Robert Burns

Wherever there are Scots, which is everywhere, January 25th is celebrated as Robert Burns' birthday. And wherever he is, every Scot has his kilt and sporran at the ready. We were lucky to get tickets from a neighbor to the "Burns Ball" put on by the Lagos Caledonian Society. Dress was specified as formal and there I am, ready to go. After being greeted with an array of whisky, of which I enjoyed several shots, we sat down for some ceremony and speeches. This included the entry of the haggis, as immortalized in Burn's "Address to a Haggis" written in 1786. It's a sort of hash traditionally cooked in a sheep stomach. The ceremonial haggis was marched into the hall accompanied by the caterwalling of the bagpipes. After reciting the Address, the Chieftan cut it open with a dagger. Tastes pretty good actually, sort of like the stuffing served for American Thanksgiving.

After numerous toasts to all and sundry, from the Queen right on down, we tucked into a delicious roast beef dinner. The after dinner speeches are governed by tradition and require lots of poetry recitations and good natured ribbing. (if you are at a loss, you can buy handy speeches and toasts here) Then the dancing, despite my total ignorance of Scottish dances, the other guests were very helpful and we joined in. At the break, more bagpipe noise and then we had to get home.

As you can tell, I'm not a big bagpipe fan, something I just don't understand. When a busker playing the pipes had showed up outside our offices in San Francisco, I led a move to collect money to give to him if he would just go away. Thankfully he left after a while on his own. If you insist on ruining a special occasion with a piper, the internet is full of them, like this scary example.

News and weather

22 °C this morning, really cold. Humidity way down too, lots of folks wearing sweaters when I went out. Sky hazy brown from the dust, sun appeared quite orange coming up. As I've mentioned before, we're in the Harmattan. Oyibos like me really enjoying it, locals complaining and getting the sniffles. White caps in the lagoon, dust on the car.

Some TV stations out this morning, phone calls erratic. Local telecoms expert (the wife) tells me the dust interferes with microwave links. But then, don't telecom folks always have a ready excuse? And why is it channel 5 (SuperSport 3) never goes out, even in heavy rain? Does nature prefer to watch football more than the other shows?

I've always thought that one's culture has a large bearing on one's view of reality. Just to prove that other cultures are different, and not just in what kind of music they like, I give you this story. To a westerner it seems absurd, but stretch your mind a bit, suppose your reality did allow for magic, like a man turning into a goat. Would be a different world wouldn't it?

Fishing for shoes

"Ayi!", Femi exclaimed as he looked down at his foot. His right shoe, plastic flip flop really, was broken. The strap on the outside had broken off right where it went through the sole.
"Why dat bad ting always happen at me?".
Femi took off his shoes and held them in his hand.
"Now I like small boy, no shoes," he sighed.

His friend Oje looked over too, "dat shoe quenched sure, less go Zorie King, he fit fix'm certain."

So Femi, with his shoes in his hand, with Oje walked off towards Alfa Beach with it's row of shops and kiosks. Ignoring the blare of truck horns and dodging the weaving motorcycles they skipped across the expressway and off toward the beach.

The Zorie King's little table was there all right, but no King. The table reserved the roadside spot for when the King was operational, no one would dare touch it, but with no King there could be no sandal repair. Femi wasn't that sad, he would rather save his N20 for some chop and go barefoot anyway. Only problem was that being barefoot made you look poor, which he was, but that didn't mean he enjoyed showing it.

Oje piped up, "Let's go fish for flip flop".
"Eh?" Femi replied.
"You know, with that big wind last night there will be lots of trash on the beach, and with luck a new flip flop for you. Or maybe even a pair."

So the two walked further down the sandy road toward the beach. At the beach they saw the results of last nights wind. The waves had pushed sand right up onto the road and deposited fresh piles of plastic debris. To the right there were a couple guys already looking through the piled up trash, so they headed left into virgin territory. Mostly it was plastic bottles of various sorts, they saw a single high heal shoe wondering where that had come from, off a cruise ship on New Years eve? The ocean must be filled with trash.

"Hah! I got one!" Femi exclaimed and grabbed a bright pink flip flop from under some other trash. A right foot too! The color didn't match, his left one was darker red, he would still look poor without matching shoes, but he did have two now. Oje and Femi looked along the beach for a little while longer but didn't find anything more and they weren't looking that hard anyway since the real goal had been accomplished. Back at the road, Femi slipped on his left red and right pink flip flop and proceeded on his way. For good measure he left the broken shoe on the King's table where he could come and get it later. Maybe make a trade with the King for a matching pair.

Never Expect Power Again

A couple of power cuts this morning, and some items in the papers bring this perennial problem to the foreground again. (I'm not sure how long these links are good for, but these summaries may be enough). Headlines:

• The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Wednesday arrested the Chairman of the National Electricity Regulatory Commission, Dr. Ransome Owan, and six commissioners in the agency over an alleged N5bn fraud. (full article)

• Nigerian businesses spent a whopping $8.2 million (about N1.180 billion) on importation of power generating sets in the first week of January. (full article) There are by one estimation 60 million private generators in the country.
  

• The country's power generation capacity has further dropped from about 3500 megawatts to 2400 megawatts following the recent vandalisation of the major gas supply pipeline to the Egbin power station. (full article)

• The epileptic power supply being experienced at present in the country may further worsen as power generation has dropped. (full article with lots of numbers)

• 21 gas turbines imported for the generation of electricity are lying idle at three of the nation's ports - Onne, Warri and Calabar. (full article)
  

Suppose we're optimistic and figure 4000 MW of electricity actually being generated. With an estimated population of 140 million that works out to be about 28 watts per person. A typical toaster takes about 1000 watts. California has about 40,000 MW of generating capacity today for a population of about 36 million. (You may see todays capacity and usage from Cal ISO here, the capacity can go higher in times of peak load.) So that's an average of about 1,000 watts per person, we can all push down our toasters at the same time!

Of course it's not that simple. The power is not distributed evenly, lots of places get none, ever, I get power, always with just a couple of cuts per day as we switch from grid to generator and back again. Actually I prefer it when we are on the generator (like now), except for the fumes from the exhaust all down the street. Our generator provides better power than the grid, more even voltage and frequency. There have been way more light bulbs exploded and electronics burned out by grid power than from the generator. Woke up last monday morning to find glass all over the kitchen floor, bulb had exploded during the night.

In their inimitable way of poking fun at themselves (and the government) the power company NEPA (Nigerian Electric Power Authority) had been dubbed: Never Expect Power Again. A recent change of name was made to reflect an increased willingness to allow for private power companies, NEPA was renamed to PHCN plc (Power Holding Company of Nigeria plc) immediately dubbed: Problem Has Changed Name please light candle.

Better post this quick before the next outage!

Shake hands with the devil

Just finished reading this book written by Romeo Dallaire who was the U.N. commander in Rwanda during the genocide of 1994. In just 3 months, from April through June, 800,000 people were killed. Dallaire relates on an almost day by day basis the events as he saw them and his actions in attempting to stop the killing.

That may sound like a real bummer of a book but it's not, this guy can write. Despite the heartache and losses there are small victories and human touches that kept the U.N. force going. Faced with an impossible bureaucracy (the U.N.) and international indifference, Dallaire and his small force soldiered on in an impossible situation.

There's plenty of blame to go around for these events and Dallaire dishes some out. He's also defensive of his own actions but who can blame him. The message is that these are human beings here, not just more dead Africans.

This crisis still lives on in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). At the end of the Rwanda civil war about 2 million refugees had flooded into the DRC, many near the city of Goma. Today the slaughter still continues in that area and now excacerbated by the struggle to control the DRC's mineral wealth.

Suzanne Wenger (1915-2009)

Nigeria lost a real treasure this week with the death of Suzanne Wenger. Despite growing up in Austria she had taken Nigeria and the Yoruba spirits to be her own. Sometimes it takes an outsider for people to understand what they've got. The preservation of the sacred grove (photo) and her art will be her legacy.

Okada helmet law

January 1 the law here was changed to require commercial motorcycle (okada) drivers and passengers to wear helmets. Last saturday while out and about I observed almost universal compliance (although some of the helmets were decidedly makeshift). The deterent value of confiscating the bike for violating this law is apparently quite strong. Since for most of the drivers the okada is their sole source of income I can see the motivation. Maybe it will save some lives.

To my oyibo mind the thing seems simple, require helmets and save lives. But there's always more to it that I will never grasp. It seems wearing a helmet can expose you to unseen risks. The okada drivers are well known for their evil and devious ways and may take advantage of this new requirement to the riders detriment. My neighbor's driver related how in two separate cases there had been juju placed inside the helmet that made the passenger vanish when she placed it on her head. Government officals are trying to squash these stories by pointing out that in other countries where helmets are required there have been no increase in vanishings.

It seems this story in various versions has been around for quite a while. I like the twist where the driver vanished. I'm not making this stuff up.

In the unrelated to anything department, the friday Moslem religious column in a local paper suggests prayer as a way out of the ongoing electrical power crisis. Well, why not? Nothing else has worked. Pray for power.

Hard rain this morning, unusual at this time of year. Had been out on my bike, but when the wind shifts 180 degrees and that line of black clouds develops wispy trailers beneath, I've learned to get inside. And I just made it, started pouring within minutes of reaching home. Good thunder and lightning too.

The Harmattan is in

There is a weird orange diffused character to the light. There is dust in the air and on everything else. Add a few drops of rain and you get my neighbors car as shown. If you've lived in southern California it's like the atmosphere during the fires and Santa Ana winds.

Bad weather for flying, the horizon disappears especially when the dust is mixed with the usual humid haze. Commercial flights are canceled and turned back, especially to airports with marginal radar systems. Like Lagos for example. (BTW the rumour that commercial pilots call the LOS tower on their cell phones to get instructions is not true.) Coming in on tuesday night we circled around for about a half hour which is not too bad a price to pay for not crashing.

Slept most of the day on wednesday and still confused about what time it is. Rubbing my eyes right now (about noon thursday) in fact. Will nap soon, maybe after I see what the cook has brought back from shopping. I'm not worried about her accounting for the money spent, she is scrupulously honest, right down to the N30 accounted for the shuttle ride. Just like to see what she gets so I can see what I'll need to fill in when I have a car available on Saturday.

Book report: By some cosmic chance I just finished these two books.

• Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden. A look at the role of the geisha in Japanese culture and the women who were, as well as the destruction of that tradition. Written in the form of a novel.
  
• The Dancing Girls of Lahore - Louise Brown. An academic takes her diary entries and forms a forthright yet sympathetic view of this culture and the women.
  

Interesting the cultural structures we build up around sex. Highly recommended. Next up: Shake Hands with the Devil, Romeo Dallaire.

Update on Tina (the cook). She just arrived with several large bags and has gone to work. I worry about her going shopping, it's hot, and she's pretty small and so I'd hoped to help out by going myself to buy a few things at the local store while she went further afield. The white looking contents of the package labeled "Dal" is actually "black Dal" (lentils), the one my wife doesn't like and isn't suitable for the dishes to be cooked at all. The papaya that I risked my life for crossing the expressway is dismissed as "old".

But Tina is in good spirits, when I told her that I will give her a company calendar, she literally jumped for joy. Cooking sounds now emanating from downstairs.

Why can't we use those brains?

Aids is not real, right? Some clowns have made a lot of money and hurt (killed) a lot of people by pushing this idea. That thing in your head is there for a reason, please use it.