To the market! (Revised)

To the market! When you need supplies in Nigeria, the most common mode is to visit a city market. The closest experience in the US is a farmers' market, where such markets are usually in a village or city of almost any size, or along the roadside. Nigeria has the same, just on a much larger scale, and a much larger array of products and services! Everything from watch battery service to furniture. I would suspect that 80% or more of consumer trade takes place in such markets.

Roadside stands are everywhere, and tend to group up into subject areas, which is interesting - two dozen stands all selling similar products. I'm told that clientele development is still important, so that a roadside shopkeeper will develop a customer base, and can survive quite nicely among lots of competition. As in this location -

All are selling onions (purple), yams, potatoes (tan), mango (yellow), and a few tomatoes (red). and there are probably 6-8 stands in this picture. But they have lots of regular customers, and all do OK.

And here. The jugs are palm oil, an extremely healthy oil made from a palm tree fruit from which oil is easily extracted, used for cooking of all sorts. Some fruit to the right is mango or oranges - Another common roadside sales product is building materials, in this case cement blocks, made and sold from this location. There is always a van or truck going past you can hire to haul them for you.

The city markets are different - they are huge! I mean acres, and usually arranged in long rows .

of small buildings, sometimes brick or block. Again, similar vendors will cluster together, offering similar items. Aisle ways are narrow, usually, but some areas are laid out to suit a specific need, as in a wide open space for carpet or furniture. Ready made and custom made to order clothing, hairdressers (all you need is a stool!), tools, electronics, fresh fruit and vegetables, of course, and

jewelry, prepared food, new and used building materials, lots of beverages of all kinds... literally, you name it. I must admit, it can be intimidating, but it can also be very funny. Like this -


(h/t to Matthew Wentworth)
This is a load of yams, coming from the countryside. You need to know that yams run 5 pounds or more each, and I would estimate that there are a thousand or more in this van, or perhaps 2 and a half tons of yams! In a Mitsubishi with a 1.4 or 1.6 liter engine! Amazing.This is a load of all sorts of fruits and veggies, fresh off the truck -








And the contents from the back, below. Bananas, pineapples, papaya, watermelons. The boxes in the foreground may be imported fruit, but this is pretty unusual, and are pretty pricey. Imported might include grapes, apples, strawberries (though they are also grown locally), apricots, and figs.



Onions and the small red peppers used in EVERYTHING -

The yellow large "bananas" below are actually plaintain, still on the big stalk as grown in the palm tree. Also carrots, cukes, tomatoes. Miriam has her money ziplock bag out to pay for her purchases -
Snails, usually collected in the woods, are a real delicacy, and quite pricey. Two or so make a nice meal -

And you need a watch repaired or a new battery? Just stop and see this young man -

Time for a new mattress? This guy has them -



And there are probably bedroom furnishings in the car to finish the remodelling. The mattresses, made here in Nigeria, are truly wonderful. I'm not kidding - they are similar to the very pricey memory foam we see in the US, but better. They provide an exceptional night's sleep, for around $75 for a queen size, without a cover. A local tailor in the market will make a cover from the fabric of your choice, at $3/yd, for $25 or so, so you have $120 or so in the whole thing. Why do we spend $1000 for a Serta innerspring mattress? I'm tempted to try to put one in our checked luggage...


Auto supplies? This fellow has cleaners, oil, hubcaps, and probably tires in the tent. And, nine times out of ten, a good mechanic to put on your parts or supplies.
This place below has similar products, with motorbike tires over on the left. I didn't get a good picture of heavy parts for sale, but we visited an area where they were repairing engines, alternators, steering gears, rear axles, and so forth.



So it is quite an experience to go shopping. There are more conventional western style stores, but they cost more, and don't have the local stuff as much, and are certainly not as entertaining!

We leave in 36 hours... With very mixed feelings. This has been a wonderful, enlightening, and eye opening trip. Will have to write our impressions in a future entry.

Jim and Mary Ann

Sunday notes

We have been in Abuja for a week or so now, though it feels like a few days. We start the morning most days around 7 - 7:30 with coffee on the back screenporch. An informal breakfast occurs around 9 - 9:30 after showers and the like, usually toast, cold cereal with yoghurt, and/or fruit. Errands and visits might take up the middle of the day, with a planned meal around 2:30 - 3 in the afternoon. A nap or some reading in the hottest part of the day from 3 - 6 PM might occur, with the news and a light snack around 7 - 8 PM to close out the day, with bedtime about 10 PM. And it goes fast!
Several things are planned for our remaining time here. Tuesday we will travel by road to Katsina via Zaria to look in on the neem tree project, described previously. We expect to arrive

Neem tree

early afternoon on Tuesday, spend the afternoon in field trips and discussion, stay overnight locally, and head home Wednesday morning, to arrive early afternoon. Thursday we plan to visit the space / satellite facility here in town, which is in place to provide ground based services for the communications and remote sensing satellites Nigeria has. The communications satellite had a failure this last winter, but it "came with a guarantee" by China, so they will be launching a replacement this fall. There are plans to add backup satellites for both units as well. The remote sensing satellite has been very useful in geological, GPS, land use, and similar work, allowing all sorts of mapping of land, rivers, temperatures, and that sort of thing, and has already exceeded its expected life. Anyway, we will visit the nuclear science gamma radiation center on Friday, where work on sterilization and medical procedures is ongoing. The last 8 years have seen the introduction of all sorts of "seed" technologies which allow and encourage all sorts of other work to begin. It is pretty amazing. It also provides reassurance to donors and investors that Nigeria is a dynamic place where there is strong opportunity for growth and improvement.
Last night, Miriam and Mary Ann were feeling sorry for me. I have had a few days of dancing digestion - just a generally unsettled feeling. So they made some wonderful fried fish with a Zatarain's coating mix supplied by Melinda Wentworth when she was here, some macaroni and cheese built by Mary Ann, and a very nice salad of cucumbers, avocado, and onion with a mild yoghurt dressing. Very nice. I think of myself as a fan of hot spicy food, but even a good thing can be overdone, and I really think that was causing some of my distress. But ...I intend to continue to challenge my system to adapt! Diseye, Ilse, and Hella joined us for dinner, where Hella showed

Diseye and Hella

a bit of uncertainty about her first taste of ice cream, and a decided preference for watermelon. It was a lot of fun, with lots of baby-watching and -passing. We had gone to the grand opening of a new local park, a beautiful place full of local flora, along a small creek, right in the middle of this

large city. It was very nice, and we were able to meet the woman, the widow of a national hero in Nigeria, who had spearheaded the construction of the park. She was a very gracious and kind lady who took a minute to talk with us, and to accept our compliments on the result. It was put together in cooperation with the Nigerian Palm Society, and contains 365 different species of palm, "one for each day of the year". It also includes an extensive nursery, providing stock for people to buy for replanting at home. We've got lots of pictures, which I will try to include.

And Mary Ann on the back deck of the Abuja house, and a few views of the city from the hill where the house is located -

Love to you all,

Mary Ann and Jim

A few notes on our daily activites

A random listing of activities and observations:

- It is 37.6 degree C at the moment, Friday noon. Figure that out in degrees F.

- We had Nigerian fast food last night, from a lady down the hill on a corner, cooked on a small wood fire. We had rice cakes, fluffy, ultra thick pancake-like things, no evidence of the rice grain left, a bit sweet and nicely oily. We had bean pucks, for lack of a better word, similar to a hushpuppy or donut hole, made from a bean something like black eyed peas. Good. We had a small cup of hot stew, or sauce, in which one could dip the bean or rice dish. We had something called avocado pear, an oblong fruit which had been boiled lightly, and which had a large seed. You kind of sucked the flesh, 3/8" thick, off the seed. Interesting... For dessert we had vanilla ice cream with your choice of fresh pineapple, banana, maraschino cherries, and Nutella. Very good all around.

- Wednesday night we had an outstanding storm - wind, rain, very loud thunder and bright lightning. Fun. We have a back screened patio at the Abuja house, where it is nice to sit and visit or read. Or to watch a storm, which on Wednesday, came from behind us. The wind picked up, the trees swayed, the flowers on the flowering trees flew around, and the rain began. It was heavy enough at times to wooosch around the corners of the building in sprays, and kept up for perhaps 20 minutes. The temp dropped 31 degree F, from near 100 to below 70F. Great time.

- Mary Ann and Miriam have been doing the market runs. Most food is sold by small shop owners who either grew it or know the person who did. One staple is the yam, a large (~5 lb.) root crop. It is different than a sweet potato, which is also popular. The yam is very similar to potato in texture, with a bit more flavor and no sweetness. We have seen the little transportation vans full to the roof with yams, so full they are sticking out the windows, on the road. Very little in imported foods; though they are available, they don't make up any appreciable part of the diet. Lots of fruit, lots of starchy vegetables, some greens usually intended to be cooked, rather than eaten raw. However, tomatoes and cucumbers work fine for a fresh salad. Let's see - fruit: pineapple, orange, lemon, avocado, bananas (the best you've ever had), mango, papaya (sometimes called paw paw), apples, watermelons, grapes, honeydew melons, strawberries. Vegetables: onions, potato, yams, cassava (Wikipedia it), sweet potato, plantain (a type of unsweet banana), various greens to be cooked, garlic, lots of hot and mild peppers. Milk and milk products are not really common, because of cost and spoilage, but a drinkable yoghurt is very popular and very good, and can be used in many ways where you might normally use milk, and it keeps much longer. Great with cereal, cookies, on salad, and so on. Protein is mostly from fish, goat, and chicken. It is relatively expensive in the grand scheme of things, so it is incorporated into stews and sauces, and actually the quantities most people get is perfectly adequate. Beef is curious - available, but range fed, so it is a "manly meat", no melt-in-your-mouth steak. We had steak one night, though, raised specifically for local steak houses, and it was very good.

- The man came to mow the lawn yesterday. The lawn is green and growing, the result of the rainy season.

- There is a songbird here we hear each morning and evening, which has an amazing repertoire. Best described as variations on a theme, somewhat Philip Glass-like. Repeating end phrase of 3-5 notes, then starts over with a slight variation or different key, ending with the same 3-5 notes. I love it.

The advent of the cell phone has changed the place. All phones are prepay format, and very reasonable. Recharge cards available everywhere, in large and small denominations. Four or five carriers, and phones are not tied to a particular carrier.

- Bottled water is readily available, and tap water in many cities is perfectly safe and tastes great. Bottled water comes in a variety of containers, from a heat sealed poly bag of perhaps 12 oz. (you tear off a corner and pour it into your mouth), to 20 oz "pop bottles" to 5 gallon carboys for in the home. People drink a lot of water, and a lot less soda/pop. Lots of fruit juice, and some beer and wine. Almost no one smokes.

That's enough.

We are enjoying our stay. A couple activities lined up - a man in the area wants to talk to me about methanol as a fuel for transportation, another will stop tonight for an introduction to his new computer, which we brought from the US, and next Tuesday / Wednesday we all will make a trip to Katsina in the north to look at Neem tree projects. So it is quite an experience, one we will not forget.

Love, Mary Ann and Jim

Nigerian Conservation Federation

A short post about our visit to the Nigerian Conservation Federation site in Lagos. Miriam had a morning meeting at the facility, and we were to go from there to the airport to fly back to Abuja, the capital, so we all got up at a reasonable hour and went to the property together. The federation owns some acreage, and has put in elevated walking trails out through rainforest / ocean savanna. It might be altogether a mile in length, with branching walkways off the main loop, going to birdwatching sites or the like. So Mary Ann, Chris (our driver), and I walked the path. You remember the old African jungle movies, where the guy was slowly, tediously hacking his way through the overgrowth with a machete? That's how it was. Thick, dense growth, with most of the firmly rooted trees and plants used as climbing supports for vines and ferns. The palms providing moist pockets for ferns at the bases of each frond was pretty amazing.

As you might have noticed in the picture above, there is also a treehouse along the pathway! Must go up 50-60 feet or more, most of it inside a vertical ladder cage. No, I didn't.

We crossed paths with a monitor lizard - hard to see in the picture below, but he is there stretched out horizontally on the tree trunk. They enjoy eggs, mostly - bird eggs, so birds have had to get ingeneous about where they lay them, like in houses, or cars, or such.

Back at the center, we laughed at the peacocks - silly creatures, with REALLY small heads -

and then we came face to face with a really large

tortoise. He just came wandering out of the brush, seemed quite intent on getting across the lawn, stopped now and then for a few mouthfuls of a particular flowery weed, and finally ended up under one of the buildings in the shade (buildings are 4-5 feet off the ground, on concrete pillars). Amazing creature, and didn'r seem the least bit concerned about us.

A few other pictures -

Palms can grow this big in less than a year.

All for now.

Love, Mary ann and Jim

School in Port Harcourt

Playtime

A high point of our visit to Port Harcourt last week was a stop at the school Jamie spent time at when she was here 18 months ago. It is a private school, run by a woman and her daughter. The woman, Debrovka, has been here since the mid - 60's, having moved here from Croatia with her husband. This, then, has been a lifelong effort.

Debrovka

Debrovka's daughter, Monica with Mary Ann in their home

It is certified by the country, charges tuition, and has a very good reputation, but Debrovka has tried to maintain the neighborhood character of the place, taking local students over those more able to pay, but who live further away. The streetview is very deceiving - there are perhaps 12 classrooms, educating 350 students in grades preprimary (2-3 yrs) to 7th or 8th grade, as well as Debrovka's home. They use a sort of master teacher/apprentice system. There are older, more experienced teachers who teach 1 or more classes, but also oversee 3-4 classroom level teachers.

Monica with the "master teachers"

The building is in a central city location, with limited land, on a side street. The grounds are neat and clean, the buildings in good repair, built in a sort of Nigerian style - open windows, air flow from outside to a central courtyard, concrete construction. We had collected a lot of miscellaneous school supplies, from pencils to inflatable globes to wall posters of letters/numbers/geography, and a number of small books and DVD's. We also wanted to make contact with each of the children, so Mary Ann had come up with friendship bracelets, adjustable multicolored string bracelets. We met each class, and M.A. did a topnotch job of explaining why we wanted to meet them, and that we wanted to be friends, and cared about them. It was pretty rewarding. The children, of course, were amazing. Even little ones would, in unison, say "Good morning, auntie" or some such. Very well mannered, but not at all wooden - you could pick out the serious ones, the frightened ones, the mischievous ones.

The third from the left is a good example of a mischevous kid! But she was fun!

We visited the oldest students last and two of them remembered Jamie. Really nice - they said she was kind and helpful, and taught them alot (!).

The next post will deal with Miriam and Turner's home in Port Harcourt, their "real" home.

Turner's hometown

Note: A good bit of this was covered in my entry of 5/8, but was minus pictures. So this will provide a clearer picture, hopefully of the previous text.

Jim's sister Miriam is married to Turner Timinipre Isoun, of the Ijaw ethnic group in Nigeria. Turner grew up in a small riverside village, Odi, in what is now Bayelsa state. You can't Google the village, but you can Google Yenagoa, Nigeria and get an idea where it is.

In our drive from Yenagoa to Port Harcourt last week, we stopped in Odi, a town of about 10,000 people. The traditional commerce in town deals with fish and the river in general, with lots of local foods produced or harvested. The main street through town is a two lane road, with shops close to the shoulder, so it feels quite close! But it was a lively scene - Sunday morning about 10 AM - with many people dressed up and going to / coming from church. The southern part of the country is heavily Christian, with all denominations represented. And Sunday is the day to go. We walked the street, and Turner greeted lots of people who know Odi's contribution to the growth of the nation! It was fun. We slipped into a side alley to stop at the home of a dear old friend, Ishmael, who was the first to have Miriam into his home when she first visited Odi 43 years ago! And he served her oatmeal and fruit! Ishmael is over 90, and showing his age, but was still very animated and enthusiastic. An amazing old gentleman with a twinkle in his eye. We talked of the village, and activities. The whole time, there was a small contingent of young people around us, who had been there with him before we arrived. A sort of spending quality time with an elder. Ishmael was a friend of, and travelled now and then with, Turner's father. In the course of those travels, Turner's father worked as a baker, while Ishmael got work as an assistant to a British colonial judge, in Ghana, I believe, where he stayed for a number of years. Met all sorts of dignitaries, and has great stories to tell. But as he got older, he moved back to Odi, where he remains. He has always maintained a phrase to live by on his home, which you may be able to read in the picture below if you look carefully - "Mind Your Business". Good advice.

We stopped by the school where Turner got his first years of schooling, and which continues to educate kids today. We also visited Miriam's and Turner's home in town, which they had constructed a number of years ago. Without going into all the details, it was destroyed 6-8 years ago in a government military incursion following the killing of some policemen by unknown assailants. Only the shell remains, but it was obviously a fully functional, nice home, with open ventilation, a tile bath and kitchen, and "mother-in-law" quarters on the other side of an open courtyard. We felt respectful of the place, and what they had tried to do, and it was really quite sad. And yet, behind the house, a large tree remained that they had planted, and had several jackfruit hanging from it. Large! We took two to Port Harcourt, where we tried it - the inner flesh was a bit like a pineapple in flavor, though blander, and had a tendency to fall apart into slivers when picked up, but not bad. A favorite of Indians and Filipinos, who use the whole thing, including some ping pong ball sized seeds. So it was a bit like something of their history at the house remained.

They had had a small house built a few years ago adjacent to the gutted one, for use by my sister Martha for an extended stay. The house is interesting, in that it was built of a solid interlocking block, made locally of concrete and a local material. No mortar is required, though a bead of caulk / sealer is frequently applied before setting a block in place. But construction is straightforward, and goes quickly. Add a metal roof, an you are ready to go. It is now rented to a local researcher. The fence as clothesline is very common.

Our impression of a village environment such as this might be overly critical if one didn't understand the situation. People walk alot. People buy and sell to their neighbors, and are very much a part of a community. Things are close, so as to be convenient. A family may own a lot in the community, which may include a home for older folks, the current family, and children. A home is a place to live as well as do business.

One story to tell - did I tell this already? - we stopped to visit a nephew of Turner's, a retired Navy guy, at his home. We had breakfast and talked, the whole time with CNN in the background. Just before we left, what should come on CNN but John Stewart, the international version. Small world.

Gotta go. Next entry, I've promised Mary Ann, will be the Port Harcourt school.

Love to all, Mary ann and Jim