Strange Things

The last few days have been quite peculiar, all third-world-country-ness aside. Join me on a tour of my crazy life.

My flatmate Jan decided she wanted to go to Egypt during our Easter break. I helped her through the process of running around town, getting airline tickets, booking hotels online, getting a visa from the Egyptian embassy, etc. It was a whole lot of planning crammed into about three days and in the end, she got it all done. I'm very happy for her - going to Egypt is something she's always wanted to do - even though I'm not going with her. (No thanks, I think I'll just hang around home, veg at the pool, do some touristy shopping, and wake up without an alarm for the next 10 days.)

Friday was a half-day at school because of the start of vacation. When we closed at 11, I took Mercy out to lunch and a movie at the Silverbird complex (almost a mall - almost.) We laughed together when we walked into the building because it felt so much like we were playing hooky.
After watching Alice in Wonderland, we came home, changed clothes, and headed back to the school for a high school party hosted by the Student Council I advise.
Yes, I was a chaperon for a high school party. Yes, it was a dance party. Yes, my students are the best high-school-aged dancers you've ever seen. And yes, I joined them for one song...because when Kevin Rudolf and Lil Wayne say "Let it rock," you gotta rock...dude.

Even though the party ended at 9, it felt like 2am when I got home. As I was getting ready for bed, I noticed a small bug in my sink. As I got closer, I thought That's not like any bug I'VE ever seen before. Until I realized IT WAS A BABY SCORPION. So yeah, I killed a scorpion in my room last night. No big deal. (My only fear is that Mama Scorpion is also in my room. But let's not go there.)

Fell asleep, woke up sweating in the middle of the night (electricity had gone off), kicked off the covers and fell back asleep. Woke up this morning, still no electricity. Got into the shower, no water. That's a first, folks. No power, no water. No shower. (If that grosses you out, I'm sorry. Sometimes the stars just don't align and you don't get a shower in the middle of Nigeria.) Any other Saturday it wouldn't have been a big deal, but today was my first Nigerian wedding. Thankfully Kleenex Cottonelle wipes work in a pinch!

Benedicta, a coworker from school, got married today. Mrs. O offered to take me with her, although she was only going for the reception. Let's review the concept of Nigerian time, shall we? The wedding was to start by 11, we planned to leave by 12:30. The wedding started at 11:30, we left by 1:15, drove clear out of town to a region called Kubwa, and still caught the last 10 minutes of the ceremony!

Side note: Kubwa is outside of Abuja city limits. When we turned off the main road into the neighborhood of the church, Mrs. O turned back to me and said, "Welcome to the real Nigeria, Maggie." She was right - it was very different from Abuja. It just felt different. It looked different, too.

Back to the wedding. When we arrived, it became apparent that I would be one of 3 white people present (and all 3 of us were ICS staff). Lots and lots of stares, folks. I didn't feel so insecure, though, because at least I was wearing a traditional outfit in the wedding cloth.
You see, when a couple gets married, they designate one or more cloths as their wedding cloths. A friend of the couple buys many bolts of the cloth and sells it to the guests, who have individual outfits made. It's kind of like setting a dress code, except most of the guests will be wearing the same pattern in different styles, reflecting their individual personalities.

There was a great turnout by my coworkers. It was nice to see everyone in their element, and to compare how we had all made our outfits. As soon as I can get a good fast internet connection, I'll be sure to share pictures.

After the ceremony, the wedding hosts led us out of the reception hall, up a steep and winding staircase to a small, unfinished rooftop room. They seated us in the ubiquitous plastic chairs and brought us water, sodas, then chicken, jollof rice and coleslaw. Mrs. O told me it's actually their way of treating us as honored guests, but I would have preferred to sit down in the reception with everyone else. After an hour or so, we left, having just briefly seen the bride. It was a little strange, admittedly, but still a great chance to see some more of Nigeria's cultural landscape.

I have two more weddings to attend in the next two weeks (another coworker and a friend from church), so I'm sure to get my fill of weddings! I have sweet outfits for those weddings as well.

By the way, when we got back from the reception, there was both power and water - praise God! Apparently, the transformer just outside our compound caught fire in the night, and one of our phases was affected. It was the phase that controls the water pump and the outlets in our house - ceiling fans and lights still worked, but not the A/C or water taps. How strange!

I'm grateful for this next week of REST. Consider it an extended Sabbath. Amen and amen!

All About Abuja Ark

We sang the following refrain in church today. In the Igbo language, it simply says, "Thank you. God, thank you." There is power in its simplicity.

Ime...Imela
Imela, Chineke Imela.
Ime...Imela
Imela, Jehovah Imela

Add guitar, bongos, and a tambourine and you've got an idea of what it was like this morning at my church, Abuja Ark International.

Since our pastor relocated suddenly to South Africa, our church has elected a leadership team as the operating body, with different laypersons preaching and teaching each week. Some are missionaries, some are ambassadors, some are teachers, some are doctors. It has been encouraging, though, to learn from my brothers (and sisters!) as fellow believers. Apparently, I have a tendency to put pastors on pedestals and forget how much I can learn from those sitting in the pew (ahem, plastic chair) next to me.
There's a sign-up sheet that gets passed around each Sunday, and people sign up for responsibilities from teaching Sunday School to making coffee to leading worship to running the projector. I usually sign up for projector duty or the Scripture reading. Talk about being the elbow, knee, left ear, or ankle of the body of Christ!

Today was Communion Sunday (we celebrate twice a month) and the accompanying liturgy really stuck with me: The gifts of God for the people of God. The body of His only Son is offered as a gift to me--lowly me--who has been grafted into the family of God.
I chewed on that during the sermon, which was delivered by the Hon. Sekonte Davies, a member of the Nigerian House of Representatives and member of our church. His sermon addressed the lessons we learn from our children which we can apply to our relationship with God. Blind trust, easy forgiveness, willing openness, unconditional love, eager expectancy--these are all examples shown us by little children which we ought to mirror in our relationship with God.

Each quarter, our church selects a ministry to support with special offerings. This quarter, we're sponsoring an interfaith conference here in Abuja in April. The emphasis of the conference is on recognizing the common ground between the Islamic and Christian faiths and using that as a starting place for healthy and free discussion.
It is our prayer that this conference will bring together leaders from both faiths and bring about a mutual understanding and peace between the two groups, especially in light of the recent conflict in Plateau State, which is half-religious, half-ethnic in nature.

Abuja Ark is approximately 50% responsible for my sense of belonging, security, and well-being since arriving in Nigeria an astonishing 7.5 months ago (how has it been that long?!). It has truly been a place of inclusion, appreciation, community, and growth for me, and for all of that, I simply say, Imela, Jehovah, Imela.

It's been a while...

...but I'm still here, don't worry.

If you're interested in reading my excuses, here they are (if not, skip down a paragraph): I haven't had internet at home for a week, grades were due yesterday so I've been calculating 59 grades in the past 3 days, and there have been no significant changes in my life to warrant a new blog post (based on the last life-altering update).

I'm now approximately 90 days away from leaving Nigeria and am definitely in denial. I experience two strains of thought in some sort of mental inhale-exhale pattern. They are:
1. I can't believe I'm leaving. I am abandoning my students and everyone I've tried to invest in this year. Walking away is the most irresponsible thing I could do. I don't even have a job in the States. I just hope that when I leave, it's not forever. I hope I get to come back someday.
2. I am so excited to go home. I'm so excited to be with people I love, to be known and familiar to people who have known me since before I was Miss Thomas the Literature teacher. I can't wait to read to my nephew, take a road trip with my brother, go on a run in my favorite forest preserve, and experience the change of seasons (Can you say "sweatshirt weather"???).

This is where I am. Some people call it a rock and a hard place. It's not comfortable.

As to the fear of the unknown, a great friend reminded me today, "Look what happened last time you didn't have a job." She's so right - God got me to Nigeria in 5 weeks and I have had some of the happiest months of my life here. He can totally handle the next phase of my life, whatever and wherever that may be.

As another great friend reminded me, He is able.

a decision made

I will not be renewing my contract.

The decision is borne out of a host of reasons, not chiefly because the decision was strangling me and I desperately needed to breathe. It also has to do with missing my family, and wanting to move in a different direction professionally, and just a tiny minuscule little bit has to do with the temperature here (just kidding. um, kind of.)

The great support from my boss makes it a little easier. When I met with her, Mrs. O reminded me that our God is not the Author of confusion, and that she wants me where God wants me. Praise the Lord for employers with supernatural understanding! I definitely cried in my meeting with her. She has been so instrumental to the positivity of this experience.

I do not have total peace about my decision, but I think we can chalk that up to the fact that I'm still in a community for whom this isn't necessarily good news. I'm pretty sure there isn't a soul on the continent of North America that wanted me to return to Nigeria, so at least I know there's rejoicing 6,000 miles away.

Very specific prayer requests for the days and weeks to come:
- To eventually feel peace about this decision.
- To find both the right time and way to tell my students.
- To discern where I go from here.

My heart is very heavy over this decision. While I can't really make a wrong decision, neither can I really make the right one - somebody is going to be disappointed, me first of all. My dad picked up on my distress over the phone yesterday and emailed me the following quote from Ellen Goodman. It really lifted my spirits.

There is a trick to the graceful exit.

It begins with the vision to recognize when
a job, a life stage, or a relationship
is over and let it go.

It means leaving what is over
without denying its validity or
its past importance in our lives.

It involves a sense of future,
a belief that every exit line is an entry,
that we are moving up, rather than out.

The trick to exiting well
may be the trick of living well.
It's hard to recognize that life
isn't a holding action, but a process.
It's hard to learn that we don't
leave the best parts of ourselves behind,
we own what we learned back there.

The experiences and the growth
are grafted into our lives.
And when we exit,
we can take ourselves along
quite gracefully.

Gonna Be a Bright, Bright, Sunshiny Day

The week has finished. I'm still standing. It's a miracle.

Accomplished:
Wrote 3 tests and corresponding review sheets
Conducted 3 review sessions
Proctored 3 tests
Dragged myself Spanish Club
Completely winged it...excelente
Avoided minor disaster on playground monkey bars
Planned a Poetry Cafe
Rehearsed for Poetry Cafe
Decorated for Poetry Cafe
Emcee'd Poetry Cafe
Cleaned up Poetry Cafe
Survived Friday

Thursday was probably the longest day of work ever (7:00am-8:30pm) but one of the most fulfilling, too.

Thursday morning I worked with my ESL students. We laughed together while playing word games. They finally trust each other. It's been an issue since January, when we added a pair of Portuguese-and-Russian-speaking brothers to our group. On Thursday, they translated for each other, Spanish to Portuguese to English and back again. Victor has found enough confidence to speak up, even though he still forgets to say "and" in English. Philip turned 14. Gabriel's favorite subject is now English Grammar. And sweet-spirited Issel tells me every day that I'm her favorite teacher, even though it sounds a lot like I'm her favorite t-shirt.

The rest of the day was devoted to Poetry Cafe-related preparation. The actual event started at 7 pm, in the dusky heat.
Can I describe for you the beauty of 30 students in Grades 6-12 finding not only their inner source of poetic expression but also the guts to stand up in front of 100 people and share that poem? How about the determination of an additional 30 student servers, bringing tea, coffee, and snacks to 100 guests?
Which is to speak nothing of the students who worked behind the scenes, listening patiently and giving constructive feedback to poets, writing menus, designing posters, lighting candles, preparing server badges. I literally burst with pride for my students...no for real, the seam on the sleeve of my dress split when I bent to pick up something!

Our Poetry Cafe was so beautiful. It didn't have the white tablecloths, tea lights, and paper lanterns that I pictured, but it was beautiful in its own way...checked tablecloths, plastic chairs, and powdered cappuccino mixes notwithstanding.
I'm not usually good at delegating to my students, but they totally took ownership and the result was fantastic. It was truly their night. I still put in a ton of work, but it was so worth it to see them shine.

I feel like I've been unintentionally depriving myself of good days, like I'm allowing my stay/go decision to hang a black cloud over my head. Thursday blew that cloud away. It was like God whispered, "For one day, forget the decision. Go ahead, remember why you love living here. And be thankful." And I was. For the day itself, for my students who surprise and amaze me, for this place that brings me joy.

Getting Flashed...is not what you think

I SO do not have time to be blogging right now, but funny stories take priority over writing tests at this moment in time.

There's a distinct Nigerian cell phone culture here. Everyone's really into getting TV on their phone, listening to music on their phone (kids have music phones as opposed to iPods), abbreviating all possible words in text messages.
I'm not kidding about that last one. The following is a verbatim text I received this week: "They wer al up in ma face bout it. bt I get a secnd chance." Yes, for real. I cn txt jus lyk dat if i rly wnt 2.

We also have this phenomenon called flashing: calling someone and letting it ring just long enough that their phone flashes once. It's technically free, as long as the person you're flashing doesn't pick up. I've been told that flashing means "Hey, how are you? I'm thinking about you."

Today I got flashed by a number I didn't recognize. I was about to call it back when they flashed a second time. Since the phone was already in my hand, I answered on the first ring. I only had time to say hello before they dropped the call. So then I texted the number: "Who is this?"

This is the text I got back:
"Sorry, i meant to call my grandma nd noticed it was a wrong number wen i heard ur voice...FYI, u got a good voice."

Oh, man, I love Nigeria.