Experiences in Nigeria

Second Day in Enugu

2009-11-14T22:48:00.000-08:00

First Day in Enugu

2009-11-13T17:46:00.001-08:00

Arrival in Enugu

2009-11-12T23:52:00.001-08:00

The flight was short and pleasant, and not once did I ever feel unsafe or suspect that the plane was going to crash-land and leave me burning to death in a corn field. I heard that such an accident actually did occur a few years ago, which spurred the aviation sector to tighten safety regulations all across the board, grounding many airlines. The end result is that in present-day Nigeria, all flights run by reputable airlines have good safety records.

Enugu is located a little less than 300 miles (500 km) east of Lagos, in the eastern region of Nigeria, as can be seen from the map above. I could have also taken the bus to Enugu, but Mr Azih strongly recommended that I take the plane. "Not for you, but for me," Mr Azih said, laughing. "If you take the plane, I only have to worry for one hour. If you take the bus, then my whole day will have gone to waste, worrying about whether you'll arrive in Enugu or not." Apparently, traveling by road to Enugu could take over 10 hours, what with the numerous accident-inducing patches of road along the way.

At the airport I was met by Mr Emeka Onyema, the younger and youngest brother of Dr Onyema. Again, I wore my GEANCO T-shirt to be easily recognizable, but in hindsight, that was probably completely unnecessary. I was most likely the only Asian within a hundred miles.

Leaving Lagos

2009-11-11T20:27:00.001-08:00

I'm finally leaving Lagos to head to Enugu, where the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) is located. A couple days ago, Mr Azih took me to the airport, where I bought a flight to Enugu. I was also running low on malaria prophylaxis pills, so I stocked up at the airport pharmacy. (Unfortunately, for prophylaxis, they only carried Malarone, which is very pricey, so I ended up spending almost as much as my plane fare on malaria pills.)

I talked over the phone with Dr Anthony Mbah, the Chief Medical Director of UNTH, and I'll be meeting him tomorrow morning. I'm very excited to see the hospital and get started on the project.

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Amusing conversation at the check-in counter

Check-in Personnel: Mr. Lee? Then you must be related to Bruce Lee. (laughing)
Woman Behind Me: He must be the older brother! (joining in laughter)

Fourth Day in Lagos

2009-11-05T21:28:00.001-08:00

Today, we visited Mr Azih's daughter in Lagos. The CultureGram for Nigeria mentions "visiting" as one of the primary leisure activities in Nigeria:

"Visiting plays an important part in maintaining family and friendship ties. It is common for Nigerians to visit their relatives frequently. Unannounced guests are welcome, as planning ahead is not possible in many areas where telephones are not widely available." (CultureGrams, World Edition, 2008)

I think the CultureGram is a bit outdated, as many people, even in rural areas, have cellular phones, but it's certainly true that unannounced guests (me) can be welcome. Mr Azih's daughter and her husband, Valentine, welcomed me into the house for lunch, and I even had the chance to watch a Premier League football (soccer) game afterwards at a local bar with Valentine.

If visiting is the most common leisure activity in Nigeria, then watching EPL football matches would be a close runner-up. Since not everyone is blessed with cable television, people gather at local watering holes, which usually have televisions, as well as chalkboards outside the door listing all the matches of the day. (See picture above.) Here, people (men, especially) watch the games almost religiously, and most will have a particular team they are rooting for, as can be seen from the plethora of "Gunners for Life" and "Billionaire's Club" bumper stickers that can be found all around town. (For those of you who don't follow English football, that's Arsenal F.C. and Chelsea F.C., repsectively.)

Visiting friends and watching soccer games. I think the Nigerians have gotten life down.

(N.B. In case you're wondering about the match, the Hotspurs played an amazingly tight game against Liverpool, and won 2-1.)

Lagos Traffic Jam

2009-11-04T22:16:00.000-08:00

On the way back from the wedding, I was to experience my first Nigerian traffic jam. Despite Mr Azih's tactical maneuvers through the local streets of Lagos, it still took us two hours to get back to the house. (For comparison, it had taken us only ten minutes to get from the house to the wedding reception.) The video is from when the traffic was finally letting up. Near the end of the video, you can see the traffic warden bringing some order to the flow of cars and motorcycles. Poor guy, I wouldn't want his job. Of course, if there was electricity, then traffic lights would make everyone's life easier.

Traffic in Lagos

2009-11-02T17:59:00.001-08:00

What struck me the most as Mr Azih drove around Lagos was how many cars there were. And second, how fast they were going. Driving on Nigerian roads is no joke; they're riddled with countless potholes, some the size of SUVs. As Mr Azih swerved at 50 miles an hour to avoid one the size of a small cow, he explained that the roads had been falling into tatters for quite some time. "The roads that are managed by the Lagos State Government are a little better [than most other roads]. The Governor of Lagos has been making some efforts to show that he is actually doing something [keeping the roads well-maintained, providing powered streetlights along main roads, etc.]."

Driving along the expressway reminded me of a computer game I used to play when I was a kid. The object of the game was to make it across a river without running into whirlpools. Driving in Nigeria is similar except you're going at over 60 mph...and there are a dozen cars lurching around you doing the same thing...and you have to make sure not to hit the occasional jaywalkers (across expressways!).

Nigerian drivers are fearless.

The picture above is a picture of a typical bus (sometimes called "bush taxi" to distinguish it from the public bus system). The man standing in the doorway and pointing is the "conductor". He shouts out the destination of the bus to potential passengers and collects the fare as they enter the bus. More often than not, when the vehicle is in motion, he remains standing with the door open so that the bus can carry as many passengers as possible. He remains in that position even when the bus is racing down the expressway performing the aforementioned swerving maneuvers to avoid potholes.

Nigerian bus conductors are fearless.

Nigerian Wedding (Video)

2009-10-29T16:45:00.000-07:00

So I've been told that Nigerians generally hold two different types of weddings: a traditional Nigerian wedding (usually held in the villages) and a "white," i.e. Western-style, wedding. The wedding reception I went to would fall in the latter category. Though many couples hold both types of weddings (on different dates, of course), I hear that it's been a growing trend to opt for just one of the two types of weddings, out of financial concerns. Obviously, it would be quite a drain to have to hold two weddings.

Though I didn't have the chance to see a traditional wedding, the customs involved with Nigerian weddings were very interesting to learn about. First, the groom must travel to the bride's village to formally ask the bride's parents for her hand in marriage, usually bringing presents and food with him. If the bride's family accepts his proposal (which could take days to weeks), then an elaborate ceremony, involving lots of food, music, and dancing, is held in the village before the groom departs with his bride. There's even a sort of "game" that is played during the ceremony in which the bride must "find" her groom, who usually hides among the male wedding guests, by bringing a cup of wine to him. (Imagine what might happen if the bride brings the cup to the wrong person!)

Nigerian Wedding

2009-10-19T18:13:00.000-07:00

Today, I also had the chance to see a Nigerian wedding. The daughter of one of Mr Azih's friends was getting married, and he was gracious enough to invite me along as well. The wedding hall was enormous, and hundreds of people filled the reception area. Apparently, the mother of the groom was a former minister (N.B. "minister" as in "government official," not as in "Christian preacher"), which explained the huge turnout. There were even security guards with AK-47s at the entrance to the building. Unfortunately, we were there just long enough for us to congratulate Mr Azih's friend, so we didn't have a chance to try the wedding food, but we did stay long enough for me to take some pictures and video footage. From the scale of the event, one could easily imagine the cost to be on the order of hundreds of thousands of naira (if not more), and I don't wish to be disparaging, but one has to wonder where all that money came from. (Ex-politician? Hmm...)

Third Day in Lagos

2009-10-18T16:04:00.000-07:00

Last night, I finally had a chance to speak with Dr. Law Anikpo (my contact at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital), and he mentioned that having a mobile phone would be essential during my stay here. So today, I went with Mr. Azih to a place called the Ikeja Computer Village, a section of Lagos devoted entirely to the selling of electronics merchandise (where I noticed a strong presence of Samsung and LG). Once there, with the help of Mr. Azih, I bought a cheap phone for 3600 naira, the equivalent of about 20 bucks, and a couple recharge cards (which are basically prepaid phone credits) to use during my stay in Nigeria. The recharge card system is nifty in the sense that you end up paying for exactly how much you use, and by exactly, I mean on a per-second basis. The rates are reasonable, too -- about 50 kobo/second, which translates to about 20 cents/minute.

Though I did see some phone lines throughout the town, my impression was that everyone relied on wireless phones to communicate with each other. I never saw a landline telephone during my stay in Lagos. The penetration of the mobile phone industry was also very impressive. "Even the hawkers [street vendors] all have phones," Mr. Azih tells me. This was not always the case. Until less than a decade ago, when mobile telecommunications was still under government control (Nitel), the administration was not very concerned with the use of telephones by the people. In the words of one minister, "Why should the poor have phones?", a comment that reflects how out of touch the officials were with the rest of Nigeria. However, after telecommunications were handed over to private companies, Nigeria saw a boom in phone usage all across the country.

Oh yeah, in case anybody wants to call me, my number is +234-803-500-3057.

Second Day in Lagos

2009-10-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

My host in Lagos, Mr Azih (a.k.a. Engineer Azih), is a very intelligent man with a great sense of humor. He went to Stanford for graduate school, and after getting his master's in material science, Mr Azih soon realized that getting a doctorate would overqualify him for anything he coud do in Nigeria. In other words, researching the solubilities of gases in liquid metals would have held little relevance to the engineering problems that he would have faced in Nigeria in 1979. He returned to Nigeria to work in the power sector, a move which I admire very much because while he could have lived quite comfortably in the US, he put the interest of his people before his own. (Incidentally, he had also considered Caltech for graduate school, but after the school notified him that any research he would do there would be "too advanced" for Nigeria, he turned Caltech down.)

With several decades of experience in power distribution, Engr Azih was very expressive about what was going wrong with the power in Nigeria. Referring to a newspaper article stating that the federal government had promised 6000 MW by the end of the year, he scoffed, "How are you going to get 6000 MW in 3 months, when it's taken you 10 years to get from 2400 MW to (an even lower) 2100 MW?" He recommends that the power problem should be taken out of the hands of the Federal Government and taken care of on a more local level. Quoting Thomas Paine, Mr Azih says, "Either follow, lead, or get the hell out of the way!"

Arrival in Lagos

2009-09-14T05:21:00.000-07:00

After a long transfer in the Netherlands, I finally arrived in Lagos, with a suitcase full of GEANCO t-shirts (thanks, Chess!) and flash drives (thanks, Dad!) to give as presents to my hosts and hopefully my interviewees as well.

No surprise I was the only Asian person on the plane, but I didn't mind my conspicuousness. People on the plane would ask me about my shirt, and I got a chance to publicize GEANCO.

I arrived in Lagos at night, and as soon as I stepped out of the airport, I was greeted by a throng of taxi drivers, each trying to convince me to take their taxi. I soon realized the impossibility of trying to pick out Mr. Oduche Azih (my host in Lagos) from the crowd, especially since I had no idea what he looked like at the time. Luckily, Mr. Azih was smarter than I was. He found me and asked me if I was a graduate of Caltech, a question I knew nobody else would have asked me.

The drive to Mr. Azih's house from the Murtala Mohammed Aiport was really something else. The city was suffering a blackout, but the darkness accentuated the brightness from the headlights of numerous cars and motorcycles that were all over the road. Before going home, we stopped by a gas station to pick up some diesel for the generator at Mr. Azih's house. More on the power situation later.

Prologue 3

2009-09-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

On my way to LAX, I learned that, as fate would have it, my SuperShuttle driver was from Nigeria. I hazarded a guess after noticing that he spoke with what I suppose you could call a West African accent, and he was happy that I had guessed correctly. (Actually, with a population of 1.5 million, Nigeria is the largest African country by population. So maybe it was no surprise that I guessed right.) On the drive, he told me a lot about what to expect in Nigeria, especially the food. I told him I was prepared for anything. He laughed and gave me the address to his wife's restaurant, saying that I should go if it turned out I really liked Nigerian food. So here's a shout-out to Delicious African Flava in Rialto. Incidentally, the driver also has his own medical supply company, Topsyn Medicine.

Prologue 2

2009-08-26T10:11:00.001-07:00

(Image copyright of The SubwayNut)

Sorry for the long wind-up, but I thought it would be unfair to start the blog without mentioning the generous help Dr. Onyema (the founder of GEANCO) gave me in preparing for the trip.

When Chess heard of my plan to travel to Nigeria, he contacted Afam (the COO of GEANCO and Chess's friend) and Dr. Onyema, who showed interest in my proposed project. Some emails were exchanged and when Dr. Onyema, who is normally in Chicago, visited LA for a meeting with African First Ladies, I was invited to join him in a lunch meeting he was having with someone else. Since I didn't have a car, the plan was for me to take the Red Line to the intersection of Hollywood and Highland, where I was to be picked up by Afam. Instead of taking the Red Line, a friend ended up dropping me off at Hollywood/Highland, where I waited.

What followed was one of my more surreal experiences in planning for this project. Surrounded by various costumed characters, as well as the usual flock of tourists that seem to inhabit Hollywood Boulevard, I received a phone call from Chess asking me where I was. Resisting the urge to answer, "Between the Joker and Superman," I simply said that I had arrived. I was then told to wait ten minutes for further instructions. Some time later, my phone rang and I was ordered to take a taxi and then given a street address. Though all of this seemed to be straight out of one of those mystery-thriller-type movies, strangely enough, none of this seemed out of the ordinary to me, maybe because of the general atmosphere of Hollywood Blvd. I met Afam and Dr. Onyema and then we proceeded to have our lunch meeting at...IHOP. I think I once had a dream similar to this.

Dr. Onyema was genuinely enthusiastic in helping me plan my itinerary in Nigeria. When I tentatively asked him if there would be a place for me to stay, he promptly started drawing a rough map of Nigeria and then his extended family tree. He said that I wouldn't have to worry about lodging or food; that this was part of Nigerian hospitality. I would be staying with his brother-in-law in Lagos, his brother in Enugu, another brother-in-law in Awka, his mother in Nawfia, as well as with someone in Abuja. Quite frankly, I was impressed and truly grateful.

Afam also threw out a suggestion for another aspect of my topic I could look into. Many NGOs and non-profits want to help in the African health sector but the main problem is that there isn't enough reliable information about the needs of particular regions for the organizations to properly plan how to most effectively help. One thing I could look into would be how to use computers and the Internet to set up a sort of database to help, say "an organization trying to build a hospital know whether they need more maternity wards or incubators". (Chess) Definitely something to check out.

Prologue

2009-08-22T04:36:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been some time since I've arrived in Nigeria, but I thought that it would be nice to devote a post to what led up to this whole endeavor before starting the main story.

So it all started about a year back when I got involved with organizing the Caltech African Health Symposium through Chess (a graduate student at Caltech). The African Health Symposium was how I came to know GEANCO, a foundation dedicated to developing and managing medical facilities in Nigeria. The foundation's main goal, especially, is to build a world-class hospital in Anambra, a region desperately in need of better health facilities.

Anyways, after the health symposium, as I came to know more about GEANCO, I thought it would be great if I had a chance to actually go to Nigeria and see how things were first-hand. (And hopefully also raise awareness of the African health situation upon coming back.) But I didn't see a feasible way this could happen until one of my housemates suggested I apply to the Housner Fund at Caltech. (The same fund had just given him a travel grant to go to the India/Nepal border region.)

The George W. Housner Student Discovery Fund awards travel grants for students to pursue independent study projects. To be frank, I hadn't really thought of a research topic I could pursue in Nigeria, so on the spur of the moment I thought maybe I could do a study on the use of educational technology in Nigerian medical institutions, partly influenced by an education survey that was being done at Caltech. After pitching the idea to Chess, he suggested that I might focus on the use of the Internet since it would be a valuable resource to medical students in Nigeria. As I was writing the proposal, I decided to shift the focus to what Chess had suggested, so in the end the topic became the use of information technology in Nigerian medical institutions.

In a nutshell, that's how this whole thing got started. The George W. Housner Fund came through for me and gave me $3100 to go to Nigeria, which I was very happy about. I'll post my Housner Proposal when I have the chance, so you can read about the project in a little bit more detail.