Our Attempt to Explain the Impossible to Explain

Thanksgiving weekend was a little different this year. Quite frankly, I feel like the ending of the weekend should have had a black screen with the words, "The preceding program was sponsored in part by the Discovery Channel." written on it. It has taken a few days to digest, and to be honest, I'm not sure if what we experienced will ever be completely understood by anybody who was not in attendance this weekend, but nevertheless, I will attempt to explain our holiday weeekend.

We left VI around 9:00AM Friday morning and set out for the town of Osogbo (pronounced Oh-sho-bo) in Osun State, Nigeria. The trip would take nearly 4 hours and was fairly smooth with a few huge potholes doing little to slow our driver Fidelis down. I thought for sure we would blow a tire out, but he didn't seem to think the craters were all that big of a deal. The GPS was out most of the time and we were going faster in some points than I was comfortable with, but hey, what can you expect in Nigeria? We did see some pretty cool sights along the way including some pretty funny billboards and a really old Mosque that is still in use.

We also saw a huge accident involving a tanker truck (I couldn't get my camera up fast enough to take the picture) and what would Thanksgiving be without a Santa Clause sighting?

As we pulled into the town of Osogbo, and after seeing Santa, we headed for our digs for the weekend; the Nike (pronounced Nee-kay) Guesthouse. Nike is a famous artist from Osogbo and was gracious enough to let us stay in her nice guest house. When we arrived, we all staked a claim to our rooms (there were 11 total people: Ken, Jena, Duncan, and Jesse Marks, Jon and Conny Cain, Joseph and Mary Teague (Joseph would love to see his name first so that's why I put it that way), Betsy Lafontant, and of course Kara and I.) We took our five rooms and then got back on the bus and headed for the Nike Gallery and workshop.

The photo to the right is of Kara and I at the Nike workshop where they put this weird Kasava wax stuff on fabric and then dip it in Indigo dye. It sounds like they don't really use the indigo anymore substituting a chemical safe (washer-proof) dye for the process. They call it Batik (I think I butchered the spelling). Anyways, it was a pretty cool experience and pretty amazing watching the artists whip out the designs on the t-shirts/fabric.

Below you will see some pictures of the Indigo leaves and Kara playing peek-a-boo around a hut at the Nike workshop. The indigo leaves were pretty cool as they were green until you rubbed your hands with them, and then after a few minutes, the dye would set in and you'd have a little blue spot on your hand.


From the Nike workshop we went to the Nike gallery and it was just okay. I wasn't very impressed as it was kind of like a art gallery with stuff that we've seen at the various markets around Lagos. You can definitely tell that the artists often make their way to Lagos to sell some of their material and that material makes it way into the markets, and then somehow makes it into our hands for an exorbitant amount of money; however, it was really cool to see where the work originates from and this is one really long sentence for a Humanities teacher to be typing so I'll just end it here.

From the Nike Gallery we made out way out to one of my favorite places in the whole world, and that was the Fulani village. Now the coolest part about this village was the fact that a month ago, my Geography students read a chapter on the Fulani of Nigeria and I didn't realize that a month later I would actually be meeting some Fulani. They are nomadic herders (no they don't herd nomads Pasley...that was a good one though). Anyways, the Fulani are the primary group responsible for spreading Islam into North Africa. The village we went to had a bunch of kids who were very fascinated by the cameras we were using to take pictures of them with. I think it may have been one of the very first times that they had a picture taken of them and then saw it the second after it was taken. They would all celebrate and look at themselves on the camera afterwards as depicted in the picture above.

Kara made a best friend almost immediately and I snapped a few pictures before being told I had to wait for the chief to give us permission to take pictures. This little girl thought Kara was the coolest thing since sliced bread (not that sliced bread is super cool to the Fulani or anything). But anyways, she held Kara's hand everywhere she walked, and played paddy cake with her for awhile. She was absolutely beautiful!


The kids had the most amazing smiles. It was so fascinating to me how happy they were with the very little they have in their lives. It just goes to show that people are inherently good and as long as they have the important things in life, they have a lot to be happy for. The Fulani children, and later the Ido-Osun people had the most real, sincere, smiles I've seen in the short time I've been in Nigeria.

We finally got permission from the Chief to take pictures of the village, and then I figured while we were at it, we might as well get pictures WITH the Chief of the village, so here it is! Pretty cool huh? That's not his hair either, he was wearing a hat.


As we were making our way through the village, we ran into a newborn infant. When I say newborn, I really mean NEW born as in born 8 hours before this picture was taken. The craziest part was mom looked like she was 12 and she was walking around like she didn't just give birth 8 hours before. Amazing stuff! This picture is of Conny Cain holding the infant.

Before it got too dark, we asked to have our picture taken and this amazing picture turned out. I think my favorite part about the picture is the kid who is right in front of Kara and the way he is looking at the camera. This picture speaks more than what I can express by writing so I'll let you stare at it for awhile and draw up your own thoughts.


Before we left, I took this picture of the Harmattan sunset. Once again, I'll let the picture do the talking.

After an unbelievable night, we came home and had some great home-cooked Nigerian food including Suya pepper on Fish...ooh it was soooo good! The cooks also prepared 3 whole chickens and those were very delicious as well. We had a HUGE pot of Jolloffe (spelling?) rice and that was amazing as well. Our conclusion was that they made so much food for us that we had no way to eat it all and so of course the Nigerian's staying with us would have no choice but to finish the food we couldn't fit into our stomachs. They ate well. That night...the power went out. And unlike here in VI, it stayed out. My estimate is that it was out for about 5 hours, and in Nigeria...that means it's gonna get hot. So we woke up around 2:30 or so, but not because we were hot. The air conditioner was off, and because it was off, we could hear any noise from outside. Well it just so happens that on Friday nights, they have this middle-of-the night church service using loudspeakers. Every 10 minutes or so, a crowd of what seemed like hundreds would just burst out chanting stuff, and I swore that they were outside of our compound ready to take us out. This was, of course, before I knew it was a church service. Anyways, the next morning, our cooks informed us that it was just church, but for an hour or two, Kara and I hypothesized that it was either a hostile group trying to get us, a sacrificial group that was sacrificing people and were trying to get us, or that it was just a village having a darn good time in the middle of the night. We were glad it was just church.


The next morning we woke up and made our way to the Sacred Grove of Osun. This was a really weird experience as there were all these really weird carved statues that were representative of the Goddess Osun. It was a really surreal experience and one that you'll have to see when we get home and show you the hundred or so pictures we took of the place. For now, I'll show you this picture of what it looked like walking down the path to get to the carvings...this picture looks like something you'd see in Lord of the Rings or something and nothing has been done to digitally enhance the photo...this really is what we saw! Later there were monkeys jumping from tree to tree...pretty cool huh?

From there we went to the artist who made all the weird Osun statues. Her name was Susanne Wenger and she's a 91 year old woman from Austria. She moved to Nigeria in the 1930's and built her house in the middle of Osogbo (talk about one old, brave, Oyibo). Anyways, her story was pretty amazing, but her house was just plain weird. Plus, you all know how buildings in Nigeria fall down every now and then, try going up 4 stories to see her, climbing stairs that didn't feel too sturdy. We were a little tripped out, but we made it safely. Check out her house!

After we went to the Sacred Grove, and to Wenger's house, we came back to the Nike guesthouse and took one heck of a nap!! When we woke up from our nap, it was time to head out to the Ido-Osun kingdom, which was just about 5 minutes away from where we were staying. When we got to the kingdom, there was a bugeler announcing our arrival. He had this code he played that told the King where we were coming from, and how many of us there were so that when he came into his chamber to greet us, he would know how many people to expect. The King's name was Oba Adeen, Oba meaning King. He lived in New York city for 20 years and drove a Gypsy cab. This was straight outta "Coming to America" I swear. Could you imagine getting a call in NYC, "Hey, it's your turn to be King, come back to Nigeria." His Majesty made the return, not before becoming a World Bank representative. He was one of the most knowledgeable, charismatic people we've met to this point in Nigeria and he will do amazing things in the times to come. For the time being, his reign over the Ido-Osun people is well-received as he took us around to demonstrate. We had a crowd of about 80 or so people by the time we made our way around the village. The people of Id0-Osun make about 100 Naira per day (roughly 70 cents) yet their smiles could light up a city the size of Seattle. The Oba had people bowing to him and his Grandfather even bowed at one point which was pretty cool to see.

That night we slept well...no crazy chanting or anything like that to wake us up and the power stayed on all night (thank you NEPA).

The next day, we went to the JuJu markets and saw some things that we won't discuss in this blog because we figure kids read it. Before we went out to the market, we had to get the "go-ahead" from the High Osun Priestess. She didn't give us a very comforting approval and the concensus is she cast some weird JuJu curse on us. That's okay though, we figure the blessing from the Oba the day before supercedes the curse from the High Priestess so we're not trippin'.

We left back for VI, exhausted, and not feeling too well rested around 12:30. The ride home was nice, and yes, Pot-Holey (if there is such a word). But we made it safely and didn't hit too many go-slows. Overall, it was one of the more amazing life-experiences we've had to this point. I think I'm going to get going as I'm pretty sure I've added to the likelihood that I'll be getting Carpel tunnel at some point in my life by typing this blog. I hope you enjoyed and this should keep you busy for awhile! We'll see you in a few days as our vacation is quickly approaching! Talk to you soon.

A Colorful Thanksgiving

Well, in trying to figure out how to incorporate a few different and random topics, I decided to use the theme of the visible spectrum of light... interpreted: the rainbow, or as some of us know it as: ROY G. BIV.

Red - The color that most of my 7th grade kids are putting somewhere on their volcano posters in class. We've learned in class how volcanoes can form, the different types and other book-type info. The kids got to pair up and choose a famous volcano and become a "Volcano Hazard Expert" on that volcano, presenting information about the book-type information, as well as the more interesting info about the devistation it created, pictures, etc. AND red is the color of our "new" car and Bryan's new Adidas shoes that he got for N4,000 ($31 US)... which were actually free because we got gift certificates from the school board president to use at the Adidas store here for coming to AISL.

Orange - The color of the sun in the morning when the dust from Harmattan gives it an eerie, hazy glow.

Yellow - Kara's new karate belt color!!!!!! Yup, I passed the test and am officially no longer a white belt. Now onto the orange...

Green - The color of the leaves of the trees that are interspersed with the street vendors. The color that we miss seeing on real trees back home.

Blue - The color of our couch cover and our bathrooms, which feel like jail cells. The color of the pool just outside of our flat.

Indigo - The dye that is a part of the economy in Oshogbo, the town we are going to visit this Thanksgiving weekend. It is located in the Osun State (north of us), that is home to many Yoruba peoples (one of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria... the others are Igbo and Hausa). Some of the sites we're planning on seeing are the Enchanted Forest, a forest that has carvings hidden throughout it, the house of Suzanne Wenger who created the enchanted forest carvings, the Nike gallery and the Fulani village. If you go to http://www.blackartstudio.com/Oshogbo.html you can see pictures of some of these sites, as well as the guest quarters that we will stay in. Bryan and I might even have a white shirt dyed indigo during this adventure.
Also check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osogbo or http://www.osogbocity.com/ to learn more... until we can come home and tell you of OUR experiences.

Violet - All I can think of for this one is African Violets, which I have yet to see in Africa (maybe in Kenya) and my mom because she loves African violets.

Hope you enjoyed the colorful array of African living! Until next time... and Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving?

We are approaching Thanksgiving and it's starting to hit home. We had our Thanksgiving Dinner on Sunday and will be having another one this Thursday, but there were some changes in our Thanksgiving traditions that really made it feel like we were a long ways from home.

1)On Sunday, it was 90 Degrees outside and not getting dark at the normal time it gets dark out on Thanksgiving.
2)We were the only ones from our family in attendance.
3)There was football on tv...but not Thanksgiving football with the Lions and the Cowboys and you had to drive to the GQ to catch any of it (AND the Seahawks lost which is a touchy subject so I don't wanna hear about it.)
4)The potential for crazy storms and windy weather was at like negative 50 unlike home.
5)Even though I hate cranberry sauce (Kara likes it), there wasn't any at the Thanksgiving feast because it's almost impossible to find cranberries over here, and that was weird.
6)Today is Wednesday, and if we were in the States, we'd be going home from work around 10:30, but instead, we go home tomorrow at 11.
7)The Mashed potatoes were very good, and the gravy was good too, but it wasn't "mom's".

Anyway, the list goes on and on. Don't get us wrong, we really enjoyed the feast on Sunday; we just miss home a bit. We have great surrogate family over here in the Rainbolts and we get hugs from Emily and Jacob anytime we go visit which is awesome. Our decision to stay here for a third year will definitely be impacted by what their decision is. Mr. and Mrs. Shearer are almost like our parents. Mr. Shearer stops by every now and then to make sure we're doing okay which is pretty cool and Lori is a lot of fun to talk to about her sons Brett and Matt. Every Saturday I go over to Mr. Shearers office (sometimes at like 3 in the morning) and set up the PC laptop for him to listen to Matt play football for the University of San Diego and it's a lot of fun watching him and Lori listen as proud parents. Sometimes Kara and I will go over to his office before the game is over just to watch them listen and of course will play with Libby under the guise of, "We thought the game would be over by now." Anyways, there are things over here we do to remind us of home, but for now, it's a little rough. We miss the entire family, and really miss our Neices, Nephews, and King a lot (no offense to everybody else but seriously...Skyping with Anna, JB, Jessie, Benjamin, and King might just be our favorite thing to do over here.)

Anyways, I gotta get going, I have students coming into my classroom in about 5 minutes. See ya soon and Happy Thanksgiving!

Smitty, Tennis, Fantasy Football, Drivers, and Slay-Torr

I figured since it's been awhile since I've blogged, that I would take some time to discuss how everyday life has been for me (Bryan) lateley.

Here's a picture I took a few weeks back that sums up some of the contradictions Mr. Rainbolt talks about in his blog. So in this picture, you will see a man in a Nigerian suit, changing a tire on a brand new Mercedes Benz, in the rain and mud, but he's taken it upon himself to put out a reflective triangle just in case we didn't see him in his bright white suit, and then to top it all off the smiley face air freshener there to remind us to be happy.


I'm sitting here on our couch right now, listening to Kara sing along with Smitty (Michael W. Smith). I have my headphones on listening to NFL Field Pass on NFL.com, watching Yahoo Stattracker to see how my fantasy football team is doing, and I'm happy as a clam. For the record, I can hear Kara singing overtop of the football game I'm listening to and through the thick headphones I'm listening to the game on; I would venture to say she's happy as a clam as well.

It hasn't been raining as much recently, although we had an amazing lighning storm the other day (See Carrie's blog for some of the pictureI took)

So we hired a driver today. His name is Sunday, and he's probably one of the kindest Nigerians we've met thus far. He's very respectful and ready to drive our car (I know, pictures are on the way don't worry). Anyways, he starts work on December 1st and comes highly recommended by his current employer who is leaving Nigeria at the end of this month.

Tonight, we went over to the Rainbolt's and had some Thai food with them and as always, thoroughly enjoyed being with them. Jacob's hair is growing pretty long and he claims he will let it grow down to his shoulders. Emily was talking to a good friend of hers from Tacoma on Skype when we got there. Which brings me to my next point.

How great is Skype? I can't imagine living in Lagos, Nigeria without it. If you haven't moved into the Skype world yet, you're missing out on free Worldwide long distance and of course, missing out on good conversation with The Slaters (thesl8ers is our Skype name so if you don't have it yet, download the program, go to Best Buy, and purchase a cheap headset for 15 bucks, 1800 Naira, and get to Skypin'.)

I'm getting pretty good at Tennis. Mr. Rainbolt and I had a pretty rough week on the practice courts though. He hurt his calf and I sprained my ankle the next day at my lesson. My ankle's healing fine and I was out there yesterday practicing my serve...and sneezing every 4 minutes or so. Rainbolt is recovering nicely and is listed as Probable on this week's AISL Tennis injury report.

Why have I been sneezing so much? Harmattan is here...sorta. There is a haze that has begun forming over the VI Skyline that initially looked like fog, but turned out to be the Sahara desert. That's right, we're several hundred miles south of the desert, but the duststorms are kicking up the sand high into the atmosphere and carrying it down here to us and then dropping it. I've been sneezing ever since. I guess it gets really bad in December reducing visibility to a few feet.

My team is getting stomped in Fantasy Football right now as we speak, Carson Palmer is having a field day against San Diego and Ladanian Tomlinson has scored 4 touchdowns (both guys play on the guy I'm playing's team)...sorry for the distraction, but it is relevant because we'll be coming home in a month and a few days (I'm not keeping track...seriously, because I want my days to go fast and if I start counting minutes, the school days will drag on). Anyways, we will be going to the Seahawks game against San Diego on Christmas Eve and their defense isn't looking as good as it did earlier this season so it should be a fun game for us and the Hawks better win.

Kara is still singing. She's been at it for about 2 hours now...and I love it. Our cockroach kill total is probably in the 30's now. We have this great Cockroach killer spray called Mortein that is like anthrax for Cockroaches. The other day I played a killer narrator as I spotted a cockroach on the kitchen floor (Not related to Mefloquine I promise). I grabbed the Mortein and broke out my best Slay-Torr Judgement Day voice and wreaked havoc on our kitchen floor and all bugs within a 15 foot radius. After I killed Roachman, Slay-Torr's Arch Nemesis, The Ant News (K-ANT News) showed up to document the carnage and got caught in the melee as well. When all was said and done, Slay-Torr had wreaked enough havoc in Flat 11 to make the scene war-like in appearance (As I was writing that, I saw myself in slow-motion for some reason so I hope as you read it you saw the slow-motion effect as well). I stood amongst the haze, hands on my waist looking into the sky like Mel Gibson in The Patriot when all was said and done. All I needed was a flag and my victory would have been complete.

We ate lasagna for dinner this weekend. They don't have cottage or ricotta cheese here, so it's not as good as the lasagna from home. We'll make up for it when we go to Italy on our field trip this March I'm sure.

Well I think I've rambled enough. I thought about themes for this blog but I decided we didn't really have a good ramble blog yet so I've satisfied that! We hope you are all doing well and please Skype us! Talk to you soon!

You dey chop?

Okay, for those of you who don't know Nigerian Pidgin English, that means "are you gonna eat?" So, of course we eat, but what do two Americans living in Lagos eat??? Well, really it's not too different from what we have back home. Our meals include tuna or pbj sandwiches, salads, spaghetti, pizza, rice and chicken stew, baked chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, scrambled eggs (a weekly event) and an occasional evening out to a restaurant such as the GQ (Bryan's favorite spot to watch football games). Something unique to Nigeria is IndoMie and is very similar to Top Ramen back home, but with a little more kick... Bryan loves it for his lunches and our students love eating it uncooked. For those of you who like spicy foods, as Bryan does, you would LOVE a food here called suya. Suya is basically a mix of spices and it can be used to flavor barbequed meats, seasoned peanuts... or groundnuts as they call them here, etc. Bryan actually has a favorite stand a couple of blocks away from school called "International Suya" that sells suya beef on shishkabob sticks. Every time we drive by it, he says "International Suya" in some new and crazy accent.

The fruit here is AMAZING!!! Our favorite, by far, is the pineapple. It is the sweetest, juiciest we've ever tasted. The sour ones here are pretty close to the best ones from back home. Pawpaw is a type of fruit that's pretty good, but not our favorite. Pawpaw tastes like a cross between papaya and canteloupe and looks like a huge (14+ inch) papaya. Keep reading for the really good stuff...

Now, the more important question is "what's for dessert"? I would say that we have three main desserts. The first one is due to Bryan's creativity. All of the grocery stores around here sell these funky, geometrical shaped juice boxes. We freeze them and have ourselves odd-shaped popsicles that are fantastic after being out under the hot African sun. Another sweet treat we enjoy are frozen m&m's. We don't necessarily freeze them because we like icy chuncks of choclolate, but we are greedy and don't like sharing them with our community ants (same goes for our cereal, flour, sugar, dried fruits, fig newtons... I think you get the point). Soft serve ice cream covered with chocolate and/or nuts is another favorite of ours. Chicken Lickin is a local "fast food" joint that isn't so fast and always seems to be out of small naira for change (coincidence or, as Bryan says, "the oyibofactor"), but makes for a nice outing with friends for a sugar boost. We could buy ice cream from the grocery store, but can't really justify spending $30 for one gallon. Last time we went to the store, we actually saw one of those large plastic ice cream containers being sold for N6,700. That's $51.54... and you thought a gallon of gas was expensive!

Well, now that you've been reading about food for so long... you dey chop!!