birra
on Fantastic Voyage (Nigeria), 06/Nov/2010 19:10, 34 days ago
I’ve got quite a few favourite places in the world: places I’d happily be at any moment of any day and stay forever. Thestage at Shakespeare’s Globewhen quite drunk in the early hours of the morning: that’s probably somewhere I’ll never be again.St Crosschurchyard in Oxford in February or early March. TheUpper Reading Roomin the Bodleian. A strange little square in the Anglo-Saxon corner of UCL’s library for which I fiercely (and victoriously) battled against some random woman who chose to read her bloody pointless books about business there. The alarmingly low seat on the sofa next to the fishtank at my grandma’s house. With shame at the cliché and having only been there for a few magical hours, the towering avenues of joy that comprise theStrand bookshopin New York. The literary history section of Hay-on-Wye’scinema bookshop. The British section of the Early Medieval gallery in theBritish Museum, right in front of the bronze fish.  Thenave of Southwark Cathedral.Sutton Hoo: all of that ghost ridden, terrifying, perfect space. Anywhere Jenny is. And pubs: the table to the left of the door downstairs at theThree Goats’ Headsin Oxford; that incredibleDomkellerplace in Aachen; any seat close to the window of theWhite Lionin Walsall on a weekend evening; the corner table in theLamp in Dudley. It’s the only really brutal occasional stomach punch I get here: suddenly missing pubs, and total lack of interest from strangers, and pint glasses, and crisps, and dim smokiness. There’s no smoking ban in my most desperate dreams.Anyway, I’m not in any of them (although you might be, you lucky chumps).  I’m in Nigeria, and swiftly discovering that – short on tourist attractions as it is – Kaduna just might possess an addition to these favourite places.It’s a bar, of course.  There’s practically nowhere worth going (or possible to spend time in) that isn’t a bar: even the brilliant Gamje Park (which I do like very much, but is far from The List for now) is essentially a bar – just one with lots of grass, some caged ostriches and a chained up monkey.And it’s where I am now, abusing their NEPA / generator as electricity isn’t generally available at t’home this week (nor is water, actually, which is infuriating.  During its brief appearance last night– between about 12.00 and 1.30 I battled with drunkenness and darkness to refill all the water vat things that I’d emptied in the previous couple of days.  it took an entire bucket to cleanse the toilet of solids and stains.  A similar fate may await me tonight, if I’m lucky).  As with the others above, there are probably a thousand things that are wonderful about this place and enumerating them all would just stop even those people who actually know me from reading and turn them to shots of neat gin in the morning.  So here are some highlights:-it’s called Sea Breeze, which I find both lovely in a pretty, holiday kind of way - and gently comic given that it’s actually next to a river, possibly further from the sea (which in this case would be an ocean) than I’ve been in my entire life – I have no idea of comparative distances on theworld stage; forgive me – and were there a breeze rolling off the river, it would almost certainly drive me far far away from its fetid stench;- being beside the river, there’s a very lovely view (not now; it’s night-time) and – other than standing in the middle of a road – it might be the only place anywhere near us where you can watch the sun set;- there’s a lot of cool birds that knock around the river.  Some you can see elsewhere: the weirdly pure white lumpy kind of things that make me think about legends of birds-as-sailors’-souls; the brilliantly cute little brown and red birds which also chill out in Shitty Alley sometimes; the charming darker brown birds, the males of which have a nifty little hat, which make me think of blackbirds and thrushes (probably my two favourite UK birds, fact fans).  But you can also see other birds from here: the big fellas that wheel about in the sky– which in my mind have tails like Kites and wings like buzzards, but I don’t honestly know what I’m talking about; and incredibly tropical looking glossy black charmers, with violently red breasts and odd yellow caps on their heads which are a little too small, giving them an air of overgrownschoolboys.- this is kinda like the previous point (probably because it’s a really good one: birds totally rock), but the whole place is built like a football screening garden with a club attached at one end and a bird hide (is that really what they’re called?) at the other.  That’s the end I’m in right now: a concrete shelter with barred *they just brought my fish: I’ll explain that joy later* window spaces looking over the river.  That range is awesome (though I don’t seriously think that many of the beautiful people who come here sit and gaze out of the windows, forgetting even the book in their lap).  And it’s not unlike the ideal garden I planned to create for about 15 years of my life (apart from the caiman pond: that seriously is entirely viable, wifey);- it’s a bit unfair to mention it, because the porch at our home has more or less the same advantages, but as I’ve been sitting here, two lizards have chased each other wildly around the floor and a third enormous female sat close to me until I twitched too hard and she fled.  And, since night has fallen, immense bats beat their way slowly across the sky and their smaller cousins flit manically across the garden– one finding its way into the shelter for a few panicked half seconds;- obviously, given an earlier comment, you can get grilled fish here.  This is several joys of Nigeria packed into one.  First, grilled meaty fish is awesome food.  Second, it’s coated in some manner of spicy rich paste which crunches after grilling.  Third, for an additional 100 Naira (that’s what, 40 pence?) you get slimy flabby chips.  Fourth, it always comes with a dollop of furiously hot tomato/onion garnish which I wasn’t quite hammered enough to gobble tonight, but which is wicked nonetheless.  Finally– and this really is important – you eat it with your fingers, sliding the lumps of sweet meaty flesh off the long bones and performing an elaborate finger dance until it cools enough not to sear your tongue.  I knew whenabouts finger eating died out in the UK, but I still can’t really comprehend why it did.  It’s one of the best things Nigeria’s taught me: ignore the burning and the sliminess, and you can rinse regularly, so don’t worry about feeling tarnished.  Just tear and squeeze and tug and prise and eating food– any food – improves about a million fold;- they play really appalling music here.  And they play it really loud.  One of their preferred CD of ballads is so shit that Jen– yes, the woman who owns a Best of Celine Dion – doesn’t recognise any of them.  That’s probably a bad point, apart from that now (along with ‘Wave your flag’, which I’ve been told is actually by a French artist, and was the only song everywhere during the World Cup) they are my Sound of Nigeria.  They make me want to get really drunk on cheap beer and dance like a 15 year old– an impulse I have, to date, resisted;- ok, this is insanely long.  Sorry.  Last one: I / we come here so frequently that the bar staff remember who we are and we don’t need to order.  On one level (i.e. compared with establishing yourself as a genuine local in the UK) that’s clearly awesome.  On another (i.e. my expectations about establishing myself as a local in a country where my skin makes me a celebrity) it doesn’t sound so impressive.  But the fact is that most Nigerians we live around absolutely cannot tell white people apart.  Another volunteering couple live near to us (one of whom is flying home tomorrow *sob*).  They’re both white.  In the first couple of weeks of living here, I was given two lifts and taken into at least two conversations on the understanding that I was t’other white chap.  There’s something deeply satisfying about being able to say ‘No, it’s not that I don’t recognise you because I’m a racist white supremacist who can’t tell the difference between white people.  It’s because I’ve never met you before and you can’t tell the difference between white people.  Do you think I’m David Beckham?  Do you?*  That was a pretty major digression.  The point is, that I’m distinguished here by the colour of my skin first, by my gender second, and (generally) by nothing else.  It’s not comfortable.  But if you walk into a bar with the otheroyiboand don’t have to order, then you feel identified, accepted, and welcome as a person.  That’s always nice.I’ll end there, because too many mosquitos are finding me very tasty (which I of course genuinely am), and it’d be grossly inappropriate and too much of a stereotype to get drunk in a bar every single night that Jenny spends away from home.  Suffice it to say, that a tiny piece of my heart will, I think, always be here– simultaneously wincing at and gyrating along with Lionel Richie, and dreaming of flying with the birds.