Posts filed under 'in the village'
Nigeria was hot — in so many ways. One of them was obvious right off the bat: the weather. I have been in America’s version of really hot. I’m not talking about the clean, dry heat of the desert — if you ask me, this is the wimp definition of hot. I mean that dynamic duo of temperature and humidity that melts tar and hairdos and motivation. Try summer in New York. In Baltimore, North Carolina, Kentucky, Florida. OK, now take that up a few orders of magnitude. Then take yourself off the power grid. In the village, where generators are few and the hours they run even fewer, for most of the day there was no moving air, cold or otherwise. No ice. No relief. This made the occasional appearance of cold beer miraculous and the chance to duck into a temporarily air conditioned room more seductive than just about anything.
On the long, dusty treks to work on the library, I was often engaged in lovely talks with my new Nigerian friends. In my myopic American exuberance, I must admit I felt impatient when they were apparently unable to keep up the pace and the conversation simultaneously. A few slow-motion feet. A few-sentences pause. And so on. The journey of a thousand words both began and ended with a single step. And then I got it. Duh. In a strength-sapping environment, how smart it was to Just. Slow. Down.
So it went like this: Sweat was omnipresent. It dripped from your nose. Trickled down your neck. Put a sheen over your entire body. Wet down your clothes. Made an effective glue for the village sand to stick to your legs. And used up bandana after bandana after bandana.
By the time you went to bed, it might have cooled down just a tad. You might have taken a little tepid-water sponge bath. You might even be sleeping in a house with a six-pm-till-midnight generator and a room with a ceiling fan. Don’t get me wrong, it was still plenty hot. But you learned to identify every little data point on the continuum of hot, and the just-before-sleep hot wasn’t quite so…well, hot.
It was always slightly disorienting to open my eyes in the morning. What was different? Oh yeah, I was dry. Thus began the tiny daily window of non-sweat. If you kept your movements to a bare minimum, you could prolong this delicious state for a little while. But inevitably, the heat and humidity would come upon you. It happened in an instant. You could be brushing your teeth or pulling on your underwear. Waving good day to some village kids or taking the first bite of breakfast. One moment you were dry, the next you were soaked. This I came to call the Moisture Moment. And that’s how you knew your day in Nigeria had truly begun.
June 1st, 2006
Just about everywhere we went in Nigeria, we were met with the same lovely phrase, intoned in the deep, musical Nigerian voice: “You are welcome.” But nothing matched what waited for us at the end of our two-hour speedboat ride from Warri to Oporoza.
see the festivities.
February 6th, 2006
GCJ journeys include a community service project. Ours was helping fund and build the Niger Delta Friendship Library in Oporoza.
take a look.
February 6th, 2006
Oporoza is a small village in the Niger Delta, accessible only by boat. This is where we lived and worked — building the Niger Detla Friendship Library and many heartfelt friendships.
experience oporoza.
February 6th, 2006
One of the most meaningful, charming and just plain fun parts of my experience in Oporoza was getting to know the children.
meet the kids.
February 4th, 2006
After a day-long ceremony to commission the Niger Delta Friendship library — hours of speeches, cultural performances, ribbon cutting, the entire community and multitudes of visitors filing through the reading room…it’s time for the real celebration: an all-nighter with the hottest highlife musician in southern Nigeria.
The sun is setting, the air is heavy with humidity, it’s hot, hot, hot. We’re wearing our by now sweat-soaked African outfits which were hand-made for all 40 of us by the village women for this very special day. Out of nowhere a stage is set up. Hundreds of white plastic chairs and many long tables carried in on the heads of children and young men are placed around the village square. Cold beer miraculously appears in this place without electricity, along with traditional snacks of peanuts packed into wine bottles.
King Robert takes the mike, his band laughing and tuning up around him. The first notes tell me never mind the heat, this is going to be one very cool night. A few hundred villagers gather in a huge circle and start dancing, bending forward from the waist and moving their butts in ways I’ll never fully get and can only vaguely imitate. About a thousand more cram the tables and all available standing room. We are peppered in among them, talking, laughing, dancing, the eighteen of us with white faces punctuating the darkness.
Kids are everywhere, their dance moves fully developed tho their bodies aren’t. The music is repetitive, hypnotic, joyous — and from what I can tell after soaking up this country for a few weeks, aptly embodies the Nigerian spirit. Every so often, a blinding few minutes of light as a journalist grabs some video footage. Flashes pierce the shadows — everyone wants to pose with us, “Snap me, snap me!” No one sleeps on this night.
King Robert and his guys play on and on, they never seem to take a break. In the early morning my roommate and I stumble back to our house to catch a bit of sleep. When I open my eyes, they’re still out there. A few villagers dancing, others stacking chairs. The band is just beginning to pack up as the sun and the heat emerge for another day.
read about king robert.
February 4th, 2006