Day 71 – 74 (Thursday 14th – Sunday 17th April)
I got up bright and early for the long trip to Ogugu in Kogi State. The heat hit us as soon as we left the plateau (the name of the state and the reason for the cooler weather in Jos). On the way we stopped at Mr Biggs which we also have in Jos and is Nigerian style fast food place. I realised why we never go there and have been warned against it. Firstly they don’t serve chips which is a complete fail, second it costs loads, and third it’s not that nice. Lesson learnt!
We arrived in Ogugu after a 10 and a half hour drive. Having gone via Kagoro to pick up the resources we had left behind and to see the boys briefly. When we arrived we were greeted by Will, Mel and Lynz (I will cal her Lynz to not get confused with the other Lynsey). They had made posters with pictures of us all on, put balloons up and written a song to welcome us. It was really cute and cool. I have met them all before, I was on orientation with Will and Lynz, and met Mel at the England and Wales conference in London. It is really rural here, and crazy hot. I just checked bbc weather and its 37C and 78% humidity but feels hotter than that!
My first night I didn’t sleep much because it was so hot, but I’m getting used to it. We spent the first few days planning for the holiday bible club next (Easter) week. We are running a holiday club for 100 children in a nearby village called Efante. There are eight of us, and 6 interpreters, so will be challenging.
On Friday we had the amazing idea of joining the locals we had seen bathing in the river. We were told that the water is fine as long as you don’t drink it. Ali and I stood on the edge contemplating the brown water, but very excited at the prospect of cooling down. I splashed her a little expecting her to move away, but she didn’t so I did it a bit more. It ended up with all the Nigerian kids thinking it was a great game and trying to drown us! We had great fun, and it was SO refreshing! We went back and did it again the next day. Here we get called enefu the Igala word rather than baturi, the Hausa word. It’s really hard not being able to speak Hausa here, I keep making the mistake of speaking Hausa then realising they don’t understand. Asabe who lives with the guys here and works for Mission Africa is from Jos and speaks Hausa so I try and speak as much as possible to her in Hausa. The second time we went swimming the kids all asked us to sing to them so we sung a Hausa song called Ni Zan Je which means we must go. They loved it, and then sung us an Igala song. Walking home through the village dripping wet was funny, and got us more funny looks than usual.
We have had great times in the evenings chilling, chatting, and playing silly games.
I am sharing a double bed with Will, it’s ok we have our own sheets! On Sunday morning at 4am I was woken up by Will saying “look at the lightning, isn’t it cool!” I grunted at him and went back to sleep. I woke up at 6 because it was pouring with rain tropical style. It was actually cool ish. We didn’t go to church because Nigerians don’t go out in torrential rain. I listened to a sermon from home which was really good. Will was given a live chicken to say thank you for preaching in a service, so we spent a good while debating who was going to kill it. Ali was up for the challenge, but couldn’t do it because the knife wasn’t sharp enough. In the end we let a Nigerian do it, and we were later presented with a plucked and chopped up chicken complete with head. Mel who is a veggie, cooked it head and all (it’s a delicacy). It had no meat on it, but it was lovely to have meat. She made chips which were lush!
Holiday Bible Club
Day 75 – 79 (Monday 18th – Friday 22nd April)
This was a crazy energy sucking but amazing week. Having only had a few days together as a team to draw the details together we were praying everything would come together. It was very challenging with the language barrier, but it went extremely well. We had great fun, and very few hiccups. The kids stole a lot of our pens which was sad, and we had to stop them doing craft, but that was the only real issue. The village had wanted to send hundreds of kids to our program so we had to tell them to pick 100, they were there for good behaviour etc. I’m glad we didn’t have their naughty ones! We did the Easter weeks theme, each day with a different part of the story. We did puppets with scripts we wrote, I was one of the puppets each day. We did songs, games, a bible talk, quiz and had a cool points system. I was in charge of the points and my team won, I genuinely didn’t rig it though! On the last day we had an Easter egg hunt with paper Easter eggs (we can’t get chocolate here!) I did one of the bible talks on ‘who is Jesus’ which went ok. I also did some crazy leading from the front.
Away from the bible club (which has taken up most of my time and thinking) there is little to talk about. We heard some really sad news from Kagoro (where I was before coming to Ogugu). There has been lots of trouble in the area, fighting and burning of houses etc. The huge market we shopped at has been burnt to the ground, and the people there are all fine, but have been pretty scared. We have also heard of planned violence for the final elections in Jos, we are praying that nothing happens and Jos is peaceful. We are praying for rain because Nigerians (including the violent ones) don't go out. Last time there was big trouble in Jos it was stopped by rain. We believe God is in control of Jos, and the situation!
The plan now the bible club is over is to relax a little bit :)
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