How You Dey?

Greetings from Nigeria! I suppose I'll begin with a poor excuse for my delay in blogging. Basically, if the blog is supposed to be about fieldwork, I didn't feel justified to start blogging without starting to do actual work, and although I've been here now for over two weeks, and it seems like much longer than that, my work is only now getting off the ground.

Instead I've spent most of my time just getting used to operating around here, ie following around Katie (the advanced grad student from Brown who has opened up her life, contact book, and everything else to share with me, for those readers beyond the cohort, if you are out there). We spent our first week in Abuja at the home of a top dog from the American Embassy, so, needless to stay, living conditions were far beyond those than my home in Providence, with wireless internet (like I said, my excuse for the delay is poor), a swimming pool, a chef and live-in masseuse /housekeeper. Since then, it's been a gradual shift to life something more like that of most Nigerians, culminating in a week in Kano, where we stayed in the family compound of Katie's good friends/research assistants/everything else.

Like so many other places around Nigeria, the house was clearly a very nice one when it was built during the oil boom in the 1970s, but has since become only a shell--wired for electricity that comes for only a few minutes a day and piped for water that hasn't come in years. So I learned how to most efficiently "flush" toilets with buckets of water kept in barrels throughout the house, and to bathe with buckets as well, appreciating the cool water in the heat of the north. Of course I didn't learn much Hausa at all, but the family was always amused when I could manage a greeting or two, and I did pick up at least Katie's interpretation of Nigerian English, with rhthmic intonations and a few words of pidgin thrown in. Katie also didn't hesitate to introduce me to all her favorite local foods, which most foreigners (and even many Nigerians) balk at, from slimy okra soups eaten by scooping up bland sticky starches like pounded yams with your fingers, to spicy and delicious beef kabobs ("suya") made on make-shift barbecues the side of the road. (As I type I'm having a typical meal of a big pile of carbs, this time the ubiquitous Nigerian version of Ramen, IndoMie, which is virtually identical except for some extra kick common to most Nigerian foods.) Unfortunately my stomach hasn't learned to love these as quickly as my taste buds have, and that can be complicated in a country without public toilets, but this, I like to tell myself, is a rite of passage of its own, and I'll leave that at that.

On the actual fieldwork front, my expat connections through Katie had me well connected at the American Embassy and I'll begin pursuing all those phone numbers and introductions now that we are back in Abuja. I did manage one intense day of work before we left Kano, after a local professor hooked me up with a super determined and well-conntected Nigerian PhD student. Unfortunately, after waiting for hours for his good friend who could probably write my MA paper for me, he turned out to be out of town, making us take the formal bureaucratic route to talk to anyone. This eventually led to a spontaneous "interview" (that felt more like an inquisition) with the big men of the traders' association in the middle of the market as a crowd grew around us. I was completely overwhelmed and had no idea how difficult it would be to try to talk meaningfully at any length through an interpreter, especially one not trained or inclined to give more thorough translations beyond the immediate and summarized answer to my question. I don't know if any of you are having to figure this out (Láura maybe?), but even once I start recording everything to get the details later, it totally hinders any anthropological ideal of interviewing as conversational when you can't catch the interesting details of responses as they arise. But even though they all seemed totally suspicious and unhappy about my interests there, I am assured that I will be welcomed to talk to more people in the future, even on-one-one and with tape recorders, so I have that to look forward to when I return to Kano.

In the meantime, I am back in Abuja for at least a week or two, staying in another palatial expat house with too many rooms to spare. Katie is off to South Africa on Saturday so I will officially be on my own starting then. While I look forward to some more independence, I know even small things will will turn into adventures, from trying to negotiate taxi fares to knowing where to go for different necessities (ie chocolate, internet, and suya). These adventures, of course, should provide good fodder for blogging, which will also be easier here in Abuja given the more reliable electricity that is readily supplemented with the steady hum of generators. That said, I won't let this turn into a one-woman show, so hopefully I'll see some more activity on here soon or I'll even withhold my contributions in protest. I'm sure that threat is stinging, so get to it. I hope all is well out in your respective worlds, and I look forward to hearing about them soon!

PS The wireless connection at this "cafe" is too slow for me to upload my photos, but hopefully I'll find a place to do that soon.