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.