09 October 2008

Again it has been a long time since I have written anything here. I have a regular update that I do through email because that is something that I can write offline and then send when I have internet access. This update requires that I am online and being online with nothing else to do is often a luxury that I don't have during work hours.

It has been a busy time. The last two days of September were Muslim holidays to celebrate the end of Ramadan. An advantage of living in a country that is split between Islam and Christianity is that we celebrate the major holidays for both religions. Anyway, Monday and Tuesday were days off. That was then followed by Nigeria Independence Day (01 October). I believe Nigeria celebrated 48 years of independence this year.

The picture here is of myself and a chief of a nearby village called Ningo. He is chief over about 3000 people. His son works at the College and brought me there to enjoy dinner with them. It is a very simple compound but we had a nice visit and good Nigerian food - pounded yam, egusi soup, and roasted chicken. It was funny that while we were there, the Nigerians complained about the sandflies and I didn't seem to notice anything. I experienced a delayed reaction, though, and spent the remainder of the week scratching the many small and irritating bites on my arms and ankles. It was a nice break to the long break, since Eriye had travelled and I was home alone for the entire break.

During the break I intended to do some work in the Internet Cafe. We need to move some computers around to get the most memory into the fastest computers, and have those computers available for use. We are also introducing some software for tracking and controlling usage and we wanted to roll that out on the first of October. But suddenly we started having problems with our LAN and with our internet connection.

I had travelled to Abuja to facilitate a small workshop for VSO and struggled for the two days before leaving to get our internet access working. I was supposed to leave about 7:30 on the Thursday morning but came in to make sure everything was working before leaving. Nothing was working, and I struggled until almost noon before it seemed stable enough to leave. When I got to Abuja I saw that my colleagues were online, so I was comfortable that all was okay. The same thing on Friday morning.

Then suddenly I got a panicked call. Things had stopped. I suggested some things to do but nothing worked. I finally said to reboot but that didn't solve the problem either. Finally, at the last call I told them to shut down and go home since it was late in the day anyway. And I planned to see what I could do about it on Saturday morning when I got home. And then I tried to enjoy my couple of days in HOT, HOT Abuja.

Saturday morning I stopped in the office and immediately found the problem - one of the Network Interface Cards had been disabled. That was one thing that I had not even thought to check doing "phone support." So that problem was solved and I thought we could go ahead and get some real work done on Monday without disturbing our users. No such luck. I spent all day Monday fighting our connection problem and finally had it working when I left on Monday afternoon. Tuesday, again, I expected to accomplish a lot only to find that our modem was not connecting to the Internet.

And that continued for 8 days. We finally found out that the ISP had a problem and that it would be solved over the weekend. The following Monday the problem was still there. The local agent for the ISP finally came with a "solution" but it wasn't until late on Tuesday that we found out the ISP had been updating the wrong model of modem.

The next couple of days have been full of intermittent problems, but finally today things seem to have stabilized a bit.

Anyway, I will close with that for this writing. We are doing well, staying busy and healthy. Eriye is selling mats and doing quite well but struggling with the trip to Benin to buy the product to sell. On her last trip home, the car she was in hit a woman and she thinks killed her. She asked the driver to stop but he refused, knowing that he would be killed if he stopped. The other passengers agreed and said that if anything happened to the driver and car, they would be stranded for who knows how long until they could get another ride. They told the driver to stop at the next police station, but I don't think he did. Eriye is still bothered by the whole thing.

And we are waiting for processing to begin our our application for Eriye's visa to come to Canada whenever I am finished here.

I really will close for now. I don't know who reads this blog as I don't get any feedback. But greetings and best wishes to all who find this page.

Meet Eriye

It has been a long time since I have updated my blog. It seems that it is hard to find the time to post something when the internet is working because there are other things that I need to do then. And when the internet is not working, it is hard to remember that I can create my blog for posting late.

In brief, I am enjoying my stay in Nigeria. Akwanga, Nasarawa State, Nigeria is very different from my last position in Bolgatanga, Upper East Region, Ghana. I thought that weather would be very similar because the latitude is much the same. However, I have found that it is very different - it is more humid, greener, cooler. The rainy seasons follow similar patterns, but the storms don't seem to be as severe here. When it rains, it seems to be a more steady rain that lasts longer though.

Outside of my house in Akwanga, which is on the College of Education campus, there are fields that were cultivated as soon as the rains started. Now there is corn (maize) taller than me with lovely ears ripening on each plant. The maize is interspersed in the field with yam, a tuber, with lots of green leaves showing above ground. Nearby are groundnuts (peanuts), beans, and all the other things that are grown here. With all this growth taking place, there is hope that prices will drop at the market soon. However, right now, the old crops are nearing the end so prices are very high. We used to buy three yams for N 500 - now the same yams cost N 750 or more. We were told the other day that the new yams are hitting the market soon and that will bring the prices down as there will be a glut on the market. Eriye says that that new yams are not as sweet though because they contain too much water.

Work is keeping me busy. We had a major struggle getting an internet service here on the campus. The internet was provided originally by a company that seemed to be cheating the College of funds in the student registration process they were providing. There are legal implications to what happened, but the result for me was the loss of the internet. The ICT Unit started sourcing for a replacement, but unfortunately just about the time that I thought the other service would end. As a result we spent almost a month without any access while the new ISP was paid and the new service was installed. There were a couple of problems encountered during the installation that slowed the process. But finally, on 01 July, we came back online. Unfortunately, there is hardly anyone on the campus right now to make use of the service - a good thing for me because I am able to make use of almost all the bandwidth myself.

The campus is empty because all of the students were sent home about three weeks ago. A female student was hit by a motorcycle and then killed by a car on the highway outside the campus. There have been too many deaths on that stretch of road but nothing seems to move the government to install speed bumps or some other safety measure to protect pedestrians. This particular death for some reason caused the entire student body to riot. They started on the street by burning the car that had killed the student. They also burned a tree across the road to block traffic. Police were called. Things seemed to quiet some but then started over again. The students attacked the Provost, vandalized his house and property and burned 7 vehicles in front of his house. Everything seemed to be directed at the Provost, though, so I didn't feel threatened at all. During the rioting two students were shot and wounded, though I suspect that they just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and were not the specific targets of any shooting by the police. By the end of the day all the students were sent home and cleared out of the hostels by the police. And from then until now, Akwanga has been the calmest place that I can imagine. There has been no projection yet of when classes will resume. By now I suspect that this term will be cancelled, meaning that the serious students have lost quite a bit because of this action.

On a more personal note, in April I renewed the acquaintance of a young lady that I had met when I was first working in Port Harcourt, Nigeria back in 2002. After spending some time together, we decided that we wanted to marry and set the wedding date for 13 June. The day before we went to the courthouse to ensure that everything was in order and to meet the magistrate who would conduct our court wedding. When we met him, we found out that he was travelling to Jos on 13 June and that he had no knowledge that a wedding was scheduled for that day. He asked if we could move the wedding ahead to that afternoon. Luckily, Eryie's maid of honour had already left her home in Makurdi to join us so we were able to proceed that afternoon. There were the four of us in the wedding party, with about 30 viewers from those that just hang around the courthouse hoping for something to happen. So we were actually married on 12 June and had a celebration at our house on 13 June instead.

A funny thing about the change in plans affected the Director of my department. He is a very good man for making social visits and providing that sort of support. On Friday morning he went to the courthouse and waited for us. He stayed there for about an hour before finding out that there was no wedding that day. We really appreciated his effort, and in retrospect wish that we had told more people about what had happened. We were trying to keep things quiet and private - partly because I could not afford to feed all the people that might have come if a broader invitation had been issued. The funny part of it all is that if we had not gone to check on things the day before, we would have been sitting there with the Director waiting for a magistrate who would not be coming.

And that is life in Akwanga for now. You will notice that my writing is more about "we" than about "me" now - the change that comes with having someone with whom to share life again.

05 February 2008

It is hard to believe that more than a month has passed since I last updated this blog. In my last post, I talked about my plans to go to Nigeria to work at the College of Education in Akwanga, Nasarawa State, Nigeria. I believe that I talked then about my proposed departure date of 08 February and then I wrote nothing more.


January has been an interesting month. There has been the usual post-Christmas activities of exchanging clothes and buying additional things to support my journey to Nigeria. I have spent some time out in the bush cutting wood with my friend, but we have not been able to do as much as hoped. The weather has been so warm some days that we would be working fields of mud if we tried to go out. Then the temperature would drop to the point that outdoor work was too difficult. Or it has rained when it should be snowing or snowed when it should be raining. In other words the weather has been all over the map.

Despite that I was able to ride my motorcycle out to the bush a couple of days. I have to admit that it wasn't too comfortable riding when the temperature was -5 or colder. And I remember one morning when the road looked dry, but I discovered there was a bit of snow still on the road when I got out of town. It made me a bit nervous, and I have finally parked the bike for good until I come back from Nigeria.


On 25 January, I travelled to Ottawa for additional training prior to my departure for Nigeria. One of the first things I found out when I arrived at the VSO office was that there would be a delay. The paperwork from the Nigerian government that was needed in order to apply for a visa had not yet arrived so the length of the delay was not known. That was a bit discouraging, to say the least.

When I left the class on Tuesday afternoon, I suggested to the travel coordinator that maybe a miracle would happen and the papers would arrive the next day and the visas would be issued quickly. And I left for home. While travcelling home the next day, Dad received a call from VSO saying that the paperwork had in fact arrived. So now it is just a matter of waiting for government wheels to grind.

I also found out that this was not just a problem with my application but that the letters had not been issued for any of the volunteers scheduled to arrive in Nigeria in February. Apparently the change in personnel as a result of the Nigeria election in 2007 meant that new business relationships had to be forged, and that can be a slow process. Today I received an email from VSO telling me that VSO Nigeria has rescheduled all of their plans for our arrival and we are now expected to be in Nigeria for training on 03 March. That means that I will likely be leaving on 29 February.

And it is nice to have a date to work toward. The uncertainty of not knowing is hard, especially when I had to think that I might get a day or two to do all those final things once the visa had been issued. Now, though the date is still not 100% guaranteed, I do have a better idea of how much time I have to do those final things.

You will wonder about the pictures that I have included. In the training course there were three American volunteers. I was quite impressed with them because they took advantage of being in Ottawa to do "stuff". For example, I believe that all three of them went skating on the Rideau Canal, Canada's longest skating rink. If you don't know, during a couple of winter months the Rideau Canal is cleared for public skating, including periodic clearing with a Zamboni. It is a part of Winterlude, a celebration of winter. Of our group of 15, only one Canadian joined the Americans in taking advantage of this unique opportunity. I had not brought my skates with me and did not feel like spending the high price for rental skates. But I was inspired to wander about town after class one afternoon. The top picture is a statue of Terry Fox, who most have heard of. He attempted to run across Canada to raise funds for cancer research when he found out that he had cancer. What was amazing about his effort was that he had one leg amputated and was running on a prosthetic. He has inspired Terry Fix runs around the world to raise funds for cancer research and they are held in various locations around the middle of September each year. The second picture is a small portion of the Rideau skating rink. This is looking away from town and the interesting buildings of Parliament and federal government. This was about noon, as I was leaving for home, so there were not many skating. I am sure that this area would be packed in the afternoon and evening. And the real celebration (Winterlude) has not even started yet.

The final picture is looking back into town towards the impressive architecture that is a part of the Ottawa landscape. It is truly an interesting city and one that I would like to spend more time visiting. And I would like to one day visit in another season other than winter to enjoy the other aspects of life in the federal capital.