Firsts

As promised (never mind the tardiness) my trip to Badagry complete with a link to pictures at the bottom…and yes you do have to feel guilty if you just thought about skipping down to the bottom and getting the picture book version.

This study abroad experience (as with most) can be summed up in a series of firsts. First time I had a turkish coffee in Turkey, first time I saw a kangaroo, first time I ate with chopsticks…etc, etc. Mine have been a tad different, first time I ate with my hands, first time I drove into on coming traffic on the highway on purpose, first time I was given as a wife to someone, first second time I was given as a wife to someone, first third time…you get the picture. Our trip to Badagry can also be summed up in a list of firsts. Our first stop on reaching Badagry from Lagos was the site of the first church in Nigeria established in 1842. After that we drove to the site of the first second storey building in Nigeria. Now on to a couple more personal firsts, after our tour of the building our tour guide took us outside and brought us to a well. Then he offered us the bucket to get a drink of water from. This was the first time I had been told that non-bottled/non-water satcheled water was safe to drink. As I do not like to play russian roulette with my intestines, I opted out. However, a few other students took a sip and they’re still standing. After this we went over to the Badagry Heritage Museum. This is a museum that deals completely with the trans-atlantic slave trade. From the museum we looked out on the point of no return, which, as you can guess, is the point at which captured slaves from Nigeria departed their homeland.

After Badagry we stopped at the border with Benin and bought apples, baguettes (first time I ate one of those here), clothes, perfume. You name it, and someone will come running to your car to try to sell it to you at a grossly inflated price (the oyinbo price).

Finally, we made it to the beach. This is what we had all been waiting for. Except the sand was searing hot, we couldn’t sit and relax, and we were told we could not dip our feet into the water because the current was too strong…we weren’t allowed with in five feet of the water in case it snatched us. Yep, this was my last first of my trip to Badagry, the first time I was brought to a beach, forced to stand in hot sand, and stare at the water from five feet away, and then ten minutes later file back into a bus.

Buy one get one free time…the week after we went to Lagos and Badagry we took another trip back to Oshogbo. This time it was just the students, and we went to a festival. A fellow student was invited along with his drum teacher to play drums at this festival put on by Iya Oshunta, the priestess of Oshun. This is the first time I’ve been to a festival for a orisha, and I was a tad underwhelmed. I expected egungun dancers, and the like; but instead I got a bunch of old people sitting around in chairs wearing beads and drinking. However, this night did provide a lot of entertainment in the form of the cluster, no, the mass of young kids who gathered around us. I spent most of my night talking to these kids in Yoruba, and I figured out halfway through that a bunch of them did not speak much English. It was the first night I spent at a festival where I didn’t hear the typical Yoruba spoken all around UI that is mixed with English.

I have saved the best first for last. Upon entering the festival we were taken to a shrine set up to worship Oshun. There we drummed/ took pictures, until the priestess of Oshun showed up to pray and receive our sacrifices (money and Schnapps). We knelt down before the priestess as she prayed over us and tasted our sacrificial Schnapps. As this was the first time any of us had been in this situation, we sat there transfixed as she took another taste of our Schnapps and swished it around in her mouth. Still staring, we were completely unprepared for the first time a priest or priestess of any orisha blessed us by spitting Schnapps on us.

Unfortunately for my German friend, she can now claim that that was the first time a priestess of Oshun spit Schanpps in her eyes.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=303308&id=512653913&l=bc88f0ee26

Three Trips

My blogging skills are so awful that we have been on three trips outside of Ibadan and I still have not written about them.

So, briefly, here ya go.

Back in December we took a day trip over to Abeokuta.  We climbed the massive Olumo Rock and looked out over the roofs and various churches/mosques of Abeokuta.  After enjoying the cool breeze and the relative peace at the top of Olumo, we climbed down to go to a market.  Abeokuta is known for it’s dyeing, so we went to the market right outside Olumo to buy the locally made Adire and Kampala.

A few weeks later we took an incredible trip to the Ijesha waterfalls and to Oshogbo.  In Ijesha we climbed up to the most refreshing waterfall shower I have ever had in my short life.  This may have been due to the fact that it was the first shower sans bucket I had taken in about 5 months, or it really could have just been that great.  From there our travelling Oyinbo bus took us to Oshogbo where we toured the sacred forest, prayed at Oshun’s shrine, and saw dyers at work on beautiful fabric.

Our last trip took us to the Old Oyo National Park.  It was beautiful to stay over night at the park and be able to look up at the sky and finally be able to see all the stars again. Although it is a beautiful area, we felt sort of short changed since we didn’t get up early enough to see any animals.  Instead we learned about the flora of the area, toured a dried up riverbed and returned home without any wild animal sightings.

All in all three great trips.  Next up Lagos (again) and Badagry!

Since I didn’t take the time to explain these trips, please enjoy the pictures I was finally able to load.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=254990&id=512653913&l=589b068ea2

 

A New Semester

At the end of November, we thought we were going to start classes at U.I.; two months later classes actually began (and then a month after that I got around to writing a blog…ah well, Africa time I guess).  I will never again complain about the slowness of UW-Madison’s student center as I impatiently wait for it to load so that I can sign up for classes, because it is still faster than the registration process without computers.  To register we had to go to each department and find the person who would register us.  More often than not they were not actually there so we had to come back on a different day.  Each department came out with their class lists and timetables at completely different times, thus further drawing out the registration process.

However, by the end of two weeks, I had pretty much signed up for all of my classes.  Next step: figuring out where and when these classes would actually take place.  Never make assumptions here.  For instance, never assume that just because it is written on the timetable that an english class is in such and such room and begins on this specific day, that it actually will.  More likely than not, the professor doesn’t show up, or a class is already going in the room where the english class is scheduled, or the professor tacks on an extra hour for class each week.  You never know.  And it is because you never know that phones are central to class coordination at U.I.  There is typically a class representative for each class that will find another room if the scheduled one is taken or will hand out copies of articles, and will call/text people in the class to let them know of any changes…usually.  So, if, like some of my friends at home, (you know who you are) you forget your phone at home, or always have it of, or simply just don’t answer, you wouldn’t make it through one class at U.I.

The lecture halls themselves here make Agriculture Hall, or North Hall at UW-Madison look new.  Typically in each row there are four or five busted seats.  I’m actually afraid to move sometimes in my seat because I’m essentially sitting on a thin sheet of wood that looks about 50 years old and I’m convinced that each creak is the one that will send me crashing to the floor.  One thing that lecture halls here have going for them is  that they are constructed to allow in the breeze as much as possible, that is, when there actually is one.

Despite the tone of this post, I really am enjoying my lectures here.  They are a lot more interactive and a lot smaller than lectures back home.  It’s comparable to a big discussion section.  It also seems that students are more excited in class, they’re more lively.  When the professor asks a question here there is no awkward silence or seat shifting, the students actually talk over each other to answer the professor.  I think the perfect example of the different attitudes is what the students wear to class.  Here, kids get dressed up. They wear office attire and try to look their best.  Where as in Madison it’s common to see students stumbling in to their 11 o’clock class half asleep and still in pajamas.  Or hung over wearing a “long shirt” and tights, clutching their coffees.  I’m not saying one is better than the other; and I’m of course including myself in the groggy, scrubby, student population of Madison (but not the long shirt-tights wearing population).  The difference in atmosphere was quite a surprise at first.

A Lunch of Champions…

A grapefruit and a good read

Recently I’ve been in a funk? a rut? I’m not sure of the correct word, but I have been in a bad mood.  Today I decided that what I needed to do was go back to my house and make myself a lunch fit for a champion.  And that’s just what I did.  So, I figured I’d let everyone know that the cure to a bad mood is a good enormous grapefruit, a few pieces of french toast, and a bit of silence to read for a little while.

 

 

Yummy Ola Mummy (corny I know)

Since this is my first post of this year: Happy 2011 everybody!  My Christmas and New Years were great.  I enjoyed the lazy but cozy Christmas that I spent with my host family and had a great time celebrating New Years the way I am used to, i.e. shenanigans with other young-uns my age.  I feel pretty comfortable in and around Ibadan now and find myself at a loss when it comes to describing things to people back home.  What do you people want to hear about?  I don’t know what will shock or interest you lot anymore.  As I was coming back from lunch today I felt pretty bad about my blog silence since December 23rd, and since I could come up with nothing else, I thought it best to describe where I went for lunch.  It was fresh in my mind, and way different from anything back in the states.

First, let’s discuss “canteens” in Nigeria.  There aren’t too many restaurants of the sort we would recognize back in the states, a place to go to relax and enjoy good food and company.  There also aren’t to many restaurants in Ibadan, for the most part people eat at “canteens” or “cafeterias” in Ibadan, and those are about feeding only.  You get your food and you get out.  It’s not that people are rude and make you leave, there just isn’t an atmosphere that makes you want to stay.  However, I could sit for a while at Ola Mummy and just people watch.  Ola Mummy is the canteen that I went to this afternoon.  I think it is the combination of the people climbing over each other to get to the front of the line and thus their soup, and the kitchen next door that make for very interesting people watching.  The kitchen at Ola Mummy, and actually the whole restaurant, would pretty much scandalized all the prissy workers at the Department of Health back in the states.

The counter at the back of the Ola Mummy, is just a wall which separates the workers from the hungry masses.  Behind this wall sit seven or so huge cauldrons, pots, bowls and other miscellaneous containers on the floor or rickety tables and stool.  These pots hold the amala, iyan, soup, egusi and various other things.  Among these containers work five or more women.  Two sit on stools low to the ground and fill up the bowls of customers with scoops of the starch you want, amala, iyan etc.  Then around them flit other women who reach into the throng of pushing, shoving, and unruly hungry customers to grab their bowls.  They demand to know which soup and meat combination is wanted then dump said combo unceremoniously on top of the or iyan already in the bowl.  Without consideration for “presentation” they slosh in obe ata, gbegiri and ila into one bowl, shout the price to the woman sitting on a stool collecting money and reach back in to the mass to grab another bowl.  Survival of the fittest determines if you get your food in the first five minutes of arriving or in the ensuing twenty minutes.

To me, the most interesting part of Ola Mummy though is the kitchen.  Seeing as restaurants are the majority (…fine extent) of my resume back in the states, I know a thing or two about sanitation in kitchens; and this kitchen (along with most here) would have sent shivers through chefs and sanitation officials back home.  While I was sitting and eating my food today I could hear the consistent pounding of a mortar and pestle coming from the kitchen and looked over to see three massive women standing in a circle facing each other with mortar on the floor pounding yams in massive amounts.  The image popped into my head of witches standing around their cauldron brewing a potion, but these would have to be good witches because what they brew is too good to be evil.  Around these three women, scattered about the room sat other women on the floor or at small stools who were in various stages of cooking, stirring, combining, or pounding.  No hair nets did they wear, nor gloves did they don; but you don’t go to Ola Mummy for the cleanliness, you go for the food.

Amala with obe ata (red), ewedu (green), and chicken. Minus the chicken, this is a typical meal at Ola Mummy

If the Weather Outside Ain’t Frightful…

Another holiday means another thread of meal emails from the Halloran clan.  I should have learned my lesson after Thanksgiving, but here I am again pouring over the lovely, but cruel, emails discussing all the delicious things they will be serving this Christmas. I justify this self-destructive behavior in my head by saying that I’m only reading these for the quirky halloran humor; that I only just realized are a “you have to be a Halloran” thing after I tried explaining it to people outside the family.  This time though, I’m not quite as bitter reading about the meal of surf and turf, since, even if I were there, I would be eating neither the surf nor the turf.  And there’s just something about the discussion of tenderloin and crab legs that does not appeal to me the way a nice oven roasted turkey does.  I did drool over the planning of the various side dishes, breads, and deserts.   Even though I will be missing those, I am looking forward to my Christmas turkey promised by my host dad when he found out that I don’t eat pork. I tried telling him that he doesn’t have to worry about changing from pork to turkey, that I always pick around the pork at home, but he wouldn’t hear of it.  So even if I don’t have the pumpkin gooey cake made by David with a little help from Michele, if there aren’t any vegetable dishes or po-tah-toes (alternate spelling pot-ah-toes?), spelt cookies (don’t ask) or store bought bread (really?) this year, I atleast will have an entrée that I’m excited to eat.

Apart from missing out on the wonderful people and food I’m used to over the holidays, another big problem with being Nigeria for the holidays is the severe lack of snow.  I know that all of you back home could do without the snow you’re being bombarded with, and I know that I’ve said in the past “I’ll take African heat over subzero Wisconsin weather anyday”; however, Christmas isn’t really Christmas without some slippers and frostbitten noses.

Apart from the tropical heat, very little around me makes me think that it will be Christmas in two days.  Mainly this is because Nigerian build-up to Christmas is gradual (at least in Ibadan and with my host family).  I am used to the mad shopping craze that posseses everyone at this time of the year.  I am used to the cooking and wrapping induced stress that leaves everyone comatose the day after, and I’m used to Christmas being thrown at me from all sides, as if I could forget the day. Here, I’ve noticed that Christmas comes on slowly, like when you’re really cold and you take a sip of hot chocolate and can feel it spreading throughout your insides warming you up.  As the people trickle home from the various cities they live in (sometimes in the dead of the night like my older sister), and the family grows and gathers at home, I realize that it is starting to feel a little bit like Christmas.  There isn’t a tree in my living room, no decorations outside, inside the only decorations are a couple cards that sit on top of our T.V.; however, the similar feeling of a full house and jolly people gathered for Christmas is there.  It will be a new kind of Christmas in a new culture, but a happy Christmas nonetheless.

Merry Christmas!

Lazy Lauren*

Per my mother’s request a blog post, because as my mother so kindly said to motivate me, “get off your lazy ass and blog”.  So, here I go.

My excuse before now had been that there wasn’t anything interesting going on that I could blog about.  First of all, wrong answer because that opens it up for suggestions.  Secondly, I jinxed myself.  The second I said that, my next three days were lined up with excursions out of and around Ibadan.  I have been on “break” for the past couple weeks and have dealt with the lack of scheduleing extraordinarily well.  I have gotten through a couple books, made that infamous trip down to Lagos, and in general have enjoyed myself immensely and to the best of my ability.  I have no regrets, except that it leaves little to blog about and thus causes harrasment from my loving mother.

It has been suggested numerous times that I should expand on my time in Lagos, and for all the world I wish I could.  However, the time I spent in Lagos is too overwhelming to really put into words, much less a nice neat concise little blog post.  Lagos is not a nice neat concise blog post; Lagos is more like a room full of notes that are scattered around, balled up, scratched out, in various haphazard piles around the room, and blowing about when the wind comes in through a crack in the wall.  Lagos is chaos.  So I have decided to avoid attempting to describe that experience.  I’m sure you would do the same if you were faced with two options; one take a hike up Bascom Hill, or two climb Mount Everest without much technical support.

I also shied away from describing my brief but memorable encounters with cockroaches.  Simply because I think I may have made my point that I have a phobia and deal with it in very odd ways.  (No eye contact and very large books).

I said that there is nothing interesting to write about because I am dedicating myself to a couple weeks of doing absolutely nothing, and I’m not talented enough to make reading and walking around Ibadan sound interesting.  But, as I said earlier, I jinxed myself.  Yesterday we took a trip over to IITA, an argicultural research center with a hotel, restaurant, and swimming pool attached.  We rolled through the not so pearly gates of IITA and Ibadan disappeared.  Ahead of us stretched a long street without craters, with lines, and an actual sidewalk; all of which are highly uncommon in Ibadan.  The residential area boasted tree lined “boulevards”, while elsewhere, if you were to stop and look around all you would see is wilderness and beautiful greenery.

What really struck me about IITA was the air.  I loved the fact that I could tell it was actually air that I inhaled.  I had forgotten what air could smell like, and I had forgotten the pleasant scents carried about by the air.  I smelled fresh cut grass, and a new rainfall.  I smelled the smell of a sprinkler running in the midday heat. I smelled potpurri which reminded me of my aunt’s house, and I smelled nothing.  It was wonderful, it was a buffet of smells and all of them good.  Unlike Ibadan where your nose is constantly confronted with the oddest array of stenches from trash fires, to diesel, or from moldy rotten things, to something that smells disconcertingly like feces.  Ibadan confronts the senses and the order, logic, and beauty of IITA was a wonderful respite.

When I arrived home I was confronted with another shake-up to my daily routine of doing nothing.  In my living room some woman was decorating birthday and wedding cakes.  Naturally I was curious.  Who is this woman?  Why has she turned our dining room into a bakery, and more importantly why was I not informed sooner so that I could come home and “help”?  After I established that this woman was one of my older host sisters, I got to quizzing her about the cakes.  It turns out making cakes was just something she did in her spare time to keep busy.  That certainly put me to shame, I obviously have no motivation since I spent the last three weeks “on my lazy ass” instead of baking cakes for all of Ibadan.  Her creations, that took her all day, were beautiful and I desperately wanted to dive in, but since they were for someone’s wedding I held back.  However, the thought lingered that I should let it slip that my birthday had just passed, in the hopes that maybe she’d make me one.

*I don’t actually think I’m lazy, the title is stolen from a chapter in the book I’m currently reading, Little Women.