Port Harcourt

The following was written Tuesday, but we have been unable to post until today, Friday, 5/8 -

It is Tuesday, Cinco deMayo in the US, and it has been a busy few days. We flew into Port Harcourt International on Friday and went to Miriam’s NGO site, Niger Delta Wetlands Center (NDWC) in Yenagoa. The facility, which they built over many years, has conference facilities, communications and office facilities, and 10 or so small, comfortable rooms for overnight guests. It has research work going on in the area dealing with habitat preservation and ecological impact assessments, but there is a big hole in the facilities available to allow group meetings and collaboration, and this facility has provided a valuable service for such things. Yenagoa is a relatively new state capital, with the state of Bayelsa only 10 years old. So everything there was built in the last 10 years or so. Anyway, we stayed over Friday and Saturday nights, and took care of a few things. Sunday morning we got up early and headed to a medium sized town named Kaiama, where NDWC is developing a solar powered water well, to supply fresh safe water for drinking and cooking for the town. The storage tank will be about 20,000 gallons, and the well pumps, at 750 feet deep, will be powered by 32 solar panels. Quite a project, but also quite simple, with no batteries, power invertors, and the like. We then went on to Turner’s home town, Odi, a community of about 10,000 people. We visited Ishmael, an old, literally, friend of Miriam and Turner, at about 90 years old. A very spry, happy guy, with a big smile, who just squealed with delight when we walked in. His house has a title, “Mind Your Own Business” on the front wall – good advice. We talked about his fish farming, and other issues in town. We also looked in on a local resident who is developing a snail farm of sorts, in a block, roofed building behind her house. Nigerians enjoy snails a great deal, and there is a big demand for them. They have traditionally been harvested in the wild. Full size is perhaps 4-5 inches in diameter in the shell. We spoke with several folks on main street – Turner has stayed very much involved with his hometown – and overheard several church services underway. Southern Nigeria is a region of churches – churches on every corner, all sorts of variations. We drove out of town a short ways and stopped at the Biodiversity Center, an effort of Turner’s to improve existing and add new agricultural products grown by rural folks. So, for example, there is work on better ways to start new pineapple plants. There is lab level work on snail farming. There is grass cutter farming. A grass cutter is a small rodent that looks a bit like a beaver without the tail, or a large smooth furred guinea pig, which grows to 3-4 KG, 6-8 pounds, and is very good eating. But it has some definite personality quirks. It does not like red, and gets pretty shook up. It also has a fear of bugs, which isn’t too much of a problem in the wild – it just runs away, but it is a problem in a cage. It doesn’t like loud noises, so the building in which it is raised is out away from roads and town. It is closed in thoroughly with screen to keep out bugs, and no red clothing is allowed. There is also mushroom culture studies going on. Amazing facility.

We ended the visit with a swing past “Martha’s house”, a small home in the village where my sister Martha spent several months. It is built of interlocking masonry blocks, so no mortar was needed. It is rented out to the Chinese man working on mushrooms. Next store is the first home Miriam and Turner built in Odi, which was burned down some years ago during a conflict in the Niger Delta area. They have left it as was, but in the yard remains a tree they had planted back then, which bears a huge fruit called a jackfruit. Miriam got two local high school aged boys to go up and bring down two of them. About 12” in diameter, bumpy green exterior, and a ooze from the cut stem that you would swear is latex caulk. We took them with us to Port Harcourt, our next stop.

We arrived in PH about 1 in the afternoon. Traffic was thick, but Miriam commented on how quick the traffic flow was. It was, after all, Sunday afternoon. We thought it was plenty thick. We found out about weekday traffic Monday morning. It is amazing. A few characteristics – three or four columns of cars on a two lane road, right turns from the left lane, left turns from the right lane, MOTORBIKES EVERYWHERE (except in the city center), little Mitsubishi vans with four rows of seats, four people to a row (this is a very common intercity transportation network). Fascinating. Our driver, Mike, is a calm, unassuming guy who gives no ground on the road, and laughs when we inhale too quickly. Great guy.

Monday was a cleaning day – Miriam and Turner haven’t been back here since perhaps late February. They do consider this house their real home, and we could sense it as soon as we arrived. It is a nice two story home with three bedrooms, nice living/dining room, a functional kitchen, and a few peripheral rooms. Beautiful property, with African apples, an adera tree, oil palms, plantain palms, papaya, and all sorts of unusual plants. Port Harcourt has recently changed the rules about fences, limiting them to five feet, at least the part that can’t be seen through – you can have fencing a bit higher, like wrought iron. So the whole town is crazy with fence lowering and rebuilding work. It is probably a good thing, but it is certainly disruptive.

Friday again - reading the above back, it feels a bit disjointed, but that is sort of how this trip is. Lots of sensory inputs! Food, people, infrastructure, and so on. Some overload is bound to occur. But we have had no real health issues, for which we are thankful. Off to Lagos on Sunday, the biggest city in Nigeria at 5-6 million. We will try to update from there.
Love, Mary Ann and Jim