Friends and Neighbours

wedding++

Originally uploaded by Fono.

Some little kids just assaulted me. They got a pretty decent running start, and came at me with their arms wide open. Then they clung to me momentarily, and bounced off in kind of delayed reaction. Like I said, children get very excited when they see me and Hiromi. They say “batturai,” which means “white man,” and they say it repeatedly, even ad infinitum, like little robots that are malfunctioning due to stimuli outside of their programming. They will frequently say “Good morning/afternoon/evening,” and if we respond to them, they will repeat this indefinitely as well. This is all extremely amusing for them and they just cannot get enough of it.

A lot of the adults we run into are similarly welcoming. Not all of them, of course, because there are a lot of people. Walking through the Kafanchan market is similar to walking through Chinatown, and understandably people tend to ignore each other. Walking through Kagoro is a different matter. A lot of guys will stop me and talk to me — invariably they want to be my friend. I approach these exchanges with optimistic skepticism. They’re always really friendly and I’m pretty sure they don’t have sinister intentions. Generally it’s all good vibes and I really get the impression that they’re genuinely glad to see me in their community. But the fact of the matter is that I’m a rich white dude and we’re all definitely aware of that. There’s no exploitation in mind, I think, but there’s probably some vaguely half-formed notion of receiving charity, working as a partial motivator.

Let me give you examples. Austin works at an electronics store in a nearby city — I actually met him at the supermarket in Kafanchan (the supermarket is one room of approximately 12 square feet.) Apparently as soon as he saw me he “wanted to be my friend.” He also wanted to come to Canada with me, but I explained to him that I’m here as a volunteer under sponsorship and I couldn’t even pay for my own ticket back if I had to. He still wanted to be my friend, though, and he greets me whenever he sees me in the market.

John lives around the corner from me. He’s an old guy with lots of kids, and apparently he’s been around — Japan, Idaho, Toronto, etc. We’ve hung out a couple of times and he just likes to chat. That’s what people do here — without 50 channels of cable, the internet, etc., people just hang around outside and shoot the shit. Sometimes it’s refreshing, sometimes it’s a little tedious. One undeniably awesome side effect, though, is that there’s a palpable sense of community. Whether you’re going to work, coming back, or going down the street to buy some tomatoes, your neighbours are all around you and they’re mostly greeting you. That’s why there’s all the kids all of the time. And that’s how I meet people like John.

And then there are the drunk people I meet at the bars. Let me tell you, Nigerians are happy drunks. My phone is filled with contacts like Big Joe, Zaza, and Kingsley who I will no doubt never hear from again, causing me to delete their numbers after a week or two. But they were seriously into talking with me at the time.

On an entirely unrelated note, I went to a wedding reception over the weekend. Photos are in the photostream. There’s not much to say about it; weddings here are apparently much larger and much less organized than weddings in Canada. That’s probably because everyone pretty much just invites everyone they want. That’s how Hiromi, Steven (Ugandan volunteer), Florence (coworker), and I ended up there — we’re just the friends of Bako (other coworker) who was the cousin of the bride. We went to a big open space with seats/tents/etc. in the yard of the… um… Prison Staff College, and we sat down. And we waited… and waited… eventually others arrived, and there was a M.C. who was in fact a hired “media consultant,” who tried to get things rolling by introducing people who ignored him entirely. The “chairman” and the “chairwomen” of the wedding (kind of like the godfather and godmother of the marriage) attempted to give some speeches and failed miserably. There was some music to which middle-aged women danced slightly, bobbing up and down conservatively so as not to upset their carefully arranged headdresses. In the end, we all scored a commemorative mug and plastic basket. Score!

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Still Alive

moses

Originally uploaded by Fono.

So in case you were wondering, the oranges here are green. They were green. They’ve actually turned yellow, now. And while traveling, I saw some that were orange. Life is crazy that way I guess!

It’s been a while since I posted to my internet weblog. I’ve been real busy-like. The week after my previous entry I visited the capitol for some follow-up training with VSO. This was a little bit awkward for me, seeing as how the scope of volunteers’ missions are typically calibrated for 2-year placements, and the training is oriented around that; in a group of about 15 volunteers, there were maybe three 1-year placements, and I was the only 6-monther. I’ve become acutely aware lately of the nebulous netherstate which I inhabit; I’m here long enough to make the experience a significant interruption in my life, but not long enough to be able to commit myself fully to a project of great consequence; I’m here long enough that I need to think seriously about what I’m doing here, but not long enough that I can forget about what’s going on back in my “previous life” either.

It’s always a little weird coming home after an extended stay elsewhere, which is generally a place that’s a lot more luxuriant than my own. In this case I went from a fairly decent hotel to my house which has dirt floors in the bathroom (okay, that’s an exaggeration; it’s merely dirty concrete.) At the same time another volunteer (from Toronto, even), Hiromi, came to live with me. It’s a lot easier to work on improving living conditions when you’re part of a team, and the last couple of weeks have been a blur of work, buying groceries, buying plastic containers, the occasional beer at bush bars, excited children, and friendly but slightly overbearing adults who frequently express interest in visiting Canada.

There’s a lot to talk about in there — there’s a lot of nascent blog posts, half-formed in my head, about a variety of topics. Like I said, life’s been a bit of a blur lately, and a blur feels a lot like normal life. “Normal” life generally doesn’t feel remarkable enough to write about. That is to say, I’m becoming desensitized to everything. I suppose desensitization to everyday existence is a hallmark of the suburban middle-class net-generation that I carry with me wherever I go. But I keep reminding myself that, “Goddamn it Fono, you’re in rural Nigeria, it’s pretty interesting over here.” So more bloggings will follow shortly.

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