Prologue 3

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

(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

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.