Just got back from a two day 'vacation', courtesy of The Sallah/Eid-el-Kabir. This Muslim festival pays tribute to the Prophet Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his only son, Ishmael, to Allah. The story states that Allah rewarded Ibrahim's faithfulness by providing him with a ram to sacrifice in place of the boy. Sounds a lot like another story I heard once. As disturbed as I was by a festival which involves the mass slaughter of rams, having the day off work made for a great adventure.
I was invited to go with some friends to Gurara Falls, approximately an hour and a half outside Abuja. We swam, jumped off a rock, sat under the falls, ate, and generally basked in the glow of nature. In short, a wonderful day. I hope to visit this beautiful place again before I leave Nigeria.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Gurara Falls
Friday, January 06, 2006
The Pirate Captain
NYE at the apartment. In an effort to ward off the blues, I decorated my apartment and got dressed up as a Pirate. I've since taken down the curtains, though my net remains draped over my bed. Arrr!
An Unfortunate Series of Events
A post from January 05, 2006 -
In other news, life here over the past couple of days has been ... hm, how do I put this ... a bit fucked up. The other night I was sitting outside talking to P and, the next thing I knew, all hell was breaking loose. One of the female members of the staff got into a HUGE fight with the manager, in which she was apparently saying some pretty nasty things and challenging him to a fight (or so P tells me, as I never actually went inside), which escalated to the point of P restraining the manager. According to what I was eventually able to find out from P and another staff member, the woman in question had been sitting in the (empty) restaurant watching thereby violating the rules which state that staff are not allowed to watch TV at work. The manager caught her watching TV and told her to "go back inside" (she was on kitchen duty). She refused. He told her again. She refused. He came and got P who pleaded with her to go back inside. She refused. According to what I was told, she was being quite verbally abusive. I've since gathered that the manager can be quite authoritarian and that this has lead to the formation of resentment among some members of the staff. Honestly, they earn a pittance.
Anyhow, despite the fact that she was breaking the rules and being verbally abusive, the manager's response was completely out of line. He had come out of the restaurant and went back into his living quarters. I thought it was 'over'. Turns out I was wrong. The manager returned a belt in his hand!!! My memory's grown a bit fuzzy, but I vaguely recall saying something like "why has he got a belt? what does he think he's doing?" P jumped up and caught up with the manager as he was entering the restaurant, restrained him and begged him not to stop/calm down. Fortunately, P was able to get the manager to back off. I was in a complete state of shock. When I finally regained my ability to speak I said to P "now do you see what I was saying about violence against women!" or something along those lines. That very day I'd printed out a couple of articles for him to read. I've been trying to demonstrate that the attitudes that people hold about relationships between men and women (like marriage) and about women in general in male-dominated societies facilitate violations against women's human rights. Not an easy task. As much as I respect P and consider him to be a close friend, he's been socialized to believe in stereotypical gender roles and sexist notions about women and their duties toward their male partners. It makes for some pretty heated debates. We ended up getting into a discussion that almost ended in me telling him that I didn't want to speak to him anymore. Eventually I calmed down and realized how upset he was by everything that had happened. In fact, he had more cause to be upset than I did as he's been working there for some time now.
All in all, everyone was upset by what happened. I don't know how I'm ever going to speak to the manager again. Whereas I can understand him getting upset by being verbally abused by a member of his staff, that gives him absolutely no cause to become violent. P didn't approve of his behaviour either, but seemed a bit more willing to excuse his reaction. That is, P kept telling me that the woman refused each time to move and then he asked me what the manager was supposed to do. I said "well, if she was breaking the rules, then he should suspend her from work or fire her, not go grab his belt!" P kept asking me "what if she still wouldn't leave?" I got rather annoyed and said "I don't know, call the police and have her removed?" It was rather aggravating.
Anyhow, that was the other night. Yesterday more madness followed, with my boss's wife freaking out on him, breaking their car window, and yelling at my co-worker. I was oblivious to what was going on (outside) until my co-worker came into the office, called her husband, and started crying on the phone. It took me forever to find out what was going on. For a while I was convinced someone had died. My co-worker isn't the type of person to break down easily, so I was quite worried. To make a long story short, no one died but my boss's wife may have some anger management issues to cope with. Maybe she had good reasons for being mad at my boss, I don't know, but there was absolutely no reason for her to take it out on my co-worker. It made for a pretty crazy end to a crappy, sleep deprived day at work. Fortunately, things have improved since and I finished off the day at a friend's place sipping liqueurs and eating chocolates. Would that every day would end in this manner ...
All righty, I ought to actually do some work before I take off. Until next time, my pretties!
Lazy today. Stopped by the Canadian High Commission to register to vote this morning. I have the sneaking suspicion that Election's Canada will take issue with one of my answers as I was uncertain as to how to fill it out and my friend couldn't figure it out either. Got the office at around 10am and had to scramble to finish a report that I was assigned yesterday. Unfortunately, all hell broke loose yesterday and I wasn't able to complete it until around noon today. So it goes. Was a challenging assignment, but I welcomed the opportunity to finally put my skills to some creative use. My boss had asked me to dxraft a letter to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) that we would use to request funding for our projects. In order to do so, I had to demonstrate that we promote democracy, in one way or another, through our work. Having finished that, I'm procrastinating on getting back to the nightmarish editting assignments I was assigned during the holidays. I realize that the documents had to be written quickly, but the grammar and sentence structure in some places is positively horrendous! I swear a lot in French whilst making my corrections as no one else here, aside from yours truly, understands French. So that, in a nutshell, is the work situation.
In other news, life here over the past couple of days has been ... hm, how do I put this ... a bit fucked up. The other night I was sitting outside talking to P and, the next thing I knew, all hell was breaking loose. One of the female members of the staff got into a HUGE fight with the manager, in which she was apparently saying some pretty nasty things and challenging him to a fight (or so P tells me, as I never actually went inside), which escalated to the point of P restraining the manager. According to what I was eventually able to find out from P and another staff member, the woman in question had been sitting in the (empty) restaurant watching thereby violating the rules which state that staff are not allowed to watch TV at work. The manager caught her watching TV and told her to "go back inside" (she was on kitchen duty). She refused. He told her again. She refused. He came and got P who pleaded with her to go back inside. She refused. According to what I was told, she was being quite verbally abusive. I've since gathered that the manager can be quite authoritarian and that this has lead to the formation of resentment among some members of the staff. Honestly, they earn a pittance.
Anyhow, despite the fact that she was breaking the rules and being verbally abusive, the manager's response was completely out of line. He had come out of the restaurant and went back into his living quarters. I thought it was 'over'. Turns out I was wrong. The manager returned a belt in his hand!!! My memory's grown a bit fuzzy, but I vaguely recall saying something like "why has he got a belt? what does he think he's doing?" P jumped up and caught up with the manager as he was entering the restaurant, restrained him and begged him not to stop/calm down. Fortunately, P was able to get the manager to back off. I was in a complete state of shock. When I finally regained my ability to speak I said to P "now do you see what I was saying about violence against women!" or something along those lines. That very day I'd printed out a couple of articles for him to read. I've been trying to demonstrate that the attitudes that people hold about relationships between men and women (like marriage) and about women in general in male-dominated societies facilitate violations against women's human rights. Not an easy task. As much as I respect P and consider him to be a close friend, he's been socialized to believe in stereotypical gender roles and sexist notions about women and their duties toward their male partners. It makes for some pretty heated debates. We ended up getting into a discussion that almost ended in me telling him that I didn't want to speak to him anymore. Eventually I calmed down and realized how upset he was by everything that had happened. In fact, he had more cause to be upset than I did as he's been working there for some time now.
All in all, everyone was upset by what happened. I don't know how I'm ever going to speak to the manager again. Whereas I can understand him getting upset by being verbally abused by a member of his staff, that gives him absolutely no cause to become violent. P didn't approve of his behaviour either, but seemed a bit more willing to excuse his reaction. That is, P kept telling me that the woman refused each time to move and then he asked me what the manager was supposed to do. I said "well, if she was breaking the rules, then he should suspend her from work or fire her, not go grab his belt!" P kept asking me "what if she still wouldn't leave?" I got rather annoyed and said "I don't know, call the police and have her removed?" It was rather aggravating.
Anyhow, that was the other night. Yesterday more madness followed, with my boss's wife freaking out on him, breaking their car window, and yelling at my co-worker. I was oblivious to what was going on (outside) until my co-worker came into the office, called her husband, and started crying on the phone. It took me forever to find out what was going on. For a while I was convinced someone had died. My co-worker isn't the type of person to break down easily, so I was quite worried. To make a long story short, no one died but my boss's wife may have some anger management issues to cope with. Maybe she had good reasons for being mad at my boss, I don't know, but there was absolutely no reason for her to take it out on my co-worker. It made for a pretty crazy end to a crappy, sleep deprived day at work. Fortunately, things have improved since and I finished off the day at a friend's place sipping liqueurs and eating chocolates. Would that every day would end in this manner ...
All righty, I ought to actually do some work before I take off. Until next time, my pretties!
Belated Posts
Updating two blogs can get a bit tricky, so I've been posting on LJ fairly exclusively. As such, I've opted for cutting and pasting in an effort to keep this one up to speed. Then again, I'm convinced almost no one* reads this blog anyways so ... Anyho, here's a belated post for the new year.
*[To those who do read it, don't think that I don't appreciate and value your interest. I do! Miss you all more than you know.]
*[To those who do read it, don't think that I don't appreciate and value your interest. I do! Miss you all more than you know.]
| New Year's Eve Adventures | [03 Jan 2006|10:14am] |
| So, after much fretting, worrying, and sulking, NYE turned out to be quite the fun night after all. I decorated my apartment, as best I could, with a pirate theme in mind. I stretched my laundry line from one side of my apartment to the other and draped all of my sarongs from the line. I was also able to attach my mosquito net to the line, which has made my sleeping area much more aesthetically pleasing. Once I'd managed to make the room vaguely pirate ship-y, I dressed up in pseudo pirate attire. I will make an effort to post pictures in the coming week. Unfortunately, after all of this work, it appeared as if no one was going to show up. After getting quite tippy and hanging out with the staff, I decided to call one of the people I'd invited over. He was surprised when I told him that no one had shown up and that I was getting drunk alone. He told me to come over right away. I made my way to the ICRC (Intl Committee of the Red Cross) and met up with 'the gang', most of which I was meeting for the first time. Not long after I arrived, we were off to Millenium Park. We parked and walked to the fountain where there was a stage set up and at least a few hundred, if not more, NYE revellers (men, women, and children). We stayed for the countdown and the fireworks, and then headed out for 'the club'. The first club that we went to was dead and the music was not that great. I went through the DJ's entire CD collection in an effort to make a request, but couldn't find anything that I wanted to hear. Nevertheless, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to 'shake my groove thing'. After a while, we decided to go check out a night club at the Hilton. It was packed! We all danced until we could dance no more. I was there until at least 3am. I ended up crashing at the Red Cross and woke up the next afternoon with a hangover. After popping some aspirin and guzzling down copious amounts of water, I went with the ladies to the Hilton. They swam and I lounged by the pool. We'd come in the side entrance, thereby avoiding the requisite fees for non-members. Eventually, the heat and hunger started to get to me. Having spent most of what little money I'd brought with me the night before, I had just enough money to get myself home. I thanked my new friends for a great evening, told them to give me a call later if they wanted to hang out, and was on my way. I got home, had some lunch, and crawled into bed for a couple of hours. In short, I had a spectacular time. It was great to finally have a chance to get out and enjoy myself. They are a fun lot. Hope to see them again some time soon. Hope everyone else had a good time as well! Happy New Year! | |
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