It’s rained most of this weekend. It’s been such a great change. The hot weather begins to wear you down after awhile, especially at night. I hate waking up in the middle of the night in a full out body sweat. The rain has cooled things down dramatically, and I actually use a sheet now to cover up when I go to sleep. But, with the rain come mosquitoes, so it’s a mixed blessing. I’m thankful for my anti-milarials. People in Nigeria get Malaria like we get the common cold. Thankfully they build up a slight immunity, so it’s not as severe as if I were to get it. That’s why young children are most affected by Malaria, their body has not yet learned how to fight of the parasite, so they become very sick and often die. Faith Alive has partnered with a great program that provides mosquito nets and chlorination tablets for water so that HIV positive patients can stay protected from mosquitoes that can communicate Malaria.
Friday after work a couple of our good friends here in Nigeria took Nikki and I out for palm wine, a Nigerian favorite. Palm wine is tapped directly from the palm tree and is already carbonated and lightly fermented, so it has a slight alcohol content. If you let it ferment another day, it loses some of it’s sweetness, but boosts the alcohol content, so you have to time it just right for how you like to drink it. The smell is gross, but the taste is mild with a hint of sweetness. For those of you who’ve tasted La Folie champaign beer from New Belgium, you have an idea of what it tastes like, but much milder. We tried it by itself, but the Nigerian way to drink it is by mixing it with Guinness stout. It was A-mazing. Along with are palm wine, we took goat and intestine pepper soup. I’ve never eaten intestines before, and I can’t say I’ll try it again. It tastes good, but it’s like overcooked octopus – tough and rubbery. The soup part was great, though. You have to try everything at least once, right?
On Saturday I attended the social services graduation ceremony. All the sewing, computer, knitting and art students graduated this week from their respective programs. It was really cool seeing the few of them that I knew well receive their certificates and rejoice for the amazing opportunity that Faith Alive had given them. It was a long ceremony, as everything is in Nigeria. But it was fun, and we had sodas and Nigerian doughnuts at the reception. It was a blast. I took a picture of blessing and the sewing class she teaches. Later that afternoon we helped scrub walls at Faith Alive, a task that was greatly overdue.
Graduation started off a really fun weekend. Later that evening Dr. Chris and the head of the Nigerian board at Faith Alive came over to the guesthouse to welcome the new team of volunteers from Fresno, CA. There are eight of them, and most will be here for two weeks. They are all very cool. After dinner Nikki and I met up with some friends and headed to an area of Jos, called West of Minds. It’s the local bar hangout area here in Jos, and we went because they make fresh Suya. Suya is thinly sliced beef that is encrusted with chopped peanuts, skewered and grilled. They season it with pepper powder and chop fresh onion with it. It was really good and spicy, and excellent with a cold beer.
On Sunday we attended the local church we go to here in Jos, for the last time. It was sad saying our goodbyes. They were all so grateful for our presence. I think that’s one thing I’ve really learned about my time here – the gift of presence. It’s amazing how much it means to people that you just show up. They see Americans as having everything. And they think, “Why would they want to come here when they have everything over there?” So they see our presence as a great sacrifice on our part, which is hardly true for someone selfish like me who has wanted to come to Africa for so long. It hardly feels like a sacrifice. Nonetheless, it is a great honor. We enjoyed a late lunch with the pastor. His mother, Hannatu, who works at Faith Alive, made us a great lunch of fish and chips with fresh cake for dessert. It was awesome, and we got time to visit with the family.
From there we headed back to Faith Alive where we spoke to the support group that gathers every Sunday afternoon. We thanked them all for their generosity and acceptance, and recounted our stories of our time in Nigeria. Starting to say goodbyes is hard, especially when I don’t want to leave.
For dinner that evening, our friend Rotimi invited us over for dinner at his parent’s house. We got to meet his sister, brother and parents. A true honor if you ask me, and they cooked us a fabulous meal of roasted yam and egousee soup. Roasted yam is the skin of yam; it is dried and pounded into a fine powder that is then hydrated. It’s very similar to pounded yam, but with more of an earthy flavor. There are many ways to prepare egousee soup, it’s made from melon seeds that are pounded into a paste, and you add various seasonings and other ingredients. This version had bitter leaf (you can also make it with pumpkin leaf), beans, and dried fish. And by dried fish, I mean the whole fish, dried and stewed. So you get the head, bones and everything. It tasted great, but maneuvering around the bones is tough. Nigerians eat the bones and skin, so they have an easier time of it. You eat the soup with your hands. You form a small bit of the yam into your hand, creating a dimple to hold the thick eqousee stew. Then you scoop it up and into your mouth. It was so much food, and I thought I’d explode. Food here is much hardier, so you don’t need as much to stave your hunger pains. Consequently, I’ve lost almost 10 lbs. since my time here.
As we made our way home, Rotimi flagged us a cab and we piled in with several other people we didn’t know. I was practically riding the stick shift. I laughed as a thought about how different it was than the NYC cab system, although gypsy cabs in Harlem have there interesting moments. We walked back to our guest house and I snuck away to eat one more piece of the corn cake that Hannatu made us for lunch, before heading off to bed.
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