my zebra greets...

kenya

My fantabulous two-week trip to Kenya on my way home.

home sweet home

I love my new house in the bush and will forever miss it, including all the lizards I was so close to naming.

My overdue housewarming with staff which included an educational tour of the Philippines. (CI posters compliments of Mother Grace)

Brand-new toilet and bath.

It was fabulous living in an African village in the middle of the rainforest. For me it made up for all the inconveniences. At least for a while...

Nigerian moments

more photos coming up here...

Mt. Cameroon

ang ganda! yun lang muna masasabi ko for now...

homecoming

One of the things I wish I had more time for (or rather, more access to laptop battery and online time) is writing stories in this blog. Two years in such an interesting continent amounts to a lot of tales, but unfortunately my time is up and I still have many blog post drafts in my mind. Maybe I will have the time in transit, or maybe I will still be inspired the first few days when I get home, or maybe you will just have to meet me for coffee somewhere (yes! real coffee!!!). I will make slideshows before I see anyone (with more photos for those who have seen my first slideshow, including my recent trek up amazing Mt. Cameroon), and I really look forward to catching up. I will have the same Smart number, and will be home Nov. 11 or thereabouts. See you soon!

hands

One of the interesting sights in Calabar, decidedly the best city in the country. Behind me is the Cross River.

pepe

In Iko Esai, if it’s not hot, then it’s not food. Lots and lots of chili pepper, ground to a pulp on a slab of rock, is what make Nigerian dishes. In the south, particularly, the popular food is “pepe soup” – goat or fish pepper soup, which is basically meat cooked in water and red hot chili peppers. And this can only be taken with rice, while other “soups” are supposed to be taken with what is called “swallow”, so named because they form some sticky mush into small balls, dip it in the soup and swallow without chewing. Into this category belong pounded yam, garri (cassava minus all the starch), fufu (fermented cassava), and semovita (some white mound made of wheat, popular in the north). Plantain (sab-a) is also a staple. What is called soup is not really soup as we know it, but a wet mixture of leaves sliced into tiny bits, onion, some kind of meat, usually also with dried fish, “maggi” (MSG cubes), and yes, pepper. Ask for rice to come with this and you spend half an hour explaining what you want. With all this variety in staple food (compared to rice for every meal in the Philippines), I really can’t understand why food here is the same wherever you go. And yet Nigerians scoff at Oyibo (white man) food, and wouldn’t touch most anything, particularly where garlic is concerned.

acquired skills

The road to camp during the rainy season. Among the skills I learn here are how to dig your pick-up out of a ditch, how to go across broken wooden bridges, how to change a flat without a jack... but as for this photo, well - this is just a Lakambini ad, hehe...

Work

It’s probably high time I talked about what I do, or what I’m supposed to be doing, aside from staring at the trees waiting for people to show up to meetings and workshops, if they can be bothered. Officially, I am a Small-Scale Business Advisor for the sustainable livelihoods program in our host community. What that’s supposed to mean, it’s all a bit hazy now, and maybe always has been. What I actually do is wait for people to come back from the farm or the forest and get people from outside the village to teach them things so that they don’t go to the farm and forest as much. Tough, since villagers are around pretty much only on Fridays, which are market days, and Sundays, for church, and there is no way they can be pulled out of their farms, or church.

Escargot. Don’t knock it, but snail farms can actually bring money in Nigeria. In the north where everything is dry, they are priced as high as bushmeat. So I started with snail farms in the village, since we have them in our forest, but not enough to sell without farming. They’re low-cost and easy enough to take care of, which is a crucial detail, since the culture in my village is not exactly animal domestication oriented. I thought setting up four pilot farms would take about two months to set up (and then move on to other kinds of farms), but this was before I knew the time clock of the people. Two years is more like it. So then I realized people cannot work in groups (forget about cooperatives), and the youth were asking for trading skills instead, so I set up an apprenticeship program, hoping to bring in services into the village which people have to go elsewhere for. Unfortunately, the women didn’t know any other vocation apart from sewing, and had to ask permission from their husbands first. Meanwhile all the men just wanted to be drivers. And this is a village where there is not an inch of paved road. Well, let’s hope something comes out of those who have been selected.

I also tried a little organizational development, a bit of gender sensitivity (a lost cause), even a stint on HIV awareness (a foreign issue to me before coming to Africa). Into these I applied participatory approaches, a thing which I have taken for granted in my past work. The problem with democracy in Nigeria is that people are at a loss when presented with options. The concept of choice is quite hard to grasp when people have had no opportunities, and have been going on with their lives the same way as their parents and their parents before them, and are actually quite resistant to change, even when they moan and moan about their situation. So my time in Nigeria has probably been the least productive years of my life, except that I discovered the joy of cooking (since I don’t have a choice), learned how to cope with minimal amounts of water (no choice there either), and went through all the possible things that can go wrong with an old pick-up on a bad road. But as I keep saying, it has never been boring. Simply keeping your sanity here is a very high accomplishment. And for living in a village where land disputes are settled by burning down the house and where your new-found friend could be dead tomorrow by some unknown sickness, I take a bow. Oh yes, and I do thoroughly enjoy living in the middle of the rainforest, even if it means co-habiting with the lizards and running out of the house when the ants attack.

Random Thoughts on Coming Back

It was the right decision to come back, but after three months of living in a sane world where real coffee can be had in any corner, I find that I have very little patience for Nigeria. I thought I had been refreshed but instead I just realized how things could be, and here I get really frustrated or annoyed at attitudes that don’t allow this country to be efficient and easy. Nigeria has turned me into my mother – I now expect the worst out of strangers. And this, I think, is a tragedy. I never realized how brand-conscious we were until a friend here, going over the stuff I had brought from home, asked me what the bag of Lay’s was. I replied, just read the packaging, but after several seconds of turning the bag over and over, I took the bag and saw it actually doesn’t say potato chips anywhere. Simply Lay’s, paprika, and it just presumes the whole world would recognize it. Have I already mentioned that a survival tactic here is to not think of this country as part of the rest of the world? It may have seemed ridiculous then, but coming back I'm really glad I brought a broom (silhig, walis tambo), which has made a great difference domestically. Other things I'm glad I thought of bringing are battery-operated MP3 speakers, sign pens, and cheez whiz. One can never bring too much cheez whiz. (They should have sponsored me instead of the cave congress.)

light reading on nigeria

This joke has been passed around amongst us volunteers, and I just want to share it so you guys get an idea about this country from other people. I don't know who wrote this but I found it pretty funny: A man dies & goes to hell. There he finds that there is a different hell for each country and decides he‘ll pick the least painful to spend his eternity. He goes to the German hell & asks, “What do they do here?” He is told “first they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the German devil comes in and whips you for the rest of the day.” The man does not like the sound of that at all so he moves on. He checks out the USA hell as well as the Russian hell and many more. He discovers that they are all similar to the German hell. Then he comes to the Nigerian hell and finds that there is a long queue of people waiting to get in. Amazed he asks, “what do they do here?” he is told “first they put you in an electric chair for an hour. Then they lay you on a bed of nails for another hour. Then the Nigerian devil comes in and whips you for the rest of the day.” “but that is exactly the same as all the other hells, why are there so many people waiting to get in?” asks the man. A concerned fellow calls him aside and said, “Because there is never any electricity so the electric chair doesn’t work. The nails were paid for but were never supplied by the contractor, so the bed is comfortable to sleep on. And the Nigerian devil used to be a civil servant, so he comes in, signs his time sheet and goes back home for another business!!”

Changes

The remarkable changes I’ve seen:

1, We now have shiny new paper currency, half its original size! First time I saw it, I almost said to the taxi driver, what, you’re giving me a 20-euro change?!?

2, The bus from Abuja to Calabar (a 10-hour trip at least) is now airconditioned all the way. Of course that doesn’t mean it’s actually cool all the way.

3, Some parts of the highway have actually been fixed! Hallelujah! Probably the same phenomenon as roads in the Philippines when election time draws near…

4, Every single street in Calabar, even the most obscure, has a sign!

5, The motorcycle drivers (our equivalent to tricycles) are now required to register and wear helmets.

As for my village, it has now started raining heavily in the afternoons, and there are two new establishments, but other than that nothing has changed.

to people i saw or talked to..

salamat sa lahat who took time out to see me in my deranged state while i was home, in between worlds. it's good to have affirmed that a sane world, a world which was starting to get hazy back here, still exists, and that there is life back home, and that it's all GOOD. can't wait to be back in october!

Nigeria, the second time around

And so I finally come back, after a month that extended into three – and not a day sooner, for eight more Filipinos were abducted while I was waiting (and waiting and waiting and waiting) for my connecting flight in Amsterdam. Question – bakit mabenta ako sa mga itim at mga puti pero hindi ako pumapasa sa mga Pinoy? Masyado bang mataas standards natin?? Haha.

Poňeta the first thing na sumalubong sa akin paglabas ko sa plane ay yung amoy – sa rampa palang naamoy ko na yung baho, at ang ingay. Ang ingay ingay ng mga tao dito, lahat nalang ng bagay pinagaawayan verbally. I groaned inwardly, ang thought, bumalik nga ba ako para dito? (Pasensya na alam ko masagwa tagalog ko pero kelangan e.)

I got a warm welcome from the VSO Nigeria staff and an even warmer welcome from the other Pinoy VSOs who met me in Abuja, but the first really welcome sight didn’t come until the day I was travelling back to Calabar – women selling pears. You guys who’ve seen my slideshow know what I’m talking about. Then there was a very cheery Claire (our new deputy director) who picked me up from the bus station, and Amy who called, saying she was very glad I’m back. Amy is an ex-VSO who now works for another NGO in Calabar, and has been very supportive during my “trying times”.

As I was going over the stuff I brought, including the package my sister sent before I came home which finally arrived, I realized I will most probably have a soup diet for the next 6 months. That’s probably a good thing considering all the weight I regained from all the eating I did back home.

What I missed about Nigeria are the big wide spaces – unpeopled plains, rocky outcrops, and forests where you will not bump into anyone all day if you choose. Also, I missed the friends I made, even though most of them have already left the country. Thank God Heidi is still here! (more to come..)

playing with mud

Among the first things I noticed as I was familiarizing myself with the village is that their construction and their industries are indigenous, and for the most part sustainable. Who would have thought of mud houses in the Philippines? Do we have them somewhere I'm not aware of? They’re quite strong and sturdy; cooler inside than the concrete houses. The support is made of bamboo poles, then a bamboo frame is tied by cane rope (rattan) to keep the mud in place. Mud is then packed in (amazingly, this is the woman’s job), and if they bother to plaster the walls it actually looks neat! Though most of them leave it just as it is, which is a shame, really. This country isn’t known for their sense of aesthetics. But it amazes me how one can build a house here for practically free, without much skills required. I’ve never paid so much attention to construction before!

break muna...

Hi everyone, if you're wondering why the sudden change of scenery, I'm back in the Philippines for an unexpected break; I'm going back as soon as it's confirmed the travel ban to Nigeria has been lifted for me as well. In the meantime I've been thoroughly enjoying my time back home, and will try to be productive by fixing this blog. Technobobo me, I found your "lost" comments, hehe. It's nice to know my friends check up on me even when I'm in far-away Africa. :)

(beaches featured from top to bottom: sabang, palawan; olotayan, roxas city; boracay, aklan)

Ahhh... 2007

…the year I go home!

That was one of my first thoughts as we were dancing and watching a fireworks display with thousands of celebrants at the Calabar stadium at midnight. The governor of Calabar organized this month-long free party at the stadium with different performers every night, in a commendable effort of promoting Cross River State as the tourist destination of Nigeria. I wouldn’t have made it this far if not for the incredible support of the other volunteers, both CERCOPAN and VSOs. Between 3 months to 2 years, depending on their term, they have all widened my mind and given me strength and encouragement.

Thank you.

When i first arrived, I met not only the CERCOPAN volunteers but also those from Pandrillus, another monkey organization working with chimps and drills. Social life in Calabar usually consists of volunteers and other expats from other NGOs getting together for beer and streetfood at a bushbar.

The CERCOPAN volunteers who arrived at about the same time as I did... they're all gone now but they were my friends for the first year... and probably beyond, though we're all geographically apart.

Pete and Jess, who arrived from the UK in their landrover, helped alleviate my insanity for 6 months when they volunteered to help out in Rhoko.

Jon, the surfer dude who could really relate to my missing the ocean, who taught us how it was perfectly fine to crash parties in the village, and who made sure I had decent supply of clean water during the dry season (bless his soul!). And Tony, who will lead his countrymen to be development-oriented Nigerians.

Geraint, who was my first house guest and was a real sport trying to fit himself in a foot-too-short folding bed. He and Jonathan had this nice house in a neighboring village and I would always crash there. Being with these guys was a refuge, and Jonathan is an excellent cook! (that’s him watering his basil)

Heidi and Caroline have been a breather - I was really able to unload a lot of stress, including a lot of girl talk, and though we mostly whined to each other, it's great to have girlfriend support!

Si Manong at si Ate - Hermes who happens to speak Ilonggo (YES!), and Amie, with whom I feel like I am the Ate. They've basically taught me more about Filipino life and food more than I ever learned back home.

It's great to have a support group among VSO volunteers. Amy probably got me through the difficult times more than she realizes, and now she's even moved to Calabar! Pete and Mary I have adopted as parents whether they want me or not. :)