How stuff's been goin' and what-not...
I hope all is well with everyone
As usual, all sorts of stuff has been going on around here, so I thought I'd give you all a bunch of general news and pics etc.
Firstly, the junior high school at Ikaare village has been completed. Well, when I say completed, the roof is on and the walls have been rendered so the kids can move in - they'll start school on 17th Sept. At the moment we've run out of funds to continue - there's no doors or windows, no ceiling etc but the wet season will be over in a month or so, so there's it's good enough to at least start lessons in. I'm just grateful to the local contractors who worked on credit for the last month to get it finished before the kids come back. I finally paid them last Thursday so now everyone's waiting to start up again soon.
The cement render's still wet in these photos (kind of hard to get anything done during the wet season, but they managed) The classrooms are huge and will easily handle a class of 50 or so... This building is probably the best built thing in the village. I was summoned by the local king a while back when I was out there supervising the finishing touches and he was most grateful for our work. Whilst the kings these days don't have a huge amount of legal power, they're still the figureheads of the community and can make life hard if they want. For that reason, I'd stayed away from the guy for as long as possible (at least until we'd finished). But in the end, we sat down one morning in his palace (ie the front room of his house with a nice big throne at one end with couches all around it) and had a couple of beers and talked about fishing. He wasn't interested in getting involved and was just thankful that someone actually gave a crap about his village. Nice guy. When the time comes to have a proper opening for the building, he'll be there with a fancy robe on to tell the locals what a great thing this is - should be an interesting day (though I'd say it won't be until early 2008 as we're still short of naira for the moment...)
The classrooms do look a little dark at the moment, but when we get some cash to do a little painting they'll come up really well.. Also the village has recently been connected to mains power so we should be able to get some lights in at some stage. The village has had power poles and lines for almost ten years now, but they were never connected to the mainland (most likely they were just forgotten in favor of more prominent places [ie local landowners who can afford to bribe the power holding company]). Anyway, now every house has an extension cord running out the window spliced directly on to the main overhead wires!! Not really the best way to do it, but there's no meters or anything so everyone's trying to make the most of it before the power authority sends someone out and it's all over...
George has been spending a fair bit of time offshore recently, so when she was home for a few days last weekend, we headed out of Lagos up to Ibadan just north of here, for a relaxing weekend at IITA. We'd forgotten, of course, that the last Friday of each month sees a three day prayer-a-thon called a revival at one of the prayer grounds along the highway north of Lagos. So with over a million devoted folk descending on the Mountain of Fire and Miracles (catchy name...) prayer ground, the usual two hour journey extended out to closer to five or six hours - I stopped counting after a while. Thankfully we had a 4WD which allowed for some rather creative route finding...
The sign says it all...
Despite the traffic chaos it was great to get out of town and do nothing. It had been raining heavily for the last week so there wasn't much we could do. George and I had a walk and a hit of tennis and Mike and Sarah went fishing in the lake nearby and managed to catch a decent sized fish!!
The rain, however is causing the usual wahalla for anyone even remotely close to a river...
The major cattle market on the river border with ogun state which feeds most of Lagos also got it's feet wet - luckily there's always higher ground to move to as this happens every year... The local papers have this to say: farmers, concern over incessant flooding
The only folk who aren't really effected by the flooding that happens every wet season, which soaks everyone and destroys most of the roads, are the folk who live in the stilt village at Adogbo which is in the main Lagos lagoon on the mainland shore (the NFS has some info here)
There's always a thin cloud of smoke over the stilt village as most places don't have power and so use wood and charcoal for cooking and burning rubbish
Most of the people living there are fishermen, many from Benin and other parts of west Africa so french is spoken a lot and there's even french speaking schools for the kids.
In other parts of Lagos, however, the new government seems to be doing something about "cleaning up" the city. Whilst in theory this may sound like a great idea - and let me tell you Lagos needs it - the actual practice of bulldozing slums and areas of informal trade to make way for folk with money (whilst not always offering any options for the slum dwelling folk) to me doesn't really sound like a great idea.
Anyway, the state govt is certainly trying to clear out a lot of the stuff under bridges etc which apparently is where all the robbers hide around here (give me a break...) but anyway.
The "Lekki Arts Centre" - one of the art markets at the second roundabout on the lekki expwy was also dozed a week or so ago to make way fro something or other. For some reason beyond me, they came in one day and destroyed the place while the stall holders still had all their stock in there - the whole place being trashed in a matter of hours. I didn't take any pics, but was in the neighbourhood the next day and all I can say is that they did a great job of f$%king the entire area, everyone was just sitting around wonder what to do next. Here's an article about it: Shouldn't the Rule of Law Adorn a Human Face? unbelievable...
Also the name of progress, the fruit & veg market where I get my veggies every couple of days has been dozed to try and fix up the bar beach part of Victoria Island. In the last year or so, the poor bloody market has been moved here and there to doge roadworks and angry landlords etc god knows how many times - and these guys PAY the local govt taxes etc to be ABLE to have a market - go figure. Anyway, you get used to going there one day, then the next day you have to drive up and down to see where they've moved.
Here's some pics from Saturday of what's left (before they set fire to it all...)
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