Back to school

On Monday James and Ruth returned to school after the mid-semester break and so did I.  Ten years after I started learning my last language (Gaelic) I'm back in the classroom attempting to learn Hausa.  I'm extremely grateful for all the prayers supporting my progress as I'm sure my great age has slowed me down a little.  Not only do I have to contend with vocabulary and grammar but Hausa is a tonal language so for many words I have to remember which tone I should be using.  At times I can hear it but not reproduce it, at times it's difficult even to discern but then today is only my third day and I'm sure things will get easier.

The classes are run by Bilhatu, a lady who worked as an accountant for the federal government for many years until she felt God calling her to get involved in her church's Hausa ministry.  Initially she was helping local women learn to read and write in the language but one day she was asked to take one of the classes for expats who wanted to speak Hausa.  She never looked back and most of the missionaries in Jos have been through her course and loudly sing her praises.

The classes are held in an area of Jos that used to be mixed until the crisis of a few years ago.  Now the Muslim familes have moved out and I drive to the school past houses destroyed in the violence. Bilhatu runs meetings for Christians and Muslims to get together and look for peace.  Both sides have suffered and both are very wary but they have come for talks and even held a three-day football tournament with mixed teams and compulsory peace training which culminated in a procession through the Christian area which Muslims had been afraid to enter since the trouble.  People are seeking peace and we pray that both sides would continue to get involved and find true peace.

I'm hard at work back at school but on Tuesday the government announced public holidasy on Thursday and Friday for sallah, another Muslim holiday.  Coming from a country where public holidays are announced a year in advance, it takes some getting used to only having two days' notice.  James and Ruth get another two days off school so they are quite happy.

Abattoir Field Trip (I go to the nicest places)

WARNING: Some people (especially vegetarians) may find the photos in this post disturbing.

Some of the things we take for granted in the UK but are difficult to get in Jos are decent cheese, ham and bacon.  Apart from keeping a cow (perhaps when we move to TCNN) there's not much I can do about the lack of cheese except save up to pay the large amount it costs to get the occasional chunk.  However, bacon and ham are another matter.

Ali Robinson (out here with Wycliffe and whose parents actually led some of the courses Fraser and I did when we were at the Wycliffe Centre in the 1990s) has been experimenting with curing her own ham and bacon.  She's an abattoir veteran and kindly agreed to take a group of us on a field trip to buy pork and then cure it at home.  We tried curing it a few weeks ago but the ham started to go green after a couple of days.  Deciding that discretion was advisable, I gave mine a decent burial, unlike some other hammers who cut off the green and ate it anyway.  Obviously I haven't been out here long enough yet.

We decided we wanted to try again and this time do it from the beginning.

Once you've been to the meat market you'll never look at a butcher's shop in the same way.  There a single fly in the sterile environment of a shop with refrigerators is cause for concern.  On the stall, as long as you go in the morning when the meat hasn't been sitting in the heat all day and there isn't a swarm of flies you feel OK.

Every single part of the animal is available, from the horns to the heart to fillet steak (if you know how to identify it).  Ali is greatly practised in poking and prodding and telling the stall holders which particular bit of the carcase she wants.  It was a real education and all cuts of meat cost the same - N800/kg (about £3.40).  There was a pig area, beef area, goat area and sometimes a lamb area, although pigs are only slaughtered on Saturdays. It's one way to ensure your meat is fresh; it doesn't come much fresher than being alive that morning.  I did feel sorry for the solitary cow tethered to a tree.  It looked rather concerned and with good cause.

With our meat packed into the ubiquitous black plastic bags we left.  I still had curing salt left over from the previous unsuccessful attempt so I took my pork (and the fillet steak for tea which I couldn't resist) back home.  The hardest part of this process is trimming the meat.  I felt a great sense of achievement that I only had to call for the first aid kit once.  Sharpening knives makes a difference, it was a good clean cut all the way through, just have to hope it doesn't get infected so my finger drops off.  The rest of the family had better appreciate what I went through so they can have bacon butties.


Now the bacon is in one bag in the fridge and the ham curing in another.  It'll be two weeks before the ham is ready but we'll be able to eat bacon next weekend.  Needless to say I'll be keeping a close eye out for any colour changes this time and be praying that there's plenty of electricity to keep the fridge running.  Next time you simply buy a packet of bacon or some slices of ham at the supermarket I hope you truly appreciate it.

Our beef stall

The buckets are for rinsing the innards

Ali (dark hair) checking the pork

Wildlife Park

It's the "mid-semester" break this week (hooray!) so we went on a family trip to Jos Wildlife Park.  Sometimes we like to splash out on excursions so today we thought nothing of the £2 it cost for us all to get in (and that included a 200 naira fee for permision to use the camera).  After the health and safety consciousness of British wildlife parks the one in Jos is very refreshing, although Fraser did feel somewhat unsettled at times when all that was between us and a carnivore was a twenty year old chainlink fence.  There were no signs saying don't climb on the walls - some of the enclosures positively encouraged climbing up to look down on the crocodiles or snakes.  Parts of the park were like a secret garden of fallen walls and overgrown paths, many of the enclosures were not as big as we might like but the animals looked cared for and the staff were all friendly.    It was a refreshing change to wander round a wildlife park without freezing to bits (the last one we visited was Edinburgh Zoo) and instead of grey squirrels raiding the litterbins there were monkeys making off with titbits.  I did wonder if the black cattle wandering about were kept to provide food for the carnivores, especially when we saw the lionness and her cub gnawing at a jawbone after the meat wheelbarrow had gone round.

Not only did we see monkeys, chimps, tortoises, crocodiles, an elephant, hyenas, ostriches, a lionness with her cub and many other creatures but there was also a museum.  The Pitt Rivers in Oxford has nothing on the Jos Wildlife Park museum.  You enter to see an elephant head staring at you.  Go behind it and all the gruesome bits are still there.  There were creatures of all sorts preserved in glass jars, stuffed, dessicated and skinned.  Unfortunately many of them were moth-eaten and suffering from the effects of too much dust but it was certainly an experience.  I'm sure we'll be back.

Bee hives: the honey in Nigeria is much stronger tasting than in the UK

Whose family?

As usual we went to chapel at Hillcrest this morning.  The preacher was a Nigerian church leader who spoke about Abraham and God's promise to him of a son and then led into our adoption as children of God.  The comment that struck me was that, as friends of his in America are jumping through all kinds of hoops in order to adopt a child and give that child the right to bear their surname, so we are able to add the name "God" after our first names as Jesus has given us the right to be called children of God. He also suggested that whenever we meet or are introduced to someone we should drop the title "son/daughter of God" into our profile and watch the reaction. 
 
An odd thing happened at lunch today.  We had David Rowberry with us (Wycliffe & Glasgow) and I was wanting to have a steamed  pudding (cinnamon and mock apple aka green papaya).  Easy to whip up you might think. Yes if there's power to work the electric beaters, too much like hard work if there isn't.  I planned ahead, prepared the pudding on Saturday night when the generator ensures electricity, put it into my trusty Lakeland pudding basin (see earlier post) and pressure cooked it for 10 minutes, intending to give it the remaining cooking time today.  In the morning I was glad I did as there was no power.  I lifted the lid to check it, it had risen nicely so into the cooker it went to finish steaming.

Pudding time arrived and I opened up my basin ready to tip it onto a serving plate.  I don't know what chemical reaction had occurred (suggestions please) but any sponge-like qualities had disappeared leaving a gooey (delicious) mixture which could only be spooned into bowls.  It was my ideal pudding - just like the raw cake mixture I enjoy so much but with the reassurance it had been properly cooked.  I probably couldn't produce it again but we certainly enjoyed it this time.

A wellie tree

I now know where they get wellies from in Nigeria.  They really do grow on trees.

Mashiah Foundation

 I’ve found another worthwhile place to spend money.

Leaving our car still with its insides scattered on the ground and no sign of the mechanics who’d promised to come back this morning, I happily went with Mary Beth to the Masiah Foundation in the Tudun Wada area of Jos.  Within huge grounds the Foundation runs a clinic, school, home for orphans and HIV positive women, sewing workshop and outlet for the handicrafts the women produce.  There are even a few geese to act as guards.

It was my first trip round a Nigerian school and I enjoyed seeing the attentive pupils in their cheerful checked uniforms.  It’s actually housed in a building that will become the expanded clinic once money has been raised to build a new school.  All of the AIDs orphans attend the school but it’s also open to the community and has expanded to about 180 pupils from 2 years old upwards.  The centrepiece is the very welcoming library.  I could have spent a long time in it and one of the problems the school has is getting the children out of the library when it’s time to go home.  There’s a good selection of games, commonplace in the UK but far rarer in Nigeria.  Many children have never come across boardgames or jigsaws until they appear in a school lesson.

The football pitch & possible site of a new school building

I was impressed by the school and delighted by the beautiful handcrafts in the shop.  Now I know where to get large beanbags, cushions, quilts and rugs when we finally get to our house at TCNN.  They even sell floppy hats but I’ll wait until it’s time for a trip to the UK before getting one of those to embarrass my children by wearing.

Each product has a label with a little of the story of the Masiah Foundation.  I’ve reproduced it below.

A poverty stricken woman with HIV received free medicine from the Masiah Foundation clinic, however one thing was still disturbing her.  She met Pastor Bayo and pleaded, “The doctor told me I have to take this medicine with food but there is no food in my house.”  Bayo handed her a few hundred naira but knew that handouts would only help for a day.  He believed there must be a way to help these women earn money to care for themselves, after all, many of them were strong and capable of earning a living if they only had skills.

Bayo had often seen his wife Mary Beth making quilts.  In 2003 he asked her to start a sewing programme for the women.  Today Women of Hope is a distinctive shop featuring the creative work of over 100 women and orphans who are infected or affected by HIV/AIDS.  The women testify that earning money through creating handcrafts has given them strength and purpose to go on living.

A good place to spend money – and I even got a complementary cloth bag.

Testing times at BRICC

Over the past couple of weeks the ladies on BRICC's skills' acquisition course have been assessed on their abilities.  Each of them had to produce bread and doughnuts to be marked by a selection of hungry volunteers.  They passed with flying colours and are now ready to set up their own businesses.  At the side of most of the roads you find pots of oil on top of open fires and women peeling potatoes to make chips or frying doughnuts to sell to passers-by.  It's an important source of income for people who have few opprtunities and can make all the difference to a family's finances.  The next skills course will be on how to make beauty products.  I don't think they'll be as many men offering to assess that one.

When Besa has misbehaved we put him in the bathroom to calm down and reflect on his naughtiness.  This morning he discovered the toilet paper.  Think Andrex puppy.

Shopping

Shopping in Jos is somewhat different from popping down to Tesco every week and coming home with all that you need.  There are only a couple of shops that I've found that actually display their prices.  Go to any of the small stalls or kiosks and you have to ask.  The price will depend on what you look like, if you're a regular, how business is going, how the stallholder feels that day and how well you can haggle.  

Yesterday I went into town to buy fruit, vegetables, fish and a printer cartridge.  Most of the time I enjoy the hustle and bustle of the streets and markets, being able to stop the man with the huge dish of plantains on his head and bargain for what I need (I haven't yet tried it with the man with the live hens on his head).  This time it was different.  At every kiosk and stall I went to I was charged an exorbitant markup - baturi price, worse than on any previous shopping trip.  One young woman shamefacedly admitted that she had asked too much for her tomatoes because I was white after I queried the cost.  It all leads to an ethical dilemma.  I fully acknowledge that as a foreigner I do have a far higher income than most Nigerians and definitely the ones at the stalls, however, it goes completely against my sense of fairness to accept being ripped off.  What should I do? I don't mind paying a little extra but I suppose it offends my pride to be taken for a fool.  It may be because we want to do good on our own terms.  Giving a gift of money that's greater than any extra charged for a bag of tomatoes somehow seems more acceptable than being asked to pay over the odds for it.  It's all to do with power - who's in control?  We were glad to be able to help one of the gate guards with transport costs for himself and his wife to go to her home village for the funeral of her sister but that was in response to an open request.  Perhaps it's also the feeling of subterfuge that irritates me.  In the end I was so fedup that I retreated to Flourish, an actual supermarket, small by UK standards but with non-negotiable prices clearly displayed.  It tells you something about my state of mind that I was seriously contemplating buying a packet of Foxes chocolate chunk cookies for nearly £3.  I did resist and got a packet of banana chips for 20p instead (last of the big spenders!) - it's all about good stewardship.

I don't know if anyone's been affected by the recent flooding in England.  Benue State in Nigeria has also had floods but with added complications.  I do feel sympathy for the people in England whose homes have been ruined by dirty flood water but the experience of one poor Nigerian who'd fled his home as the waters rose puts things into perspective. As he told reporters, Wuese Jirake had returned to his house to find it already occupied.

“This morning I visited my house. It is still inundated with the flood waters above my waist. There is now a hippopotamus in the house,” he said.
He said he had reported the situation to the authorities.
“I hope that when it is tired, it may leave my home. If there is any other way of dealing with the problem, the authorities need to pursue that because it is beyond my abilities.”

 Other houses have been taken over by snakes and crocodiles; at least the affected residents of England don't have that to worry about.

Cloth

Celtic-Nigerian Fusion

One of the pleasures about being in Nigeria is the vibrant and original clothes.  I am rapidly finding it harder to resist buying cloth (as a piece of material is called here) and getting it made up into a dress or skirt and top. When I saw this piece at Iffy's stall in the main market I knew it was destined for me.  How often do you find Celtic knotwork in Africa?

Update on the driving licences: Makeji paid the fee to the bank as directed but was then told the money had ended up in the Plateau State Government account instead of the vehicle licencing account it was meant to go to.  Have you tried retrieving money from a government?  At least we have multiple copies of documents which show we're trying to obtain Nigerian licences while we wait for the mess to be sorted out. In some ways it doesn't really matter as the biometric camera in the licencing office is not working so we wouldn't have been able to get official photos taken anyway.