the last of it...

so this is it. my last few hours in nigeria. i decided not to do brunch. i figured why should i go thru all the trouble of getting out there and back so i can eat the nigerian version of an american/english breakfast? i'll be home soon enough and can eat whatever breakfast i want whenever i want and it won;t have any PALM OIL in it! so i spent the morning lounging and drinking nescafe and reading magazines (so i wouldn't have to pack them) and then decided to brave the craft village yet again. and it went well! i can totally bargain now! it was great. i mean,a lot more work than going to target but the guys were really nice and i goofed around with a few of them for quite a bit, bantering back and forth. they had fun too, i think! apparently, some people get really offended if you don;t put up a good fight. so i got a lot of beads and some necklaces and bracelets and a few silly figurines (like a brass lizard). i also got a hand painted tablecloth which won't match anything and a wood and seed version of the game mancala. they call it something else here but i couldn't understand it but it's a fun-ish strategy game that i used to play alot a few years ago. and then i hit the pastry shop for a tasty "greek" sandwich with feta and cukes and tomats and whatnot. and i got an apple and a banana muffin for later. and that's about it. i'll get picked up at 5:45p and drop off the computer and phone at the office and then off to the airport. my flight leaves at 9p and stops briefly in kano before the 6hs or so to amsterdam. then a 2hr layover, fly to detroit (8hr?) and then to dc! yay! i should be home by 3pm! anyway. so it's all done. i may post once or twice more just to sum things up and mention a few more things once i've had time to mull them over. one final interesting thought was said by dooshima last night. i asked her who she trusts if she can't trust the police here and she said "i trust in God". and went on to say that that's why she believes there's so much religion here - there's nothing else to put your faith into, nothing else you can trust. pretty powerful. anyway, good luck to nigeria and the future of all it's people.

last full day...

what a great day! so work was slow (of course) but dr singer took about an hour or so explaining the breakdown of the government money for the program and how it gets here and then followed up with some helpful mentor-ish tips. it was interesting and informative. the dooshima and i went to amigo's to get our beef sandwiches which were really good! spicey with lots of green peppers and the meat was only a little bit tough. and then we were off to the pottery village. it was a really pretty drive too. and about an hour later we arrived. and the stuff was great! there's all these little mud "huts" on this plot where the resident artisans live and work. so the guy took us around and showed us where they keep the raw clay, which is local from about 40km away. and then he showed where they sift it and then dry it into big slabs and then the little cellar where it all gets stored while awaiting a project. and then we saw the wheels, drying rooms, kiln, and glazing areas. it was totally cool. even all their glazes are local from ground quartz and other minerals. it was really fun. i could have spent a ton in there but i didn't have any way to safely bring it all back! so i got an awesome teapot and 3 mugs, one which he gave me for free!!! it was awesome. and dooshima got really excited because he let her try the wheel and she had a lot of fun when she didn't even care about coming! so after this totally insane sorm rolled thru we stopped by the dam. it was really peaceful and georgous there. i would have spent all my time there if i'd had a car. it was just so incredibly pretty! i took a ton of pix too. and then we were off to sahad which is a huge indoor shop. along the lines of walmart but not really. and i got some cool fabric for pillows or something and a nice blue wrap. and then i bought a plastic zipper bag that i can pack for my trip too. that way my stiff will all fit safely in my suitcase. and after that we stopped by a mall just to see it and then went back to salamanders for dinner. it was really good too. i had chicken curry and chocolate cake. and a glass of pretty good wine. and then i came back . and i am so tired for some reason! but maybe it's just because i'm so happy to come home. i still have N25,000 to spend so i'll go to the craft village tomorrow and maybe the gift shop and i'm not sure, but i also may go back to salamandars for brunch. i don't leave for the airport til 6pm so i have plenty of time to goof off. i may even call george to see if he wants to have brunch too. i thought about going back to the gallery for one of those mini stone sculptures but i'm thinking not. it's totally heavy and is a little expensive. we'll see. so tomorrow is just lounging, packing and shopping and then i'm off and away. it's been nice...

nearing the end... day 19

wow. today was the most boring day ever. i did nothing. i read and played online. that's it. and i was cranky. and then there was a huge storm and the internet went out. but the seamstress came with my clothes today! and i feel pretty silly. i went kindof overboard on a bunch of stuff i'll probably never really wear. but it was fun and realtively cheap (just over $100 for fabric and making) and i will at least wear something new tomorrow. and i'm wearing my pj's now. but i feel dumb because i didn't notice the bottoms were sewn funny; all the fabric is vertical except one panel on the back! it looks silly! perfect for me, i guess. no worries. it's jammies. and everything fits pretty nice but i just realize none of it is really "me" (duh, right?). but nice none-the-less. i'm sure i'll actually wear a few things but i just feel buyer's remorse right now. anyway, after the trying on of my stuff for dooshima and gayathri we went for a traditional nigerian dinner of vegetable stew with fish and chicken and pounded yam. so they bring out the yam and it's molded into the shape of a meat pie and fairly firm. so you pull off a small chunk and roll it into a ball with your hand and then dip it into the stew and mash some of the greens and meat into the yam ball. and then you eat it! it's tasty in that "ethnic" palm oil way. but the bones! it kills me! i can't take any big full bites because i always get a mouth full of fish bones! but overall it was good and the girls loved that i ate it and didn't mind getting dirty and picking bones out of my teeth. and really that was it for today. i'm still kind of carnky for multiple reasons: i decided not to run because it was crapp out and i was tired (so i went back to sleep, ahhhh...), i did nothing useful today, my public library account has been blocked because of overdue books, i was hungry most of the day, my clothes were not really "me" and i didn't notice until after i paid for them, i feel fat, dinner was not what i'd call satasfying, and my pj's are rejects. it's just not my day. but tomorrow we're going to the pottery villiage and that should be fun! and i still have like $300 in naira that i have to get rid of so i don't lose money exchanging it back into us cash. and i still have my saturday to goof off all day if i want. and dooshima and i are going to dinner tomorrow at salamanders again which will be fun too. so at least i've got plans here at the end of it all! but the internet sucks today so i can't upload any pictures either but they're on snapfish if you want to see me eating and my goofball pj's.

my last hump day here, day 18

i did it. i got up early this morning and went for my run. actually, when i woke up i had totally lost my nerve and decided not to go. but then i thought "what am i going to do instead?" and anyway i would have been really pissed at myself for being up and not going. so i braved the road with running shorts and a baggy usuhs rugby t and hid my camera in a sock that doubled as a sweat towel and took off down the stairs and out the front door. so i just leisurly jogged along and pretended like i do this all the time and it's no big deal and people pretty much gawked at the white chick in shorts running along the street. but most people said hi or good morning which is more than i ever get from fellow runners in bethesda, but these guys were probably walking to work instead of getting their morning sweat session in. so i crossed over into mellinium park to check it out and i was pretty disappointed. first of all, it was really hazy so i didn't really have a view of any of the rocks or anything. but the park wasn't that nice. it was a combination of scrubby grass, attempted manicured landscape and trashey areas in the process of being cleared. there was nothing resembling a trail so i just ran wherever and ended up on the other side of the park pretty quick. and then i looked around for any people nearby before slipping my camera out of it's sockey confines and snapped a couple pics of, well, nothing really. but i wanted to document the fact that i actually made it out. and then i turned around and ran back. it was actually really uneventful and not very interesting. there really wasn't anything to look at. and no where to really go. and when i mentioned it to dr singer tonight he worked into about hald a dozen of our other conversations about how careful i need to be and that it's kind of risky and all that kind of talk. so i went for my run. and nothing bad happened. i don't know if i'll go tomorrow. it feels, i don't know, unfun. i wouldn't run through the park again, i'd probably run on the sidewalk between the park and highway. which means i'll be in full view of every honking taxi for my entire run and i'll pass A LOT of people walking into the city. so those are both pretty annoying and pretty likely to keep me confined back to my room or the gym. i'm going to just wait and see tomorrow. i've also decided i'll just go out the side gate of the hotel (where employees come and go) so i don't have to deal with all the comotion at the main enterance. so maybe... but today was ok. worked a little on more data for my spreadsheets and went to another weekly meeting but other than that i didn't so too much. read more of that aids book too. and then i came back to the hotel and met darryll in the lobby at 6:30 to go to his place for dinner. and it was nice. he lives in a cool place (3 homes within one wall) with some other expats as neigbors. i met his house boy who cooked up some thai beef and rice (with parmesean cheese on top?) for dinner which was very tasty. it was the best beef i've had here and apparently that's because darryll brought the meat in with him from a butcher in germany. but then we had fruit and protein smoothies for dessert and talked about his career and prev med and other workish stuff. but it was encouraging as far as the things i may be able to do in the future if i do a fellowship and get my MPH. apparently if you're a doer you can make things happen so you can go places you want and work on projects that are important to you. so that was encouraging. and he's a cool guy. so that's it. and now i'm going to relax for the rest of my night (or what's left...)

the picture on the top was taken during my run, the girl is dooshima and she's uncharacteristically dressed in more "traditional" wear than her usual trendy duds, and the bottom is aso rock and the moon on the way to darryll's car in the hilton parking lot (it was hard to keep still for so long so it's blurry)

17th day

so wow! today went from total crap to really great! everyone is really on edge because of the budget thing which will all have to be finished by the 29th (the day i'm set to leave, of course) and you can practically palpate the tension. it's not fun. then add a bunch more of that annoying hammering and drilling and all that they're doing at the office and it's a recipe for misery. so i didn't do all that much today; mostly just updated my med list and briefly talked to dr singer about some of the medical and social issues surrounding prevention and treatment of aids. but more or less i was on my own so i just spen the rest of the afternoon reading that aids book that i recommended. it reads so incredibly well; amazing that she can take something so technical and tedious and make it fun and interesting to read while really providing a lot of information. but i found this thing online about a nearby pottery village and asked gayathri about it and she said it was about an hour away and definitely worth going if i'm into that sort of thing. so we asked darryll if we could use a car friday afternoon and it looks like at least a couple of us girls will take an short afternoon trip out there! i am SUPER excited!! so it sounds really awesome and interesting but i have no idea how much i can actually bring home with me but hopefully i'll find at least a few things small enough to be reasonably packable. so woo-hoo! pretty cool! and tomorrow night dr singer is having me over for dinner (i think he said tex-mex!) so we can talk about prev med and the military and other "work" things; the guy's all business all the time! crazy. but it should be nice. and today worked out so great! gayathri and i went to an art gallery after work that's right by her house and it was AWESOME!!!! i had such a blast! and the gallery owner was around and talked to us for a while and i asked tons of questions and he let me take pictures (after some pleading "poor, art-deprived medical student")! but his name is hussein akar and his gallery is called apart in wuse 2, abuja. he ships to the us but won't have a web site up til the end of the year. i asked about alot of the pieces that i really liked and it turns out they were ALL by the same sculptor, named iyke okenyi. apparently the modern art scene in nigeria has absolutly exploded in the past decade and it's really becoming popular (at least with all the diplomats here and in lagos!). hussein says that people will come in and want him to furnish their entire home with the work he carries (which also includes furniture). sounds pretty lucrative. and he also has another gallery in lagos and is planning on opening another in south africa in the next year or so. his shop has art from all over africa, not just nigeria but there's a lot of local art here. not crafts but ART. there's a serious difference. i mean, there are a few cheap, kitchey things but not many. and this guy is young! maybe in his 30's? and he's lebanese. the labanese are one group of people that have had a very long-standing presence in nigeria so he was probably born here. anyway, it was awesome and i was totally on cloud 9. and then dinner! we went to an indian place (with an indian owner!) called wakki's and it was great! we had wine and veg samosas and lamb curry with nan and tandoori chicken with rice and it was all fabulous! really, really nice to have a good sit-down dinner with wine and all. and gayathri also has a cab driver that she uses regularly so it's cool because you just call him and he comes. so i may get his number from her in case i want to go somewhere and then i won't get stranded (for long anyway). so that's helpful to know.

and i may go for a run at millenium park tomorrow morning. it may be like a mile or a little less to the park from the hilton and will only be annoying because i have to go past a bunch of hawkers and taxis on my way there. but i don't know if there are any trails or anything but i can at least run there and check it out and run back. i just don't know what to wear because i don't think i should wear my little running shorts so maybe i can dig up something more conservative. anyway, it's a possibility for tomorrow. but i am happy with today! and one other cool thing is planning our winter break. tom and i were thinking about doing some volunteering or something cool for our annivesary over xmas break and he had the clever idea of trying to get a 2 wk trip to do some medical work somewhere but get it funded by school! he's so smart! i hope it will work out; that'd be so awesome! anyway, it turned out to be a pretty full day, or evening, at least! and now i'm ready to relax with my book, half of a yellow sun...

day 16

ahhh... what a lovely, boring, relaxing day. it was so nice and peaceful. i woke up, read a magazine, did a short workout, showered and went to the pastry shop for breakfast before work. and work was also nice and relaxed; i read an article, read some of a rotation-related book and worked on my medications spreadsheet some more. and then i came home, read, ate, read and that's it! i needed it. it may be lame but i don;t care. but i would like to recommend another fantastic book. this one is called the invisible cure by helen epstein and it's all about hiv/aids in africa and why it's so much more devastating to this population than our own. there are some very surprising reasons! but it is a really easy read that feels just like a novel even though it's filled with cutting-edge research and information (it was published this year). so i'm only 1/3 of the way through but so far the biggest difference between "us" and "them" is their relationship style. western culture is raised with the whole one partner, one marraige, the knight in shining armor, and not sharing thing going on. africa has lived with polygamy for thousands of years and still does. so here's the big difference: concurrent vs subsequent relationships. many men here will have multiple wives or just 1 but with a mistress or 3. but these are not short term relationships; they last for years or lifetimes. here we have that whole get together then breakup then do it again with the occasional random, and usually short term, sexual partner on the side. this is interesting because the us hasn't had >1% of the population infected and at times in certain african countries that number approaches 20% with as high as 40% among certain tribes or cultures. and this is so weird because the average american has more sexual partners than an african. but it's the infectability times the concurrency of sexual relations that seems to make a big difference. a woman may be faithful to 1 man but he may have 2 mistrisses and she can still be infected if he brings hiv home. but anyway, there are tons of really interesting reasons why this is so important but i'm pretty sure it's less interesting in my blog than in is in helen's rendition. read it! it's a pleasure and you'll learn something too! and i got it at the public library so it's not like it a medical book or anything. but i find this extra interesting because of spending time with dooshima and tessie. dooshima is being chased by a married man right now (and for the past 5 years) and is trying to avoid this whole mistress thing because she's cristian and wants just one husband and to be a real, legal, court-married wife. but tessie had previously been a mistress for a few years and the man wanted to make her his second wife but she decided it was wrong for her at the time. it's fascinating because it's very open and accepted but not really addressed per se. so everyone does it but no one is confronted or told to stop. and the muslims can have up to 4 wives based on their religion. hiv is generally lower in that population though because the women are closley watched for adultry which is punishible by death (burried to the neck and stoned to death, remember?). the men are also cirrcumsised which research shows decreases the transmission rate. but i digress... so these grils are an interesting example because they are both in long term relationships that "work" with fairly successful men. here it's all about money and success and support and not so much about being in love. i know there are tons of places at home like that too but i think it's bigger here. especially because so many people don't have secure, steady work or paychecks. anyway, i just think it's interesting and if i try to write more it will end up sounding all convoluted and won't make any point at all, other than to bore you. but here's another interesting thing; so i think it's certain muslim groups, but you'll meet people with the symmetric facial scars all the time. apparently each "group" has their own pattern (some even look like cat wiskers!) that may be as simple as a nick on each cheek or multiple long, elaborate scars running the length of their face. this is done while they're infants, to boys and girls, at the same time as cirrcumsicion (usually just of males with muslims, i believe). so they're just a couple days old and don't remember being cut with the razor (good thing, i think!). but female currcumcision does happen here in nigeria, and unfortunately often when girls are getting old enough to care (early teens). this is a procedure that's done the old school way, at home by a familly elder, to help keep the woman from straying because if she doesn't get pleasure from sex (because of clittoral nerve damage and scar tissue) the she won't cheat on her husband even if he has 6 mistrisses and beats her every other night and has given her hiv. nice, huh. i can't say much though because it's not my culture. i can't say that i agree but i also don't want someone to come to me and tell me why my culture is wrong, so we'll just leave it at that. so aside from all of this talk i just wanted to say how incredibly beautiful it is here. i don't know if i'll ever get a picture that even comes close to capturing even a glimpse of what it actually like. flying into the abuja airport was just amazing. everything is so lushly green, so much grass with just the right amount of trees and grazing cattle and goats. and there are the muddy ribbons of flood water that navigate their way through the landscape. it's not really mountains, it's more ungulating. there are smooth hills and then huge jutting hills of granite that just grow straight out of the red earth. most are balding in patterns but all are smooth with tufts of green grass and the occasional wiley, twisted tree. i just can't explain. it's completely exotic; i've never seen anything like the landscape here. it's there rocks! they're like big humps that just randomly sprout out of the ground! and just the green-ness; it's incredibly intense. rich. georgous. it is truly a garden paradise. then contrast that with lagos. from the air it is the rusty corrugated tin city. the polluted haze hangs like a perpetual gloom. and yet it's such a sharp contrast to what you see at ground level; brightly colored umbrellas atop even brighter fruits and veg for sale by glossy cheeked people in happy-patterned clothes. it's beautiful! once you break through that dirty cloud and stay above the detritus and grim under your feet, in the middle is where the human beauty happens. it's just so beautiful. like a musical piece by bella bartok or a modern dance performance. so dynamic and so much action but all performed with passion and precision. all i can say is it's georgous; a differnt (and stinkier) kind than the lush banana groves but still, beautiful in is own discordant way. i don't know. it leaves me with an inadequate vocabulary for sharing what i've seen. read some of the books i've recommened and you'll see a little clearer. and that's what i have for today. and sorry i haven't been breaking up the monotonous text with cool pix, i haven't been taking very many and they take so long to upload... but they've all been added to snapfish so just click the link on the right and it should take you to the nigeria album (hopefully) and you can see if you've missed anything cool (but you probably haven't). enjoy!

day 15, i think

hmmm... today was quite a day. i got a call from dooshima at about 0830 asking if i wanted to go to the market with her and tessie. so we got in a cab and took off for lagos island to shop (and for me to watch) and get this; there were like no shops open! even though there's the whole church on sunday thing here they were sure some shop owners would go to evening services instead and then there's always the muslims shops that are closed on fridays and not the weekend. but there was little open. tessie got some tops (after trying on a bunch while guys dug thru big baskets of clothes looking for her size). and then we stopped at a (cheap) jewelry shop to brouse. i have to say, it was probably worse that the shops were mostly empty because the market was disgusting! there were various animal parts strewn accross the pathway mixed with a variety of detritus. it smelled like a rotten fish market. the produce and grain stands looked awesome; really vibrant colors and tasty looking dried beans and rice. and they dry fish and roll it into these donut looking things which are actually really pretty because the scales are irridescent and shine all different colors in the sun. and there were lots and lots and lots of wheelbarrows filled with some kind of hooved animal legs. and loads of orange peels and wilted greens littered the ground as well. it was just unpleasant. and the thing was this was just like going to a big outdoor fleamarket; cheap, knock offs everywhere. nothing interesting or original and i have a much easier time finding what i want at target. glad i went but even happier it was a very short trip and i didn't find (or look for) anything to buy. and then we went to a fast food shop, the chicken republic, for fried dough (sortof donuts without holes) and meat pies. we checked out of the hotel and checked in for our flight and after terrible weather and a 45min delay we were on our way back "home". and abuja is georgous from the air! i mean so lush and green with all these rocks and hills; a tropical paradise. and doesn't smell like any of the badness of lagos which has an uncanny resemblance to the smell of busch gardens at 3pm right after a rain when it 97 degrees outside. not to be mean but that's really it to a t (or a p u ). and godday met us at the airport and we were on our way to the office. i got my bag that i stashed there and we shoved everything into dooshima's old honda and took off to pick up gayathri and rush to the market before closing. and fabric! they have loads of patterns and prints and it's all in 3 or 6ft pre-cut pieces. i was so overwhelmed but i only had a few minutes to make my decisions because the market was shutting down for the night and the seamstress was meeting us in 30min! but after a few minutes my brain kicked back in and i was suddenly able to pick out a zillion things i liked at the 3rd booth we stopped at. so i just got 4 different fabrics and it cost about us$25 or so. and then we went back to gayathri's and had some wine while her tailor measured all of us for our outfits. i ordered 3 dresses, 2 skirts, and pj's and it will all be ready on thursday for <$100! very impressive. hopefully it will all work out pretty cool. i may be able to squeeze out one or two more things out of her if i find more fabric that i like too. but we had a nice time hanging out and chatting before i got dropped back off at the hilton and after sandwiches for dinner at the pastry shop i made my way back to my new room! this one is down a different side of the hotel, has a different view (although it's too dark to tell of what) and is very green instead of very orange. and there were slippers and a robe! super cool. and i got complimentary water and apples! double cool! so that's fun. and i'm pretty well settled back in here. and i think that's it. it was a good day; very good!