Pray pray pray

Gifts from the Netherlands!

'Happy belated birthday!’ My birthday was on a Saturday this year, so most of my colleagues see me only on Monday again. They heard it was my birthday. So, like, in the Netherlands, they congratulate me. But, different from the Netherlands, one of my colleagues immediately adds; ‘Let’s pray for her!’ So I find myself in an office of the Ministry of Education with two colleagues praying for ‘Sister Esly’ who is so far away from home but is at home now in Ilorin.

God makes so many extra hours in Nigeria. I really doubt if He has time to pay attention to the birthday of an Oyibo. And even if He has, maybe He should better focus on some of the real problems in this country.

Food

But well, anyways, it’s been my first birthday where people pray for me. Also on Saturday, during my actual birthday party, my Nigerian friends prayed for me. Every time I love the fact that my Muslim colleagues pray happily along with the Christian prayer (and that goes the other way around as well). Everyone says Amen at the same time, Muslim or Christian, doesn’t matter. I can only hope the rest of this country, or even better, the rest of the world, will take this as an example of how two religions can live together.

 

Something else happening at the moment is my planned trip to Benin. I really want to go there in July, just for a few days. But I found out that it is not as easy as it seems. There is an embassy in Abuja and I also managed to find out that I need a visa. But I can find a lot of different phone numbers online and none of them work. So I can only hope (or go the Nigerian way and pray!) the embassy will be open Wednesday afternoon so I can apply for my visa.

If it works out, I will be visiting Cotonou soon again. I’m very curious how it changed since the last time I was there (2010). That time many things changed since 2008 so I am really looking forward to see what happened since. And of course, I’m looking forward to see my friends again (and to enjoy a luxury hotel with 24 hours power, hot water, AC, TV, a swimming pool and a restaurant where you can eat other things than rice and chicken).

 

Birthday gift from my housemate Stacey... Very true!

But, before I can go to Benin we will have training in Abuja next week with the partners and then the last training with the volunteers in Kwara. And then we have to start thinking about next year’s program. We started recruiting NGOs who want to take a National Volunteer next year, so I hope we will manage to form two separate groups of 10-15 volunteers, one with teachers and one with people working in NGOs. So, let’s do it the Nigerian way and pray it will work out!