Food Blog Pt II - The animals I have known and loved.

Stew

Meat in Nigeria is much tougher than in the UK (or anywhere else I’ve been), I think this is because animals are not fed high protein feed but have to fend for them selves and endure the long dry season when food is pretty scarce. Also female animals are only slaughtered once they stop producing babies so are pretty much over the hill once it comes to eating

To counter this Nigerian meat is either beaten senseless (see suya) or stewed for at least 8 hours. Butchery standards are low (why pay someone else to kill your animals when you have your own perfectly good knife and the road is basically wipe clean…. Right?) This results in a most meat coming with extra connective tissue, gristle, furry stuff  etc.

Goat Meat
Despite looking like they are a  little on the fat side the average goat doesn’t have much meat on it. Most of the meat is also impeded by bones and other things not normally considered food in the west (except if preceded by the word dog). Nigerians however love goat, its much more expensive than cow (which is considered not sufficiently flavored), goat also tastes suspiciously like what the goats eat, rubbish.

Goat Head
The head of one goat chopped up and presented on a very nice wooden plinthy thing. There are about 2 bits of decent meat in the average head. Mercifully I have never had the eyeballs served with it, although I imagine you could devise a good bar based tabletop game to play with them.

Dog
More expensive than cow. eaten in nigeria but not normally by accident.

Cow Skin
Yes people cow skin… commonly know around the world as leather a substance so indestructible you can use it to protect yourself in hundred mile an hour motor bike crashes. Here it’s a form of food, and I can confirm it is just as tough as you would expect, at the slightest sign of this in the soup at a Nigerian house all volunteers know to run, to do otherwise might result in it being served to your soup, and we all know that to be polite you have to finish what’s in your plate.

Intestine
Errr, not much  to say about this. Imagine trying to eat boiled hosepipe. Again another acquired taste I just don’t have the enthusiasm or dental fortitude to pick up.

Gizzard
mmm…. Sounds tasty huh. Yes random bits of chicken inside are considered a delicacy. The best way to describe it is chewy, and not in a good way, more in “I wonder what vital function this particular piece of gristle did, perhaps poo production?” In a random bit of etiquette, woman are not supposed to eat gizzard, I’m not sure why.

Suya
This part of Nigerian cusine I am really going to miss. In/near every bar is a man with a barbeque with meat. My dinner often

I - Meat on a stick suya


Cow (or other meat) beaten to a flat strip, barbequed once to cook then again to reheat. Its really tasty, and amazing. Normally you can have it delivered to your table, it also often comes with masa which is a type of rice bready substance.

Big sticks of meat are 200N (80p), with a variety of sticks available up to this price. Suya costing less than 100N a stick should never be purchased except as catfood substitute (this is actually the cheapest way to feed our cat but even he’s refusing to eat it now).


II - Random lump o suya
Meat arranged on the top of a old oil drum sizzling away in a pool of its own fat, yes it is as amazing as it sounds. Also these guys have taken a leaf out of the supermarket marketing textbook and normally do a try-before-you-buy system, careful descion making and comparison can result in more meat being consumed at this stage than in the post payment stage.


In general I prefer type I suya, it less likely to be dog and less likely to be completely composed of actual meat.


Kilishi

This is dryed meat, think biltong but not as meaty. This is produced by cutting meat into thin strips then leaving it to air dry for a day, then coated in peanut paste and bbqed for a bit. The drying process is perhaps not the most hygienic of processes, I’m not sure what percentage of the .As with many foods in Nigeria its probably best not to see it prepared if you want to enjoy eating it.

(it gets worse, behind this photo is dala hill in kano, this side of which is used as the local toilet)

Fish
Fish is very popular in Nigeria. Crayfish is added to any stew (including vegeatable stew, much to the annoyance of the vegetarians). The

In bars however it is possible to acquire the best barbequed fish in the world. Cooking is simple:
Step 1 (optional) you select your live fish from the “point and kill” tank
Step 2: Fish is de-scaled and dipped in a tasty and hot sauce
Step 3: Fish is put on bbq
Step 4: Fish is taken off bbq, and eaten by hungery volunteers, with optional chips and more hot sauce.

This process results in really really good moist white fish. Well actually if you follow the process through to step 4 it results in poo, but no one wants to hear about poo.


Rat-o-Van
This is for jon, he knows why:

A list of foods not available in Nigeria*
•    Cheese
•    Bread not containing 30% sugar
•    Bacon
•    Ham
•    Pork chops
•    Eggs with proper yellow bits in the middle
•    Lasagna sandwiches
•    Haggis

*except at ridiculous prices

what to bring

This is a list of some of the stuff i have found useful, someone may find this of use in the unfortunate circumstance they find themselves heading to nigeria for VSO and have taken to reading my blog for inspiration. Also i suppose it highlights the daily issues of living here.

This is based on being placed in a city and also includes some things I wouldn’t bring and discussion on other aspects of life here. I am a bit techy so this may be reflected in some of the things I suggest.

The main challenges (outside work) are lack of power, water and things to do in the evening. Power can be managed through excessive battery purchase, water through really really big buckets and entertainment through books, dvd’s, scrabble, internet and excessive battery use.

Wind up Lanterns - Some of these work really well and some are complete rubbish, if possible try and get wind up lights which also charge from the mains as you can leave them to charge over night and can only resort to winding after a couple of days without power.

Rechargeable batteries - These are useful to go in head torches etc, bring lots along with a really bright led torch, some come with magnets on the back so they can be put strategically on doors/fridges etc

Solar chargers (Don’t bring)- I can see how these could be useful if you have your own compound. I brought a phone charger, which i’ve not used enough to justify the expense. The main problem is that as they take a while to charge during which you have to leave your shiney charger out in the open, which is just inviting it to be borrowed.

If you have a bit more cash or a birthday present/Christmas to use up consider a power gorilla. Its basically a giant external battery which can charge your phone and laptop (depending on size it gives 2-5 hours of extra laptop use) which can be quite useful for playing movies/music in the dark, powerless nights.

External hard drive and flash drives (lots). The hard drive is useful to back up all your photos etc and for borrowing movies from other volunteers. Make sure it runs off the usb power (i.e. doesn’t need to be plugged into the mains). Flash drives are super useful as emailing is slow, if possible get a flash which has the option to be locked, this means the drive is turned to read only and the computer you put it in cant load viruses onto it, very useful for getting things printed etc. Flash drives also make good presents.

Internet access is possible via numerous mobile networks, although only MTN currently supports ‘broadband’ which allows skyping (and occasionally video skyping) which is very handy and gives you something to do in the evening. If you have a smartphone which can be “tethered” bring it if you are planning to get internet access, as it will save you having to buy a dongle here (also if you have an unlocked dongle you could bring that too).

The internet is costly, at £32 a month for 24h access, so you might want to decide before you come to bring extra cash to cover this if you think you will need this. It is now possible to buy one day plans, which will cover you if you want to simply to skype once a week/month.
Check here to see the MTN mobile broadband coverage in Nigeria
http://www.mtnonline.com/index.php/broadbandaccess.html

There are internet cafes, access is normally slow (outside Abuja) and expensive but can be used to pick up emails etc (ideally not from the same email account to which your bank is registered, but I haven’t heard of anyone actually having their login details stolen).

If you don’t have a camera and are considering purchasing one, it would be a good idea to consider ones which are dustproof or better fully waterproof. Most of the volunteers in my group’s camera’s broke within the first 3 months, we think because of dust.

Amazon kindle (3G version) - If you live in the MTN coverage area (see above) and bring no other bit of technology this should be it. Apart from the endless supply of books, it gives FREE internet access, with which you can check your emails/facebook/news etc, the battery lasts for about a month of reading and about a week if your using the internet a lot. It is amazing and I love it.

Surge protectors have been suggested, we used these religiously until a transformer problem gave us about 400V, which happily fried our laptop chargers which were plugged in through surge protectors. They may be of some use, but they are not infallible

Dark coloured clothes - there are no (or few) washing machines in Nigeria, so its hand washing only, dark hides the evidence of the dirt which didn’t come out in the wash.

For boys a few shirts are useful if your work is formal or you need to smarten up occasionally.

Lightweight raincoats are useful in rainy season (pac-a-mac etc) as they can be carried in your helmet bag (which if you live outside Abuja you will carry everywhere with you).

Cheese - Cheese is either difficult or too expensive to buy here. If you think you will miss your cheese hit we have found that the supermarket pre-grated parmesan doesn’t melt, and lasts long enough to be worthwhile. Also if you have space, bring some cheese for the in country volunteers, they will love you forever for it.

Going back (temporarily)

For the past 3 weeks I have been back in dear old blighty, the thinly veiled excuse for this was a need to attend a wedding. I did wonder if I would be able to return to the old ways very easily but being a pretty no-nonsense kind of guy I didn’t think there would be much of a problem. There wasn’t much in the way of reverse culture shock, I found it quite easy to flick the switch and return to my life of washing machines, running water and an electricity supply which isn’t trying to kill you half the time. I am still amazed by supermarkets.

Being home did remind me of how easy life is for us, much of my time here in Nigeria has been taken up with the everyday chores of living, e.g. washing, going to buy water, cooking, and sitting around waiting for the electricity/water to return. The idea of having a daily routine involving 9-6 work, commuting, going to the gym then cooking a meal from a packet in the fridge does seem a bit odd, like the activities of those who live on an alien world (if I was being dramatic) or something like that anyway.

To all my friends who read these ramblings of a madman, I will say Hi and thanks for making the trip a very pleasant one it was nice to see everyone and I’m glad not too many of you have changed too much in my absence.

The other issue of going home was that everyone would expect a present on my return, and when I say everyone I mean, everyone from the people who run shops on our road to all colleagues. The other volunteers asked with varying degrees of politeness and subtlety for things to be brought from home. In the end I brought back about 2kg of cheese, a similar amount of chocolate and enough pens, key rings, small toys etc to keep most people happy.

I also bought a new kindle, its amazing, and if there are any prospective volunteers with a little spare cash wondering what to bring with them I would recommend it - long battery life, endless books and free internet (even in Nigeria!)

When I got back the first thing said by almost all my colleagues was, you must have enjoyed yourself, look how you’ve added (i.e. welcome back fatty) whilst this is true it’s a bit of a shock when everyone says it. I really must do some/a lot of running over the next year to return to my original sate of only being slightly podgy.


In all its nice to be back, but going home does remind me that I’m not going to be here forever and I really should try hard to finish up what I’m doing so at least something carries on after I’ve left. I think wondering what I’ve actually achieved here will be the subject of another blog post, navel gazing is not my favourite of sports but I suppose everyone does want their time here to mean something, even though we know statistically that this is at best unlikely.

Hopefully I’ll be here for another 3 months, but this will be contingent on VSO trying to extend my visa by a month (it runs out on 31-Oct), so I will be back permanently from either the 1st Nov or more likely sometime around the 24th Nov.

When I return permanently I guess there will be a re-run of the emotional rollercoaster effect which thankfully I seem to be able to take very little notice of. I’m sure VSO will put on lots of ‘supporting’ workshops so we can all sit around and be reminded of how depressed we are supposed to be feeling, I may just put the invites in the bin. I’m not sure in my fragile state I will be able to handle a jolly ‘facilitator’ armed with a flip chart and a mantra that “all the answers are in the room”, it maybe just me but I find nothing as depressing as hanging around in a room full of depressed people. I think a swift beer down the pub and curry should sort any problems, this may mean I am emotionally cynical and should seek group hug therapy immediately.


There are some photos of the durbar in Kano on facebook now (although you have to be my friend or friend of friend to see them)

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/album.php?aid=235168&id=515547849

Food Pt I - The Starch

Right its finally here, the often promised and never delivered blog on the Nigerian culinary extravaganza. This will be divided into two parts, this part is an homage to starch. Ask for what food is available in a Nigerian restaurant (or chop house in the local parlance) and you will be given a list of the available starch, no further explanation is necessary.

Typical beside the road 'chop house'

There are many places which serve Nigerian cuisine, they range from upmarket air-conditioned restaurants which remind me of a kind of bling version of McDonalds to a lady by the side of the road with a cool box. Price is normally inversely proportional to tastiness and directly proportional to the probability of bowel problems in the hours afterwards. I think this is mainly due to turnover, the women with coolers normally have to sell out within an hour or two of opening up, whereas at a proper restaurant the food can sit there for days and still be re-heated by enthusiastic if olfactory ly challenged staff.

One other thing to note about Nigerian food is the temperature, even breakfast here is served with ground dried hot peppers (called peppe) up north the amount of peppe added to food is manageable (for someone who like madras), but every so often you get a land mine which can blow your mouth off. Like many things in Nigeria food is something that should be approached with caution and the ground either carefully prodded first or follow in someone else’s footprints to avoid nasty surprises.


Following on from the format of the wildly successful drinks post I give you…. Starch:

Pounded yam

Pounded yam:

The undisputed king of the Nigerian starch based hierarchy, ask any Nigerian their favorite food (a more common question than you would have thought) and the answer for ALL men and most women is pounded yam. All households have somewhere a yam pounding mortar and pestle (a novel use of such a device to prop up a car is provided for illustration purposes only). To prepare your yam you must get dry yam (new rainy season yam is too wet apparently) boil it (err.. .didn’t you just say it had to be dry???), once soft you just wack it in your novelty giant mortar and pestle and pound away to your hearts content.

Most of the time no knife or forks will be provided and the accompanying soup or stew (for soup read stew and the stew is more like a spicy tomatoes soup) is eaten by rolling the yam into balls/shovel shapes then scooping the stew up with the resulting sculpture.




Other lump based starch:
Semovita - yellowy lump based starch made from corn flour at a guess.
Gari  - Like pounded yam but sticks to your fingers more, less flavour too.
tuwo schincafa (Stirred rice) - Rice but beaten to a pulp, then formed into balls. Its pretty good actually and most importantly is the only way to consume rice if you don’t want to also consume half a gallon of palm oil.

Yam Porridge
This is my favorite kind of starch, amazing considering its not normally served with meat. Its boiled yam which has been fluffed a little bit with a stew of beans and served with spicy palm oil based sauce. Looks disgusting, tastes great and a huge plate is only 30p

Jallof rice
This is a Nigerian staple, the wikipedia article for Jallof rice sums up the dish quite nicely:
“The most common basic ingredients are: rice, tomatoes and tomato paste, onion, salt, and red pepper. Beyond that, nearly any kind of meat, vegetable, or spice can be added.”

You can safely omit “nearly” before “any kind of meat”.

Also they have omitted one major ingredient, palm oil, lots of it. Rice here is not complete until it’s been thoroughly greased up.

Any form of rice must be cooked on an industrial scale in giant comedy caldrons, which do have the effect of making any group of women chefs look like the coven of witches who decided that black was so last year and floral oranges were a better summer look.





 


Street Food

Kosee
In all parts of Kaduna you can buy deep fried bean cakes on the side of the road, these have the advantages of being cheap and pretty much safe (nothing survives boiling oil) but you do have to start your day with deep fried food and pepe

Moi-Moi
These are similar to kosee except the bean cakes are boiled rather than fried, also for some bizarre reason certain evil people stuff crayfish in the mix so the whole thing tastes and looks like boiled vomit.

Corn
From March to August you can get bbqed sweet corn, which is similar but dryer and tougher than western sweet corn. Like many shops in Nigeria they tend to clump into groups so that at some roadsides you will see 4 or 5 women in a row, proving there is comfort in numbers, if perhaps not profit.

Also available are fried yam, sweet potatoe etc etc, if you can put it in oil and it contains starch you can more or less buy it on the streets of nigeria.


Right that’s It for now I leave you with a cute picture of the kitten and some video of an idiot being forced to dance for the Hausa people… who ever he is he didn’t get to keep any of the money and is very angry about this.

how not to get a re-entry visa

This is an email exchange between a volunteer and an official at the place where people live who have to approve our long term visas.

I've taken the names out to hopefully prevent this being found by the guilty. My favorite bit is the use of "robust" as a compliment.

There will be a proper post coming soon... but this should keep you going for a couple of days.

************************************************************
Dear Xyz,

I don’t know if you remember, but I am the volunteer from Germany and we met during our visit at the FGH place as well as at the CP and the dinner at City View.
As you might remember, my father is getting married beginning of September and as this is a one time experience in my life I would really like to attend the wedding.
I was just wondering if I can support you in any way in order to obtain my multiple entry visa for Germany in time.
Please let me know if I can support and I’ll be happy to do so.

In the meantime I wish you a good Friday and an even better weekend,
abc
************************************************************
Dear Meg, (not abc)

Thanks a million for your interest in helping me attend your father's wedding as well as enjoy my four week stay (training programme) in Germany.
I should be glad to have you truly support me obtain the multiple VISA. I guess we should mee to discuss it, since you are in Abuja.

Best Regards
Xyz
************************************************************
Dear Xyz,

of course we can meet. As I am in Abuja, the (place removed) is not far so just let me know when (date and time) it best suits you. Probably sometime after 4pm would be good.

Regards,
Abc
************************************************************
My dear Abc,

Thanks for replying my mail promptly. I would like us to meet Tomorrow (Wednesday 07-07-2010) in my office by 4.30pm. Please, confirm your availability. Or would you rather prefer somewhere else? Hope you are enjoying your service at the ME.

Regards
************************************************************
Dear Xyz,

could you let me know the exact address again. I know more or less, where it is but just in case the taxi driver doesn’t know.

Many thanks,
Abc
************************************************************
Dear Abc,

Please take a Taxi to FGH near THE DOME NIGHT CLUB following from National Hospital. That is the nearest landmark. Have a good day until then.

X
************************************************************
Dear Ms Abc, (nice use of knowledge of marital status)

Thanks for paying us a visit yesterday.
You just make me fell in love with you. You look more robust, friendly and captivating.
You owe me the love.
Have a beautiful day

Regards.
Xyz
************************************************************
Dear Xyz,

Thanks for the email and compliments. I am happy to be your friend, but I don't think we should be talking about love. None of us owe the other anything. I respect you being open and friendly. Thank you for your understanding.

Regards,
Abc Efg
************************************************************
Dear Abc,
Thanks a million for being frank to your heart.
Best regards as usual
Xyz
***********************************************************

Heartstrings for Purse-strings

Update on 14th July :

Thanks everyone, see below for some video messages from the pupils and principle thanking everyone for their very generous support. The justgiving page will remain open for a while and any additional money is very much appriciated!

Update: The video has been removed cos i need to edit someone out, headscarf issues....

---

Right so England have progressed through to the next round of the world cup been knocked out by Germany, all is right with the world.

Well nearly, the Demonstration school for Deaf Children is currently facing a shortfall of funds which if not met will result in the closure of the school.

This is where you come in… I want to gently request that you part with some of your hard earned dosh for a good cause.


Thanks to the magic of the Interweb you can give money from the very computer you’re sitting at.
http://www.justgiving.com/Richard-Norman

(For any under 7’s reading this, please find mummys purse reach in and find the shiny plastic things, email me the big number on the front and I’ll do the rest.)

To enhance on this already highly clichéd and corny post, every pound* counts. I know this is a cheeky abuse of your trusting readership, but I wouldn’t ask unless it was necessary.

Thanks, and I promise to do a proper post once we have raised some cash. If we raise lots of money I'll post an exceptionally embarrassing video of me dancing at the Hausa theater, 300 Hausa people entertained by one batauri....



*US Dollars, Zambian Quacha, Brazillian Real’s or even Naira are all welcome.

A day in the life

This is the second attempt at doing this. A couple of weeks ago the hard drive on my laptop failed, taking with it a much funnier but similar blog post. So that’s my excuse for not updating the blog for a month and a bit, sorry.

This is a description of a typical(ish) day at HVC

Commuting: Mornings start a bit earlier than back home as there are only 12 hours of daylight and light outside those time is unreliable, getting up early is the best defense against the vagaries of NEPA. After a quick and refreshingly cold bucket based “shower” its time to head out and try and find an okada (motor bike taxi) for the first stage of the journey.

If pouring a bucket of cold water over your head doesn’t wake me up, the morning bike ride does, after a quick negotiation is off down to the main road. The cost should be N40 (16p) but they always try for at least 50 despite this never having worked in the past. Negotiating is part of any okada journey, think the “he doesn’t want to haggle” bit in life of Brian. The ride is 1.5 miles and takes just under 10 mins.


After getting off the okada at the main road its onto the public busses, again a brief bit of negotiation is in order, but as I’m going out of town against the flow the bus is normally empty which makes this bit pretty easy and they agree to 40N without any complaints. The bus goes the 8 miles to sabo and takes 20 mins.

After the public bus I get onto the staff bus which goes from the very south of kaduna (a suburb called Sabo) to HVC. The bus ride is 10 miles takes 25mins and the staff use this time to gossip and attempt to teach me Hausa, which I have only really mastered the greetings and essential phrases. On the way we go past the exciting sights of Kaduna Refinary and the New road (so new they rebuild it every year and never seem manage to finish it)

Work:

We arrive at HVC’s offices just before 8, it takes a while to get to my desk as it is important to greet everyone who’s arrived already and ask how their night was. The offices are formed of a clinic building, a meeting hall and a series of office rooms big enough for 2 desks arranged around a central courtyard.



There is just enough time to make a cup of tea before the real work begins, I am helping run the Financial management committee which has the task of sorting out financial processes and identifying new revenue streams and reducing spending. The committee is having its first meeting and top of the agenda is the loss of a major donor. Where I help out is in the preparation of some tables and charts of all the accounts, expenditure and income so its easy to see what’s going where. The idea behind volunteering is that where possible we should not be making the decisions but helping permanent staff to make them. In this case its true up to a point, but I do tend to help things along a little in the direction that I like best. Somehow this all goes horribly wrong and the meeting ends with me responsible for all the action points.

After the meeting is over the man who is going to build the solar dryers has arrived so its time to take him through all the little improvements which need to be made to the current prototype before they go into full production. As he speaks only a little English and my hausa doesn’t extend past greetings it takes a little translation from a colleague to communicate the changes I want made. At the end I hope he understands and hopefully this will be the last “prototype”.

This take the time up to about noon when I have a chance to have some lunch of whatever I cooked the night before. After the break its time to type up some minutes of the meeting once finished I chat to some of the other staff to find out what there up to before catching a lift most of the way home.

Normally I am home by half three, but today we stop at the bank. Whilst Ruth is in the bank a bus full of school kids breaks down behind us and the driver tries in vein to push start it. After videoing his attempts I give them a hand and to much to the amusement of all involved the crazy white man pushes their bus and we get it to start. This is the first exercise I have done in ages and my sweating and panting only add to their amusement.



Cooking:

Cooking takes up large part of the day because everything has to be prepared from scratch. Most volunteers eat very little meat due to the trauma of the purchasing process. A Nigerian butcher is basically just a table by the side of the road, no refrigeration and no attempt to even dissuade the flies turns most volunteers vegetarian very quickly. Luckily there is an expatty “frozen meat shop” the meat is normally frozen when I buy it and they seem to own a generator which fills me with some confidence that its spent most of its afterlife in such a state. This is normally consumed on the day of purchase, trying to keep frozen meat is the electricity equivalent of a rain (drought?) dance.

The heat also takes a lot of the fun out of cooking, the kitchen can get up to 40 if the hob and oven are on. Although the back door opens cooking around dusk means the mosquitoes normally make us shut it shortly afterwards. Despite all this we manage to have quite a good variety of meals, mainly ranging around the tomato and onion base with occasional meat and pasta/potatoes. I am looking forward to the ease of frozen pizza or a ready meal, this makes me a terrible person.

(food in general will be the subject of another blog post)


Evening:

After getting home there are a couple of hours before cooking which are normally filled by shopping for food, reading a book or if I’m feeling really energetic doing some exercise. Kaduna has an amazing set of sport facilities, all built around the old polo club for a local sporting games in 2009. In true Nigerian style no maintenance has been carried out since and in a couple of years the place will look like a soviet era ruin, but at the moment the weeds are still planning their attacks on the tarmac. Running around the horse racing track is the normal way to get some much needed exercise and occasionally (well once) I played tennis with another NGO’s tennis academy which proves just how bad at tennis I am. I’m hoping now its rainy season and there are new volunteers coming to Kaduna we will be able to play tennis more often.

After eating dinner NEPA will normally go off around 7, so most meals are by candle light which is very atmospheric but this is tempered by the sweating which goes with 35C and no fan.

After dinner its off out for a beer in one of the many bars conveniently located just up our road or a dvd. After which its time for bed and doing it all again the next day.

So that’s it, a day in the life. Hopefully this has explained a bit more of what my life is like at the moment.

Transport

Transport in the uk is dull. When we set out on a journey there will normally be some form of timetable and if taking a car you can have a moderate idea by dividing the distance by the speed on a motorway and adding a bit for traffic etc. Transport in Nigeria is much more interesting, not only do you get the fun of negotiating the price you also get the simple joys of not know where you’ll arrive or the people you will meet on the way.

The main forms of transport can be divided down into the following types: motor bikes, bush taxis, buses, private cars and lorries.

In the developed world the judicious application of laws, safety standards and courtesy disappointingly hold back the full potential of transport. Nigerians are not limited by such problems, a car is only full when there are 3 people in the front, 4 people in the back plus enough animals to make Noah proud and a boot full of yams, all this in a golf.

Roads:

Roads in Nigeria range from quite good duel carriageways to impassable streams of mud. The most dangerous roads are the good ones. Nigerians have fully embraced the digital revolution; accelerators have two settings on and off. In Birmingham it took years and months of computer modelling to design a traffic flow system which utilised the most number of lanes in the direction of rush hour, Nigerians do it by instinct.

Okadas
Motorbike taxis are apparently named after a defunct airline, which pretty accurately sums up their potential. There is a factory in china which must churn these 75cc machines out by the million, they are the cheapest way of going from a to b, and normally the quickest through traffic.

An okada can carry almost anything, a family, 20 chickens and their eggs. One of the other volunteers had their double bed mattress delivered from across town on the back of one of these bad boys .


Apparently they cost around £500, which is pretty much a bargain.An okada can carry almost anything, a family, 20 chickens and their eggs. One of the other volunteers had their double bed mattress delivered from across town on the back of one of these bad boys.




Okada drivers are also proud of their uniform, despite 40 degree heat they will always be wear at least a jumper, preferably some form of ski wear. My favourite was a guy in French 70’s style pink and luminous yellow shell suit onesy, unfortunately i don’t have a photo.

For all the amusing things you can say about okadas , they are cheap, relatively safe (as they cant go that quickly) and can go places where even 4x4’s get stuck. Out in the villages they are the only form of transport, and provide an important way of rural farmers to gain access to markets for their goods.

Buses:

In Kaduna Toyota mini-buses act as the predominate form of transport along its north south main road. They are cheap, packed and sweltering. The minibuses seat 10 passengers (4,4,2) a driver and a conductor. The bus fare as with all things in Nigeria depends on time of day, wind direction, moon phase and mood of conductor but ranges between 40-70N (15-30p). These buses also form a great way to interact with the local community as everyone below those who can afford their own car gets them and are normally surprised to see white people getting them and pretty chatty. They are also a great place to watch the occasional Nigerian amateur boxing match.

Bush taxis:

Bush taxi’s are just cars which run intercity motorpark to motorpark, there is no timetable you tunr up to the motorpark (every town has one or two) fend of the various people who grab you and try and push you into their car, find a car advertising the appropriate destination, negotiate the price and then wait for all the seats to fill up then the car goes. It sounds like a lot of hassle but once you get used to the system its actually pretty easy and allows quick and cheap if not comfortable travel.

The key advantage of bush taxi’s is the lack of hassle on the road, at police checkpoints and other miscellaneous roadblocks the drivers will simply drop N20 (10p) and sail through. They also seem to operate some form of union system which will send a new car from the nearest motorpark if your car has a serious breakdown (broken axel or better).

Private cars

These are both the safest and most dangerous way to get about. Safest in that you control the speed and maintenance standards but dangerous in that you are most likely to get stopped and have your car/papers etc ‘inspected’ by police or just have your car stopped until you pay the operators of the roadblock an amount of money (anything from N100 to N20,000).

Lorries:

Move large amounts of stuff from a to b, the more stuff the better and the more careless the driving the better.

Train

There is a train which runs from one end of Kaduna to the other, I regularly overtake it in the bus. There is supposed to be an ‘intercity’ train which runs the 150km to Kafanchan in the south of Kaduna, it takes 6 hours but apparently does serve beer. I’ll report back on this magical means of transport soonish!

Cows:

I was once stopped on the M25 for 2 hours because some cows had got loose on the carriageway. Not much chance of that happening here, the Fulani use roads as convenient ways to get cows to market and to the various rubbish piles which urban cows feed on. It makes an okada trip much more interesting if you have to weave through an oncoming herd.

Here are some other amusing photos of Nigerian transport in its many forms:

Aplogies about the length as usual, however you haven’t had an update in a while so thought you would all be able to handle a biggie.

xkcd Tribute

We have a new kitten, its small and violent. Also there's not a lot to do on a Sunday afternoon.

More computer training

This is just a quick post of some photos from a computer training session I helped out with. All very Geldofy.

The computer training runs every week, but because I was coming a banner was made and I had to do my best Prince Michael of Kent minor royalty impression. Most my input was simple stuff that I learnt when I was a kid and providing moral support for the people who volunteer to give up every Saturday to help out.

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Hot season has well and truly hit, the temperature in the house ranges from 38-32, which is slightly below the highs outside but still a bit on the warm side.

Also I now have a new housemate, she's very nice, doesn't complain about my terrible taste in music and occasionally makes tea (and she reads this blog). Its nice to have someone to talk to when the NEPA goes off for the evening.

Mr Ratty II - First Blood

As the only form of rodent control sold in Nigeria appears to be poison, my new housemate has brought me a present of a rat trap. With the power to moderately annoy a rat, or do some serious damage to my fingers the Rattinator 5000 marks a dangerous upswing in the level of violence. Its him or me.

In the black corner we have Rattus rattus aka Mr Ratty the second most deadly creature on earth, equipped with an arsenal of contagious pathogens featuring the ever popular Bubonic plague and toxoplasmosis.

In the other corner is Richard, equipped with moderate intelligence giving him the power to use basic tools (poorly).

Its a close call.

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Carefully placing the trap by his new entrance point we didn’t have to wait long before the first kill.

You can imagine the Ratty home being a sad place, little Timmy ratty asking Mrs Ratty
“Mummy when’s daddy coming home, he said he’d read me a story when he came back”

And then 2 nights later Mrs Ratty, obviously coming to investigate Mr Ratty’s disappearance:

I feel no regret.

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I know what you’re thinking, some form of graph is in order to plot my struggle against this invasion:

However this tells us very little...

What you need is a pie chart:

Now that really adds to the story

Richard goes crunchy:

There is a shop in Charing Cross station, which I used to refuse to go in (except once whilst drunk) which sells all kinds of organic/fair-trade/horrendously worthy, dried fruit. I refused to go in partly because of the apparent possibility of catching hippy and partly because when the shop first opened one of the promoters offered me some form of luminous coloured shrivelled sample saying it was “mother nature’s candy” (Shudder).

Well it appears I may have caught hippy (maybe one drunken exposure is enough) because the current hobby project is the construction of a solar drier for fruit.

Nigeria is blessed with an inordinate number of Mango trees, each producing about 1000 fruits. We are now approaching mango season where there are more mangoes around than it is possible for the Nigerian populous to eat. A UN report (I know, I have far too much spare time) recons around 50% of the mango crop is wasted . A suspiciously unscientific and round percentage if you ask me, but we’ll use until I can be bothered to further investigate mango production in Nigeria which will probably be never. If only there was some way to store them, so mango could be enjoyed all year round..... enter project dryer.

The basic design of an indirect dryer can be seen above. Air enters at the bottom of a thermal collector (1), heats up and rises through the main drying chamber (2), passing the stuff whot you want to dry (3) and taking with it some water. The ideal drying temperature is around 50°C any higher and you end up with cooked product any lower and bacteria etc can still multiply. Nigeiria’s air temperature at the moment is around 38-40°C so a temperature rise of 10 degrees should be fairly easy (but the design might have to be adaptable through the year).

I am also trying to build a really low cost direct solar dryer with Hope For The Village Child (HVC) but these have the drawback that the direct sunlight breaks down all the vitamins and discolours the end product. The type sold in the shop in Charing Cross will be indirect dried, with some form of preservative treatment before drying to preserve the lovely bright colours.

So what i needed was a small metal box for the drier with a big thin, flat, metal box to act as the collector. As everyone knows there is only one place to go in Kaduna for such a construction... Pantaka (insert sudden intake of breath, or something like “not Pantaka that’s suicide” etc).

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Pantaka is Kaduna’s post apocalyptic industrial area where all kinds of woodwork and metalwork are carried out. The place is cross between the middle ages and a Mad Max film, pots of molten aluminium bubble away on the side of the dirt tracks which crisscross each other away from the tarmac road where HGV’s, vans and okadas bring in raw materials and take out “finished” goods. The atmosphere is rancid, the background music is the constant hum of generators but if you want get some scrap wood, need some spot wielding or fancy seeing some of the worst examples of child labour and poor health and safety in the world (I hope), this is the place.

Aluminium smelters casting a cooking pot, note the careful use of safety flip flops.

The whole place is organised in sections with an area for each trade and then subareas for each specialism, it took us a while to locate the metal section, then find the sheet steel section. We found a nice man called Bash (yep that is his real name, “hello i’m Bash the metal worker”) and suppressing inner giggles I judged somewhat inexpertly that he seemed to have the requisite skills to construct a glorified metal box.

Clutching my carefully prepared bit of paper with diagrams on, we began the difficult task of explaining i wanted one metal box than wouldn’t fit in the other and wasn’t a piece of furniture. After a lot of explaining and re-explaining to the surrounding crowd of workers in Hausa, a chorus of generally satisfied “Na garne” (i understand) was muttered by all. In this process I carefully demonstrated on the diagram all the dimensions, and even tried to build a model out of scap bits of metal lying around the place. I though that they had grasped the idea.

Two days later I returned and was presented by drier box twice the size shown on the diagram, with a tray in the bottom. Some re-explaining happened, more money changed hands, as the single sheet of steel we purchased would no longer be enough, and there was much more Na garne.

Eventually on the third visit and under supervision for the last couple of bits/hours (“what is he doing”, “cutting the second hole”, “errr, i don’t want another hole”, “ah”) we finished the dryer.

The guy who made almost the entire dryer using only a hammer, a sharp bit of metal (for cutting), a steel girder (as an anvil) and a hell of a lot of ingenuity.

This is the project come to fruition*, set up at Moniques Deaf School (they now have a large collection of my solar based nonsense projects).

Luckily it can also be used for meat the most capitalist and manly of snacks so I can cancel the tie dye T-shirt order and have a shave.

Making the wire racks to go inside. These are normal steel so we’re putting a layer of thin fabric (new handkerchiefs) down first so they don’t rust onto the fruit.

Today we started drying pineapple, which is about the one dried fruit product which i’ve actually tasted, further updates will be posted once this is actually dry(or not if it doesn’t work) .

* I had to use this pun once

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The obvious question is why, and how much did all this cost. The total cost of the metal sheets and labour was N9,000 (£36), racks were N750 (£3) and if i have to paint it this will be around another N500 (£2). This is about twice what i think will be an “economic” price, assuming the ability to dry around 3kg of fruit in two days. This version only has 3 racks over the one meter and has to be loaded from the top, I think in any new version it needs to have 6 racks across half the size and have a hinged back to allow easy loading.

All I need now are some customers. The plan is to start drying the product and using it to illustrate what is possible, as yet no Nigerian i have met belives that the crazy box will work, not even my amazing side kick the deaf school driver Malam lawal, hopefully this will change soon!

As ever i apologies for the length of the post, and the delay in posting since last time. I hope everyone is good back at home, and i enjoy reading your comments and I might actually respond to some if I knew the answers.

Geeky Addendum

I don’t let the inner physics geek out very often in public but here goes:

If you’re feeling geeky the total area of metal exposed to the sun is a 1m² (0.5*1 for the collector and the box itself), Solar radiation has a peak power of around 800wm^-2 and the energy required to evaporate water is 2260kjkg^-1. Some simple maths later shows that it will take four hours to evaporate a kilo of water if the whole process is 25% efficient, the limiting factor i think will be airflow around the fruit.

From an extensive literature review (hahaha) there will be two stages to the drying, the first evaporation limited and then a second stage where the limiting factor will be the transport of water from inside the fruit to the edges where it can be removed. (they’ll also be some boundary layer effects, but i unless anyone has a PhD in fluid dynamics i think we’ll just leave it with, this will slow the process down somewhat.

In terms of the evaporation and and humidity limitations, I have stolen the following graph from Wikipedia:

As you can see at 35°C water can hold 38g of water per m² (also assuming density of air to be 1kgm^-2 as I am very lazy and this isn’t the most rigorous of analysis). If you heat the air to 50°C the holding capacity rises to 95g. The total volume of the Mk I is 0.5m² meaning to evaporate 1 kg of water will need the air to change around 10 times, but probably closer to 30 if you assume a 30% efficiency. If i had some form of flow meter i could work out how quickly the air is changing inside the box from the flow at the top, but i dont so we'll all have to wonder what could have been if i had brought one with me.

What this graph does show conveniently is that even if the air is saturated at 35°C, you can still use a dryer effectively if the temperature is increased by 15°C.

Also you can see that at the current difference between night and day temperatures (23°C night, 38°C day) the humidity would have to pass RH50% for dew to become a significant problem, as its around 10% at the moment fruit can be left overnight with minimal worry.

Accountancy at the sharp and pointy end

As many (all?) of you know in a former life of pork products and all day electricity I was an accountant, the letters which now expensively grace the end of my name apparently designate some form of sharable skill. In the hope of spreading the simple word of double entry, rates of return and income statements I have been working with a NGO called Hope for the Village Child on their microfinance program.

This first involved me desperately reading everything the internet could tell me about microfinance, which told me many things. The first was that I have never actually been an accountant, secondly that this didn’t matter and thirdly and most worryingly that deep down i quite like the bits of this accountancy malarkey which are like financial engineering (I can definitely recommend- Measuring Microcredit Delinquency: Ratios Can Be Harmful To Your Health, 20 pages of pure geeky fun).

After thoroughly reading up on the subject I had a couple meetings with the two people who would be administering the microfinance program. This obviously changed everything, and the plan in my mind went from “microfinance empire” (poorly received) to “I think you’ll need to use what is known as a spreadsheet “ (Enthusiastically received) this may be the only time someone else was more enthusiastic about excel than me. Getting ahead of yourself is a bit of an occupational hazard here, remembering to start small and work from there is the name of the game.

Every January they disburse hand out agricultural loans of around £20-25 to groups of women to help in the improvement of their farms. Each group consists of five or six woman and the whole group is joint and severally liable for the loan of the whole group. Most of these loans should be put to buying goats/renting farmland/developing new income streams. To put it in perspective, £20-25 is probably more than rural families live on a month.Previously these groups have used the money to simply buy up food just after the harvest and then re-selling once prices have risen, which isn't quite the life affirming, liberating change HVC is looking for.

Designing how to do this effectively surprisingly never came up on the ICAS Audit exam.

You have a group of Illiterate woman, who speak only the local village language and a bit of Hausa, a shopping bag full of money, One Land Rover, 2 pens and some paper. What controls would you put in place (12 marks).

The first day we went out we were dealing with around 50 women, and the whole thing nearly descended into a riot. With people pressing in a crowd around the Land Rover (my new mobile office) hands, paper and money everywhere and people giving any old name their group leader told them to give

Example conversation:
Mercy: "whats your name?"
Woman A "err.."
Woman B "Aggie Bobbins"
Woman A" yes how silly of me to forget Aggie Bobbins is the name, chimney sweepings the game"
Mercy "how do you spell that"
Woman A "err...."

In video form

There are a number of problems with the above:

• Explaining that this money is a loan and has to be repaid
• Figuring out who you are dealing with
• Making sure that who you give the money to actually gets to keep it.
• Getting them to spend it on something worthwhile with the money.

Most of this is work in progress... ideas on a postcard please. We had problems with men hanging around and I suspect simply taking the cash off the woman as soon as we had headed back over the horizon.

Money is in the jargon term fungible. Advanced microfinance theory states trying to control what the money is spent on is pointless and all that is needed is to provide the cash in the family unit will efficiently allocate the capital. In theory, theory is the same as practice, in practice its not. Nigeria has the habit of taking advanced theories down unlit backstreets and beating three kinds of hell out of them and stealing their wallet. However once you give someone some money its quite difficult to get them to spend it on what you want them to spend it on so even though I (plus HVC staff) don't like the theory we're pretty much stuck.

Mercy (who runs the woman’s program and can be seen in the photos) said “we’ll probably come back to find them all with new wrappers”.It’s nice to not be the cynical one all the time!

The simple solution to the identity problem was to take photos of each participant:

This amused the hell out of the customers, “who is this crazy white man with his crazy camera and tiney tiny whiteboard”. But hopefully this should impress on people that “we know who you are” and that the are entering some form of enduring system, its almost all a deterrent factor but hopefully we’ll see higher repayment rates. The rest of the changes will be around general microfinance theory awareness and the record keeping (almost accountancy).

Look at their happy smiling faces

These loans are one year(ish) in duration and attract 10% interest. Which is both a long time and a pretty soft loan (the interest doesn’t cover inflation), so hopefully we’ll be working towards some more text book microfinance over the next six months or so. Currently the farmers whole business model does revolve a single planting season, normally of a single or two crops with a single harvest. This is fine for a western farmer who has access to insurance markets, subsidies, irrigation,fertilisers and a welfare system. For people who have access to none of this it doesn’t take a genius to spot this is somewhat of a high risk strategy.

HVC works on grain banks, to give the farmers a way of storing some excess. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be using my dubious physics skills to work on building some food dryers. Proper and hygienic drying should allow people to store the early rainy season fruit for up to year and selling this fruit should be an easy way to raise cash (especially if done on a community level, leading to smaller transport costs, more division of labour etc.) The dryers are as simple as a polythene tent over a table, with sliced fruit laid out on wire racks (but don’t tell anyone they think it’s my in-depth knowledge of physics that allows me to copy the design of the internet). I’ll post some photos once they’ve actually been built.

My tragic tale i won’t prolong, you’ve only yourselves to blame if it’s too long, you should never have let me begin....