CATCHUP: FINALE

Date Unknown, (Actually, Monday January 27, 2014)

Second day back in Nigeria, err Calabar. It’s a melancholy feeling.  I can’t pinpoint it exactly. Perhaps a month of socializing has upset my solitary rhythm. Being back in Calabar I’m seeing things afresh. The garbage is disturbing. The people though are wonderful. I’ve heard “Happy New Year” atleast three or four times in the past 24 hours. “Happy Sunday” greetings. Big smiles. Hearty laughter. Helpfulness for the sheer sake of being helpful. I suppose the melancholy also comes from knowing this is all very soon drawing to a close. A year-long vacation if you will. Twelve months to put this Canadian mind on a shelf and leave it there.

Thursday February 6, 2014

Emotions are raw.  Twelve months in a strange land and the thought of leaving it and its people brings me to the edge of tears too many times a day these days.

Nigeria taught me to laugh out loud again.

But I will weep when it is time to leave.

Today people dance in the streets as a car with speakers bungee-strapped to its roof drives by blaring Niaja music.  Damn, I should have bought a CD from the two guys walking alongside pawning pirated recordings for N100.

Today 14 year old Happiness returns the book I lent a few days ago. Read, critiqued, ready for “the next storybook.”  She’s asked me for Oliver Twist, the novel featured on her grade X exam.  I will market for it, buy it, and maybe a whole bunch of others. 

“I want you to go to school, to learn, to be successful at what you love and to be rich enough to come visit me in Canada.”  Sometimes her mother holds her back from school. The family stall needs manning. 

I’m hoping mamma acquires respect for her

daughter’s education.  Should anyone be my benefactor-ess, be it Happiness.   I love to see her draped over her school work. She shares space for her pages of notes with piles of bananas, and groundnut shells and shaved green oranges.  I love to see her huddled at the back of the store hut immersed in the pages of the storybook of the moment.

There’s no library in Calbar. Imagine.

Happiness only gets to read what she can get her hands on through school.

Anyone wanna send some books through the Concern Universal address?

Her family street shop is on the corner just outside the compound wall. 

I haven’t ever seen her father.

Her mother is a tall, strong woman with striking cheekbones and broad smiling lips that sometimes scowl at Happiness.

Monday February 17

Comedy of Errors

This UN Benin workshop thing is a string of mis(sed)-communications.  It begins by finding out last minute only after asking UN peeps, that a Visa is needed and then discovering it can only be gotten in person from consulates in Abuja or Lagos – no downloadable online applications available.  Next, reps from within the same UN programme responsible for hosting this international journalists’ event decide to come visiting in Calabar for the same time frame, which causes the new CD to question my commitment to even consider being away and why I’ve even been invited to participate when my placement ends less than a week later.  And then the headaches associated with arranging travel, accommodations and logistics in Lagos: a) flying in on Sunday; b)needing to head to the consulate first thing Monday 9am c) coordinating a pick up time thereafter to drive from Lagos on to Cotonou Benin with unknown-to-me other attendees who all want to leave early; d) a French-first Benin based coordinator who makes initial plans, neglects to explain these extenuating circumstances to others or the driver taking us and then gets twisted when asked for clarification – language barriers at play; and now e) a driver who somehow thinks he can expedite travel by showing up at the hotel to pick me at 7:15 am. Seriously?  The consulate doesn’t open until 9.

RANDOM LAGOS ...

local barbing salon

And the flight an experience in itself: only moments after takeoff the cabin crew are instructed to prepare for landing. What the?!  I sit cross legged and begin to ease my mind.  Best to be calm, icicle cool.  As the ground grows closer I reach out to the man sitting next to me and ask to hold his hand.  It’s that need for human touch.  He’s confounded but obliges. Turns out we’re making a pitstop at Uyo airport; somehow I missed that announcement and think we’re making an emergency landing in the middle of nowhere.

Cotonou Workshop et al:

 the high table

tuned in to translation

chillaxing afterwards

BENIN: Of Border Crossings and Road Rage

Friday February 21, 2014

It seems innocent enough, stopping roadside on the outskirts of Cotonou to pick up fresh smoked fish, but 20 minutes of price haggling really sets us back. Then comes the crossing saga. Every Benin border official is on the take. Fistfuls of Naira are squashed under paper stacks and stuffed in pockets. Journalist Sen is hounded three times and acquiesces twice. Oddly I’m left alone until the last guy on the Benin border rung asks me for N500 for no good reason. I refuse, snatch my passport out of the sleazy guy’s hands and march onward. What the hell, I’ve already got my Benin exit stamp. Back “home” in Nigeria all seems tickety boo. We’re processed and stamped through. Our cab is stopped a few yards away by a Nigerian official who wants to see immunization papers. The other two cab companions haven’t such documents, one doesn’t even have a passport. No wahalla for them. I pass documents to  Mr big-sense-of-self knowing full well everything is in order. He puffs out his chest, “This is not right.”

“What? Are you serious? You’re looking for dash aren’t you? Well guess what, you’re not getting anything from me.”

He doesn’t like that. My Nigerian compadres explain that I’m not Nigerian (kinda obvious, the white skin and all) and that I’m not going to be dashing him cash any time soon.  They play into that great big bruised ego, even stroke his arms. We’re off.

Two hours later it’s dark. The highway is crammed with traffic and people. Driver Ismael snaps at Sen to shut off his laptop. 
“This is bad.  This is very bad. Being here in the dark is unsafe. There are criminals. They use the traffic to rob cars.” Ismael explains how he has seen armed robbers squeeze through the metal congestion touting AK47s and armloads of take.

Lagos traffic here means literally inches between vehicles – front, back and at the sides. The car passenger mirror scrapes against a truck, nearly ripping off. Driver I’s anxiety is contagious.  I pull on my cap, sunglasses and tuck my hands into my sleeves to try to hide white flesh.

Come morning my Arik flight – surprise – leaves at 7:30a.m. rather than 11:00am as scheduled.  No notification.  I’m fortunate enough to get a seat on a flight to Uyo, a city  in Akwa Ibom, a state unsafe for oyibo travel and grab a cab from there for the 90 minute drive to Calabar.  It’s on this drive that I learn the stretch of road we travelled the night before, between Lagos and Benin is notoriously unsafe.  Meh. We made it.

Backward Bound

Tuesday February 25/14

I hesitate to say homeward bound, as home is where the heart is and these days it’s been here in Nigeria. 

Today I take 14 year old Happiness and her six-year old sister Blessing to Drill Ranch. Liza has agreed to share her books with this voracious teenage reader.  Happiness is chattier than I’ve ever seen, talking about the books she’s borrowed and their storylines. When we walk through Drill gates, the sisters’ eyes widen. Blessing lunges for my hand when baby chimp distresses.  We visit the Duiker with butterfly ears for a few minutes before all eyes glue to the Drill enclosure. Lady Lazy sprawls atop a tall wooden beam, deep asleep. Patriarchal papa sits with belly full, babies swinging from ropes and from  perches.  Grown male and female chimps rest quietly in portable metal cages. Sedated? Baby chimp screams and howls, holding face between feet, contorting in emotional angst.  She doesn’t understand what is going on. Delightfully, it turns out this chimp clan, held in a small enclosure for three too-long years, are finally moving to Afi Mountain.  Departing within 24 hours.  How fortunate to have caught them on their last day. 

When Happiness steps into Peter and Liza’s home and spots shelf after shelf, stuffed with books, she is on them in a flash.  To decide is overwhelming until Chimamandu’s Under theYellow Sun. 

“The first book you gave me to read was Purple Hibiscus. I loved it and this looks so good. I will have it done in a week if my homework is not too much.”   Walking slowly from the compound, she reads front and back cover, thumbs pages, caresses her new treasure with a reverence that’s magical.

Now here I sit keying this last entry from Calabar as a CUSO sponsored communications specialist. Back to Canada bound.