Football game in Abuja

A couple weekends ago, a group of us travelled to Abuja to watch the Nigeria vs Kenya qualifier game for the 2010 World Cup. I've never even watched a soccer game on TV and here I am travelling the 4 hours to Abuja to watch two African teams compete for a spot in the World Cup.

It was quite the adventure getting to Abuja and then to the stadium. Dustin, a Texan who came with us, made facepaint and a bunch of us put it on. It was made out of corn starch and food colouring or something. With all the heat, it kinda smelled like you were baking a cake on your face... but we looked like fans, anyway. We stuck out a tad at the stadium, and the Nigerians were all pretty excited to see a bunch of white people dressed up in Nigerian jerseys at the game. Lots of excitement.
Nigeria ended up winning 3-0 (first goal in the first 2 minutes!) I'm told it wasn't that exciting of a game compared to other games. Which I use as my excuse for dozing off a couple times. It was all good fun though.

On the way to the stadium. Kinda excited. The stadium is right behind me.

The field as seen reflected in Dustin's sunglasses.Some really cool clouds/sunbeams.

Us all decked out in green.The prominently African crowd.Both teams praying together after the game. Pretty neat.The field as we were leaving.

Last week we went for a bit of a hike. Checked out some neat rock formations as well as a waterfall.

Top of a large rock = great silly-face photo op.

Running water isn't the same here. It's pretty brown and mucky. But the falls were impressive anyway. Can't recall the official name of the falls, but it's commonly referred to as Flip-Flop Falls, as you will understand from the photos... The waterfall is on volcanic rock, which is neat, as I'm pretty sure that marks the first time I've been were a volcano was. There is an old volcano not too far away, but it's not very impressive. Covered in shrubbery (Ni!) and not very big. Might check it out another day.

The waterfall.

Get why it's called Flip-Flop Falls yet? (Might need to click on the photo to view it bigger.)

Not much else to report here... Julia got her visa the other day! :) Barely a month left until she's here!! (I'm pretty excited)

To fill up some space/make up for my lack of posting, here's a couple more photos. This is the choir leader leading the choir in church.And here's a group of us after we played soccer in some pretty cold rain...
Also, I posted some photos of the trip I blogged about way back when the school collapsed. Check it out here, there's a bunch of photos in there I didn't put on here!

Thanks for reading!

Random update

Hey folks,

Not a whole lot to report at the moment. Had a pretty nice Saturday. Slept in, played some Ultimate frisbee with a ton of people (we normally have like 14, this week was close to 30). After that we went to a restaurant called Net Café. It does neither coffees nor internet, but has good food. As long as you're willing to wait an hour and a half... But we anticipated this and brought a deck of cards. So it was all good.

This past week I've been helping out at a conference doing technical stuff. Setting up sound equipment, making sure the projectors are working... and if the power goes off, turn on the generator. The work isn't too exciting, but the conference was pretty interesting. It was called Theological Education in Africa (TEA) and they had a ton of speakers from Nigeria, Kenya, Ireland, UK, Canada and the States. I sat in on the workshops, they were pretty interesting. But that's all over now.

Starting Monday I hope to take a Hausa class. Hausa is one of the hundreds of languages spoken in Nigeria (languages, not just dialects...) But Hausa is one of the more common languages in this area. So, that class is ever morning Monday-Friday for the next six weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to say more than just 'hello' after all that.

We'll see how it goes, since it means I'll only be working half days for the next six weeks, as well as taking a month off when Julia comes (yay!!) at the end of July. I'm pretty excited for that...

Not a whole lot else has been happening out here. Be glad to hear from y'all! (I was just hanging out with a guy from Texas, sorry...)

I'll leave you with a photo of what happens when a group of volunteers are left with too much duct tape and not enough to do...

Isn't it supposed to be "RAISE the roof"?

So I was travelling last week, as you die-hard blog readers would know. Went to Lafia, which is the capital of Nasarawa State, right below Plateau State (the one I'm in) and only 2 and a half hours away. It was a good trip. Also eventful. Some events I'd rather not share with the masses (I'll let your imagination run wild) but one event I feel deserves mention...

Hope you're in the mood for a story...

So, the point of this trip was to visit the promoters (teachers, basically) who teach either to little kids, preteens, teens or themselves based on the Choose Life books we have. Depending on the group, the 'students' either take what they learn about HIV/AIDS and abstinence and (hopefully) remember it, or they end up teaching what they've learned to another group of their peers. Which is pretty neat. Kinda a pyramid scheme, but for something good.

We visited several of these groups, to just monitor the promoter in his or her teaching of the material. Check to make sure he or she is doing it right and well, while also offering encouragement or constructive criticism where appropriate. We would introduce ourselves at the beginning of each session, then just sit back and watch the rest. At the end, we opened up the kids to be able to ask me anything they felt like. I obviously stick out and I know kids can be random, but I still didn't expect some of the questions they asked me. I was also curious as to why they ended up asking ME these questions and if they had someone they felt they could ask these things any other time. Some of the questions were pretty standard... 'Where are you from?', 'What's it like?'... but one boy stood up and stated "I want to know more about love." and sat down. So that was interesting...

Every time they asked me a question I tried to relate it back to HIV/AIDS, abstinence or overall health/life choices. Like when I was asked if someone could get AIDS from using an infected person's toothbrush, I told them that it was highly unlikely, but that for the sake of health reasons, one shouldn't share a toothbrush ANYway. I was also asked about pants. Girls wearing pants in Nigeria is a relatively new thing. Last year I hardly remember any Nigerians wearing them, now a lot of them do. It was an interesting question to answer. The girl wanted to know whether or not the could (as Christians) wear pants, like all the women do in the West. Traditionally, Nigerian women never wear pants. Many of the older men and women are not too fond of this new 'trend' of women in pants. Nigerians are regularly bombarded with Western things, pants are one of those things. I tried to get across how WEARing pants isn't BAD, isn't a SIN. BUT, if you're wearing pants to rebel against parents or authority, or wearing them to provoke boys (had to link it back to that...) THEN it's wrong. Not sure how much made sense. My 'accent' can be hard for Nigerians to understand sometimes.

Anyway, back to the story.

Last Wednesday, we headed out from Lafia to the outskirts to a nearby village school. It was in a field and would not have passed ANY safety codes in Canada. I grabbed a quick picture of it while we were walking up to it (crooked, sorry. Took it without looking) I wanted to make sure I got a picture of what some schools look like. Inside didn't look much better. The school was pretty big, as you can tell. They built the roof first, propped it up on some beams, then started work on the brick walls. The entire building was leaning on about a 70 degree angle, with a few poles placed in vain attempts to keep the metal roof up.As the session wrapped up and I was answering a question about whether or not 'boys and girls can sleep in the same room' the entire school fell down on top of us!

Fortunately it fell slow enough (took a couple seconds to come down, wasn't instant) and there was no ceiling, so we were all able to move and get out of the way of the beams over us. The roof came down intact and didn't make it all the way to the ground, but was supported by all the childrens' desks, so we had a couple feet beneath the roof to tuck ourselves in. We ended up all being unharmed!! Praise God!
One of my coworkers mentioned how it must have been "quite the experience", I think it was more of a potential tradgedy. There were dozens of kids in the school and if just one of them had been seriously injured it would have been a complete tradgedy. This is not a representation of all Nigerian schools, I've never been in one this bad. In their defence, they put the roof up first to protect the kids from the rain (the irony being something that was built to protect had the potential to harm...) so they put it up so the classes could resume. They had just been forced out of the building they had been using before, so this was a new structure. You can see some of the bricks already being laid. They just cut too many corners in their rush to put this up. Something that's bound to happen when there are no building codes. Enforced ones, anyway.

So, that was quite the day... the rest of it was much better.

Please pray for the safety of children worldwide, as at any moment, tradgedy can strike.

Also, hug a child today and tell him/her you love him/her. (Preferably a child you know). Might as well do the same for your friends and family as well.

Repeat daily.

I was reminded again on Sunday of the speed we may end up leaving this life. Three Dutch girls who are volunteering as nurses here for a short while were in Jos last weekend, so a few of us took them rock climbing. Then on Sunday, I found out they ended up in a car accident. Thankfully they all survived, one ended up with stitches and they're all sore, but they're alive and well!

Driving here can often be dangerous. Accidents happen often, but only ending up with stitches does not. A Nigerian I worked with last year lost his wife and small girl in a car accident and he now has permanent back pain. Practically everyone here knows someone who was killed in a tragic car accident. Particularly dangerous roads, like the steep roads leading on and off the plateau, have signs placed to try to enforce some common driving sense. Please pray also for road safety. And for people to find better ways to transport 4 goats.

Oh, and I uploaded some photos onto Facebook. Enjoy more of the Animal Kingdom costume party!!

Woah! Here's a ton of pictures! We'll see how this goes... I'm hoping to have captions above each one, but if the layout doesn't let me... then well, it'll probably be a bit confusing for you to figure out... These are pretty random pictures from all over. My house, work, surprise dress up parties... (but we'll get to that later). Enjoy!

A bit of an update first: I'll be travelling most of May. Monday to Thursday/Friday next week, several days the week after and most of the week after that as well. I'll be visiting some of the promoters (people who teach HIV/AIDS awareness in their respective church/youth groups) and seeing how the program is running. That way I'll be better able to see where improvements can be made... I hope to have another post up every weekend I'm home. We'll see. No promises!

Now for the pictures...

This is what I found in my freezer one day. It confused me. I can't figure out how it would have happened. How does an icicle grow upside down?? Is it an ice stalagmite? *shrug*
Every year, the CRC mission has a spiritual conference. Everyone who can in the mission from Nigeria (some came from Niger as well) spends 3 days at a place called Miango. It's a resort (in African standards) and we have sessions by a speaker almost every day. This year it was the week before Easter and was very interesting. The speaker (Dan Walcott, a teacher at Holland Christian in Michigan) spoke. He was very interesting. Taught a lot about context. Pretty interesting stuff. This was during one of our worship moments.
This is Kyle Apts, missionary here with his family (wife Ann and kids Zion and Gabbie). Kyle's practising guitar for another worship moment. He sometimes also plays at the church I usually attend.This is a random picture of the fireplace cover at Miango. Jos Plateau (plateau that the city of Jos is on) is apparently the only place in Nigeria with a temperate climate. It can go below 20! Therefore fireplaces are actually in some homes. Like mine. But you'll see that later... *suspense*
Not all bees in Africa are African killer bees...
We went on a hike one day at Miango to see a water system that brings water to a couple turbines from a dam. Very interesting and apparently took about 5 years to make. All dug by hand, the turbines brought in by hand... pretty crazy. And the turbines were made in 1908! And still going strong! Pumping out power to nearby places. Not to Jos though... anyway, this was a neat flower I saw on our hike.This is the view we saw along our hike. There's a trench beside us on our left that we were following that's about 6 feet across and probably more than 6 feet deep as well that brings the water all the way from the dam, through these hills to the edge of a very large hill, down a giant pipe and into the turbines. It still being rainy season (the first rain of the year is about to pelt us in a half an hour) the dust is still in the air, making seeing long distances a bit tough.A couple times there are some 'bridges' to carry the water across some valleys. This is one of them.Near the end of the trench/aqueduct, there's an overflow. If there's too much water in the trench, it flows over into here all the way down. It would also make an AWESOME water slide...
Not sure what this flag is for, but this is the end of the trench, where the water flows into a pipe down to the turbines. You can see the pipe here. We walked down this part of the pipe (ON the pipe, to be exact). At the edge (you can kinda see it here) it gets SUPER steep and carries down even farther and steeper to the turbines.Looking down the pipe.The view from the edge. Down there are the turbines and the house for the controls or something.
Me looking cross-eyed and creepy at the edge. Selfie!Walking back along the trench.
We had a 'Family fun night' at Miango. Lisa and Rachel, a couple of nurses from Canada, held a Jeopardy game (with Nigerian trivia). I helped them out by being 'Vanna White'
This is my office. I'm pretty sure I'm one of a very select few people who've moved to Africa from Canada to work an office job. I've moved the desk since I took the picture, but you get the idea.
We had a surprise party for Dana (also in picture). It was costume party with the theme being "Animal Kingdom". Costumes included zebra, faun, mouse, dog, rabbit, toucan and crocodile. Costumes are a bit hard to come by, so they're all homemade. I went as Tarzan, using a borrowed bean bag chair cover as my costume...Micah, one of my housemates, went as a crocodile. Pretty sweet costume. Here he is eating Dana's head. Note his actual mouth being open. Apparently he thought he could operate the cardboard mouth with his own...Next we had a scavenger hunt. The person who could find the most hidden animals would be the winner! I won!! Woot! The prize ended up being a piece of chocolate cake shoved into my face by Kari. But I got her back... Here I am about to get her again by distracting her as I take a picture...These are the test strips. They require a drop of blood and 15 minutes. Then you have the result. It's very accurate and fairly cheap. We don't charge them for doing tests, but each strip costs about $2. We tested more than 250 youth and had only one positive! Praise God!!Some test strips after they've had blood put on them. Waiting for the result to show.Gideon putting a drop of blood onto a test strip.This is a fly.This is my hammock. It sits behind my house. I spend some time in it almost every day.This is what I see when I'm in it. ahh, hammocks.... You can tell the rains have started as there's green on the ground! It's pretty cool to see everything going from brown to green! Already it's a LOT greener since I've taken this already.This is the leaky shower ceiling I talked about in my last post. Piping doesn't really get hidden much in Africa...What's more fun than a barrel of monkeys?? A barrel full of me!Eggs. Occasionally they come with a free chicken feather.Nasco is a Nigerian food packaging/manufacturing place just a few minutes away. They make cheap stuff (some of it's actually good!). They make a ton of stuff, soaps, cookies, cereals... Here's their regular Corn Flakes and the brand new FrostyZ! They're basically Frosted Flakes and not bad. Real name-brand cereal is pretty pricey. Like 10 bucks for some Rice Crispies. So we stick to the Nasco stuff.We don't have a paper towel holder OR a banana holder. So I made both in one. Out of a clothes hanger.As a nice snack every now and then, we make trail mix. Delicious!This is what I make coffee in. It's actually not bad. Coffee makers are a rarity, as well as real coffee. Most is instant. gross... So I stick to this guy. Makes about 2 big mug fulls of coffee. And cream's another 'not-gonna-happen' kinda thing, so I took powdered Coffeemate. Almost like having a Timmies in my kitchen! Ok, not even close, but it'll do. I get to take one of these guys every week for malaria. There's no cure for malaria (mainly transmitted via mosquitoes) but medication lessens the effect if you were to get it. Malaria is a HUGE killer of Africans. More than AIDS, statistically, but many people who have AIDS end up killed from malaria because their immune system is shot from AIDS and can't fight it off anymore.This is my bedroom. Pretty classy, I know. The mosquito net is pretty awesome. In a non-awesome kinda way. Quite the pain in the butt to sleep under. The bed is 6 feet long. I am 6 feet. This means my feet hang over the edge, tangling in the net.Grass is growing!! Woo!!Trees are blooming!! Okay, this kind of tree actually blooms in the dry season, but it's still really pretty!My 80GB paperweight...Power here is 220 (110 in Canada) but tends to jump around above 220 sometimes. We use these regulators on things like fridges, TVs and laptops so they don't get fried if the power ever spikes.Our living room. Not too shabby. Could use some decorations, though. If the walls weren't brick, it would make hanging things a lot easier...The fireplace! I thought it was just a wasted space since we won't be using it anytime soon... so I put a lamp in it!Pac-anapple man.Two of the Strydhorst girls, Kristen and Andrea. They had just asked me to take a family picture of them all in the tree... looked pretty neat.A flower on the tree with the sunset in the distance.That's all!

Thanks for checkin' out some of my life in Africa!

Feel free to come by anytime!