The funniest thing happened yesterday, apart from ManU losing to Wolves... I came to Ibadan to visit Kyle and we went to the zoo on campus. The zoo was ok, but at one point we went into the primate house and were staring at a chimpanzee, and it really didn’t like Kyle at all. After making noises at him, the chimp grabbed something off of the floor and flung it at Kyle! Fortunately, Kyle ducked, and I almost couldn’t believe that the chimp had actually flung his dung! I had always heard stories about monkeys throwing poo at people, but it was very different seeing it in person. It’s highly entertaining, as long as it is not getting thrown at you...
Everything else that has happened this week pales a bit in comparison, but it was still pretty interesting. The mad lady has been getting better everyday. Now to make her take her medicine, we have to go to the places where she buys food and ask the people who make it to put it inside, because she is too together for us to try to sneak it in ourselves. Just recently she started going out of the house to go buy things that she wants, which never used to happen before. The Araba told me that it may take some months for the illness to completely clear from her head. We’ll see how long it takes.
There was another family who came to Baba’s house because their father had been almost dead for months now, but was not able to die. They said he had taken some kind of traditional medicine to stop others from being able to kill him, but now it is stopping him from dying when it was his time. So the Araba cast Ifa for his children and they made a sacrifice. The Araba collected some leaves and made a kind of paste with them and we went to their house. When we got there, the Araba told them to leave a snail in the corner of a room, and then we went in to see the man. It was honestly the most miserable I have ever seen anyone in my life. The man already looked like a corpse. The people in his family told us that we had to leave quickly because a pastor was coming and they said the pastor would want to kill us, but it was pretty clear that they just didn’t want him to know that they had called a Babalawo in for help. Apparently they had been working with the pastor for a long time, but since neither he nor the hospital had been able to do anything, they decided to try the Araba. So the Araba told them what to do with the paste (they had to make nine small little cuts on the top of his head and rub the paste into them), then we left so they wouldn’t be in an awkward situation. They called the next day and said that the medicine was working because their father’s face had changed completely. They didn’t say anymore than that, and we haven’t heard from them since, but I really do hope it worked. I felt so bad for the poor man...
At home, Samuel has discovered that I know the answers to most of his homework questions so pretty much everyday without fail, he comes into my room and tries to get me to give them to him. Since I worked in a classroom of kids of the same age in Cambridge, the kind of work they are doing really worries me. He’s supposed to be going to one of the best schools around, but that’s a bit worrisome. At first I thought he wasn’t trying too hard to figure things out for himself, but then I realized that usually he either hadn’t been taught what he needed to know, or even worse, sometimes he has been taught incorrectly. I’ve looked at a lot of his homework, and sometimes the teachers will have marked correct answers as incorrect, and left incorrect ones as is. Just this past week I had to teach him French pronouns, how to do long division, find LCMs, and everything in between, mostly I think because it wasn’t really taught to him the first time. I can’t really blame him for just wanting to have the answers to things when the explanations either aren’t there or don’t make any sense (especially if they’re wrong). Sometimes I feel bad that I can’t spend more time with him working on his homework, but I know I don’t have enough time for both of our work! It does really get me worried about the Nigerian educational system though...
Another problem here, for which there are several Ifa verses, usually comes with painted eyebrows and fake nails. Since we’ve been spending a bit more time outside the past few weeks, the Araba and I have been running into more and more ladies who are in or around their houses. The Araba has told me several times that nobody will ever see him with a lady-friend because there’s too much trouble there, and also because his Odu Ifa says he cannot have any more than 3 wives. That confused me at first because my wife-count for him was up to 5, but I must have made a mistake somewhere because he assured me it is only 3. At any rate, we run into a lot of these ladies, and like most other people, they all beg me to take them to the US, but some of them get really angry when I tell them that it’s simply not possible for me to do that. Most of them also either ask the Araba if they can marry me (to which I always say no), or sometimes they ask me. I usually try to laugh it off, but they are really persistent so I have to be frank sometimes and say I’m not interested. They also are pretty shameless in asking me to buy things for them, and often because it’s the only way I can get away from them, sometimes I give in and just give them some money to leave me alone.
The Araba usually thinks it’s kind of funny, but recently I think he has even realized that it’s a bit too much. Also, for all his caution with women, there is one who got him into a lot of trouble. One lady who used to be his friend in Ode-Omu, his hometown, needed to have a funeral in November, but didn’t have the money. Because the Araba is a nice guy, he just gave her all the money I paid him one week, and then called one of his friends who is a bank manager to see if he could give her a loan. Since the lady owns a beer parlor, the manager and she agreed that she could take a loan of 40,000 Naira after she made lots of money over Christmas and New Year’s, she would return 50,000 Naira (a little over $300). The Araba signed on as a guarantor for her, and everything seemed to be ok, until January ended and she hadn’t come back with the money. The Araba called her several times, but she refused to come. She didn’t say that she didn’t have the money, she just didn’t want to give it up. So the police came to the Araba’s house and said they would come back and arrest him if he didn’t get the money to the bank somehow. To make a long story short, the Araba paid the 50,000 himself and has been trying to get her to pay him back ever since, but she hasn’t showed up yet... I always knew that people struggled in Nigeria and that some people would always try to cheat others, but this one really surprised me. It has definitely taught me to be very careful with letting my money out to people here. Thank God I am J+
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