Further Adventures in Medicine - II

Wednesday (21st) I woke up and was immediately grateful. I was grateful that I was not in terrible pain. I could walk and was just fine. I headed off to the hospital, made my way to the MRI, and showed them my N100,000. Now how about some service? "Well, where's your green [registration] card?" I still don't have one. Did the doctor not prepare anything?

One of them kindly walked me around the hospital gathering the various pieces of paperwork I needed, steering me through lines (and sometimes around them), arguing with the officials on my behalf, until I finally had the paperwork done 45 minutes later. Actually, since I only thought I needed the N100,000 for the MRI I had very little other cash on hand. When registration cost N1,500 I had to borrow N1000 from him. I paid him back once we returned to my backpack, but he really helped me through and was very nice.

Ruth and Boaz in Nigeria

On our way here, I read the book of Ruth and noticed something that made me smile. Boaz has promised to marry Ruth, assuming the unnamed nearer relation does not. So he needs to meet with the fellow, sound him out, contract the business, and get witnesses together for the transaction. They don't have cell phones, so how do they get together?

Then went Boaz up to the [city?] gate, and sat him down there: and, behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by; unto whom he said, "Ho, such a one, sit down here." And he turned aside and sat down.

And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, "Sit ye down here." And they sat down.

How do they get together? He sits in a public place and waits. How long? Who knows; who cares. Ah, there he is, good old Mr. Suchaone. He doesn't tell him the business at hand, just asks him to sit. Then they wait until they get a minyan together, asking each one in turn to join them until they can get down to business.

It sounded so much like Nigeria it made me smile! Even though most of the poorest have a cell phone now, there is a still lot of sitting around and waiting. We do a great deal of it ourselves for reasons that are never entirely clear to us. There are even people hired to stand in line for others. And most everything happens at the last minute. Even such modern industries as airlines assume you are buying tickets for the same day, not planning for a week in advance. Some of the AUN faculty left for the summer without knowing if their contract was renewed for this year or not, and I only just learned about changes to my teaching schedule this week.

So the moral of the story is that in Nigeria you need to have a very flexible idea of your schedule, because you never know when your near kinsman is going to ask if you want to buy some land and marry the widow that goes with it.

Coming Home to Nigeria

What makes us feel like we're coming home?
When we went down for breakfast at the hotel in Abuja on our way to Yola, we found our former-neighbors there, who are some of our best friends here. Several other friends flew in with us on the same plane. A student recognized me and greeted me happily. Our compound's guards laughed and rejoiced to see us return. Friendly faces make for nice homecomings.

Prince excitedly cried, "I'm going to go see my room!" He crowed, "Look at all these great toys!" Then he grabbed up ... "Yoshi! Oh Yoshi, I missed you so much!" He spent the next minute talking to a plush ridable dragon.

Princess, who was not allowed on the floor until the cockroaches were swept up, explored the house for the first time on her own two feet and also found her room and the wonderful toys therein.

What was Joy delighted to see? "I can find my can opener! That means I'm home."

My delight, of course, was finding my work computer and being able to sit down at my own computer for the first time in three months (story in a coming post). The other electronics are still at an office on campus, so it's just a question of how long I can be kept from heading over there before I have the rest of them again.

What makes us feel like we're coming home ... to Nigeria?
Having the electricity shut off at the hotel and seeing all the faculty/staff present say, "Welcome back to Nigeria!" as they take a deep breath of air -- some of them like they're getting ready to dive in, others as if they were smelling mother's cooking.


Joy rejoiced at how clean our home was. I reminded her about the cockroaches on the floor. "Well, yes, but it's really very clean ... aside from the cockroaches." I swept up a full cup of them plus two grasshoppers.

I realized at some point that my inspection of the house when I came in was to see 1) how many lights broke while we were gone; 2) what else needs fixing; and 3) if was anything stolen. I never acted that way in Ithaca.

Coming home to Nigeria also means reshifting expectations:

The Elephant is a rope: Nigerian Standard Time

What is life like in Nigeria? In the next three posts I will be explaining the same event our family went to, but from different perspectives. [Since one doesn't really require any pictures, it gets to go first. Click to be reminded of what the elephant analogy is.]

Nigerians are very sensitive about the phrase "Nigerian Standard Time," at least when used by outsiders. They will stand up and yell about it at AUN. When not in public, of course, they shrug their shoulders and invoke it constantly. (Funniest when spoke with a Jewish dialect:) "This is Nigeria! What do you expect?" Things kind of happen when they happen and you just have to get used to it. There are two flights to the capitol and they leave no earlier than their posted time, but often 2-3 hours later. Students stroll into class 15-30 minutes late unless you lock doors or impose sanctions. AUN drivers give you grief if you ask them to wait 2 minutes to go get one more thing, but don't apologize for sometimes being half an hour late.

If you need something done on time, you need to be very clear and even then get used to it. It is a very strange thing to be telling people what their business is and I really hope this doesn't become a habit. I feel bad doing it, but it is sometimes the only way ... like today.

We heard about a fun children's party in town and today we took our family to it. We were told it started at noon. We got there 1:15 to give it plenty of time to get started. They decided it would start at 2 instead. By 2:15 the guy with tickets hadn't even shown up yet and we bugged someone to go wake him up from wherever he was. He had walked past us several times, but was not obviously doing anything about the party or ready to accept customers.

The party was only partly set up. Prince got to play on it for a few minutes. When an organizer passed, I asked him when the rest would be up and running. He said it required more electricity than he had right then, so sometime around 3. I told him how long we had waited and how long we were willing to wait. "Okay, they'll be up at 3" he repeated, which I knew meant 3:15-3:30. I said, "No. It will be up before 3 or we will leave." Thankfully, a group of ten much older kids showed up and the crowding convinced them to finish the job. The rest was set up by 2:45.

The fact that Nigerians and Americans clearly use different words to talk about things that happen in the future, things that regularly happen at a certain time, and things that are happening now doesn't help.

Immunizations

One of the differences that I am feeling strongly is an overall lack of independence. I have not wanted to be very mobile to begin with, but when I felt the importance of getting my baby more of her immunizations, it required getting out of the house. The doctor that Derrill saw about his amoeba was willing to give her the shots, would be 40 minutes away from us by car.
We had been assured that shuttles could give us a ride most places and that we could request a UseMe service (like a taxi) to go other places. Another option is to hire a regular driver, and of course buy your own car. So, I contacted the shuttle service to see if they could give me a ride to the doctor. They let me know that their shuttles did not travel that far away from the school.  We have requested phone numbers of UseMe services multiple times in the last week and had received no information, so I was feeling… impotent might be the word. Incompetent was not the word, I just didn’t feel like I could find a way to take care of my child. I haven’t felt like this since I was a child and unable to care for myself because of others.
Derrill called Rama. Rama really has been a angel of mercy for our family. He has helped us solve our small and large difficulties that have arisen with our challenges with this move of adjusting here. He is also the one that is letting us use his washing machine. Rama found us a phone number for a reliable UseMe, someone named Mohammed. Yeah! I called and his phone was turned off. Boo!?!