Oyibo and excitement

As a white person (an Oyibo) I am quite an attraction for the people of Ilorin. The kids in the streets are still going crazy every time they see a white person. When I walk through the neighbourhood I constantly hear children shouting Oyibo! Oyibo! Sometimes you don’t even see them, but they see me! It feels like being the queen, you just wave to everyone.



My new haircut

Recently I had my hair cut at the neighbour’s house. This was the event of the year for all of them I think. Before she started there were five adults and about fifteen little girls, all touching my hair and saying that my hair is so soft and straight. Then the neighbour started cutting and all the little ones were just watching, holding the hair that was falling down. They were extremely excited, an Oyibo in our house!

This weekend I (finally) bought a bicycle. Might be very Dutch, but I love the idea of freedom the bike gives me. For the first time in my life I now own a kind of mountain bike. Something different from my ‘omafiets’ back in the Netherlands! But Ilorin is pretty hilly, so this bike seems to be fine. Even the gears are functioning.



There is water!

As an Oyibo I am an attraction. But an Oyibo on a bicycle, that’s even a bigger attraction! I am afraid the number of traffic accidents in Ilorin might rise in the next few weeks. So many motor bikers and drivers don’t pay attention to the road because they are looking (or better, staring) at me.  

For Nigerians, a biking Oyibo seems to be the most exciting thing ever. For me, different things are becoming exciting. For example; having power for a few hours after each other, or the possibility to take a real shower (don’t even think about a hot shower) instead of a bucket shower. You learn to value the small things overhere!

Igbo wedding

This weekend we travelled to the south east of the country to attend a wedding. Paul, a fellow Dutch VSO-er in Ilorin married his Nigerian girlfriend in her village. For us as VSO-ers, the perfect chance to go to a traditional Igbo wedding.

Saturday morning we left our hotel with two minibuses. As the wedding took place in a state where they do sometimes kidnap foreigners, each bus had a policeman with a huge weapon on board. At the wedding some guys in army uniform, also with weapons, were present. So we were well protected! In general, the people who get kidnapped in this area are mainly the oil workers and contractors, the people who are rich. It is a way to generate income, not to make a political statement. So as volunteers, we were pretty safe.

The wedding itself was a great event. An uncle explained it all to us. Kola nuts seem to be an important element in weddings for the Igbo. As a religious scientist, it was interesting for me to see how old and new traditions are mixed. The kola nuts are for sure a tradition that goes back to far before Christianity arrived in Nigeria. Now a priest is blessing the kola nuts, so here the old and new beliefs simply mix into something new!



palmwine

After the final negotiations among the men of both families, the ceremony started. First the mother of the bride was entering the party, together with her sisters and friends I suppose. She was dancing around all the public who were throwing money to her. After she made her entrance, the bride came in together with her sisters and friends. Again they were dancing around and people would spray money on them. Also Paul and his brother and friends (us) had to dance around. Then the bride came again, in another beautiful dress. She was carrying a cup of palm wine to offer her husband. After he accepted it, the father of the bride was officially marrying them. Then they had to dance and it was our turn to spray money on them.

Just like at a Dutch wedding, the couple also has to cut the cake. It looked like a big jar of palm wine and kola nuts again. Also here, the new tradition of the cake is matching the old one of kola nuts and palm wine. I love this mixture of old and new traditions. I suppose I will see much more of in the next months.

Cake!





Four weeks of...

Today it is exactly four weeks ago that I arrived in Nigeria. So many things have happened since then, it feels like I spent much more time here already. At the same time, it does feel like I just arrived, that I just left the Netherlands. The same things goes for work, I am still struggling to find out what is happening and what is expected from me. But also, I did already quite some things.

Last week, my colleague and I organised a one day training for the National Volunteers about project management. VSO is giving them small grants to execute a project in the community they are volunteering. After the first applications, it turned out that the form used did not really ask for the right information. So I improved the form and in the training we discussed about some of the questions. Like; if you buy computers for your school but the principal is not giving access to the students, is it sustainable? Who is your main target group? How can you make sure this group has access to the activities you organise? How can you measure your results?  The discussions were very good and I was very pleased with the feedback the groups gave each other as well.

While they were filling in the new form, the newly recruited NYSC volunteers arrived. My colleague Moshood did a great job in receiving them and informing them about their future roll. The next day they were placed with schools and left for their placements. Quite exciting! Moshood and I will go to visit the schools where the volunteers (the old group and the new group) are placed in the beginning of May to monitor how things are going.



Groupwork!

 

So, what else has been happening? I went back to Abuja for the real In Country Training. Stacey, my housemate, also joined. We travelled to Abuja on a Saturday, we were informed that transport within the city would be limited due to local elections. But we were not aware that they would simply close the town for incoming traffic. That meant two hours traffic jam, the Nigerian way. We just sat in the shadow of a van, people were selling water and food. But we made it in the end!

I went swimming a few times and got so badly burnt that my colleagues were really worried about me. I did not really feel it that much though, and I don’t have a proper mirror, so I was not aware that it was that bad. But when I saw my pictures from the training (few days after I burned) I could imagine the shock of my colleagues. Now, I started peeling (‘like a lizard!’), so it should be better soon. I hope...

About gay rights

Reading the Dutch news, I see a lot of discussion going on about the Dutch official delegation for the winter Olympics in Russia. Many people say sending the king, the queen and the prime minister is too much. They refer to the human rights situation, especially regarding gay people in Russia. And to the fact that many other countries don’t send their political leaders. (The US is sending three homosexual ex-Olympic athletes, quite a cool statement!)

In the same week, President Goodluck Jonathan signed a new Nigerian law. This law makes homosexuality illegal. People who break this new law risk up to 14 years in prison. Supporting gay communities can bring you to prison for 10 years. (Just compare, raping a woman or a child can make you end up in prison for maximum 7 years). In northern Nigeria, it is even worse and gay people even risk the death penalty.

I think the consequences of this law can be so huge. Nigeria has the second population of HIV+ people in the world (about 4% of the population, 3.4 million people). Among men having sex with men, the percentage of HIV+ people is estimated on 17%. What will a law like this mean for AIDS prevention? The more illegal it is, the more difficult it is to reach the people I would say.

Being Dutch, it is hard to imagine that this kind of laws make it through the parliament. What is maybe the worst part for me is that the vast majority of the Nigerian population seems to agree with this new law. Most people are very clear that they want homosexuality to be illegal. Even the most liberal people I know here say they want homosexuality to be forbidden.

I am in doubt now. At the one hand, gay rights are human rights and we have to fight for human rights. At the same time, who are we as Europeans to tell the Africans what to do? Can you imagine a group of Nigerians coming to the Netherlands to tell us what to do? Let’s say they will tell us we are not allowed to have homes for the elderly and children should take their parents in their house, care for them, pay everything… I am sure our politicians and many Dutch people will ask what a Nigerian has to say about the way we treat our old people.

If we want to change this law, I believe we have to try to convince the Nigerians, not their politicians. I have discussions once in a while where I explain how things work in the Netherlands and how I look at things. Some people are not ready to listen, but with others you can discuss. Maybe this is a beginning.

I saw the new Pope doing so many great things in 2013. Maybe he can also fight for gay rights. I think he will be able to reach a lot of people all over the world. And in a country like Nigeria, the words of the Pope will most likely have much more influence than a king and queen from a small country in Europe.

Besides that, let’s hope football players and Nollywood actors will be open about being gay and supporting gay rights. This kind of people can hopefully (slowly) start a discussion which goes deeper than; I am against it because I hate it.

Till then, let’s support organisations like AMSHeR and try to discuss human rights and gay rights issues. And, being in Nigeria, let’s pray the situations for gay people in this country will improve and that change will be led by Nigerians instead of Europeans. My VSO ‘oga’ Jaye is one of these Nigerian people who try to bring the change. Read his great contribution here.

NYSC

We are in a village about one hour drive away from Ilorin. There are more than 2.000 young Nigerians, all dressed in a white shirt, white shorts, white shoes and white socks with two green lines (the Nigerian flag!). These 2.000 people are the new group of the National Youth Service Corps. In Kwara state (where I am working) there are three batches a year. They are placed in different projects in the state and will serve for a year. The start of this year is a three week camp in this village.

We recruited here twenty new National Volunteers. Until now, the Graduate Volunteer Programme in which I work was only open for people who finished their year in the NYSC. But now we could recruit and select twenty people who can participate during their service year.
I am happy that we managed to recruit twenty young and enthusiast people who will be placed in schools in the rural areas to teach. They will get the chance to do small projects in their communities and will receive training. The first training is already given in the camp. I was very impressed by two young Nigerians who delivered a training on teaching skills. They have been in the programme for two years and did a great job in this training. Everybody participated very well and was very excited after the day. So I am very much looking forward to working with them again.

The newly recruited volunteers

I have been out for a few days, but I did get a tour through Ilorin last weekend from my housemates Stacey and Aswini. Ilorin is a big city (for Dutch standards at least) but also pretty quiet. My house is nice and quite spacious. The electricity is not always very reliable, (as expected). Our guard dog (Strong) is very funny but needs some training. The poor dog will be multilingual I think as I try to teach her Dutch, Stacey teaches her English and the guard speaks Yoruba to her I think. But so far she seems to listen to none of us, so no matter which language you use.

The neighbourhood is nice and the kids are extremely excited that there is even one more white person. Every time I get home all the kids are shouting and cheering and I get walked home by a lot of kids. As Stacey said; they are our daily Prozac dose, they are so happy to see us that you lose your bad mood immediately.


Next week I will be in Abuja for the In Country Training. After that, I will deliver training on project management and then I expect that everything really starts running. It seems like there is a lot to do and I am really looking forward to work with the National Volunteers.



My room

 

Our house

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome!

Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! According to the VSO Nigeria Country Director, there is no country as welcoming as Nigeria. Wherever you go, people tell you that you are very welcome in their country. And it is true; so far everyone is extremely friendly, nice and, indeed, welcoming.

Now that I am here, I really realize how valuable my experience in Benin is for living here. People are happy that I eat the local food (‘that moimoi was pretty spicy and you did not even blink!’), I am not shocked about the traffic (I even miss the motorbikes which are banned out of Abuja centre), I am not amazed about people selling small items at every traffic light. Last night it rained and this morning I could really smell Africa when I woke up. Some mixture of rain, heat and emissions. At the same time, Abuja does not feel like Africa to me. It is a very new city (built from scratch in the nineties), it is pretty clean, most houses look good and the distances are huge. So I can’t wait to make it to Ilorin, what will most likely feel more like Africa.  

Regarding the work, the VSO course is postponed as the third volunteer arriving did not manage to get her visa in time. We just got a crash course on VSO in Nigeria. For example, for some African countries, development aid makes a big part of their BNP (up to 60%). That gives a lot of power to international organisations. For Nigeria, it seems to be only 1% of BNP. So, Nigerian government is in charge, if foreign aid stops, they will hardly notice it!

Part of the course is also meeting the employer. We met briefly today and we will meet again tomorrow. He seems to be a nice person. The poor man even went to my new home yesterday after work to put my bed together… I guess we will make a good team. He has a lot of experience in teaching but is looking for knowledge about things like volunteer management, fundraising and project management. For me it is just the other way around.

On Thursday I will head to Ilorin. I hear so many positive stories about my project that I really can’t wait to go there. I am really looking forward to meet my housemates, the other VSO people there and, maybe even more, the national volunteers with whom I will work!

 

PS my Dutch phone number can receive SMS messages, but I am not on whatsapp. If you text me, I will most likely reply from my Nigerian number.

Visa issues

Being Dutch is normally quite an advantage for getting visa for whichever country you want to travel to. The Netherlands is probably too small and too unknown. Although our politicians might dream of our country as a place that really matters in the world, in my experience people often think the Netherlands is the capital of Berlin. The only thing people usually know is that we play football.

Getting a visa for Nigeria seems to be quite a hassle though. I need to submit a lot of documents, like a proof of the Nigerian Immigration Office that I am allowed to go, several letters from VSO Nigeria and my future employer, an airplane ticket and so on.

On the one hand, I feel frustrated when I have to wait for weeks for one document to arrive from Nigerian government. I am sad my departure is postponed with two weeks because of this. I feel annoyed to realise that I have to pay about two year salaries of an average Nigerian in order to get a stamp on my university degree.

At the same time, I think they are right in doing it like this. Just imagine how difficult it is for Nigerians to enter the Netherlands. Is it bad that their government is also putting up strict rules for Dutch people to enter their country? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!

For now, all my documents are sent to apply for the visa and the only thing I can do is keeping my fingers crossed that they will not ask for more documents and will just give me my visa.

One of the positive sides of waiting for my visa is that I had more time to spend on some PR. I gave two interviews with newspapers, sent a press message which was published in quite a few local and regional papers in Enschede and around Veeningen.  You can find some examples at the links page of this blog. And from the beginning of March I will write a monthly column for the Huis aan Huis Enschede. These columns (in Dutch of course) will also be published on this blog.

I hope, next time I will write from Nigeria!