living with fono here is like living with paris hilton. except the paparazzi have no cameras. and most of them are under the age of ten. going to get eggs or toilet paper from the shop around the corner involves about 5 million stops to chat with everyone and usually results with a trail of children behind us yelling "good morning/good afternoon/good evening" or "batturai! batturai!" whenever we go out anywhere, people come over to shake fono's hand and introduce themselves. this does not happen when i go out on my own. except for one time...

the second day i was here happened to be a sunday. this meant that the children had nothing to do and were bored out of their minds. fono, being the town batturai/paris hilton, was already a favourite source of entertainment. but now, fono had a new companion. this powerful combination of factors lead to a near riot outside our house (think: what happens when paris hilton gets a new beau. paparazzi shitstorm!)

we were walking back to the house and children ran at us from everywhere and attached themselves to us. it was cute, especially this one little girl who i had met the day before. but then it just got awkward, especially because i haven't really interacted with little kids since i was one. especially because i was all fucked up on my anti-malarials. so there i am, dazedly walking down the path with 5000 laughing children attached to my arm and touching me all over with all the adults smirking. when we reached the house, the large mob and i stood awkwardly looking at each other. then, there was almost an incident involving a larger more surly girl with a voice like an android who suddenly turned up wanting to pick more oranges even though she had picked them all already. we eventually went inside. but the children - now lead by android girl - camped outside the house for the rest of the afternoon. every time we looked out the window, they would get very excited and call for us to come out. it was when i decided that living with fono here was like living with paris hilton. i never want to be famous

its nearly 6am here. the dogs are barking, the roosters are crowing and the two muslims are praying into their competing megaphones.

today is my 6th day in nothern rural nigeria, visiting mister fono who is here volunteering his internerd skillz for the fantsuam foundation.

i have had many exciting cultural adventures so far (my favourite kind), mainly because i'm a foreigner and am still totally shocked by everything because of my north american pampering.

i'm also going slightly crazy from my anti-malarials. each night i have at least three sessions of very vivid dreams, after each of which i wake up. aside from my sanity, i also miss cold water, clean feet, not having ants crawling all over me and safety regulations.

here, they call everyone who isn't black a batturai. the children like to yell it at me as i walk by, in case i forgot. it's the same as "ethnic" in north america, except the normal isn't white, it's black. how's that for exposing the social construction of normal.

now, without further adieu, i present to you my adventures with local transportation and healthcare!

transportation
everything here is more dangerous and more dirty than its canadian counterpart, but i think one of the biggest safety hazards is transportation. fono agrees. to get around, you have the choice of public cars or bikes. if you are lucky, you get a private car. a public car is just that - they stuff a car with the public and take you in the general direction of where you want to go. and by stuff, i really mean stuff. fono calls it nigerian efficiency - "why put only four people in a car, when really it can hold sixteen?"

yesterday, i saw a passenger on the back of a motorbike holding onto the folded-over mattress sitting on top of her head, rather than holding onto the driver. the day before, i saw a compact car, its hatchback open and a guy's legs dangling out. he had to hold them up to keep them from touching the road that was passing below his feet at 100 miles an hour. fono told me he once saw a car with a guy standing in the trunk as the car flew along the freeway.

yesterday was also the day that the public car we were in ran out of gas. we all waited while he took a bike to get some. then the fuel injector was borked, so he had to suck the gas through with his mouth. everything here looks like its about to fall apart at any second.

health care
fono has been sick on and off so his coworkers convinced him to go to the hospital to get some tests. i'm generally traumatized by hospitals to begin with, but this place was something else. the outside looked nice. but inside, it was like the place had been abandoned years ago. the place was cavernous and uniformly tiled with hospital torquoise coloured tiles. each room in the microbiology wing where fono was getting his tests done had a label above the door(hematology, blood transfusions...) but the rooms were unlit and empty except for random scary looking pieces of expensive looking medical equipment everywhere, all unplugged and disused. in the room next to the doctor's office of the doctor fono was seeing, there was a pot of water boiling on the floor, sitting over a bunsen burner.

as we sat waiting for the doctor, i turned to my left and pulled back to the curtain to look out the window. sitting on the windowsill was a needle in a test tube stand - filled with blood - the syringe part facing upwards, with a bit of bloody goo hanging off the end. the plasma was already separated out from sitting there so long.

the next day when fono went back, he told me the needle was still there, but this time it was wrapped in plastic.

and in case you were wondering, yes, i am having a good time:)

stay tuned for the next episode, where i'll write about my adventures with bathing and children (thankfully, those are separate topics)

its nearly 6am here. the dogs are barking, the roosters are crowing and the two muslims are praying into their competing megaphones.

today is my 6th day in nothern rural nigeria, visiting mister fono who is here volunteering his internerd skillz for the fantsuam foundation.

i have had many exciting cultural adventures so far (my favourite kind), mainly because i'm a foreigner and am still totally shocked by everything because of my north american pampering.

i'm also going slightly crazy from my anti-malarials. each night i have at least three sessions of very vivid dreams, after each of which i wake up. aside from my sanity, i also miss cold water, clean feet, not having ants crawling all over me and safety regulations.

here, they call everyone who isn't black a baturai. the children like to yell it at me as i walk by, in case i forgot. it's the same as "ethnic" in north america, except the normal isn't white, it's black. how's that for exposing the social construction of normal.

now, without further adieu, i present to you my adventures with local transportation and healthcare!

transportation
everything here is more dangerous and more dirty than its canadian counterpart, but i think one of the biggest safety hazards is transportation. fono agrees. to get around, you have the choice of public cars or bikes. if you are lucky, you get a private car. a public car is just that - they stuff a car with the public and take you in the general direction of where you want to go. and by stuff, i really mean stuff. fono calls it nigerian efficiency - "why put only four people in a car, when really it can hold sixteen?"

yesterday, i saw a passenger on the back of a motorbike holding onto the folded-over mattress sitting on top of her head, rather than holding onto the driver. the day before, i saw a compact car, its hatchback open and a guy's legs dangling out. he had to hold them up to keep them from touching the road that was passing below his feet at 100 miles an hour. fono told me he once saw a car with a guy standing in the trunk as the car flew along the freeway.

yesterday was also the day that the public car we were in ran out of gas. we all waited while he took a bike to get some. then the fuel injector was borked, so he had to suck the gas through with his mouth. everything here looks like its about to fall apart at any second.

health care
fono has been sick on and off so his coworkers convinced him to go to the hospital to get some tests. i'm generally traumatized by hospitals to begin with, but this place was something else. the outside looked nice. but inside, it was like the place had been abandoned years ago. the place was cavernous and uniformly tiled with hospital torquoise coloured tiles. each room in the microbiology wing where fono was getting his tests done had a label above the door(hematology, blood transfusions...) but the rooms were unlit and empty except for random scary looking pieces of expensive looking medical equipment everywhere, all unplugged and disused. in the room next to the doctor's office of the doctor fono was seeing, there was a pot of water boiling on the floor, sitting over a bunsen burner.

as we sat waiting for the doctor, i turned to my left and pulled back to the curtain to look out the window. sitting on the windowsill was a needle in a test tube stand - filled with blood - the syringe part facing upwards, with a bit of bloody goo hanging off the end. the plasma was already separated out from sitting there so long.

the next day when fono went back, he told me the needle was still there, but this time it was wrapped in plastic.

and in case you were wondering, yes, i am having a good time:)

stay tuned for the next episode, where i'll write about my adventures with bathing and children (thankfully, those are separate topics)

NB: i spelt baturai incorrectly - it's baturai not batturai