will carry on into the wee hours, but as we make our way back to Marion a steady stream of cars suggests otherwise. Barricades have been removed. Crowds long dispersed. It’s just past 10pm?!

“The carnival was poor.” 

 “The costumes were not as good as last year.”

“This is the worst carnival.”

Street consensus is unanimous. Without a comparative point of reference it’s still fair to say we’re disappointed with Calabar’s signature event.  I bid auf weider zien as Costas and Frank and Sanne and Esly and George pull away for the long car ride north to Obudu. They’ll sleep well tonite, the cool mountain air a welcome respite from Calabar’s 24/7 humidity.

JUST LIKE THAT

Sunday December 29

How glorious to sleep in. I’ve begun to think my internal clock won’t allow that luxury, but today I don’t wake until 10:30, make a pot of decaf, fall back into bed to read and wake a couple of hours later.

Spend the better part of the day poolside at Axari’s gabbing with two new Nigerian friends and Texas Marty. As boozy eyed as ever Marty asks if I remember Eric, “the bald guy.”

Umm, no?

“He’s dead.”

Say what?

“Yeah, he’s dead, the day after Christmas. It was liver failure, excessive internal bleeding.  Four of us had to carry him out of his room. You can’t call 911 around here. There are no ambulances. You should have seen the hotel trying to figure out how to get a vehicle closer to his room. When we got to the nearest hospital they had a helicopter waiting to air-lift him to Navy hospital. But he was gone in six hours. Just like that.”

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Monday December 30, 2013

Today was nothing exceptional. I picked up a few odds and ends for the trip to Uganda and Rwanda, found a cyber café to send email and killed a few hours hanging with Tina tailor.  Hopes are that she can make a dress for Sarah before I leave to Abuja Thursday.  In between, it’s end-of-year time. What that means around town I’m not sure. No one seems to have plans other than returning to homestead villages. So I’ve accepted an offer to do the same. I’ll catch public transit from Calabar’s main transportation hub tomorrow afternoon travelling some 45 minutes north to Okurikang junction leading to the State of Akwa Ibom.  Then it’s a west-bound ride for another 20-40 minutes before meeting up with Effiom and riding by motorbike to his village, Akpap, just outside of Creektown.  This is the same area spent traipsing thru mucky-muck mango swamps Easter weekend. It’s a place where children have enormous belly buttons from botched deliveries and extended bellies from poor nutrition. It’s the neighbourhood where members of Pandrillus Peter’s task force, combating illegal logging, were nearly blown to bits by a bomb last week. A community marginalized by poverty. It’ll be interesting to see how the ending year is sent out, the New Year heralded in and where I’ll rest my head when all is done.

Books read over the last 10 months:

Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts

About an escaped convict who spends his fugitive years in Bombay where he established a free medical clinic for his fellow slum-dwellers and worked as a counterfeiter, smuggler, gunrunner and street soldier. Even though it’s 933 pages you’re still left wanting more.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney

A must read for Africans and African expats; academic slugging with gobsmacking insights.

The Marsh Arabs, by Wilfred Thesiger

Meh. An outdated non-fiction read about marsh people, tribal Arabs living completely water-dominated lives. 

Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Almost unbearable yet it somehow made the 2006/07  #1 New York Time Bestseller list. It was probably the timeliness of the subject matter: building schools for impoverished Pakistanis and Afghanis – “in the forbidding terrain that gave birth to the Taliban.”

Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamandu Adiche

Such a gifted writer who exposes the underbelly of Nigerian Christian fundamentalism, patriarchal dominance and the toll it takes on innocent children.

Americana, by Chimamandu Adiche

African American or American African, in this brilliant novel the author writes about life from both vantage points.

La Cucina, by Lilly Priyer (?)

A delightful story set in a gourmand’s favourite setting with Italian characters who discover the sensual power of kitchens and their outcomes, as true foodies have long known.

The Inbetween World of Vikram Lall, by M.G. Vassanji

A Canadian award-winner with good reason, this narrative follows the story of an East Indian born and bred in Africa and his coming unravelled.

The Question of Bruno, by Aleksander Herman

Not all that memorable since I can barely recall the storyline; something about living in Eastern Europe during a period of violence and strife, immigrating to the U.S. and recounting travails.

Monkey Luv, by Robert Sapolsky

A non-fiction look at nurture verses nature.

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, this chronicle of poor black families in 1940s Ohio is heartbreaking.

Forests of the Heart, by Charles de Lint

This Ottawa-based Canadian author weaves a fantastical tale about juju and the spirit world of First Nations, Celtic and Mexican-Indian peoples.  Much of the story is set in a city besieged by a brutal ice-storm (Ottawa/Montreal 1999?). Most of the writing is palatably bad.

The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman

What would happen to planet earth if humankind were to disappear in a blink? This New York Times Bestseller examines the enormity of destruction left in the wake of Homon sapien carelessness.

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, by Tom Wolfe

Unreadable disappointment.

Out with the Old, In with the New

Thursday January 2, 2014

To my surprise, Effiom arrives in Calabar to escort me back to Akpap Oykong for 2013/14 festivities. We catch a share taxi at MCC and Mobile late afternoon. Squished like a tin of sardines, we six passengers rattle and roll along a route just as bad if not worse than the dancing road to Ikom. Though I understand nothing of what he is saying, Effiom’s quips break fellow passengers in laughter. This is a guy who seemed so quiet when accompanying his VSO mentor, Christine A. He tells me he likes to listen and learn, to soak up what he hears like a sponge.  In his own zone he’s called the “Master” by student beneficiaries of the Mary Slessor Foundation, an organization he now manages. Over the course of my visit I come to realize he is widely known and respected by folks young and old. His entire 32 years have been lived in this place where faces are familiar and everyone knows everyone.

We arrive at the Okurikang junction and hop a bike; a threesome squish. I’d forgotten how beautiful this area is. It’s lush, peppered with fushia and mauve, deep blue and iridescent yellow flowers. Women and children walk the shoulders carrying buckets of water from nearby streams. The houses look so tidy, front yards swept clear of debris.  

At Akpap town roundabout we grab Effiom’s bike and head up the road to the house where Christine lived. It’s empty, vacant since she left.  But the children are still there and gather tentative at first.  I don’t see sweet Mary, the tiny child with piercing dark eyes who crawled into my arms and held tight on my last visit.  I teach the ensemble how to play hopscotch while Effiom sweeps and tidies.  Pineapple spines bear tiny new fruit, the fruits of Christine’s gardening. That girl loved her pineapple! It’s a wonder her mouth wasn’t one giant cankerous sore the way she wolfed them down. As I watch the children chasing after each other one of them stays by my side; she sits squatting on her feet and stares into my face.  Mary!  She’s grown SO much it takes time to recognize her.  She’s taller with a fuller face and a light crop of tight curls, still dressed in tattered clothes that don’t fit.  “I remember you,” I whisper.  She stares deeper, “yes.”

As night falls “corper” joins us, a new 20-something graduate from Lagos working at the local primary school as a teacher. The three of us take off again on Effiom’s bike, turn at the roundabout to a house with strands of Christmas lights, coloured strobe lights, Tupac tunes, platters and bottles plentyO. And so, the night begins.

Another guy, “second-son” I call him, becomes part of the four-man chaperone team that stay by my side over the next 18 hours. Effiom and his posse: my boyz. 

Feeling comfortably numb we shift to our next venue, an outdoor bush bar. The table fills fast with bottles of Star. Wrestling is airing on the small mounted TV set. Rose! It makes sense that she’d be joining me for this memorable experience. After all, we shared her last NewYear’s Eve together. I definitely feel her presence.  Nine months in Nigeria and this is the first time I’ve seen wrestling.

It’s also the first time I’ve seen chicken wings! I order a stick of six. When they arrive at our table the guys scoff.  “No really! Don’t send them back; they’re a treat in Canada.” Heavily coated in pepe they rival even Honey’s suicide version.  While we wait for midnight when the churches let out, Croper teaches me how to dance Nigerian style. Second son tells me how his wife has left him and returned to her family. He can’t provide for her. A certified welder, he hasn’t the N35000 to purchase equipment. He has nothing to present to his wife, to his inlaws. I can see where this is headed and tell him straight up that I cannot provide financially but will ask around on his behalf. He asks if I’ll come tomorrow at 7am to help with peacekeeping efforts, the first day of the new year. Seven in the morning? oooK-O.

Fireworks crack. Young women finally show up, dressed down after hours Amen-ing in their finery. We return to the happy den, call my folks, my Boyz send their greetings in Efik and Yoruba.

Highlight snippets:

Pig out on ginger rice and tomato pepe stew at 2am

Wake early to roosters

Breakfast on Efung soup (periwinkles and skin and hunks of unidentifiable meat and fish) with garri - lovingly prepared by Croper. I dip and swallow the broth, barely.

Travel by bike – our foursome to Creektown

Build an Inukshuk for Rose

Watch baptisms in murky shit-brown water

Snap pics of flowers

Pit stop for smoke

Take back roads into another village to deliver December salary to Mary Slessor security

Buy a goat leg hanging from a roadside stall.

Travel into more back roads to Effiom’s home – meet his wife and two children. The baby cries at my whiteness. The little girl plays coy, so I do the same and in no time we’re fast friends.  I watch her sucking back mouthfuls of Star and smacking her lips with satisfaction.

Bid Adieu.