We’re Back!

Yes, it's true. We are back in our home in the U.S. enjoying all of the comforts of home. I wanted to drop you all a short line to say how much I appreciated all of you reading my blog and also to mention a few late-breaking reflections regarding our experiences.

Reflection #1
It’s really nice to be back. Unlimited fresh water. A strong supply of hot water. Showers. Highways, stop signs, stoplights. A plethora of restaurants. Grocery stores with gazillions of items. A hundred (or more) kinds of cheese… Ice cream. Literally hundreds of other observations of the differences between here and there. For the first week we were back all I could say was “this is very different world that we live in.”

Reflection #2
We really have too much stuff. I cannot believe how much stuff we have. There are moments when I am completely embarrassed by how much we have. Not that I have someone to be embarrassed to... but embarrassed as in mortified that we have so many things that we do not need.

Neither one of us are employed, at present, so we do have some time where we will be able to work on de-cluttering our lives… I am looking forward to it.

Reflection #3
They say there's this thing called "reverse culture shock" when you go somewhere foreign, spend a long time there, and then come back to your "home culture." Yes, I experienced this. No, it has not been too severe.

During our first few minutes back on American "soil" I found my way to a bookstore in the airport in Chicago (O'Hare, that is). I was in awe of the number of books available. I hadn't seen a selection of books like that since leaving. Then I picked up a small pocket sized journal. Lined paper, $7. Not including tax. And all I could do was stare at it and think 1200 Naira. Maybe a week’s wage for some. A week’s wage for this trifle. Not that we didn’t spend our share of money on seemingly frivolous things while we were there (Coke, Snickers, Shortbread).

And while I have continued to spend more than my share on seemingly frivolous things, I have not done so with anywhere near the reckless abandon of my former self.

Before we got home we decided we would go out to eat whenever we wanted for the first two weeks we were back, as a kind of celebration, before starting on a much stricter watch-what-we-spend kind of regimen. We didn’t go out to eat every meal. Or every day for that matter. Yesterday was our last day. I was craving cheesecake so I said let’s get Buca curbside-to-go. Stephanie had wanted me to go out solo for sushi as I had been craving it and hadn’t had it since being home. I thought… $40 for dinner? For just me? I can’t do it. For $40 we can get an order of pasta, some dessert, and have some money left over. Six thousand Naira. More than a month’s wage for some. One meal for us. Shameful.

Danger

We did experience some real danger living in Nigeria. Not that we experienced all that much first hand. Well, aside from the gunshots I heard right outside our hotel in Lagos. And that one other time we heard gunshots while sitting in our house one night.

There is always danger where there is significant poverty mingled with a small percentage of the population willing to use violence or other wicked devices to try to improve one’s station.

I was told I should always lock the car doors while traveling. Always keep your money hidden from sight. Never speak about money in public. Do not carry more than $50 or $60 with you at any time. Never travel alone to change money. Do not make any other stops after you change money, but rather, go straight home. Keep any money that you have at home in a secret, safe place (cue Gandalf “keep it secret, keep it safe”).

For the most part I was good about all of these things. Except locking the car doors. One out of every three or four trips Stephanie would have to remind me to lock the car doors. And there were certainly other times that I forgot…

As I think we’ve mentioned, there were no fewer than six security measures for our home: Locked gate (tho’ it was never “locked” I don’t think), compound guard, watchdog, outside padlock, bars on the windows, a main door deadbolt, a padlocked gate across the back door and dead bolts and skeleton key locks on all room doors.

And that’s just our general physical and financial security while in our home and traveling in our home city of Enugu. Healthwise, and traveling outside of Enugu, there is another entire set of rules and guidelines for recommended safety.

The U.S. Mission employees here in Nigeria (i.e., the embassy people, U.S. diplomats living in Nigeria) do not travel to Abia state without a whole host of extra security measures. See, you can get kidnapped, held for ransom, mainly. Twice while we were here, I traveled to Abia state. Certainly, it’s not as dangerous as, say, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, or Delta states… those are the really dangerous ones. And certainly not as dangerous as Iraq or Iran or North Korea. Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia would carry a whole new set of risks. Not to mention living in Lagos… I don’t even want to think about it! But there are certainly a number of places in North America that would be equally if not more dangerous…

One time we were in Abia state, the host pastor had arranged (unbeknownst to us aforetime) a security detail for us. We had two or maybe three armed policemen nearby the whole time we were there.

On the road the police checkpoints are really unnerving. You never know when they’re going to ask for a bribe (or “dash” as they call it here) and Bro. McLean has never been interested in paying up. One time and only one time there was a policeman who asked us for money. (This is out of something like 35 or 40 such checkpoints I have been through). That is not to say that the checkpoints always proceed without incident. Twice we were hung up to check the paperwork on the tinted windows (long story) and another time we experienced a verbal dressing down (for who knows what) and then there was another time they wanted to see the paperwork for the vehicle and then one other time to check my fire hydrant. I really hate the checkpoints.

I guess the only other major worry for us has been disease. To be a little more specific, malaria is the main concern. I haven’t been concerned for myself. You get malaria, you take the drugs, most of the time no problem. Untreated, malaria can have a high fatality rate. And when you bring a three year old into a country where the medical facilities are not nearly as reliable as the ones back in the U.S., you tend to worry a whole lot more about even the smallest of potential problems. But I will bring my focus back to malaria, specifically.

“Each year, there are approximately 350-500 million cases of malaria, killing between one and three million people, the majority of whom are young children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa” (Wikipedia).

The anti-malarial meds we take are reported to be 90% effective. So one out of every ten mosquito bites from malaria carrying mosquitoes could effectively transmit malaria to one of us. Thankfully we have been pretty careful and have not been bitten too many times. But it seems like every week there is someone at the school who is sick, presumably with either malaria or typhoid, two of the most common diseases here. It seems that everyone gets one or the other some time. We have been extremely careful with water and food and still both Stephanie and I have experienced a day or two’s worth of illness.

We have learned whole new levels of trusting God while we have been here.

I will not miss

I have been thinking a little bit here and there about the things I will not miss about living in Nigeria. At or very near the top of the list: This lightbulb.

This is the lightbulb connected directly to NEPA, or the Nigerian power company. When this light is on, we have “light” (which, being translated, is power from the power company). When this light is off, it indicates that NEPA is off. It is often off. If we’re running electricity in the house from the generator, there is really no other way to tell if NEPA has come back on unless we look out our window. In our “parlour” (a.k.a. living room), we can look out across the way at the light on Okese’s (our neighbor’s) porch to see if NEPA has come back. When I am in the kitchen and NEPA is off, I have to look out the kitchen window (leaning over and craning my neck to see around the partially open window) every two or three or five or ten minutes to see if NEPA has come back on (the lightbulb pictured above). Most of the time I am disappointed. It is frustrating to have to look out the window so often just to see if we have power.

I will not miss having to run the generator, or filling the generator’s tank with gas. I will not missing having to call on my neighbour when the generator is not working properly. I will not miss worrying about the fact that I’m using a borrowed generator and if something goes wrong I will feel responsible to repair or replace it.

I will not miss having to fill the uptank, fill the downtank, open the valve, turn on the pump, reliant on when “board water” (city water) is “rushing” or “floating very nice” or rely on needing to have NEPA on to run the pump to fill the uptank.

I will not miss having to lock every door all the time. Or any of the myriad other general safety concerns here. Driving at night. Being robbed. Just to name a couple. I will not miss having to put DEET on Timothy when we go outside to play.

I will not miss “living out of an action packer.”

I will not miss police checkpoints.

I will not miss rats or cockroaches.

I will not miss the waiting. There is no such thing as instant gratification here. Unless you’re cutting open a pineapple and decide you need an immediate little snack.

I will not miss the thin layer of dried sweat caked all over the skin of my face and my body accumulating after only a few hours of sitting in 80+ degree temperatures.

I will not miss how when something breaks it isn’t easy (or even possible at times) to get it fixed.

I will not miss the difficulty understanding someone who is speaking (or trying to speak) English, but an English that is so heavily accented that you have to ask two or three times for them to repeat what they are saying.

I will not miss not having a dishwasher, washer and dryer, unlimited supply of running water, central air, furnace, oven, shower, water heater and the power always on to run them.

Did I mention rats and cockroaches?

Things I Will and Won’t Miss

I will not miss the heat, the wetness, the humidity, the dampness in the air.

I will miss the predictability of the weather. I never have to think about whether or not I will need a coat. Or even long sleeves. I don’t think it ever gets below 70 here.

I will not miss having to stop and a different stand for every last little thing.

I will miss the relationships I have developed with the proprietors of those shops.

I will not miss having to have cash on hand in my pocket and never know for sure whether I will have enough for that day’s expenditures.

I will miss the tangibility of having to pay cash for everything.

I will not miss the unpredictable traffic or the whacked roads.

I will miss the “no holds barred” kind of driving I get to do here and the relative enjoyment derived from driving on dirt roads where you can’t go more than 5 miles per hour. It always makes me think of how much I would love to go to Canyonlands National Park someday and drive those types of roads in the U.S. with the amazing scenery of southeastern Utah.

Things I Will Miss

I will miss the predictability of the sunrise and sunset times. The sun comes up around 6:30 and goes down around 6:30.

I will miss the fresh tropical fruit, especially those things you can’t get very easily (if at all) at home.

I will miss looking for lizards with Timothy.

I will miss the huge mango tree in our compound.

I will miss seeing people in their traditional dress here. The patterns and colors you see on people here… wonderful, amazing, beautiful, sometimes a little crazy, but never lacking in vivid self-expression, especially on Sunday.

I will miss our neighbours. Okese and his wife Stephanie, their beautiful children, Pearl and Odara, Obinna and his wife, Helen, their three children… the two older of which usually mercilessly picking on their younger daughter (that part I won’t miss), Chinidum the medical doctor, and his wife (who works for UNICEF), Everistus and his family (darling cute daughter and he is such a loving father to his baby), and the “singing lady” and her son although I am sure she is too old to be his actual mother.

I will miss my teaching at the school. It has been such a privilege to spend so much time studying, reading, and teaching from the Bible.

I will miss the students, fellow teachers, and the host missionaries. I will miss them deeply. I love them all very much.

Igbo Names

It seems like everybody around here is named Chi (pronounced Chee) something or Chukwu something or like that. Chukwuka. Wachukwu. Chinidum. Chinyere. Chukwudemekwu. Chinekeokwu. That's because Chi, short for Chineke, or Chukwu both mean God and the cultural God-consciousness here is very great. There is awareness in many of the names of the relation one has to God. I can relate to this. I named our son Timothy because in the moment he was removed from his mother's womb via C-Section all I could think of was my thankfulness to God and the name Timothy means to honor God. But it's not quite the same, is it?

Other Igbo names include Obinna, Ikenna, Ngozi. These from the family that sells me bread and eggs. Nna means father. So the sons are named heart-of-the-father and power-of-the-father. Their sister, Ngozi's name, means blessing. I should mention that Igbo (pronounced Ee’-bo) is the predominant language spoken where we are living here in Enugu. There are about ten or dozen major languages here, besides the hundreds of dialects and regional variations. At the school alone, the major languages of Yoruba, Hausa, Efik, Tiv are represented alongside Igbo.

Ndubuisi is a common name here. It means “life is supreme.” Don’t ask me, I’m just reporting the facts. There is obviously an additional layer of cultural meaning here that escapes me at present. There are two main spellings of the name, but I won’t go into that either!

Emeka. Another common name. It means “well done.” Also short for Emekachukwu, meaning well done, God (i.e. God’s work is well done). Not to be confused with how you want your steak cooked here. There is no steak. The beef is extremely tough and must be cooked for a minimum of ten or twelve hours to be palatable. Unless it’s ground beef. And everything is cooked well done.

Kingsley and Samuel are common names as well. I don’t know about the name Kingsley, but Samuel often carries a connotation of devoted to the Lord (just like the Bible story in the book of 1 Samuel). I have heard two beautiful stories associated with the name Samuel in relation to their circumstance.

One day I was consulted as to an argument as to which was greater, Igwe or Ezeh. Igwe carries the meaning of cloud but also has a greater cultural connotation of some other traditional worship practice while Ezeh refers to a king. It wasn’t until well after the argument that I realized the nature of the question. The two individuals in question were arguing about which of their namesakes was greater.

Some people are named after days of the week: Friday, Sunday, Monday. Yet some others are given English names that relate something special about their birth: Promise, Blessing, Faith, Peace, Charity.

I counted it an honor recently when I was given an African name. It was associated with the fact that I had decided to purchase a couple of outfits like the ones that folks here usually wear. I asked the principal of the school to come up with an appropriate name and he could “christen” me at the next following church service as I was scheduled to preach anyway. In the introduction to the name it was mentioned this would be my last time preaching there (we are heading home in just under two weeks). But since only God knows at this point whether we shall return here to Nigeria, the name I was given corresponds with that phrase, God knows.

I was reminded of the prophet Ezekiel’s response to God’s question, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel responded, “Thou knowest.” A fitting response when confronted with a direct question to which you don’t really know the answer and is really, in the end, in God’s hands anyway. And so, my Igbo name is “Chima.”

Rats!

As you may have heard if you have followed my Facebook updates, we have had an ongoing rat problem. This goes back to the beginning of time. We first thought it was a lizard that was taking little bites out of fruit that we would leave out on the counter.

No, we were assured it must be a rat.

After hearing a number of heartwarming stories such as the one about how rats will eat your toes if they are sticking out under the covers… we decided the rat must die.

After what seemed an eternity (it must have been three weeks at least) we procured a trap. After setting it and being unsuccessful in my first half dozen or so attempts to the kill rat #1, (they’d eat the bait and the trap wouldn’t go off, or else the trap went off but there was no dead rat in the trap). So I gave up and put the trap away, for good or so I thought.

In the meantime we had started to amass casualties. At first it was the bananas. Then the potatoes. I thought this or that would be safe… avocado, mango, peanuts in a Ziploc storage bag. It seemed nothing was safe. One night we had Timothy’s car seat in the house. And that got eaten up. So we put everything far out of reach and made sure everything was locked up at night.

Some weeks later, my Pastor came to town, and he suggested perhaps a little cooking oil on the trap might be enough to do the trick. Sure enough, I managed to snuff the life out of a couple of them that way!

But then they were back to their old tricks, eating the bait, not setting off the trap. Nevermind. I give up. Since we’d learned to lock all of the edibles far out of reach, we should be out of the woods. NOT!

We discovered one morning much to our dismay that one of our hard plastic medicine bottles containing zinc supplements had been chewed. Not only did the rat chew open the bottle, he managed to chew the plastic on more than a couple zinc capsules. What pain. What misery. And if that wasn’t enough, he chewed through the plastic lid to a bottle of cooking oil.

In the words of Bugs Bunny, “this means war.”

I enlisted the help of Stephanie in setting the trap this time. We rigged a ketchup bottle top with peanut butter and peanuts and made sure the peanut butter went in under the lip of the cap and then tightly fastened it to the trap with a rubber band. Later that morning around 1:00 a.m., I woke up needing a trip to the bathroom and heard this “clink” . . . pause . . .”clink” . . . pause . . . “clink.” Without even heading to the kitchen, I suspected I knew what that sound meant. The rat was stuck in the trap trying to escape. Sure enough, to my horror, there it was. The trap was upside down so I didn’t have to look at the little thing’s face quite yet.

WARNING: The following paragraph is rated PG-13 for violence and horror.

Trying very hard to come up with a decent game plan in very quick order and yet quietly for fear of waking the house, I grabbed a shoe. Not a regular walking shoe, mind you, but this little piece of rubber they use for shoes here that weighs about one-fourth the weight of a walking shoe. I tried beating the rat three times with the lightweight shoe. It simply squeaked and looked like it was renewing its efforts to escape the trap and starting to make some headway. I was horrified. This is awful. What am I going to do??? It didn’t take long. I knew the thing had to die. The moment it cracked the zinc bottle its fate was sealed. With the shoe still in my hand I decided my only remaining option was to smother it. So I did. With my little black rubber shoe. It was horrible. After it was over I just wanted to cry.

I climbed back into bed and sat there wide awake for about half an hour, thinking about the awfulness of the deed I had just committed. I shuddered. I tossed and turned. And finally, restless, dreamless, unhappy sleep.

As I was reliving the horror with Stephanie the following morning she suggested the cast iron frying pan might be a better thing to try in the event there was a repeat of the previous night’s episode. She also wondered what kind of television or movies I had been watching that gave me the idea to suffocate the thing. Actually, it took me back to my childhood. I watched portions of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” at too young an age. I was never able to get the horror of a certain suffocation scene out of my mind.

I concluded the ketchup bottle cap was too large and had prevented the trap from closing properly. I decided I’d try a Coke bottle cap next. Two nights passed, no rat. Walking into the kitchen late at night, I would start talking trash to any rat that might be around. “Yeah, I killed your brother, and your father, and your mother. You want a piece of this? Come on, let’s go. I’ve got some peanut butter right here. And the steel jaws of death. And if that doesn’t work, I’ve got a shoe.” Two mornings later, however, I saw #4. So the trap is once again set tonight. We shall see what we shall see.

Lagos

After having been to Lagos, I can honestly say I have been through the fire and I’ve been through the flood. Like Paul, I have now been shipwrecked three times and have been in perils of robbers. Unlike Paul, thankfully, I have not spent a day and a night in the deep.

We planned our incoming and outgoing Nigeria flights so as to avoid Lagos at all costs. From all of the negative things I had heard and read about Lagos, I thought I would be pleased if I never had to shake “Lagos dust” off of my shoes. And then as fate would have it, we planned a side trip there while I was here.

We had the great privilege and honor of having my Pastor from the United States come to Nigeria to visit us. Truly, the only reason he wanted to come was to visit us. I was, of course, greatly humbled by his sacrifice.

Bro. McLean, on the other hand, decided this would be an optimal time to plan a “That I May Know Him” seminar in Lagos so he could present his excellent teaching on the Godhead to a wider audience there. In addition, it would be an excellent opportunity to utilize my Pastor’s evangelistic experience to the utmost, having him preach evangelistically wherever and whenever possible.

Time, and space, not to mention your patience as well as a dignified courtesy prevents me from narrating the entire tale of our adventures while we were there. But I will suffer a couple paragraphs of the highlights (or, lowlights, if you rather).

It rained and it rained and it rained and it rained. And the car that was transporting us from point A to point B was not well equipped to spend two hours traveling fourteen miles one way in pouring rain. With the leaks around the sunroof, I would imagine that my Pastor had a few liters of water drip or otherwise soak him each of the two days of the scheduled seminar. Neither was this car adequately equipped to drive through the lagoon that Lagos becomes after a very heavy rain. On both days we ended up “abandoning ship” in the middle of the road when the car reached a point where so much water had poured in on to the floorboards and up into the engine that the car was unable to proceed further.

 

Traffic in Lagos can be horrific. As I mentioned, fourteen miles to go two hours. Stop and go traffic like I have never experienced. And there are no emissions requirements here. Exhaust like you cannot imagine, that is, when we were able to have the windows down. Five lanes of traffic on a two lane road. No a/c in the car, and you can’t have the windows down a good part of the time because it’s raining so hard.

To top it all off, on our second night in the hotel we heard a series of gunshots. At times it sounded like they were coming from inside the hotel. For about forty-five minutes I lay there in bed (this is around midnight) scared to death, thinking this night might be my last. Trying to plan what I would say should the robbers break my door down… “anything I have is yours, only please spare my life.” I did hear someone knocking quietly on my door at one point during the affair, but I would not have gone to the door for anything. Bro. McLean called my cell at one point between series of gunshots and asked if I was okay. I timidly eked out a fake “I’m okay.” He was just as much in the proverbial dark (and just as terrified) as I was.

The next morning we found out that the hotel staff had called the police because the estate next door to the hotel was under attack by robbers. The police surrounded our hotel’s compound and they were the ones firing the shots in order to keep the robbers from entering our compound. The knocking I had heard was one of the hotel’s staff, wanting to let us know what was happening and that we were safe. They said they were not able to use the phone at that point in time. Figures.

And what of the seminar? Both days the attendance was dismal due to the heavy rains. But the Bible school in Lagos did end up with some new enrollees in the program from the advertising leading up to the seminar!

And my Pastor preached with his usual flair and there was a great response in all three of the evening services back on the other side of town!

I’ve Got Rhythm

I thought I had a decent sense of rhythm before I came to Nigeria. I could clap on the beat, off the beat, and in any other sort of predictable pattern or rhythm I could imagine. But I never imagined what I have encountered here.

It's not the clapping that's the hard part, though. It's the clapping and singing. You see, the clapping here is nearly always some form of syncopation. You clap on a beat, then you clap a second time a quarter of a beat before the next beat. The easiest way for a music-reading person to visualize this is the dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth note.

A majority of the time, this syncopated clap pattern occurs only once during each measure (that is, for every four beats, assuming four-four time, there are two claps, one on the beat, and one immediately following just before the next beat).

So why can't I sing and clap at the same time? I have actually accumulated a fair amount of musical training over the years. Three years of music theory (if you count counterpoint) and oodles of piano and voice lessons, I would think I would be capable of ready adaptation. But no. Three months later, I am still challenged by trying to sing and clap properly during a single song.

I will beg off the accusation by claiming that I have been concentrating too much on trying to keep with the clapping, and not enough attention on the singing. I know, I know. I should simply stop clapping, and try to learn the words and melodies to some of the songs. But even when they're singing in English, I can't understand all the words. In fact, some of time, I can't even understand more than a word or two. But that's no excuse. More often than not I can pick out most of the words.

I guess it comes down to laziness, pure and simple. It's just easier to clap. I enjoy clapping. It sure beats the work of trying to learn new melodies (even to familiar tunes at times, but sung with widely melodic and rhythmic contours that vary to an extreme from how we sing the song back home). And since we're here only one more month... well, it'll be a miracle if I manage the dexterity to do it.