Thanksgiving '08

After a few months in H-town, we've managed to get our stuff together, our shipment's arrived from Nigeria and is all unpacked and we're embarking on our first local holiday (we were conveniently overseas for halloween...)

Rob and Rachel had come back from Nigeria to have thanksgiving with rach's family, and we were kindly invited to indulge in their turkey fest. It was awesome

As a send-off, we had a little shin-dig at our place

(we've got more furniture than when we started, but still no chairs for out table...)

IKE

Don't really know what to say...

The folk at wikipedia had this to say about the third most destructive hurricane to make landfall in the continental US: (full article here)

On the morning of September 13, 2008, the eye of Hurricane Ike approached the upper Texas coast, making landfall at 2:10 a.m. CDT over the east end of Galveston Island, with a high storm surge, and travelled north up Galveston Bay, along the east side of Houston. People in low-lying areas who had not heeded evacuation orders, in single-family one- or two-story homes, were warned by the weather service that they may "face certain death" from the overnight storm surge, a statement that unfortunately turned out to be true for some who refused to evacuate.
In regional Texas towns, electrical power began failing on Sept. 12 before 8 p.m. CDT, leaving millions without power (estimates range from 2.8 million to 4.5 million customers). Grocery store shelves in the Houston area were left empty for weeks in the aftermath of the storm.

The Houston Chronicle also has good coverage of the hurricane aftermath

George and I were stranded in Canada as the airport was closed in Houston for a few days, but our place survived and all our friends were unharmed thank god.

I see no need to post photos of everyone's tragedy here, but here's few that caught my eye...

The heavy rains that came withIke changed the usually busy I-10 fwy near our house to this.
And Buffalo Bayou by our place rose to the top of it's banks - a good 30ft

Places with cool names... Banff

We'd barely landed in Houston (still only had a sofa we'd bought off a friend, a TV someone gave us and a plastic fold out table from Home Depot... yep matress still on the floor... classy) and we were off to Canada for a conference. Run, by a local Alberta company, the boys new exactly where to have it - the Fairmont Banff Springs!! Look at this place... it's disneyland meets switzerland... thank go we weren't paying for it.

Anyway, once the conference was over we took a long weekend to drive from Banff through the Icefields Parkway to Jasper and back.

As you can probably tell, it's freekin' cold in that part of the world, and coming from Nigeria where there's only two seasons: HOT and HOT & WET, we weren't quite ready for so much nature...


Thanks to Ryan and Desi, we managed to borrow a bunch of thermals, puffy jackets, gloves and tuks (beanies) which saved us from freezing to death.

Our trusty Dodge Caravan - the mummy wagon of choice for discerning campers
There were tiny squirrels (much smaller than the ones that dig up my garden back in houston) everywhere. This little fella was happy to sit around and eat wild berries while we took pictures..
The Glacial lakes (this one's Peyto lake) are full of sediment and so have this amazing aquamarine colour.
It actually felt quite alien being up in the mountains after three years living in the tropics. We'd got used to jungle plants and stifling humidity, yet here it was so cold and dry our lips cracked immediatly and I had to use a heater instead of AC for the first time in years!!
Along the highway is the Athabascar Glacier where you can travel up on to the glacier on these huge ice buggies and look at the clomubia icefields...
This is the Athabasca Glacier, in the old days (mid 1800's) it would've covered me where I stood taking this photos, now it's a good kilmetre shorter...
For good reason, they don't really want you to walk on the glacier by yourself
These huge 6 wheel drive buggies (specially made for ice travel apparently) carry hundreds of people up on to the glacier. It was the first time either of us had been on a glacier, so we just had to do it...
it was freezing...
We had a couple of days, so we headed up to Jasper, a small mountain town at the far end of the icefields parkway. Whilst it was still a little touristy (mainly for skiing and hiking) it was a hell of a lot better than Banff - which had a kinda fake northpole elf village vibe going on (complete with sushi restraunts for the japanese tourists staffed by aussies waiting for the ski season to start)
our neigbour in Japser one morning...
Being further away from the hype of Banff and Lake Louise, the trails around Jasper are practically empty and you can enjoy awesome hikes in the surrounding mountains. We spent some time near Mt Edith cavell at the Angel glacier...
There was a small lake caused by the toe morraine holding the melt water from the retreating glacier which was full of these really cool mini icebergs. It's so cold here that huge lumps of ice are scattered all over the place...
Angel glacier

When the glacial chunks of ice melt during the day, they create quite amazing shapes...

Our new home...

After all the packing and parties in Lagos and a month in a hotel in Houston whilst looking for a house and a car and seeting up a new life with new bank accounts social security numbers, drivers licences...etc.... we have a new home!!!
We still don't have any furniture - apart form on old ikea couch we bought of some friends for $100 and a plastic fold out table... but we're getting there

oh yeah, we bought a barbie too - very important in these parts

The garden needs a bit of work...

Going away parties

Unfortunately someone once said that all good things must come to an end, and for us this came true for our time in Nigeria...

Don't get us wrong, there were definitely hard times, and working here is an interesting experience to say the least, but we've made such good friends here as well all go through the same stuff, and we've done some amazing things here that we'd never imagined back in oz - we're going to miss it all.

Most expats are in west Africa for the money (as it is VERY good - no complaints), so when we said we were sad to leave, we got a lot of blank looks like "why would you want to stay in this shithole rather than go to the States..?" Why? Coz, we've had so much fun with so many people, we've been part of people's families, both in the villages and in Lagos with Chris our driver...

So much so, that Chris actually secretly organised a party for us by himself!! Using his own money!! (ie about a months salary for the one night!!) It ended up being a hell of a last weekend in Lagos. Whilst juggling packing, getting visas and closing out everything here, we had a party every night for a few days, just to fit it all in. No one shys away from an excuse to have a party in Lagos, and we didn't do it any differently!!

Chris and I spent days driving around town buying up all the beer and food we could find. In the end, we got a bunch of the stewardesses working at 29 ikoyi (where we live) to help cut and skewer what seemed like a tonne of suya (spicy bbq skewers) - so much that it filled a few peoples freezers...

Whilst it was sad saying goodbye to everyone, the thing that got us was Chris. He was so proud to have work for both of us that he made a speech and presented us with a painting of George and I dressed up in local gear which he had taken when the three of us had taken our road trip up north the previous year. I was surprised to hear later that no one had ever heard of staff putting on a party for their boss with their own money and we felt like proud parents as Chris made his speech (a little teary)

Anyway, there's too many people to thank and to say "see ya later" to. We'll miss you all... enjoy the slide show (click on the "comments" icon next to the yellow man on the bottom LHS to see photo descriptions)

Ikaare - Unity Junior Grammar School (1of 2)

The Ishahayi Beach School Foundation (IBSF) started in the small fishing village if Ishahayi to help finish a school building the local church had started. In only a few short years, the foundation had built schools or infructurture in half a dozen small villages off the beaten path that are generally under the radar of larger charity groups and NGOs.

And it was the village of Ikaare that started that expansion.

Once the children of Ishahayi had finished primary school, there was no High school on the isolated peninsula and the mainland was to far to practically get to by boat (expensive) for the kids. There was, however a run down set of ruins called the Unity Junior Grammar School in the nearby village of ikaare that was hanging on to life. IBSF saw this as the only chance for these kids if they wanted to further their education...

...so we built a new junior high school from the ruins of the old...

The building at the end of these ruins had recently been completed by the government, but no sooner than it had been completed, it started to fall down again - I couldn't believe it... (well, actually, I'd been in Nigeria long enough to completely belive it - even expect it. A sorry day)


I won't go into the details of the first building that was covered in blogs last year. Suffice to say that our new building is on the left and the crappy government one is on the right...

Anyway, before I get all soap boxy about how the education department doesn't care about outlying schools and that the once 2000 strong student body, with teachers from as far afield as Ghana, has all but disappeared here, I should just cut to the chase. The building was crap, we raised more money and we rebuilt it.

The state of the thing was unbelievable. Barely 6 months old and it was falling down as all the timber was rotting...


So we jacked the roof up (by hand) and pulled out the bad wood...

... we set proper steel reinforcement in the lintels over windows and door openings (which had already begun to fail)



... we treated all the roof timber to prevent any further attacks...


... and we gave the whole thing a paint job!!

...oh yeah, and we hooked them up to the local power pole (by hand...) so they could run lights and fans (and the principle could watch TV...)


It took the best part of a year, and as much begging borrowing and stealing as I've ever done to get this project done, but it was absolutely worth it, and I made some good friends in that village.

HUGE thanks have to got to all at IBSF for getting this one across the line, especially Lindy Edwards and Jerry Aroozoo (and of course the principle with the mostest... Chief Osaba)

Ikaare - Unity Junior Grammar School (2 of 2)

Unfortunately we had to leave Nigeria before IBSF could open the school officially as they wanted all the sponsors and the local king to come to the ceremony.

An expat blogger wrote about it here (with HEAPS of photos!!) and from what I can tell it was a great party. It's good to see that village finally getting somewhere, hopefully it'll stay that way...

We worked really bloody hard on that school and I was sad to miss the fun

> Cheif Osaba (the principal)[red tie] and the local King Oba Akinyemi [beige mumu]

local woman with offering

[l-r] The principle, Osaba; the vice; the king; and reps from the education department
all looking very proud of themselves...