A Very Under-developed Community Development Program

This intro is for people who are not familiar with the NYSC program.

In addition to the primary assignment that each Corper is given (mentioned by SongSmith in the previous post), depending on where that job is, you'd have a Local Government Development Area where you'd meet once a week, with other Corp Members, for Community Developement. There are different groups - Charity, Enviroment/Beautification/Sanitation, Dance and Drama, etc. As a part of each group, you're supposed to develop projects, in line with the concentration of your group, that would help develop your Local Government area.

* * *

Now, except playing errand girl and making trips to the bank for a CD coordinator counts as some sort of community development, I believe that this entire thing has been a waste of the last 30, or so, Wednesdays of my life.

Yesterday (Wednesday), we actually did something 'useful' - we walked around the LGA and picked up trash and stuff; generally cleaned the environment. (And then I did a quick bank-run).

Don't get excited though, 'doing something' is just one very small bit of the hoopla. You have to get your CD cards signed too! They have these yellow and green cards that you have to present for the coordinator's signature every week, as proof of attendance. You would think they were the ones that signed N 1, 000.00 notes.
"Who said all of you should come upstairs? See how this place is hot and smelly. Oya, down! Everybody!"
Then she'll shout through the window from the second floor (third floor American nomenclature, lol. It took me almost 6 months to get it right when I just got home) - "Five people should come at a time to sign their cards".
If she sees five and a half people - "You people don't want to leave this place today. Everybody downstairs!"
How this helps community development is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around.

All of us who hoped the NYSC program would give us an opportunity to work for a better Nigeria would just have to make sure we survive this year of torture first, and then find other ways to develop our comminuties, and country as a whole. I can't decisively say that the NYSC program should be scrapped, because I think that it can serve a very good purpose. It just has to be totally restructured.

Oh, and then, everybody likes to get 'settled'; as in "You, Corper, when you're leaving you'll settle me o. All the work I did for you - signing your card, doing your clearance. In fact, your debt is serious, you're my daughter's namesake".

See me foolishly thinking she was just doing her job...

To Serve With Love, Part II

As promised in my last post, here comes the second installment of the nightmare that was NYSC camp. My biggest beef with it, far above the poor sanitation, the brutish officials, the ‘cozy’ living quarters, was really just the stupidity of the whole thing. It’s three weeks where you take grown-butt adults, make them share rooms like prepubescents, tel them when to go to sleep, when to wake up, make them perform stupid dancing drills at 4am, make them march for the governor and to what end? No one seemed entirely sure .

The whole thing was run by a bunch of illiterates, who resented foreign-trained students instead of seeing them for the valuable resources that they are. The thing with these “foreign-trained” students (that phrase was always spat out with the most bitter venom imaginable) is that they’ve seen how things are done outside of a country that is not run by money-obsessed orangutans. They’ve seen that with just a little bit of effort, conditions can be exponentially improved. They understand the meaning of customer service. They get that people who have voluntarily (somewhat) enlisted to serve their country must not be treated like vermin, but like heroes. Instead of capitalizing on the skill-set and worldview that these students bring to the table, they are treated as persona non grata. You these fake Nigerians, please get back to your country – awon omo obodo oyinbo --if you love it so much. (Trust me, I’m working on it).

The main culprit in this regard was the Camp Director. A slow-thinking, slow-speaking chore of a woman who cannot ever have seen the insides of a grammar school at any point in life. On one particularly interesting night, following a bonfire party that promised to be hot but fizzled out early, the boys decided to revolt and storm the female hostels which were bolted shut to protect the female corps members’ virtue. They were unable to breach security but caused enough of a fracas to get everyone a bit worked up. Camp Director Lady is mad and someone is going to bear the brunt of it but who would it be? Who could she blame for the male corpers acting in such an unruly fashion? The female corps members, naturally. She goes from dorm to dorm admonishing the girls for “waving around their dirty, smelly c*nts” even though “almost 70% of the camp has tested HIV positive”, advising girls to not accept any requests for “blowjoys” as it is an indication that a man cannot perform and should have his “hammer” chopped off, and advising that condoms are not safe because “when he is at the height of his excitement, HE WILL REMOVE IT!!!” This is who is running the joint and who convinces herself every night before she goes to bed that she is empowering and educating the future of the country.

On another night, a couple was caught inflagrante delicto in the bushes behind a bus. Two adults. Two consenting adults. Two nasty adults, but two consenting adults nevertheless. They were flogged in front of the whole camp, allegedly until the guy broke a tooth. Greater than being a waste of time and a health hazard, the biggest affront of this entire process was that it was being run by people with absolutely no sense of propriety or decency.

Anyway, the whole thing ended with you being posted to a primary assignment where you’d serve (aka work like a slave for very little pay) for a year. Some were pleased – they got posted to the cushy lawfirms and accounting outfits. Some were hesitant – they got posted to the banks, where corporate prostitution in the name of attracting more customer deposits is not unusual. Some were distraught – they had clearly been posted to teach in a secondary school (using the term ‘school’ loosely) or work in a local government. Regardless, we all left the camp that day (on my bloody birthday, no less), with nothing but our hopes, our dreams and our vows to never again reurn to the dreaded Iyana-Ipaja.

To Serve, With Love Pt 1

I am extremely grateful to be writing this blog post from the relative safety and comfort of my own home, Milo in hand and Michael Buble in ear. You see, I have just recently escaped from the NYSC Concentration…err, sorry…Orientation Camp in someplace called Iyana-Ipaja. I’m impressed with myself; I survived a good solid five days before bolting for the security-clad gates. There’s really only so much a girl can take.

First and most offensively, there was the matter of the pregnancy test. See, if you’re pregnant, you’re not allowed to serve. If you can’t serve, you can’t work. If you can’t work, you starve and you die. So there’s great incentive for an expectant mother to try to pretend that she was not in the family way. As such, each female is expected to submit herself for a pregnancy test, performed in the most sanitary of conditions and by the most capable of medical professionals. Or standing over a ditch filled with someone else’s urine, outdoors in the compound of the NYSC camp with three apparent market-women screaming “WHERE IS YOUR PISS?? IF YOU CANNOT PISS, PLEASE LEAVE THIS PLACE!” at you. Same difference, really.

After overcoming this minor indignity (read: most dehumanizing thing you’ve ever, ever done), you’ve got a registration process ahead of you that you can expect to last no fewer than seven hours and which consists mostly of filling out triplicate versions of the same form seven times and taking verbal abuse from the power-hungry wenches manning each booth. At some point, you get your uniform, which, remarkably, has the ability to be both too big AND too small for you. (If it fits you perfectly, please return immediately. There has clearly been a grave error). The uniforms appear to have been crafted by a tailor who is simultaneously blind, finger-less and very, very stupid and to whom the concept of button-holes and zippers is clearly foreign. It seems perfectly clear what’s happened here. Money’s been appropriated to the purchase of uniforms for the nearly 100,000 corpers that must pass through the program every year, but has probably gone to outfitting someone’s house in Mayfair instead.

On to the matter of your sleeping accommodations. When I was in college, I had a roommate. A perfectly lovely girl from Seattle whose only annoying quirk was the fact that she had to live with me. You see, the room was just so SMALL! How could two people be expected to live in there? My NYSC dorm-room was just about the same size, only instead of just the one roommate, I had twenty-seven. Twenty-seven. Well, there WERE twenty-seven until about Day 3, when I came home to find they’d moved in the fifteenth bunk-bed bringing the grand total up to a nice round thirty. With four such rooms on each floor, this meant that 120 girls were sharing four bathrooms. This in turn meant that in order for all the girls to be ready in time for the 5am drill (and by ‘ready’, I mean showered, dressed and made up because who doesn’t need makeup for a 5am drill??), preparation had to begin at about 2:30am. Not such a problem, unless your roommates were having a good ol’ time gisting about who Bioye was or was not sleeping with back in university till 1am EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Of course, when you realize that water stopped running in all the bathrooms by Day 2, you’ll have to factor in another hour for all 120 girls to fetch water from the borehole. So long story short, you’re not sleeping in camp. Sleep when you’re dead.

Stay tuned for part II

Sounds of Silence

Love that song by Simon and Garfunkel. It's like 10.00 at night and its dead quiet outside. NEPA just got turned back on in my neighborhood so there is not a sound from a single generator. Strangely also, there are no horns going off and no huge trucks passing by. There is no ruckus going on outside from the people who normally chose to have night time arguments directly outside my house....it is just so QUIET!

Is it completely ridiculous that this made me terrified for a couple of minutes. I've gotten so used to the noise of Lagos that it has become so normal! I swear I was frantically turning off my lights and trying to stare out the window to discover some kind of alien invasion. (We have an inverter which is why I didn't notice the nepa thing immediately)Africans, especially us Nigerians do not believe in doing anything quietly. We must shout and make noise no matter what, lol.

On a side note, there are a few people I wish I could revoke their right to speak. People who don't deserve the right to speak until something that makes sense wishes to come outta their mouth. Crazy tactless individuals who say things like "only people who have no faith in God get sick and take medicine. Medicine is for non-believers". I'm a Christian and I really take offense when people make comments like that. This person should thank their lucky stars that nobody in their family has a life threatening illness...let's see how long it will take for them to run to a hospital. I believe you go to seek medical help and pray to God or whatever you believe in that it all works out for the best.

Anyway, after that little rant, I'm off to savour this rare moment as I am sure it won't last for much longer. Thank you Jesus for this beautiful and divine silence.

Have a blessed weekend.

Lagos Driving.

I am going to give all of you a chance to laugh at my inability to draw, because this post just won't many any sense without a sketch.

I learnt to drive in the US of A. Nigerians feel bad for me as soon as I tell them that, for the following reasons:

1. Americans know how to drive.
2. Americans obey traffic rules, and not just because someone may be watching.
3. A manual transmission car has to be specially requested in the US.
4. Sanity is common on the American road.

Now, when I came home in 2006, I was driving our old school auto-transmission Merc around Festac alone (because I didn't have a Nigerian license). I was looking forward to cruising my ride again when I moved back home, but I found out that it would be unavailable for a while. No problem. Taxis became my best friend. (I think I'm a pro at haggling taxi prices now.)

Anyway, my brother started learning to drive, with a VeeDub Beetle (I mean the really old ones o), and my folks started challenging me, talking about - 'your brother is a gee at maneuvering a gear shift, and you're here talking about knowing how to drive a car, when your left leg doesn't even know what a clutch is'. Fine! I started learning how to really drive, since apparently, auto transmission vehicles are 'toy cars'.

I now understand the clutch/accelerator dance, but I'm only starting to shift to gear 3. The first time I tried it, I was in the car by myself. The car jerked and made a funny sound, and I fugured I'd ventured to gear 5 instead of 3. Ah well, I'm sure I'll be perfect soon. I'm still only allowed to drive around Festac and Dolphin, but I'm sure I'll be a pro before I get into the real world.

Driving in Lagos amazes me. I'm not even talking about traffic jams. Check out my less than perfect sketch:

This is what an intersection close to my house looked like a few weekends ago. Absolute chaos! Now, someone please tell me why Nigerians simply don't turn correctly like Car 2 is doing? Everyone pulls a Car 4 left turn, and I really don't get it!

Car 1 broke down right at the intersection, and no one thought it would be smart to push it out of the way. How are those indicators supposed to help?

Car 5 can't see what's in front of Car 1, so he's just going to check. And then get stuck somewhere in the middle.

Car 7 is trying to be patient to let the madness clear out but Car 6 doesn't see the importance of that. You can only imagine the pile up and honk-a-thon going on behind Car 7. Unfortunately, a woman is driving the Car 7, so everyone is going to insult her, calling her 'Woman Driver' though we all know she's doing the right thing.

Car 3 is too busy cursing out the okada that's overtaking him on the right side to see that he's about to lose the front of his car to Mr. I-don't-know-how-to-make-a-proper-left-turn in Car 4.

Don't even get me started on the way all the okadas are maneuvering themselves through the chaos. Look at the one next to Car 1; he's going to want to cross over to the right side of the road without looking, in a few seconds.

God will help us in this our Lagos o.

AMEN!

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

About this talk (Source: http://www.ted.com/)

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

It seems to work faster on the website.

Coming Home Now...

So I’ve been here for about a month now and I’ve got to tell you; coming home after so long was a much more surreal experience than starting from scratch in a country I’d never been to. Everything was so different, and yet so remarkably familiar. Every turn was littered with memories but yet everything seemed somehow smaller, duller, dustier. General observations:

The People

The people here are as I remember them; chatty (to a fault – I don’t know you, stop talking to me), aggressive (observe the okada driver that you are foolish enough to cut off in traffic), enterprising (observe the hawker/hustler peddling potatoes in high-speed traffic) and helpful (just like the kindly lady who reached out to adjust a wayward bra strap that had dared to peek out from underneath my tank top).

The City

The city itself seems to have taken two steps forward and either one or three steps backward (I can’t decide whether cumulative progress has been made overall or not). Certain parts of Lagos – your Victoria Islands, your Ikoyis, your Lekkis – seem to be a bit more civilized and easy on the eye than I remember. The newest state government seems to have taken huge steps in getting the place at least aesthetically more pleasing, but you get onto the Mainland and the story seems to change quite dramatically. There’s certain areas of Lagos that look like they have yet to take a step into the 20th century, let alone the 21st. People living like they’re straight-up in the village; clothes hanging outside the front of their houses, the streets (or rather, random collection of concrete and sand) riddled with potholes, electricity spoken of as though a distant memory -- heard of, but never quite experienced. The contrast is honestly a bit alarming, but I suppose it’s not much different than the difference between Georgetown and Anacostia, or the Upper West Side and Marcy Projects, so I’ll just go ahead and jump off my idealistic high-horse right about now.

The Fashion

Oh and another thing. So I was warned - in worried, hushed tones - by my mother and several friends, that if I wanted to survive in the social minefield that is Lagos, I was going to have to seriously, seriously up my fashion game. The fashion is out of control here, I was told. People dress up to the nines, tens and elevens here, I was warned. If elan and ThisDay Style magazines are anything to judge by, this largely means; bad weaves, fake handbags, too-short skirts, too-tight pants, too-little originality and almost-zero individuality. It seems that money is a replacement for taste, braggadocio a substitute for style. I know that this is certainly not the case with my entire beautiful Nigerian sisterhood, but I gotta say, I was a little disappointed.

The Food

What bad could possibly be said about Nigerian food? I’m not sure if I’m biased because, at this point, efo pretty much courses through my veins, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find food that tastes better than what they’re serving up here. Even the neighborhood Mama Put serves better food than your average restaurant in DC and at not even a fraction of the price. If I was a woman who wrote poetry, there would be odes to Nigerian food. If I was a writer, there’d be epic novels! I would erect monuments – okay, I’m stopping now. You get it -- I loves me some grub. It’s a compelling enough reason for me to yell from the highest mountain in Abuja – IT’S GREAT TO BE HOME!!! Ain’t no place in the world like it.

For better or for worse.