Farewell to Nigeria
Well, my friends, here you have it. So Much World, So Little Time has landed back in the US of A. If I can do some early-morning lounging in a comfy bed in my good friends’ George & Pierre’s beachside bungalow in Venice, enjoying streaming KRNN on the headphones and uploading photos to the blog via WiFi, then it seems to suggest I’m no longer in one of the developing-world towns I’ve lately been calling home. You’ll note, in the non-italic text below, that I wrote it about three weeks ago while sitting in Hong Kong en route to China; as you can guess, all this travelling I’ve done in the month (wow! yes – it was EXACTLY one month ago that I left PH, the 9th of May…) has left me quite exhausted and rather mentally whiplashed, coming as it did after a fulfilling and hard-working eight+ months in Port Harcourt. (I hit four continents in less than four weeks and averaged about two hours per day airborne – not counting terminal time and gate-but-not-yet-airborne time — over that period…) I know the sequence of these shots may seem off to some people – after all, I went to China after I left PH. But it simply does not seem right to let these wonderful shots that bring the PH & Nigeria era of this blog to an end, come after the photos of China, which though impressive and important represent only a couple weeks of my life, rather than the investment of time and mental energy I made, and was well rewarded for in experience and enjoyment, in Nigeria. So…herewith, SMW, SLT presents some final shots and thoughts from Nigeria…and Paris….and China. J Don’t expect to see much more on here for quite some time to come. I’ll be helping Mom with this house-reconstruction project, so am unlikely to have many experiences that merit the SMW, SLT treatment. (Though life often surprises me.) Take care…and though I’ve said it before I shall say it again: you all – and you KNOW who you are – are the most wonderful group of friends and family and supporters that anyone doing what I do could ever dream of having, in fact far more wonderful than I or anyone has any right to even dream of.
It feels well-nigh trite to say of Nigeria that it’s the people that make it great, and a wonderful place to spend some time working. Photos of African children looking happy are standard fare in tour books and tourists’ photo albums the world over, so it’s truly with some trepidation that I present these portraits for your enjoyment. But it’s all altogether too true. Relaxing (what the Nigerians would call vacating, cognate of ‘vacation’) at my desk in Los Angeles last summer, I read with some trepidation the stories of violence, crime and near-anarchy in Port Harcourt, Lagos and other parts of Nigeria. While excellent books like This House Has Fallen present very good portraits of Nigeria, they are by nature geared toward the dramatic. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that most of the time life somehow manages to go on in most places, in usually rather undramatic and mundane ways.
In point of fact, Nigeria rocks and its people rock even more. Sure, it’s messed up and full of corruption, and no Nigerian will deny it. Heck, even the politicians admit it; they’ll just say it’s all the other politicians who’re corrupt and not them! 🙂 I find this in many ways more palatable than the US, where so far as I can see everything about our foreign and domestic policy since the ascension of Shrub George II has been all about how best to enrich the companies in whose shares his friends have invested…while the folks in Kansas and Texas still seem to think he’s trying to keep Americans safe. Yeah, whatever. And this has involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and around the world, while all Nigeria’s troubles have done so far is mess up Nigeria…oh yeah, and raise the price of oil even higher, which is the only time the developed world (and especially Americans) ever seems to notice Nigeria. But don’t misunderstand me to be suggesting that you head off on vacation to Nigeria any time soon – one colleague says, of Senegal (one of the more tourist-friendly countries in West Africa, one is given to understand), that ‘it’ll be a while before tourism here is really enjoyable for the tourists.’ This is even more true of Nigeria: if you get to work there, it’s great. I wouldn’t go there as a tourist any time soon.
Still and all, I’d certainly be delighted to work again in Nigeria, with Nigerians. A colleague – pardon me if I’ve mentioned this before in these pages, but I do love the quote – says he describes his experience in Nigeria as ‘a minimum security prison with a work release program.’ He adds that he loved it – one of the most enjoyable and engaging jobs he’s had, at least with MSF. I fully concur. Yet another said that Port Harcourt presented in many ways the most unattractive surroundings in which he’d worked – but that the work and hospital presented the most enjoyable and engaging work he’d done; another statement with which I quite concur. And that’s always it with MSF – it takes me to these crazy places, far from potential dates or even potential bean & cheese burritos, where I run a bit more daily risk than when I’m walking down the streets of San Francisco or London…but where the things I get to learn, the work I get to do and the people I get to meet just hands-down beat anything else I’m likely to have a chance to do at this point in my life.
When I was sent to China more than three years ago on my first MSF assignment, I remembered with some worry all those things I hadn’t loved about China, Taiwan and the Chinese in the 1980s – noisy, nosy, brash, often olfactorily dense (that’s a politically-correct way of saying things and even people often have very strong odors in China, something to which we Americans tend to react very adversely), etc. But I’d forgotten all the things I love about China and the Chinese – fascinating, culturally rich, often open and very friendly, full of surprises. MSF seems to keep sending me to these superlative countries – most populous in the world, most populous in Africa, etc. And of course I grew up in another superlative — biggest economy, most populous outside Asia, most fucked-up of the major economies, etc. Whether from these roots or from some other aspect of my personality, this seems to work for me: I end up loving these big, loud countries. I dream of vacations and retirement in Iceland , Ireland and New Zealand (places I picture as quiet, peaceful, clean, unpolluted, green…), but I seem to thrive when my work takes me their diametric opposite.
…And, below, a bunch of shots of me and the team out and about around PH and the creeks spreading the word about our trauma clinic and services for victims of violence & sexual violence.
Above & below – this is more or less in the heart of PH, in a section that borders the creeks…obviously. Seen from this perspective, kinda hard to conceive that it’s a 3-million inhabitant city that’s by far the largest city in the Niger Delta, which houses the world’s eighth-largest identified reserves of petroleum, huh?
Better late than never may be a good motto in the case of these photos. It’s a gray and somewhat drizzly Wednesday afternoon in Hong Kong as I write this, and Nigeria and my dense and rich experiences there during more than eight months seem a world or maybe a lifetime away already. Two weeks ago I was still in the swing of handing over to my replacement in Port Harcourt; a week ago I innocently expected to be back in NYC the following night after a few days of helpful debriefing in Paris. Right now I was supposed to be in Oberlin, getting ready for the weekend’s 100th anniversary festivities for Shansi (www.oberlin.edu/shansi for the uninitiated) and enjoying a slight break before taking up the home-reconstruction project for my mother. But – well, the earthquake in China happened and it seemed a good idea for someone with my experience of China and knowledge of the language to be available to help the team that’s ascertaining how and whether MSF can do more than we already have (www.msf.org for those stories) to support populations affected by the earthquake in Sichuan. It strikes me that the contrast between China‘s official response to the earthquake – massive, swift, and generally quite thorough – and that of the junta in Myanmar to the destruction in the Iriwaddy Delta could hardly be more stark. Perhaps this means I’ll get to be home sooner rather than later, after all. But I’ve learned, again, that the future is unpredictable and often surprising. May we all experience surprises more pleasant than unpleasant in the coming months.
Empty market stalls on a non-market day in Oil Mill Market, where we frequently went on outreach to spread the word of our free-of-charge services for victims of violence & sexual violence. Below: a tree full of swallows’ nests in a creekside part of PH, and some of our outreach team posing with the local snack-stand manager in Abonnema, who it turns out happens to be the mother of two of our staff members. I remember my American friends all thinking I was crazy to go to Nigeria, and I remember my own worries; indeed, there is violence and there is danger there, as there is almost anywhere, but when we got into some of the smaller towns, again and again we found patients who’d been to us and welcomes our services, and/or friends and relatives of our own colleagues, if not our colleagues themselves on their days off. (On the day of this outreach, we were helped by one guy who happened to be in the market there in Abonnema, and just naturally grabbed some fliers and started helping out even though it was his day off.)
Creeks & Towns of the Niger Delta
…by the pier, the end of the dirt track that links Krakrama with some of the surrounding villages, though none of them are linked by road to any outside, larger towns. (More about that below…)
Above and below, a small fishing camp in the vast riverine network of the Niger Delta.
Below and above are a number of shots from trips into some of the creek or riverine towns I visited. The shots are mostly of Krakrama, a small town just off the roads and accessible only by boat; Abonnema, the largest town in the Kalabari Kingdom area, including a few shots of me and colleagues with the Amayanabo or King of Akuku-Toru/Abonnema; and Buguma, the traditional seat of the Kalabari Kingdom and its Amayanabo (different from the Amayanabo of Abonnema, though both are Kalabari town; Nigeria is a country rich in traditional rulers, chiefs, and kings – rather un-English, one might say…). In one shot you’ll see a large bridge crossing the river; this bridge links Abonnema, on one side of the river, with the road that leads to Buguma and other towns like Port Harcourt, as seen from Krakrama, which will need one or two more bridges built before it’s reachable by road. Even Abonnema and Buguma were only linked by road to the rest of the state when a new bridge went in about a decade ago.
…our wet pants tell you it was a rainy day on the creeks.
This is a fairly typical example of the type of evangelical protestant church that has sprung up, apparently, throughout West Africa. I found the Christianity of my Nigerian colleagues quite interesting — in the US, all the born-again evangelical types would never dance as fantastically as my Nigerian colleagues do; most certainly not to tunes with such lyrics as “I like that booty, I like that booty…” So our parties were sometimes a bit confounding to me: truly excellent dancing to songs whose lyrics were really quite forward; yet I had to remind myself that a very high percentage of those doing the dancing were very strongly Christian. I also noted that a lot of it is about power and success and winning — winners chapel is a typical name.
…me in the riverine equivalent of the corner bodega: in the plastic container is fried dough, yum!
Most of the boats on the river, in numbers, are still wooden dug-out canoes or pirogues (dunno if they really are pirogues or not, but that’s how I think of them…) that are obviously going about their fishing or taking- yams-to- the- market in the timeless way they’d have done long before British colonizers and missionaries starting showing up. But obviously, in this day and age, there are plenty of motorized transports on the creeks as well, hence the floating gas station right by Buguma Town, below.
These guns would have been used by slave-traders around the time that the guy represented in the statue below was Amayanabo (King) of the Kalabari Kingdom, a vast section of the Niger Delta in what is now southwestern Rivers State.
Above and below, two of PH from the water: a very different aspect of PH than the usual daily view en route house-hospital-house-hospital. An expat colleague, once, even asked how we came to have a patient with a motorboat-propeller injury – that’s how distant the reality of the Niger Delta was from our daily routines sometimes. 🙂
Port Harcourt Miscellany
…These shots just don’t fit very well into any other category I could think of, so here they are: two shots of me and Clara being mobbed by a group of kids at one of the schools we did some outreach to (above, early — the camera had just come out so not too many kids figured out that pix were being taken; below, just a few short seconds after…), a couple of the primary-school kids right next to the hospital who used to love nothing more than chant “Oyibo! Oyibo!” (= foreigner, white person) at us as we drove in to work each day, a goat looking curious, and a random shot of one of the many overstuffed vehicles that crowd the roads of PH. Sorry, this one’s really very moderately overstuffed: I’d wish I could have gotten one of those where the ropes are containing plantains and yams and other stuff that’s sticking a good couple meters out the back of the vehicle…but one takes what one can get. 
Social Life in Port Harcourt
Often, departing expats spend virtually half a day taking photos with members of the staff and saying farewell. My friends who’ve noted my quiet disappearances from parties know that farewells are not my favorite thing, so it won’t surprise anyone that I slipped out of Teme rather quietly on my last day. My replacement was there and well settled in the job; my debriefing and weekend in Paris called; and I had new travels and new responsibilities to move on to. But I couldn’t resist a few final farewell shots with some of the staff I’d worked with most closely over the months, including the whole outreach and sexual-violence team, above.
Al, Michiko, Junko and I greatly enjoyed working with each other for the five months that all four of us were there — I overlapped with Michiko and Junko even longer, but Al just couldn’t hack it so he got out early. (Hehe, just joking: he was in far more demand back home than the rest of us, it seems.) On the last night before his departure, I treated us all at the nice Chinese restaurant in town, and we dressed up in our Nigerian finery: don’t laugh! Outfits like that look NORMAL on guys in Nigeria, and I know enough not to try wearing it as one outfit now that I’m back in the boring ol’ jeans and t-shirt US of A. 😦
…Above and below are a bunch of pictures of my colleagues and friends at farewell party that five of us (who were all leaving in the space of about four weeks) threw for ourselves and our Nigerian friends and colleagues. Dancing! Lots of fun! Beer and good times and good friends!
A Paris Interlude
Leaving Port Harcourt and Nigeria, I headed to Paris for what should have been some debriefing and a chance to catch up with my friends Howard & Gene, who’d kindly rearranged their schedule so we could spend a little time together after not seeing each other for nine months. As always, they rather overhwelmed me with their generosity and kindness — it was such a treat, after eight months of performing-arts deprivation, to see on my very first afternoon back from Nigeria, a truly fantastic dance performance at the beautiful (is it rococco? I think so) opera house (Palais Garnier) with H&G – as their treat, no less. Thanks, guys!
…This is another favorite new museum in Paris, as foreground for one of the more renowned symbols of the city of light: Musee du Quai Branly, a truly exquisite museum both in collection and in architecture and gallery layout. It houses an enormous collection of art and artifacts from traditional cultures in Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas.
An Earthquake in Sichuan
I am deliberately leading with this photo, to remind us all that life does go on even in the midst of such tragedy as a 7.9 or 8.0 earthquake. Returning to the US with its continued willful obsession with the tragic events of 9/11 and sheer stubborn unwillingness to, as it were, move on…well, it seems there are things our leaders and fellow citizens could learn from the good folks of Sichuan about accepting tragedy and moving on constructively and engagingly with life.So , as it happens, I was in Paris debriefing from my eight+ months in Port Harcourt, when the earthquake in China happened. Having studied Chinese language and history in college; having lived in China for more than two years if you add up my time there with MSF and my student days in Taiwan, and being readily to hand in Paris for the emergency desk to ask if I’d be willing or able to help out with any relief effort we decided to try to launch…well, let’s just say that rather than returning as planned to the US and enjoying Oberlin’s graduation weekend and the celebration of Shansi’s successful fundraising campaign, in which I played an enjoyable and not insignificant role for the past four or five years, I headed off to Asia less than a week after returning to Paris from Africa. Everyone’s read the news reports, I’m sure, and knows that the government’s response has been impressive and thorough. I won’t get on the soapbox for long, but let’s just say the citizens of New Orleans would have fared far better under this regime, which so many in the US delight in criticizing endlessly, than under the band of thieving incompetents we’ve allowed to run our country for the past eight years. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves here.
…Above, you can see the mountains in the hazy background — they’re really quite close, as this town butts more or less up against them, but there was always a lot of haze (or was it pollution?) in the air. Below: I do, always have and always will, love the countryside of China. I just love rice fields and wheat fields and the small low-tech way they’re still run in China, by contrast to the superfarms that have driven American small farmers out of business…while allowing us all to pay nearly nothing in cash for our food and put off the real environmental and social costs of such factory farming for future generations to sort out. (Ooh…sorry, I’m really in a soapbox mood today, aren’t I? Sorry!)
And Then There Were the Pandas :-)
During my brief time in Chengdu it was pretty much long work days and no down time really. On the very last day, though, I managed to slip out with my delightful colleague Sarah for a visit to the famous Panda Research & Breeding facility on the outskirts of Chengdu city. There’s a larger, more forested and wild place a good deal farther outside the city, but that one was out of the question. This one was possible, only taking up a couple hours on my last morning there. I’m not at all sure this layout will work: further down there’s a sequence of shots of some young pandas playing, which I tried to lay out in sort of a filmstrip fashion from top left to bottom right…if they overlap on your browser, try launching another one: I find that strangely enough explorer often interacts better with blogspot than firefox, much as I usually prefer firefox…
By explanation: adult pandas do what many of us have seen the adult pandas do in zoos in our home countries: lie around snoozing, or if you’re early in the morning (as we were) chomping on bamboo. (Yum! I’d like mine with the spicy salsa, please!) The young pandas are another matter altogether: they’re like the young of many other mammals, overloaded with energy and playfulness, and they were a total treat to watch endlessly playing with each other like a litter of puppies.
Anyway, it was nice to be able to enjoy Chengdu even a little bit. Otherwise it seems a very nice city and I was happy with how at home I felt there, and how well my spoken Chinese came back after nearly two years away from China; the city itself was very little affected by the earthquake or the aftershocks, though of course everyone felt them all and was quite jittery, understandably.
(so much world, so little time....) 