They want to eat my dog!

Poor old Toby dog was unable to put his weight on one of his front legs this morning. As there was no obvious cause I decided to take him on the 40 minute, pothole laden journey to Howard the Australian vet.  

All went smoothly (apart from some alarming clanking as I drove over drastic speed bumps) and Howard diagnosed a probable sprained ligament. Rest and time were prescribed and we set off home. 

A short way down the road stood an armed man near a truck belonging to the "safety on the highways" branch of Nigerian security. Several ideas about how to improve safety on the highways sprang to mind: fill in the road craters, remove lunatic drivers and unsafe vehicles, don't have armed men standing in the middle of the road but I decided to keep my suggestions to myself. He asked to see my particulars and directed me to the side of the road where his two colleagues waited with their automatic rifles.

"Where is my happy new year?" asked the first, code for give me some money but we don't mention that. I wished him a happy new year and the ability to do his job with honesty and integrity. Then he spotted Toby. "You should give me your dog." (Some tribes on the Plateau see dogmeat as a delicacy.)
"You're not going to eat my dog," I replied.
"God wants us to give things," he answered.
"Not our dogs to be eaten."

We went good humouredly back and forth on the same subject for a while before he waved me on. I wasn't a lucrative target and other cars were passing by so Toby escaped becoming dinner. And people wonder why sometimes we just don't want to leave the compound.

Dinner?

Shopping

I've just come back from a brief trip to the shops in Bukuru.

One shop which advertises electronic payment facilities didn't have a working machine nor did it have change for cash but as usual tried to pay me off in individually wrapped sweets.
Insistent cries of "Baturia" or "Oyibo" weren't friendly greetings but invitations to be ripped off. If I hadn't carefully checked the tomatoes half would have been rotten, as it is I haven't yet had the heart to look at how many bad ones got through the net.
The happy young man at the meat stall carefully showed me his scales as he weighed 500g meat after resetting them when I queried their accuracy. Somehow my kitchen scales show only 350g. I wonder whose are the more reliable.

The sad thing is that I expect to be cheated or overcharged every time I have to go to the market. It doesn't make it easier to be proved right and every time this happens another little piece is chipped from the reputation of the majority of Nigerians. Pray for this country, that 2016 will bring the start of a complete change of heart and attitudes at all level of society - lack of integrity is certainly not confined to the market.

There are many interesting things to eat in Nigeria. Often they're so spicy that the change from white face to red causes much amusement and I know my tolerance of hot foods has increased since I've been living here.

Cafe BRiCC tends to serve a different selection from the local norm but yesterday we went traditional with moimoi cooked in leaves. Nowadays in the city the flavoured bean paste is often steamed in cans but the old way of wrapping it in leaves improves the taste immensely.

Hassan, a member of staff and always an enthusiastic customer, tucking in to moimoi and Chinese fried rice.

Cafe BRiCC

Sunshades needed at Cafe BRiCC

Cafe BRiCC opened yesterday not quite to a fanfare but at least to satisfied munchings.  We started small with a menu of meat pies, vegetable spring rolls and plain cake, ably made by assistant co-ordinator Mary and women's skills graduates Blessing and Aisha.

Sandra making meatpies supervised by Veronica

  Many people in the neighbourhood had never tried spring rolls and were pleasantly surprised to find them affordable and tasty.  Of course, BRiCC staff are already well aware of the high standard of the women's skills department and lost no time in buying lunch for themselves.  As we have no facilities for refrigeration we can't afford to have products remaining after lunchtime so quantities of each item will be small until we guage demand.  Business yesterday was a success - nothing was left over and we made enough money to buy ingredients for the next day.  Hopefully all who bought yesterday will tell their friends and gradually more and more people will come to try something a little bit different.
Friday's menu is samosas and fish rolls.

Developments

Learning a new skill is great and the women's skills department at BRiCC (www.briccjos.com) is excellent at teaching women how to make all kinds of food and cosmetics.  Using that skill to start a business can be a little harder and that's where our new venture comes in.  Next Wednesday we plan to open Cafe BRiCC just outside the gates of the BRiCC offices.  It'll be nothing fancy - we'd rather start small and do it well before expanding, but the ladies who were given the opportunity to be involved are already excited.  As one of them said, she's tried starting a business but had a few problems.  At Cafe BRiCC she'll be able to learn more and get support from Madam Veronica and her friends.  The idea is to have two different women on duty each day, one Christian, one Muslim; one a recent student, one who graduated longer ago. They'll learn from each other and show the community how people of different religions can work together and have fun as well as providing a quality product.  The women will have the opportunity to show off what they can do and take private orders to build up their own businesses.  We won't be setting up in competition to the exisiting food places nearby as the menu at Cafe BRiCC will be very different.  Hopefully there'll be winners all round.

Planning

If anyone wants to help with the startup costs of the cafe please let me know.

Matter of the Heart

How do we move head knowledge about peace down to the heart? How do we make a real difference in people's lives and attitudes and not merely constantly talk about what should be done?
We tried something new at BRiCC (Building Relationships in City Centre; www.briccjos.com) on Wednesday. Many people have no idea about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and how similar the divisions in Belfast are to the results of the Crisis in Jos.  There are no go areas for members of each community; children are taught in segregated schools and learn hatred and fear; both communities exercise their cultural/religious "rights" in a way guaranteed to antagonise the other side; underemployed and angry young men are frequently on the verge of boiling over; the "religious" conflict is more about territory, economics and opportunity than differences of faith. 
Northern Ireland has had "peace" since 1998 but the divisions seem as deep as ever.  Real peace won't be achieved in either place until heart attitudes change and children are taught there is more that unites us as humans than divides.

BRiCC invited members of the police, Neighbourhood Watch Vigilante groups, peace NGOs and other community leaders to attend a morning workshop.  About twenty-seven people turned up.  We talked about how peace can only be made complete by a change of heart, watched documentaries on the state of Belfast filmed 15 years after the peace agreement, then broke into small groups to discuss how to apply the lessons learned from Northern Ireland to the situation in Jos.  There were good discussions, important points were raised, but the test will be in the practical implementation. Next week we look at Rwanda.

 

There are many interesting things to see by the roadside as you drive in Nigeria - that's during the few seconds you're not avoiding kekes, motorists on the wrong side of the road, potcraters and roadworks.  One that I like on my way into the BRiCC office is the sign on a tailor's shop.  God is invoked in many business titles, from dentists to photographers but for this tailor he's the senior partner. The sign over the shop includes a quote from Genesis: '"Let us clothe man" - God is the partner in our mission.'

God is very present in daily life here, possibly because people live much closer to mortality than we do in the West.  This was brought home yet again earlier in the week when the BRiCC family went on a condolence visit to the brother of Sadiq, our education co-ordinator. His three year old daughter had died the day before after eating the rat poison he kept under the dvds. "It'd been there for three months and there'd been no problems," he told us.  My heart went out to the little girl's mother who had been divorced by her Muslim husband when her Christian faith was reignited. By custom, the children belong to the father. There was no sign or mention of her when we visited.