Projects Office and My Home

Bags of peanuts shared with rats.

Storage room door where bag found.

I have not had a lot of excitement here this last week. Mostly, technical work here in the house and lots of meetings. I did meet one of the big rats that live in the house and patrols at night. I got up in the middle of the night to use the toilet.The rat saw my light and ran and hide between the toilet and the wall. This was not where I wanted it hide when I wanted to use the toilet. I got a good look at it before I gave it a clear escape route and chased it back into to the Parlor.  (Maybe I should carry my camera with me at all times. It would have been a good picture.) The first week I was here I left four small bags of peanuts out on the table overnight. The next morning there were only two bags on the table and two bags by the door to the storeroom, I left hot peppers sitting out one night. and they took some out of the bag and chewed on them. They have not gotten into the pantry where I store most of my food. Now my hot pepper and onions are in a bowl on top of the refrigerator.

(Clicking on double clicking on the pictures will make them larger. Then you have to close the picture and you will come back to the blog.)

I think I will give you a tour of the house. This house is on the LCCN Jimeta Mission Compound which is adjacent to the Jimeta Cathedral. The Government Primary School used to be the LCCN School. Back in the 1973 the  Government took over all of the schools and health facilities from the churches and said they wanted to improve them. But in reality the opposite happened. Now the elected government has allowed churches to have schools and health facilities as long as they operate with government licenses and to government standards. The Cathedral has the western third of the complex with church, offices and their Primary and Secondary School. The Mission Compound is the rest of the compound with the LCCN Deaf Center building (under the trees), Deaf Church (under construction), a large office building shared by the LCCN Audit Office and Christian Association of Nigeria Adamawa State Chapter, the Missions Afrika Development Office (where I used to live), the Projects Office (where I am staying this year), a small soccer pitch with several tree within the pitch and various small buildings. The soccer pitch is probably less than 50 meters long and the west end must be at least a meter higher than the east end. Several times I have seen the ball get stuck in the branches of the trees that are on the pitch on just beyond the goal.

This building was Elisabeth Holtegaard's house when she lived in Jimeta as a missionary from Denmark. She has been returning and living here for a few months per year and working on organizing the boxes and boxes of records that were kept by the Danish Missionaries from 1913 to the early 2000's. The church is working on building an archive building at Bronnum Lutheran Seminary that will be a safe storage area. While I am typing this the Archive Committee is scheduled to be meeting in the dinning room. This old house is easily invaded by termites who love to eat paper and of course rats like paper for their nests. The house has two bedrooms, bathroom, parlor, dining room, kitchen, and several storage rooms. It was constructed before 1950's by the Danish Missionaries.

The building I used to stay at (now Mission Afrika Development Office) was built by American Lutheran Missionaries and called the American Guesthouse. More recently, it has been called the falling down house. It has several walls that are falling away.

There is an addition and a porch on the back the Projects Office house. Also there is an old round mud block house in the back. The addition, back porch, and round house are used by Joel and Regina and their children for a home. Joel is a former security guard for the church. By giving them housing they provide additional security. In the rainy season they plant okra,  groundnuts and greens for income. I did stay in the Project Office house in the back bedroom in either 2009 or 2010. The back bedroom gets less breeze and has window out to the porch where Regina and the kids spend most of their time. It was not as private and a little hotter than the front bedroom where I am sleeping this year. They have a pit latrine with a concrete slab and used metal roofing sheets as walls. This is one location I wanted to included a demonstration ventilated Improved Pit Latrine as a part of the 25-40 Foundation Grant. That did not work out and I am looking for a different source of funding. Since this area is used for weddings, conventions and other things it is a good location for a demonstration VIP latrine.

View form soccer pitch

This is a large house for one person. It is used as both the Projects Office, the Health Board Water Office, Health Board Jimeta Office, Health Board Education Office, and a meeting place for various small groups. It is rarely used for living. Elisabeth used come yearly but had not been back since 2013 for the Centennial Celebration.

Front Door

The  main entrance is from the front porch to what I call the Parlor. The door faces out to the main road through this part of town. Jimeta is a bustling urban center with a population estimated in the 600,000 range.  It is mostly a government center and part Yola it houses most of the local Federal and almost all of the State offices.

Solar tea and solar battery on porch

 You will notice that a lot of the glass is replaced by plywood. The large open area to the front and left as you face the house is used by kids and adults for soccer. The adults use the larger pitch with wooden goals and the kids use the area directly in front of the house. They put down rocks for goals right in front of the doors and window. They use the windows to stop the ball so they do not have to chase it. Mostly, they do this when no one is using the building in the mornings and evenings.

Thru Parlor, Dinning, to Kitchen Door

To the right of the Parlor, as you enter, is the dining room and then the kitchen is off the dining room. This side of the house gets full sun and is like an oven. It averages 2 degrees C higher than the bedroom I am using and has less breeze. The Parlor is used by Yakubu Bulama for his office as the Health Board Water Coordinator and Projects Coordinator (unpaid position with LCCN Headquarters).

The kitchen is off of the dining room. The red plastic basin is my washing water, the blue basin is where I rinse with borehole water then rinse with hot boiled water. The taller blue bucket is borehole water. It has a faucet on the bottom for filling my teapot or pots for cooking. The orange container is also filled with borehole water I can use for cooking. The larger black container on the floor I mostly use for cleaning water. It appears clean but I have not emptied it and cleaned it so I prefer not to use it for cooking. The tall silver container has Ceramic filters in the top section and the bottom is storage. The stop cock on the bottom section is stuck. I use this as a reserve. When I boil water for tea or oatmeal the leftover water goes into the blue thermos bottle for a second cup of tea or rinsing dishes. The four burner stove has a cylinder that still had cooking gas in it. I have so far only used one burner at a time. There is a second tank in the storage room and it feels like it also has cooking gas.

Behind the stove is a storage room used for the Water Program and stores the generator that is used when there is need for power and there is not power from the government power grid or from the Cathedral large generator.

To the left of the stove and door to the storage room is the refrigerator with my bowl of onions and peppers on top of it. The fan that blows air across the condenser coils is sitting on the floor. We keep the ceiling fan running to keep air circulation around the coils. We have had almost continuous power last couple of days so the sachets of water in the freezer are blocks of ice. Unfortunately, the vendor we buy our sachets from was out of the Faro brand that used a thick strong plastic bag. We had to buy the cheaper water and they tend to break when frozen.

This morning breakfast

Across from the refrigerator is the screened pantry, I use this to store my food. I have a small bag of rice, cans of mixed veggies, baked beans, canned mini weiners,  powdered milk, instant oats, box of Kellogg Fruit and Bran, some ginger cookies, cans of sardines, tuna, salmon, mackerel, spices, roasted ground nuts (peanuts), a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread.

Breakfast is hot tea, milk, oatmeal and bread or tea, milk and a bowl of cereal. Lunch, if I have lunch, is usually a sandwich, peanut butter, hard boiled egg or tuna fish. Dinner I will cook some rice, then fry some onions and peppers, add in spices and a can of sardines or mackerel. When I use sardines I fry the onions and peppers in the oil from the sardines. I have not decided what I am going to do with the salmon. The can was marked as 500 Naira but when the scanned it the current price was 700 naira ($2.30 at 305N/$).

Looking back through the dinning room to the parlor/office is the small desk Yakubu uses under the ceiling fan.The table and couch, by the wall, I use for my computer at the edge of the ceiling fan breeze. I took the picture to the right while I was writing this. The Archive Committee is having a meeting in the dining room and Yakubu is working on reports. Behind the couch is the hallway to the bathroom and bedrooms.

The house is no longer connected to the water supply system. The toilet tank is not connected to the toilet. The toilet is flushed with a bucket of water. After my dish water and rinse water from the kitchen get dirty I use it to flush the toilet. I purchased water two days ago. The water vendor pushes a cart filled with 13 plastic 20 liter containers. 260 liters of  water fills the large blue barrel and about every other bucket or water container in the house. To get here from the borehole he pushed the cart mostly up a slight hill to the Cathedral gate and back down to the house. The water point is behind the house and across the street. For this he asks 130 Naira. I gave him 150. This is equal to less than a half a dollar. If he is lucky he will deliver 6 to 8 loads a day. This is a very short distance for a trip (close to 1/2 mile round trip). If he does not own his own cart and cans he rents it for  200 Naira per day and pays 20 naira to fill his 13 containers. For 8 trips his cost would be 360 Naira and he will receive 1040 Naria. His daily maximum take home would be 680 Naria ($2.23 at the current black market exchange rate.). You never see a fat water man.

On either side of the bathrooms are bedroom. To the right is a room that now is used mostly for storage. To the left is a room used for some storage of archive material and I am using it for a bedroom. They stacked up two mattresses on the floor by the window to make a bed. I hung my mosquito net from various points in the room. The windows stay open most of the time. When I have wind from the west or from the south I get breeze. When I have power I have the ceiling fan working. Opposite of the bed is table with some old computers owned by Yakubu. He has a shop that he sells agricultural chemicals from during the farming season. Most of the year is sits empty. He is trying to turn part of it into an copy shop and place where people can rent computers by the hour. My bags are stored on the table with the computers. There is a wardrobe on one wall (not shown) where I hang my shirts and pants. Socks and underwear are kept in my bag.

While I was writing this post a group came and put up a tent and off loaded a lot of chairs. Later in the day they put up a second tent closer to the street. This indicates that there will be a wedding reception in the open area between the tents tomorrow (Saturday). They will have a DJ and loud music. With the Youth Fellowship Convention at the same time this place will be busy tomorrow.

The local kids usually notice the tent and will put on their best clothes to crash the wedding reception. The reception usually has a dinner served in Styrofoam containers. The local kids get the left overs form the containers before they get piled and burned. If the party is large the kids get a lot to eat. One year we had three receptions simultaneously. The kids took food home for their families that Saturday.

I hope this has given you a little insight into life in Jimeta, Nigeria. I know what I experience is nothing like what the "normal" person's life is like. I have the capability to buy whatever I want and move to an air conditioned room is the heat becomes too unbearable for me. I could have been working on one of the projects but instead I decided to spend most of the day writing this post.

Yesterday, during a meeting I asked if it was Tuesday or Wednesday and was surprised when they said Thursday. Tomorrow I have several reports Yakubu gave me to get updated on what is happening and will try to get some walking in. Sunday I will attend both the English Service and the Sign Language Service. They are currently holding services in the former Pre-School building which is a concrete slab with corrugated metal sides and roof. Fortunately most of it is shaded by trees or it would be an oven.

End of Second Week

 Note: if you click or with some systems double click on the pictures they should get bigger

I have now been traveling for 2 weeks and have 4 weeks to go. Last night was the first night back in the Projects House. Overnight the temperature stayed around 93 in the bedroom with no breeze and no power for the ceiling fan. After 5 nights in a hotel room with A/C it was a hard night. About 4 AM a little breeze came through the window. By 6 AM the temperature dropped to 89. The Cathedral turned on their generator for about an hour between 7 AM and 8 AM so I got an hour of ceiling fan. In the middle of the afternoon the Cathedral had a short funeral so we got another two hours of ceiling fan. Tonight it  looked like rain for a short time but all we got was dust and wind so far. I am hoping for rain. Rain can drop the temperature 10 or more degrees F.


Today I had a meeting with Emmanuel Sabiya the CEO of the Health Board. Last week before before the Malaria, He had given me drawings their new architects had made from the sketches I had provided him for a possible training center with accommodations. They had taken my sketches and made the buildings larger. My sketches were for training small groups of people and he envisions times where their could be up to 50 people attending a meeting rather than small group training. Over the weekend at the hotel I had taken their drawings and added tables and chairs and showed that the training room as his architects designed could hold 70 people with tables and chairs. Without table and only chairs we could probably fit 100 people in the room. He decided that this was too large. We will take 2 meters off the length and 0.6 M off of the width and have the quantity estimators make a cost estimate. '

For the accommodation hall they took the most complicated of my sketches and made it a little larger. Emmanuel was hoping that we could build the training hall and two accommodation halls (one male and one female) with in the budget. The extra couple meters did not actually add any more beds but a larger center aisle between beds. The hall would hold about 20 people. Before the Malaria Yakubu and I had discussed the accommodations building and he thought it should be simplified. If we felt the need for instructors to have better accommodations we can rent them rooms at the local hotel with by car is less than ten minutes away. Over the weekend I had taken the accommodations hall outline and rearranged it from 5 room to 3 large room Each room has two connected bathrooms. This design will hold 30 people dormitory style. Emmanuel liked this design and we will have see if the quantity estimators can make an cost estimate without having to have a new set of drawings from the architects.

Later in the afternoon I met with a portion of the Deaf Church Construction Committee and made some progress on getting this project back on track. On Monday one of the primary movers on the committee a former Danish Missionary now married to a retired Bishop will be leaving for holiday in Denmark. The former chairman who has not handed over his notes and files to the new Cathedral Vicar will be in town on Friday to attend a wedding on Saturday. We are trying to arrange a committee meeting to bring the new chairman ( New Vathedral Vicar Pastor Gideon) updated so he can carry on the construction. Pastor Ruth will also be leaving Monday to fly up to Abuja for her Tuesday Interview at the US Embassy.

Later in the day we worked out a new design for a temporary water supply system for the Demsa Health Referral Center Renovation project. We cut the previous cost estimate and we can get this concept completed quickly. Then as the master plan for the entire facility comes together over the next couple weeks we will have time to located a position for a new industrial sized borehole that will be able to service the entire facility.

In between all of this we were able to drive to a shopping area and buy some more grocers for me and four bags of drinking water sachets. This time I found some Skippy peanut butter and my favorite breakfast cereal (Fruit and Fiber). My breakfast is usually oatmeal with sugar, cinnamon and salt, a cup of tea  and a glass of milk from powdered milk. Now that I have Fruit and Fiber can exchange it for the oatmeal. Variety is good.

This evening I walked to the market and bought three hard boiled eggs and a 50 Naira bag of peppers. I am not sure of the peppers here. I was hoping the little ones were hot and the bigger ones more mild. They were the only peppers in the market. I opened a can of sardines and used the oil to fry up onions and peppers, Added curry spices then the sardines and a little water. I boiled some rice, I should have done the rice first. This time my fingers were starting to sting for the hot and hotter peppers and with the kitchen well over 100 degrees F I was wiping my brow. While the rice boiled I was in the bathroom washing my hands and face.

I have eaten dinner with some tea. Whole sitting near the office window.  The batteries on my laptop and my phone are about exhausted. The phone provided a portable Hot Spot Wi Fi connection. It still indicates 2G data speed but is much faster and more reliable here than at the hotel.

There are no activities at the Cathedral tonight so I will probably not have power overnight. Right now there is a little breeze and the temperature reads 92 on my radio in the bed room. With a little luck a storm will come through or the national power grid will send some power to this section of town. It is 8 PM I will take a bucket shower, brush my teeth and listen to the BBC or Voice of America on the radio. Oh, and sweat.

I am not going to proof read this. Just publish. I hope it makes some since. Next time I get the battery recharged I will edit its a bit.

Deaf Church Progress

Note: The Internet has been very poor this week. I uploaded pictures for this post many times over the last 4 days but they never would download into this post. Tonight is Sunday night. My last night in air conditioning. I feel much better. 

On Friday, April 15th, I went over and found Pastor Ruth Ulea, the first Ordained Deaf Lutheran Pastor in Africa, at her office at the LCCN Deaf Center. She took me for a tour of the Deaf Church construction. 

The Construction of the Jimeta Deaf Church on the Jimeta Mission Compound has been complicated by the Chairman of the Construction Committee, the Vicar of the Cathedral, who was also supervising the construction has moved to Jos, Nigeria to attend the Theological College of North Nigeria and he has also been reassigned to another church. The records were not handed over the and a new committee chairman has not been assigned. In spite of the administrative problems, work has continued. The floors have been completed. Most of the electrical is installed and wiring installed. There is confusion over the next step as the electrician wants to do his final install of fans, sockets and switches after the painter finishes the walls and there are others that want the electrician to install before the painting. My personal preference is to have the painters do their work first and then the electricians. Of the projects I have been on so far the painters have been the least skilled and seem to be able to drop paint most everywhere.

On my way back to the house from the Deaf Centre I passed through an area that women had set up their kitchens and were selling food. The Yola Diocese Women's Fellowship was having their annual convention at the Cathedral. Some women cooked for themselves and their churches and other cooked and sold food to the participants. I went to the house and got a plate and bought food. No reason to heat up the house cooking when food is available. I am poor at remembering the names of the dishes. The white ball is pounded white corn and the sauce or soup is various greens with some peanuts  I also bought 5 packages of peanuts from her so she did not have to make change for me. I ate less than 1/2 of food and one package of the peanuts. I put the food away in a plastic container and put it in the freezer of the refrigerator. The Project House I am staying in has a full size refrigerator. With the Women's Convention going on the Cathedral runs their big generator when the women need the loudspeakers and when their is no power on the local grid. So the freezer was actually making ice. Currently, the power grid seems to provide power for a while each morning for several hours and more on the weekends. Usually the freezer will keep water cold but not frozen.

On Sunday I attended the English Service at Jimeta Cathedral up through the offering. I then went to the old nursery school building that is being used for Sunday Services by the Deaf congregation. After their service I went with Pastor Ruth to the LCCN Deaf Centre and met with various members of the congregation for pictures and conversation. One man had a shirt made from the 50th Anniversary wrapper for the Christian Mission for the Deaf and Andrew Jackson Forster. He told me the tailor was and idiot. I told him he just had to stand on his head. I also met his wife and new baby. They hope the church will be finished soon so their baby can be the first to be Baptized. Another young lady I met could be the bride in the first wedding of the new church.

Tuesday Night I Lost 7 Hours of Night Time

Summary Update. I have been in Nigeria a week and finally have internet access. Unfortunately, at the hotel I am currently in it is only 2G.  So pictures take a long time to upload. The hotel has WiFi but it is not connecting properly. Below is a posting I wrote while waiting to get internet access and Malaria. I will be in the hotel with air conditioning as a continue my Malaria treatment. 

This is somewhat of a long post. Probably could edit it down more but I am tired and need to go back to bed.

Flights from Minneapolis to Yola Nigeria were fairly uneventful. I left Minneapolis Tuesday afternoon to Chicago on United with a middle seat. I had a fairly long layover so I made the leisurely walk from the next to last gate on the concourse to Gate 3. Confirmed that it was the right gate and walked back to McDonalds for lunch. My Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany was full but I was lucky to have an aisle seat.

Wednesday morning I arrived at Frankfurt Main Airport on Concourse Z. I asked a Lufthansa employee where the flight to Abuja was located. He checked his tablet and told me gate B58. Then he told me to check the monitors for updates. My flight was at 11:10AM and the monitors only went as far as 10:00. So I decided to head over to Concourse B. I figured that by the time I got there the monitor should be up to 11:10. Concourse Z to B is not as bad as it sounds. Frankfurt Main Airport has concourses A through E and Z. Z is off the end of A. You walk through Concourses Z and A to get escalators going up to passage ways that loop around the building to the train. The walks to the train is about as convoluted as possible. I think I took enough left turns to make at least a complete 360.

The train ride is only a minute or two and it takes you to the hallway that leads you to the end Concourse B.  After the train ride you walk another 5 minutes past Gates B19 and down to B1 then follow the signs to the escalator down to gates B20 –B29, B30 – B39, B40 - 49, and B50-B59. At the bottom of the escalator is a wide hallway with concrete columns dividing it length wise. From this location there are no directions signs in sight. To my right I see gates B40, B41 and B42. The numbers were getting bigger to the right. To the left there were no gates, just a long hallway leading to some shops. My logic said my gate being B58 which is a higher than B42, therefore, it would be to the right. I walked to the end of the hallway to gate B49. I returned down on the other side of the hallway and saw the signs to the rest of the B gates. The sign was hung in a manner that it could not be seen from the base of the escalator. If it had been turned 90 degrees you could have seen it. If it had been on the same side of the hallway and down to the left you could have seen it.

I walked down through mass of shops in the center of the Concourse, to a Hallway leaded to Gates B50-B58. I checked the monitor and they were up to 11:00 departures. Went back to McDonald’s and had an Egg McMuffin, Coffee and free Wi-Fi. I still have another hour to boarding. As I sat down, a young boy about 3 years old came over and offered me a fry. He spent the next half hour walking to other tables and walking a on the shelf covering the heating and air conditioning by the windows. He managed to stay just out of the reach of his older sisters when his Mom sent them after him. Finally, they brought out a toy car and he came within reach. They hauled him off struggling as he and his family headed to their gate. After being entertained by my young friend I headed to the monitor and it said boarding starts in 2 minutes. I got to the gate as they were announcing the pre-boarding. Us cheap seat tickets won’t be called for a while. When we left the gate they sent us in groups down to busses that toke us across the airport, past a couple terminals, down past some maintenance hangers. I was waiting to get on the Autobahn and drive to Heidelberg. This was one of the longest airport bus rides I have ever taken. They had portable stairs up to the front and back of the plane. The staff was directing us cheap ticket passengers to the back stairs. Then the plane had to cross back to the other side of the airport to take off.

My flight to Abuja is only 5 hours and I have a window seat on my boarding pass. When I get to my seat there is a women already in it but the aisle seat is open so I take my preferred aisle seat. The flight is not full so before take-off I move to a center row that is empty and laid down across three seats. I had not slept much on the 8 hour flight from Chicago. So it was nice to get to stretch out a bit. It was not real comfortable on seatbelt bracket poked me in the back. But I got some sleep. In fact I slept through the passing out of the immigration forms.

We arrived about 30 minutes late at 4:45PM. The flight for Yola leaves at 5:45 which gaves me less than an hour to get through immigration, customs, buy a ticket at one end of the terminal, check luggage and get to the other end of the terminal and up to the third floor departure gates. Impossible with less than an hour and I still have to get and fill out the Ebola health form for the people in white coats, the Immigration form, and the custom forms. The white coat people are real friendly and patient. I answer "no" to everything. The immigration form for a half asleep traveler was smaller print and less room to answer. I scribbled out my answers then looked for a short line. The Immigration officers managing the lines directed me to the Diplomat only line which was the shortest. I protested that I was not a diplomat. They said it did not matter neither were the people in front of me. That is where I met the Immigration agent who likes to run things by her own book.

The Immigration agent turned out to be one of the worst I have encountered. She told me, my business visa should only be for a week or two and that is enough time to do my business and leave. I told her I am scheduled for six weeks of meetings and project reviews. I explained what I did and there were many projects to review. She asked for my flight itinerary. Seeing that I was scheduled longer than 30 day she said she was not going to let me into the country. After a little pleading and using my nicest church language she said since I was working for the church she would stamp my visa for 30 days and I needed to go to the Immigration office and pay them for an extension. I have always wondered how they distribute the funds collected at the immigration office for extensions. The Official Nigeria Immigration website says Business Visas are good for 90 days stay and you can extend beyond 90 days. Also, the official policy is that you pay all fees to the Immigration Service through a bank and no cash can be accepted. You are to get your application form off the internet and pay the fee at a local bank then bring the form and bank receipt to the local Immigration office. There are no forms or set fee for a Visa extension on the Immigration Website. You show them you original Visa application and give them 15,000 Naira cash which they slide behind the table and count then put it in a drawer and they stamp your passport with a new date. I am afraid with the inflation that has happened they will want more this year when I go it the extension.

With all of these delays I could not possibly make the flight to Yola on Wednesday Night. The Divine Love Retreat and Conference Center (DRACC Catholic Guest House run by the Sisters of Divine Love) had told me on Monday evening that they did not have room for me in their guest house. While I waited overnight at the terminal I saw a lot of Sisters and Priest coming off of planes. I had emailed some contacts in Abuja and Yola to see if they could find me an alternate site. But with little time I had not gotten any responses when I checked my email in Germany. I was on my own. So I decided on the cheap option, overnight at the Abuja Airport. I walked out of the International portion of the terminal to the Domestic ticket office and made a reservation on Med View Airline for Thursday Morning. They only allow ticketed passengers into the International part of the terminal, I fumbled for my ticket and said I am sorry, I am really tired. The man said go ahead. The domestic portion of the terminal does not have a waiting area. The International side has air conditioners that provide a little cooling if you are directly in front of them and is open all night.

I carried my bag up stairs to the restaurant floor and had a plate of chicken and rice. They had a TV connected to an satellite channel from India with Indian Soap Operas. They all were similar family drama but it took two time through them before I figured out who was who. The villain in one is the grandmother and in another the grandmother give sage like advise.  I sat there a couple hours sipping on a bottle of wateruntil the channel was changed to Nigeria music videos. Lots of twerking and Nigerian rappers trying to look tough and showing their underwear. Not everything exported from the US is good. Around midnight I went to the waiting area where half of the seats had luggage porters and other overnight staff sleeping and some travelers. I did not get much sleep. Planes came in routinely until about 2 AM and then started again around 6. Late at night I forgot that photography is strictly forbidden at the airport.

Thursday morning I walked back to the domestic side of the terminal and checked in to my flight. Climbed up the large spiral stairs to the third floor departure lounge. I feel asleep waiting for my flight and man who had noticed I had slept through calls for plane departures woke me and asked me where I was going. I told him Yola and he said they called that flight a long time ago. There were still four people in line at the departure counter after 16 hours at the airport I almost missed my flight.  

Yakubu Bulama met me outside of the baggage area of the Yola terminal. He is just getting back to work with since recovering from Chicken Pox. He said it was very painful but now he is over it and almost back to full strength. I asked him if he felt like Job since he burned his had badly in 2014, then his home village was overrun by Boko Haram he had 40 people living at his single family compound and now the Pox.

He had the front bedroom in his office fixed up, cleaned out and some mattresses stacked up for a bed. I got out the mosquito net and tied it off to the curtain supports and one eye hook in the ceiling. I have a ceiling fan when there is power and will need to get a desk lamp. The fluorescent bulb other the desk is burned out. The kitchen only needed a little cleaning. After cleaning the small pantry we went to the Oasis Bakery to get fresh bread. Slice bread in 250 Naira. The current black market money exchange is 310 Naira to the dollar.  So the bread was only 81 cents. Next we went to Luka Memorial Market for canned meats, canned vegetables, canned beans, and other things to eat. Then on to Yakubu Shopping Center for drinking water,rice and a couple things I forgot at Luka’s.

I have gotten lucky. The propane tanks for the old gas stove still have fuel. It took a little cleaning of the regulator but I got the burners working. It will be nice to have four burners. Rather than the single burner on top of a tank tipsy propane tank, I have used for the past three years. I have to reconnect the gas each time I use the stove. It only leaks a little. I heated a kettle of water and made a cup of tea. The power is not on so I decided to have a cold tuna fish sandwich for dinner. The Yola Diocese Women’s Association is having their conference at the Cathedral next door. When they turn on the big generator for their evening service I had power to the house. But I had already gone to bed by then and just enjoyed the breeze from the ceiling fan. They shut down around 9 PM. Sometime, early in the morning the power came on for a short period of time. A small sprinkle of rain cooled the evening air off a little so I did not sweat too much through the night.

Leaving For Nigeria

I will be flying to Nigeria on April 12th on Lufthansa. I will arrive in Abuja on the 13th and spend the night there. Plan to catch a flight down to Yola the next day. Hopefully, I will be able to stay in the mission house on the LCCN Jimeta Compound that has the Water Program office in it.

The house I have stayed in has been converted to an office for the Development Director for Mission Afrika (Danish Lutheran Church mission organization). The house I will be staying in is a little newer and larger. It was the house the Elizabeth Holtegaard lived in. It has two bedrooms, a bathroom, a large living/dinning room, a kitchen and some storage rooms. I am hoping the Yakubu Bulama will be able to get my bed out of the other house and moved into the back bedroom. The house does not have running water. Last year it did not have electricity. The wires had been ripped down and not repaired. I am hoping they are repaired by now. If not I may have to invest a few bucks and have it repaired.

I will be there almost 6 weeks. I hope to assist on a couple water projects, assist in the final design of the proposed training center at Demsa (Global Health Ministries project), coordinate the completion of the Demsa Health Referral Center renovation project (Lutheran Partners for Global Ministry), and work with the Deaf Church (Citizens Into Action). If I am able, I want to visit the new Bishop of the Gongola Diocese and drive to the south end of Adamawa State to visit the North end of the Gashaka National Game Preserve.

This was the bedroom I stayed in in 2009. I am not sure where if the bed is still there. Just outside the window on the right is a concrete porch and a round mud hut. There is a family living on the porch, in the round house and in a back room connected to the back of the house. This provides an extra layer of security. However, it less private and harder to sleep in on Saturday.