Christmas Eve was unexpectedly a lot of fun. The four of us at camp went down to the tourist cottages where Zoe (British director of a partner NGO) and her parents were staying and had a hoot with the party favors they brought all the way from the UK!
this is sandra, the volunteer camp manager; jan; and geraint, another VSO volunteer from a nearby town who spent christmas at the camp with us. this was our christmas dinner, and we were supposed to have chicken (which is pretty special as it comes all the way from calabar) but there was something wrong with the solar power for 2 days and it spoiled. so sandra and jan had to go down to the village and chase one tough and scrawny chicken but it didn't make it in time for dinner. we had a nice meal anyhow, and the company's what really counts. happy holidays, everyone! :)
and this is how the cassava gets dried and becomes garri. there's fire under this huge metal pan; very hot! no idea how we do it back in the philippines...
If my months here will amount to nothing, at least I’m learning how to cook from scratch. My first attempt was a pancake, and I just kind of thought about the ingredients without actually knowing how to measure or how to go about it. But voila! I got it great the first time. A great feat for a fast food person like me. One time it was Nicky’s birthday and I know she loves chocolate so I tried to make cookies with chocolate syrup. I’m amazed what one can do with Milo. Yes, Kix, may Milo, mabubuhay ka dito! I thought I wasn’t so big on chocolate, but what deprivation can do! I had such a choco fix that afternoon! Then I was able to make pizza without an oven, and who knows what I can whip up next! VSO Nigeria has actually made a great compilation of recipes using local ingredients and measurements, and it takes into account that most of us don’t have electricity.
Ironically, I’ve had to cook rice here for the first time. Even with all those camping trips, I always got away without having to cook rice. Kasi sa lahat ng staples dito, pinaka ok pa rin rice, kahit na ang pangit ng variety nila at ang mahal, sa North kasi talaga ang nagtatanim ng rice. At syempre sobrang low tech ang pagka-mill. Pero Bunny, pinagtyatyagaan ko favorite food mo! I actually got it right the first time (Bot, naalala ko pa ikaw yung rice guru dati). The second time I thought, why not try it on a frying pan; much easier to clean. Weeelllll…
The thing about cooking for myself and having no fridge is, no matter how much I like my lunch I always have to force it down my throat for dinner.
If anyone knows how to cook laing (pangat), puso ng saging (banana blossom), bananaque and ibos, please email it to me in very simple steps.
The price I get for wanting a conservation-related placement is that I get thrown in one of the most remote areas, in a village just at the borders of the Cross River National Park, a village that is a clump of mudhuts and flat rainforest all around. I get stuck where there is no electricity, no post office, no cellphone signal, and absolutely no mechanism for handling solid and human waste. You would think, as it is back home, that the more remote the area, the cleaner the water. Well, not so at all here. Water from the few streams which dry up during the dry season (like NOW), is dirty. I feel that taking a bath and washing my clothes are rhetoric tasks, really. I only feel really clean when I take a bath at the stream at Rhoko Camp.
Ok, for those who don’t know yet, my NGO here is a conservation organization founded by a Canadian and mostly run by volunteers, with a focus on preservation of primates (you guys should really visit the site I sent out long ago – www.cercopan.org. Our main office in Calabar (the capital of Cross River State) is a rescue center with over 90 monkeys (orphaned when their mothers were hunted for bushmeat – go to www.bushmeat.org if you want to know more about the issue). Then about five years ago a solar-powered electrified enclosure in the middle of the forest was built, and about 30 monkeys were airlifted to this enclosure, in preparation for their (we hope) release. This is Rhoko Camp, 8 kilometers into the forest from the village (the road from the village to the camp, though traversing streams, is much better than the road from the village to the highway). Some of the volunteers stay here, together with local staff who care for the monkeys and patrol the surrounding forest.
Then there is I in the village, with two other staff (well, the staff at the camp are from the village and trek everyday anyway, even if there are quarters for them near the camp). So I trek to the camp to get my dose of decent conversation, clean water, and solar power. It’s also the place where I can freely wear shorts (oh joy!), though of course insects here, though there’s less chance they are malaria carriers, are more, since this is deeper into the rainforest. I’m actually expecting malaria to hit me any day now, starting on my 3rd week in the country. It’s just impossible to keep away from mosquitoes all the time. Most of the volunteers have had it, and since I take prophylaxis, it will be very mild IF I do get it. That’s why, even if I don’t take any drugs, I’m making a regular habit of my doxy, which is about the only routine thing I have been doing here.
I still can not believe the things that women can carry on top of their heads. A big basin-full of cassava, several huge pieces of firewood, yam, a bunch of plaintain, a whole sack of gari, a machete (bolo), a big bucket of water, and sometimes all together, too! Their entire vertebra must be compacted together! They can’t carry anything with their hands, even a roll of toilet paper goes on top of their heads. From the time they learn how to walk they’re already trained to carry things this way. That’s why even the very young girls walk tall and straight, and very gracefully. That’s why, too, that they’re incessantly afflicted with waist pains and back pains and whateverelse pains.
This is one of the women leaders (who has sort of adopted me) when I went to farm with her. She has a very light load here, just several pieces of yam, but you get the picture.
The chiefs here seated (there are two for the village, don’t ask me how that works!) visited Rhoko camp for the first time to see (and supposedly settle the issue) the land clearing of one farmer along the road near our education center. This is the main hall of the camp, 8 km into the forest, which I walk to charge batteries (through solar power), and also to recharge myself. That’s Jan standing on the right. He works directly with the monkeys, training the keepers and making sure the enclosure and cages working. As I had mentioned, he supervised the additions to my “enclosure”, too!
My neighbor who shits on my front door every morning. Well, just about every hour, actually. If I had a shotgun… but it’s probably good that I didn’t; I later found out that she’s the beloved pet of the chief’s wife, and she’s been really friendly with me. There are lots of free-roaming goats in the village, unfortunately they’re mostly for display and not for meat.
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the VSO volunteers who arrived in October 2005. we were together only for 4 days but we all got along very well. i wish i could see more of them during our 2-year stint.
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this is jorn and toby (in this order). jorn leaves for another job at cameroon at the end of the month; will miss him.
Stuff that would be very well appreciated if you can sneak into your letters to me (not in order of need/preference): News articles Clippings on anything interesting, kahit crossword Haring Ibon Pocket calendar for 2006 (it’s nice to look at my “no mining no logging” calendar in my wallet from time to time) Flavored tea bags, especially those with fruit/flower infusions (lipton lang nandito) Sachets of Off! Powdered soup (those single-serves good for a mug) Iced tea!!! (it doesn’t exist here!) Cheezewhiz (yung sachet na rin) Cheese powder (yung pang popcorn)
I would be eternally grateful (seryoso) if someone will send me: Barako (or any ground coffee) Cheese
Kahit na ilang bwan bago dumating dito I’ll eagerly wait for it. If not, simply letters would be greatly appreciated too, as I am so cut off from civilization.
“the road to hell”
…as Darryl, a former volunteer, I was told, used to call it. Ironic how this is among the first signs that greets me as I enter the village. The trip to Iko Esai, where I will be staying for two long years (for now anyway) was the longest, most anxious time in my life. After the main highway from Calabar we turned at a junction, whereupon the road just got from bad to unbelievable. I know most everyone thought I was crazy for doing this, but by the time we had passed the neighboring village Iko Ekperem, even I thought I was crazy then. I already felt suffocated (with 2 years ringing in my head), and I had not even seen Iko Esai!
It’s not on the map, so don’t bother looking for it (God knows I’ve tried!). If you do get a good Nigerian map or Google Earth, look towards the southeast near the border of Cameroon. Iko Esai is a village in Akamkpa town, which you will find on the map. It is somewhere between that and the Cross River National Park or Oban Hills. It is a cluster of 6 villages and 5 other villages in its periphery, and Heaven is one of those smaller villages (don’t ask me why it’s called that). I guess the villages are comparable to our sitios, although Iko Esai is not exactly a barangay, it’s not even a proper local government unit. It’s hard to understand and it’s all very disorganized, as with everything else in this country. Anyway, here is a view of it.
So that’s the main road, and it doesn’t stretch for much longer. At first I was shocked to see mud huts along the way from Abuja to Calabar; little did I imagine I would be living in a community full of them. But no, my house is made of hollow blocks, made as crudely as imaginable (again, as with everything else in this country). This is my living room/guest room/kitchen, with Nicky, the Cercopan deputy director, and Mike, the education assistant, who is an “indigene” of the village and who has been introducing me to everyone and showing me where everything is.
This was taken the first day I arrived, and Mike was showing us how to cook the most common Nigerian meal – gari (processed cassava) with soup. Every food here is some heavy carbohydrate (gari, yam, plantain, or rice) and soup. Whatever soup it is, it has 2 cubes of “maggi” (broth bullion); some green leafy vegetable; often with pounded okra (just so you get the slime without the fiber) or some other pounded seed to thicken it; sometimes with some kind of meat, but at the village there’s just disgusting dried fish (not our daing or barol), “ice fish” (which is more disgusting, since it has traveled continents and has supposedly reached Nigeria still “iced”), or crayfish (dried hipon, and I mean the Ilonggo hipon, not actual shrimps), which is probably the least gross of them all. Oh, and of course, lots and lots of “pepe” (sili). Anything without pepe here is not food. But more on food later.
