From the campsite to the prisons

 So I survived camp! What an amazing experience. Hard and uncomfortable, but worth it all the same. After the usual delays from waiting for late comers at the church, 55 youth set off in buses and SUV’s to the camp site. We arrived an hour and a half later at Nkiedonwro Village outside Miango. We parked the buses and walked 20mins to the camp site to meet the team who had gone in advance to set up. They had erected a huge canopy made out of rice bags into a tarpoline on huge spear ended sticks. This was to be out meeting place for activities and talks, termed the ‘ghetto’. Fiona and I started to set out the tents we had bought only to be over taken by the Nigerian guys who kindly wanted to help us. After a while we realised that we were the only girls helping with the tents and the rest of the Nigerian girls had gravitated to the designated kitchen area (think massive cauldrons over fires). We figured we’d better let the boys be boys.

The 'Ghetto'

The Nigerians really do have their priorities when they are camping. Among the things brought to the camp were a full set of drums, guitars, amplifiers, huge speaker system and a projector screen. It made for great entertainment, worship and dancing during the camp (especially when popular Nigerian pop music was cranked up loud at 7am while we were taking bucket baths before breakfast!) but it was just so amusing to see a set of drums in the middle of the bush!

Once the tents were up we ate dinner which was jollof rice (rice with bean, carrots and chili) and fried fish, had an introduction to camp then it was lights out. Thankfully and amazingly the other big priority was mattresses. They somehow managed to cart about 30 mattresses to the campsite which made everything more tolerable from my point of view. While the girls were in the tents the guys slept under the make-shift tarpaulin structure and prayed for no rain!

The kitchen

The next morning we were woken at 6am by a blast of an air horn (like the one they use to start races) and told it was time for personal devotions and bathing. The first morning Fiona and I took a tentative ‘bucket bath’ in sarongs and towels, cleaning what bits we could reach without revealing too much, but by day two after seeing how the Nigerians did it, we were a bit more adventurous, although I still didn’t have the courage to strip down to nothing and lather up in front of 4 beautiful black bodies, being so white made me self conscious!! So feeling semi clean we had a morning programme which included some bible study down by the river. My team was on cooking lunch, which was yam porridge. That afternoon we went back to the nearby village to do some community service. Some of the guys dug a pit for the community to dump refuse, some of the group did dramas about water safety and the importance of seeking professional medical help (or at least this is what I deduced as it was in Hausa!). Myself and a doctor who was at camp and had brought some simple medications, did a clinic with the villages. I was completely swarmed by little hands when I sought to give out the worm medication, it was pretty overwhelming, but really good to be able to use my skills to help in that way unexpectedly.

Make shift bush clinic

Dinner that evening was semovita, garri ogbono and vegetable soup ( I don’t even know how to begin to describe it!). Another early rise on Saturday morning and a breakfast of fried potatoes and yams with egg sauce and bread (almost a whole loaf each! Nigerians really know how to eat!) and tea, then we were off on a hike to a beautiful waterfall upstream. The track was very steep in parts and some of the girls were very ill equipped for hiking in terms of their clothing and shoes so struggled, but overcame their fears as they slid down gravel paths on their backsides! We arrived at the top of a gorgeous waterfall which was about 50ft high. A few of the guys jumped off (after watching one of the village boys do it to check it was deep enough!), but I was weary as I knew I’d have to take tablets to prevent sickness afterwards. I think we’ll have to get a group together and go back and just do it one weekend soon though, you only live once.   

So over all my camp experience was defiantly less traumatic than I expected. The pit dug for a toilet was usable, the bugs were annoying but didn’t bite and being able to get a good nights sleep (with earplugs to drown out the snoring coming from the ghetto) just makes everything seem slightly less taxing. Once home, my shower had never felt so good, washing off all the grime of 3 days of built up sunscreen and insect repellent felt like heaven! I’ll never take my little apartment for granted again J

The campsite from up on a hill

I have started going to the Jos Prison to do outreach and bible study with the women there. The women’s compound is small and the ratio of guards to prisoners is ludicrous. There were 7 prisoners this week when I went and 9 guards sitting around talking, sewing, eating, reading and sleeping. I won’t comment on the Nigerian governments use of funding. The woman for the most part are in prison for petty crimes like stealing a cell phone or not being able pay a debt, and are only there because they don’t have the money to bribe their way out of the system. Some of the women however are serving life sentences, most for murder of their husbands mistresses. The women are so welcoming and cheerful despite their circumstances and not hardened emotionally as I presumed they would be. I am working alongside a women who runs a halfway house for prostitutes who are trying to rehabilitate and so having that resource at our disposal is a blessing as a lot of the women were prostituting before being arrested and don't have their bail money (sometimes as little as $25NZD) or anyone willing to pay it, and would out of necessity be forced to go back to prostitution after being released. Please pray for a good lawyer, a quick court date and release for a 19 year old girl named Blessing. We are hoping to get her into Grace Gardens (the halfway house) as her family have disowned her since her arrest. 

Off to buy medications this morning at the pharmacy for clinic tomorrow with the Muslim women from Blind Town. Always a long and drawn out process that demands maximum patience, but I have to remember the benefits also, like that we can buy whatever we need without a prescription! Yay Nigeria!