Singing

Every Friday the ante-natal staff choose the concrete outside my office window as a place to collect urine samples from the pregnant women. So I’m usually serenaded by a gaggle of women chatting and laughing, and often a few children crying.

Today, as the women had their protein and glucose levels checked, the two staff with the dipping-sticks began to sing. In harmony. It was like a gentle lullaby, and while the child they were trying to placate still winged and griped, I felt myself being soothed and relaxed.

Now, as I type, the same expectant mothers have gathered in the hall, and their singing voices and clapping are rising above the grumble of the generator.

Musical moments in Africa.

Litter

Nigeria has a serious infestation of litter-bugs. Seemingly 130million of them. It simply does not enter people’s consciousness not to throw litter, where ever the place. Excess packaging in de moto? Fly it out the window. Finished with your egg-roll wrapper? Lob it on the floor in the hospital. Sucked your pure-water bag dry? Drop it to the ground. On safari in Yankari? Chuck your empty bottles off the side of the truck. Enjoying the pure-water springs in Wikki Camp? Chuck your bottle tops and plastics into the river.

Yankari Game Reserve

Visitor Suggestions

Stop selling safari tickets when you know the truck is full. (This would have averted my almost overwhelming desire to shout ‘BUNDLE’ and charge through the hoards of people all trying to fit on a twenty seater truck. Of course I didn’t do that – I just watched the scrum and decided to join others in a jeep instead.)

Clear up the litter! Don’t allow guests to throw plastics down from the safari truck or into the spring please!

Educate visitors that a safari truck is not a party-bus. If they shout and yell during the safari they will not see any animals.

Train restaurant staff to know that when people enter, perhaps they want to place an order. If people order drinks, they just might be incredibly thirsty and will need their water now now not 45minutes later. This should be a nationwide training, not only restricted for Yankari.

Train all guides to know the environment so when asked questions like ‘ooh, what’s that?’ they have more to offer than just ‘That is a bird’.

I’m sure these few inexpensive changes would make it nicer for everyone. I have a few more suggestions that perhaps my Nigerian friends would not agree with. I ask:

Wall-to-wall carpets: Luxury or, in the absence of hoovers, impossible to clean?

Dimsy restaurant with closed curtains and no view or an outside terrace from which to enjoy the surroundings?


Wikki Camp in Yankari is a tad run-down. There is room for improvement. A little bit of thought and organization would go a long way. But, it certainly has its own charm and is a cheap and popular spot for ex-pats and Nigerians alike.

Wikki Springs

I’ve just spent a beautiful Easter in Yankari – a 200km/squared game reserve near Bauchi, heading north-east from Abuja.

The highlight of Yankari is hands-down the Wikki spring. At the foot of a limestone cliff is a cave, and at the bottom of the cave is a spring. The spring pumps out over 4million litres of crystal clear, pure, silky water a day. For visitors delight, there is a 400 meter long river to swim in. You can almost see more clearly under the water than above!

At night, floating on my back, massaged by the current, I gazed up past palm trees to see the brilliance of the stars twinkling above. A perfect anecdote to the sweaty dusty safari trips spent spotting elephant, hartebeest, bush-buck, water-buck, red monkeys, baboons, hippos, and beautiful birds.

Dry Heat

I am English, so you’ll forgive the incessant reference to the weather. But it is simply and absolutely necessary to convey to you in Blighty just how roasted I am feeling. Actually, roasted is not the right word – roasted conjures images of juicy meats and succulent vegetables. I do not feel juicy and succulent. I feel shriveled and dried. Crisp. Parched.

I am a forgotten pottery in an overheated kiln. I am a neglected piece of dough in a smoldering pizza oven.

Shrivel.

'Men At Work'

This sign means it.

They are laying a pipe along the express-way leading to Abuja. But this is not like at home where hard-hatted, steel-toed, yellow vest wearing tea-drinkers push a few buttons on a digger, trundle in with a crane and lay a pipe.

This is a six-kilometer line of bare-chested, flip-flop wearing, pick-axe wielding men at work in the thick, heavy, relentless 40degree heat. At the end of the line, a handful more of men at work (still bare-chested and flip-flop wearing) pour molten tar onto the road from buckets in their un-gloved hands.

“It seems you have traveled?”…

Yes, I have traveled! A beautiful holiday in Ghana! Ghana! Oh sweet Ghana! Land of peace, smiles, tree-top canopy walkways, palm lined golden beaches, butterflies the size of small birds, waterfalls, litter-bins, queuing systems, calabash trees, strange sticky fruits that make water taste like syrup even twenty minutes after eating.

…“So what did you bring for us?”

Hum…?….. My smile?….. My new sense of inner peace?….. My renewed motivation to try to get something done in this place?

Oh, and some icky Ghanaian chocolate with in-built no-melting mechanism that removes all flavour of chocolate and replaces it with that of soap. That’ll teach you to ask for something every time I so much as leave the hospital compound!!!