Nigeria

I know, I know – my post titles are very imaginative! I spent the last two weeks in Nigeria doing a clinic audit. We started in Abuja (the capital), then spent a few days in Lagos, which I thought was the biggest city but I have since been corrected then on to Calabar with a day trip to Uyo, back to Abuja with a day trip to Kaduna and finally out via an overnight in Lagos. Most of the travel was flights, which I far prefer to long road trips as was the case in Uganda last month.

Anyways, Abuja (top left picture) was established as the capital of Nigeria only in 1991 as a compromise between the mostly Islamic north and the mostly Christian south. And it’s clearly a created city – with very little vibe or soul. They put us up in the Hilton, which was the craziest hotel I’ve ever seen. Monstrous, we were paying about $315 per night, internet was another $22 a day, breakfast was $30 if you only did the fruit and breads and cereals part (I made the mistake of taking a piece of bacon one day and found out later that going to the meat section of the buffet added $10 to my bill). But the internet was super fast and the gym was amazing! I kept getting lost on the way to my room.

It’s an interesting time in Nigeria. As most probably know, the President, Yar’Aduna secretly went to Saudi Arabia a few months ago to get medical treatment and the country’s leaders weren’t sure about where he was or if he was okay. He gave a brief interview to BBC’s Housa-language radio station. Nigeria’s Senate took that as proof he was outside the country and turned over leadership to the Vice President, Jonathon Goodluck. From when he left to when they turned Goodluck into acting president was about 80 days. Yar’Aduna was then snuck back into the country but hasn’t been heard from or seen since. As I understand it, Yar’Aduna is a muslim from the north and Goodluck is a Christian from the south and that’s part of the problem – there are vested interests in having their man in power. There’s a lot of blame being thrown towards Yar’Aduna’s wife as well but I can’t quite figure that one out. While I was here, there were several very large protests insisting the Goodluck become vested with all the powers of a President and all the papers talk non-stop about the debates.

The other big news while I was here is the revenge massacre in Jos. We work in Jos but after the massacre in January, we avoided it on this trip. While we were in Calabar, another massacre took place – they say 500 people (although reports vary). Apparently they came at 3am, fired shots into the air to bring people out of their houses and then machete’d them when they came out. It was well organized and in about 4 villages all at once so there’s a lot of suspicion that security forces/army knew about it and either assisted or ignored it.

My general impressions are of a proud, talkative (in a loud, debating sort of a way), chaotic and hot country. Several similarities with India. The population is about 150 million (nowhere near India’s 1.5 billion) but in a much smaller area so the density is actually only about half of India's. Lagos is Nigeria's most populous city (and the second in Africa after Cairo) was a lot like Mumbai in the areas near the sea. In fact, they estimate Lagos to have 15.5 million people, which is not far behind Mumbai. There’s entire slums of people living in huts on stilts in the bay, which I would love to know more about. Guys ride by on the back of motorcycle taxis with three goats across their laps! I can see that this city has as much to notice and enjoy and get annoyed at as Delhi. I kept thinking as we passed the most chaotic and overcrowded areas that if I were still in India, this is where I’d get out of the car to work. It was nice to not do that here.

Calabar (the river is pictured above) was by far the most pleasant place we went. A little cooler, had already started raining and was luscious green. On Saturday we did a self tour of the city seeing everything that was listed to see. First we went to the Calabar Museum. It’s in the old house of a British governor (or something) and they insist you get a guide (who rambles lifelessly through the script) so I just went at my own pace which was half the speed of the guide. Calabar was best known for being the "origins" of the slave trade so much of the museum focused on that. They've sealed shut all the windows so the museum is uncomfortably hot and really has more captions than artifacts. Next we went to the Drill Monkey Ranch, a rescue place for drill monkeys and chimpanzees. It’s a tiny little place and keeps them in smaller cages than I would have expected for a rescue operation but their big ranch is a few hours away in the jungle. The drill monkeys are the coolest monkeys I’ve ever seen, with faces that look like masks (picture on left). It’s a matriarchal society and the alpha females pick the alpha males. The females are a quarter of the size of the males but the males will run scared if chased, as they know the females can get other males to do their fighting for them. The benefit of being an alpha male is you are the only one allowed to mate with females whose butts are red (in heat). Other males can mate with females not in heat. They also had 3 young chimps. It’s the first time I’ve really interacted with chimps. I first went over to the two in a play compound who were 4 and 5 years old (they have our lifespan). I was trying to get pictures but the chimps knew better and threw handfuls of sand every time I put my eyes to the camera. But there was one baby chimp Eko (right) who was still being raised by humans and not yet integrated with the others. Eko took an immediate liking to me – or possibly my sparkly red Indian sandals. She would come over and bury her head in my legs or grab my hand (as she's doing in the last picture). They really are just like humans – it’s completely eerie.

After the ranch we had some shwarma for lunch (for some reason the Lebanese dish is every where in Nigeria - second only to endless fast food chicken joints, which also have shwarma) and then went to the Marina, which has a lovely walk and park and houses the slave museum. The slave museum had many of the same photos as the Calabar museum but had an exhibit you walk through with life-sized dioramas. The first was of a slave ship showing people stacked up in the hull - we've all seen the blueprints before but seeing it like this was vomit-inducing. Just horrifying. It went through the kidnapping on this side (first they traded prisoners but when they ran out started village raids), the selling on this side to slave traders, then on to the US side. It was mostly stuff you'd expect to see although all the white men were dressed like today's businessmen, not like men of their time - which was eerie and odd.

There are a thousand other stories including being fooled by a twin pretending to be her sister during the audit. All in all, I think Nigeria is like many other places, if you choose to love it, you can find plenty to love but if you don't there are a million things to complain about. I always try to choose to love it.