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!