Hello?

So last weekend my friend Krysty left her room to go fetch some water. She was gone maybe five minutes. When she got back to her room she noticed her phone was missing. She searched all around but couldn't locate it. She borrowed her neighbors phone to call her number, and a man answered. She asked, "Who are you? Where did you get this phone?" The man said the phone was left in his shop. When she asked where the shop was he hung up. She tried dialing the number again but he had switched it off. What's interesting is no one saw anyone enter into her room, and what's even more fascinating is the fact that there was 600 Naira on the table next to where her phone was, but he only took her phone, not the money.
Later that day she went to the phone shop to block the phone line and salvage her number for when she's able to get a new handset. When she arrived there were over 150 people waiting in line for the same thing! All of whom had their phones stolen recently. The woman at the counter told her this was "light" compared to what it usually is.
The appeal for stealing handsets (cell phones) is for re-sale value. "Used" (which may often turn out to be stolen) handsets are re-sold for more than half what a new phone would cost. You can find handsets such as these in the markets all around Jos. Just another little snippet of life in Nigeria.

Clown Car

A couple weeks ago I went to church with Blessing. I've told you about the bike situation (the motorbikes) and how I wouldn't touch one with a ten foot pole. Right, so with that said, Blessing said we could take a cab to church. A cab I thought, now that seems reasonable, I can get behind that. Okay, so where do we find such a thing? We just look for one she says. Hm. Okay, let's go look for one. So there we are standing on the side of the road in our Sunday best 'looking' for a cab. What exactly are we looking for, I asked her. She looked at me and smiled, um, I don't know, one will just stop. Finding all this very interesting, I stood faithfully at her side waiting for one to "just stop". Every once and a while she would stick her hand out at her side, a signal of sorts to cab passing by? After about five or so minutes of this clunker of a car pulls over. She negotiates the price of the drop through the window and motions for me to get in. Now, I don't quite know how to describe this said 'vehicle' that we entered, but I'm going to give it my best. First of all of the paneling on the inside of the door was missing, the inside wreaked of gasoline, and the area where the controls would normally be for radio, heat, air etc. was totally gone. Just a big hole showing straight through to metal. There were noises coming from places I'm sure they shouldn't be and other smells that were unidentifiable. I seriously didn't think this thing was going to make it three blocks, let alone three miles. But sure enough, old Bessy got us there, all in one piece. Hallelujah.
After church we went through the same process: standing on the side of the road waving down cars that look like they may be a cab. The best I can tell, you look for the oldest, junkiest, most beat up thing on the road and wave it down. So again, after about 5-10 minutes a car pulls over. Now mind you, the car is full, three in the back, one in the front, and Blessing is negotiating with him as if we're actually going be be getting in. Standing beside her I said, "Um, Blessing, there's no room in this car." She laughed and said, yes, we can fit. Are you serious? Where?! I didn't say that, but that's what I was thinking. So Blessing got in the front, half sitting on a random man's lap and I got in the back, one cheek half wedged between the seat and the door, the other riding up the side of the window, bracing myself for dear life. We went on like that for a mile or so, hit some traffic, which was awesome, and then arrived at our dropping point. I'm guessing most, if not all of the people ridding in the car were estranged to one another, but let me tell you, by the end of it they might as well have been family. Heaven knows I've never been that close to complete strangers before.

Death and Dying

The first week I was here I visited two women, home bound and dying of AIDS. The images of them will forever be engraved in my mind. To say they were emaciated would be an understatement. They were so weak (and frail) they could barely walk. I'm not at all exaggerating when I say skin on bones. One of the two women died about a month after our visit. The other, Habbibat, I just found out passed away yesterday. Her husband died long ago, he was the one who infected her. Extramarital relationships are very common especially with the Muslim population. She had three children, two of which are currently in school courtesy of Faith Alive scholarships. The oldest, a teenager, is still in the village, uneducated. The worry now is what will happen to the two that are in school. Will they be able to stay with her sister here in Jos? Or will they be sent back to the village? Faith Alive of course is pushing for them to stay here and continue their education. I guess only time will tell.
I've seen and heard about more deaths in these last three months than I have in the last 24 years. Death due to bike accidents, car accidents, AIDS and other illnesses. Makes me realize how much I take for granted.

Can You Hear Me?

A few weeks back I was sitting outside the clinic, it was the afternoon, and few patients were left inside. A boy (who I later found out was 19) walked up to me with a sign that read he was deaf and was begging to pay his school fees. I didn't have my purse on me at the time and so I tried to asking him in sign if he could wait while I went to get my purse. Who knew I’d be using what little sign language I know in Nigeria? He looked confused, but got the message and a few minutes later I came back with a meager 100 Naira. I told him I was sorry it wasn't much, but he didn’t seem to mind. In fact you would have thought I gave him 1,000 Naira from the look on his face. From there we communicated a little bit more through sign and then mostly through writing back and forth. His father died when he was young and his mother still lived in the village. He’s in a special education school in a state not too far from Jos. Somehow the conversation turned to him signing "pain" and pointing to both kidneys. From there I learned he'd been having blood in his urine and pain in his sides. I found out he was HIV positive and hadn't seen a doctor about most recent problem. I told him he needed to come to the clinic the next morning and see a doctor. He must have sat there with me for an hour or two, even after we had stopped talking. As if, he was completely content just sitting there with me, reading and re-reading our written conversation. Some how it made me sad; I wanted to talk more with him. Why didn’t I pay more attention in those sign classes at work? After he left I couldn't stop thinking about him. What sort of life was ahead of him in a country that makes little provisions for the disabled? He begs for his tuition. With a beggar on every street corner I have to wonder how much he actually pulls in and is it enough for him to continue is education? And then what? How will he earn a living? Will he be forced to a life on the streets as so many disabled are?
The following day I had to go to Abuja to change my plane ticket, so I wasn’t around when he came back. But apparently he showed up the next morning with a sign that read “Where is Mikki?” My friend Yemi spotted him and corrected the “M” to a “N” and told him I had traveled. I tried explaining that the day before, but it must not have registered. Anyways, I’m not sure what happened to him. At some point he left the clinic and I haven’t seen him since. I pray provisions will be made for him, wherever he is, whatever he does. It’s strange how your soul can connect with a perfect stranger like that. But there was something about him, something that drew me in and touched me. Such a small exchange, and yet I am forever changed. I see now more than ever the ministry of presence.

Chicken Little

I had gone to the market with Blessing that afternoon, she bought the fixings for "vegetable soup" which she had been talking about all morning. First she bought fish, which was an experience unto it's own-there's just a pile of frozen fish, like whole fish, head, eyes, skin, bones, the whole enchilada, then a woman who's sitting on what looked like an overturned bucket of sorts. You pick out which one you want, and when I say pick, I mean you're literally handling all the fish to find the one you want. So you have your fish, and then fish lady uses her super machete to chop off the head, slice off the fins and dice it into little steak like pieces. She throws it into a small plastic bag and calls it good. The whole while there's swarms of flies buzzing all over the place. So that happened, and then we went from stand to stand gathering tomatoes, spinach, onion etc. Once she got everything she needed we headed back to her house to drop off the goodies. I think I may have mentioned this before, Blessings "kitchen" is more or less a cement block next to the room she sleeps in. Imagine a cube and remove one side, that's her kitchen. There's a single charcoal burner and a couple of benches with some pots and pans. Finding this totally intriguing I walked over to get a better visual of how all this might work. Like, where do you keep your water? Where do you eat? Where do you chop food? Do you have a cutting board? So anyways I'm rambling on, playing a round of 20 questions when I hear a noise.
"Blessing...what's that?"
"That my chicken."
"Your chicken?"
"Yeah, my students bought me chicken for Christmas."
I turn the corner to find a rooster with one leg tied to a post in the middle of the cube.
"Blessing, there's a chicken in your kitchen."
She laughs. "I know, I feed it every morning."
Rooster crowing
"No but seriously Blessing, there's a chicken in your kitchen."
Still laughing. "Yes, I will fix it when my children come home from village."
"Soooo, when you say 'fit it' you're going to kill it yourself? Like, right here?"
"Yes."
"But, how do you, I don't, where do you..."
I couldn't even get the words out. It was so far beyond my ability to understand at that time, I was speechless. I asked her about the process in detail later after I had some time to compose myself. Turns out she's never actually done this before, slaughtering a chicken. But she has seen in done in the village...so I guess that's all the training one needs?

"Live Simply...

...that others might simply live." I don't remember where I read that, but I've adopted it as my motto. Meet Ahmed, a man in his mid 40's with a wife and five kids. Ahmed has an extra-cranial tumor that's been growing on the back of his head for over ten years; it's a little larger than a grapefruit. Because of the positioning of the tumor, sores have started started to develop, they break open and scab as the tumor continues to grow in size. Can you even imagine what his life might be like? Ashamed, embarrassed, depressed...He always wears an over sized hat to cover it up, keep people from staring. The surgery to remove this tumor is $50,000 Naira, that's about $400. He's only managed to save 3,000. He has five kids to put through school after all. Up till now I've been living on a very generous $100 a month, more than enough to make my life comfortable in the land of little. When I saw him that Friday afternoon, something in my soul broke. He looked like he had given up. it was written all over his face. Knowing he needed the surgery, yet no hope in sight. Yemi (a medical student from Mayo Med School) and I decided we would pool our money together and pay for all the expenses of the surgery. He came to the clinic faithfully everyday to have the wounds dressed and lab work drawn. Each time I saw him he would say, "God bless you, thank you." Then exactly one week later I was standing over him in the OR, watching as the doctors removed the tumor that had plagued him for so long. When I went to visit him post surgery, it was like meeting a totally different person. Not so much because of his now absent mass, but because of his spirit. Something in him was now alive where it wasn't before. He was grinning from ear to ear. And it wasn't until that moment that I realized I had never once seen him smile.

Faith Alive

You know what's amazing to me? Everything at Faith Alive is free. Their counseling services, HIV testing, doctor visits, lab tests, medications (ARV's and otherwise), sewing school, computer school, transitional teen housing, food bank, it's all 100% F-R-E-E. There is no other hospital like it in Jos, and I would venture to guess in all of Nigeria, although I'm not positive. Other hospitals in this area charge for every little thing: the hand card, the visit with the doctor, the lab test and the medication; all separate fees.
I went to Blessing's house last week. Mind you, she lives with her two boys and her sister-in-law. Her 'house' is a ten by ten room with a double mattress on the floor, clothes hanging on free standing bars on the walls and everything else lining the perimeter of the room. She and her boys sleep on the bed together and her sister pulls out another mattress that leans up against the wall during the day. She cooks and bathes outside. Everything was very neat and tidy, clean and organized. Even as she was mourning the loss of her brother, when I arrived she said, "Nikki! Please, what can I offer you to drink..."