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.