Christmas 09

The pictures on this page are (from top to bottom (I still can't shift them round to make them fit right on the page)):
Anita Aparshe, Abraham Aparshe and John Okereke enjoying my atlas, Abraham again with a toothpick, John again, Mrs Monde the Provost of the College, Dan Aparshe (the dad) with little Rihina from upstairs, a spectaular pair of jeans that I spotted at the Miss Akwanga Pageant on New Years Day, a group of volunteers enjoying a night out in Abuja, me with my hair braided, Janet and Augustine Aparshe, me again, guys playing in a basketball tournament in Akwanga. (The Aparshes and the Okerekes are my neighbours.)





















Christmas
The weekend before Christmas I went to Abuja for my friend Angie’s birthday and went out dancing. I was then meant to go down to Calabar, which is on the south coast, for Christmas. The bus company had said that the bus would be leaving Abuja at 7am and passing through Akwanga, so I kept in touch with the driver to know when. The time ticked away and the bus didn’t arrive until 1pm, meaning that we probably wouldn’t arrive in Calabar before midnight. There’s been a fuel crisis recently, so queues from the filling stations are hugely backed up. There was also a lot of congestion on the roads because of Christmas, so I forelornly picked up my backpack and went home. There I found the Aparshe children (my neighbours), who were happy to have me back to join them for Christmas. Christmas Eve was spent preparing food for the following day. I visited Comfort, another neighbour, who was also preparing food and practised a little bit of Mada dancing. Mada is the dominant tribe around here. In the night, around 1.30 in the morning, I spoke to the Stansted crew, who were all around Ed’s enjoying Finnish bun and gingerbread after having been at the pub. It was funny to think of them drunkenly standing around the phone in his mum’s kitchen while I lay in the hot night under my mosquito net.


I woke up early on Christmas morning. My fridge has been on the fritz but had miraculously started working a day earlier, so the Aparshes had stored some veg and meat in there. They came to pick it up and I chipped in by chopping green beans. The plan was to go to Church that morning at 9, but before we went we had some food – spicey rice with vegetables in, coleslaw and meat. So we waddled off to Church, bellies full. Once there, we discovered that the English spoken mass had been earlier and we had joined the Hausa service. ‘Bademwa’, as they say (no problem). Back at home, we went to rest, so chilled out a bit and had a nice call from home where everyone was enjoying opening presents.

Later on in the afternoon I went to visit Comfort and Gudi, my neighbours downstairs and had some more rice and meat and some watermelon. I then went on a little walk to Becky’s house, which is across the campus and in a part of town called Lo-cost. She tried to ply me with more food, but I just took some chicken as I knew she’d been keeping them for some time especially for Christmas. It seems that it’s the custom to go and visit other people’s houses on Christmas Day where you’ll be fed. From there I went to see Mrs Monde (Acting Provost of the College) and we sat outside drinking beer and eating meat. For Woody’s information (ever since some Nigerian couple were on The Restaurant, she’s obsessed with how I must be eating goat all the time!), the traditional meat at Christmas is beef. My neighbours had gone in with a group of 4 to buy a cow, which was slaughtered and divied up on Christmas Eve.

When I got back from Mrs Monde, I visited the Okerekes upstairs, my final visit for the day.

Boxing Day was quiet. I sat and watched some TV with the Okerekes and started to write this. I have a friend coming for dinner, so am cooking some beef that I bought today. It’s a bit of a pain that my fridge is being so temperamental, because it means that things go bad so quickly. I have a list of things to do in the new year though, which includes getting my fans and fridge fixed and building a book shelf for my parlour.