In the last blog I spoke too soon about the quiet night, in fact, I was woken up throughout the night by what sounded like a call to prayer at 1am and 4am and was finally waken up by one of the 14 kids knocking on the window saying “Alex” at 6am. Fair to say it wasn't the best night, as the 30-degree heat made it hard enough to sleep. Once awake I had a bucket shower that was pleasantly cooling and then got ready to go to the office. While doing this, we were brought breakfast, which consisted of a loaf of bread and hot chocolate. As someone who has never been a breakfast person, I decided to give it a miss and look forward to lunch. On the way to the office we met up with the volunteers that lived closest to us (Samiria and Ayan), when we entered their compound I noticed that they had kittens that were around the same age as the kittens I had left back at home, this made me pretty excited and knew I would be coming back to their house often now. Ayan’s host home was a lot like ours. However, she wasn’t having to share it with 14 kids, the children that still lived at home were all grown up, meaning her house was a little more peaceful. She may not have been living with any young children, but she was sharing her house with about six chickens and over fifty chicks running around everywhere. After being introduced to her family who spoke pretty good English we made our way to the office, through the dusty streets and finally somehow, we made our way through the maze of Gwada. The “Office” is a small carpeted empty room that we all sit in listening to each other and the team leaders. We first spoke about our host homes, and what we thought of them, it turns out that not all of the volunteers were living in the same primitive homes that I was. Cosmas and I were the only ones to be living in a house with more than ten children and two wives, and some of the houses had both electricity and toilets, this seemed unfair and a lesson to be learnt, life isn’t fair. We then went on to speak about world issues and the effect that these issues have on a community and country. We then had an hour break to have lunch… unfortunately for Cosmas and me, our house was one of the furthest houses from the office, and we couldn’t hack the walk all the way back (around 30 mins) to our host home, so we went to the local shop (best way to describe the shop is a shack at the side of the street), and bought the only thing edible without cooking: Biscuits. One thing that I miss most about England is the range of snacks available, the options in Gwada is bread or biscuits. After the lunch break, the team leaders sent us out to do a treasure hunt and acquaint ourselves with the village we will be living in for the next few months. The list consisted of buildings such as the mosque, church, police station, school and the only bar (TVS) in Gwada that we were informed we were not permitted to go to. The scavenger hunt started well, but after around thirty minutes the Nigerian heat started to become too much, so I persuaded my team around an hour into walking around the town, that it was not worth getting heat stroke for a game and we made our way back to the office, taking us to around an hour and a half walking in the midday sun. I was very glad to get back and my hands on the pouches of water. Around four is when we finished at the office, Cosmas and I went back to our host home and interacted as much as we could with the host family and children, as only one of the mother spoke very little English it was hard to communicate with them. The electricity was still out in Gwada meaning that as soon as the sun went down around 7pm, we are plunged into a world of darkness with not much to do. Luckily for tonight, Cosmas had enough power on his laptop for us to watch a film, but I know when all our electricals die, which will be soon, we will defiantly have a lack of activities to occupy our time in the evening. Especially as curfew is at 7pm. Below is a video of one of the teams during the treasure hunt, visiting host homes and looking for some of the other locations. If you were wondering what the town looks like this is a great insight into the life in Gwada.
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AuthorThis blog is written by one of the owners of the site; Alex Hood. Currently studying English Literature at Brighton University and was given the amazing opportunity to work with VSO in Nigeria for three months over the summer. Archives
August 2018
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