First Day of Work

Friday morning we reported to work.  What will our work be you may ask? Electrical for Matt and electrical for me!  Although we will both be in the same department we will not be working together.  Matt will be working hard to get power to this:

The new Baler for the printery.

And I will be working here:

Electrical Warehouse

Seems that Electrical work just runs in the family! :)  Too bad I didn't pay better attention to all the names of parts when my Dad showed me!  I mean, I know what wire is and a few other things....well, here is my chance to learn!!

After work we had Market Day, which is collecting food for the weekend.  Although they do have dinners here on the weekend which is nice!

Then we took a walk to collect some fruit, but it was cut short by our first African Rain:

It was not a monsoon or anything but we enjoyed it!  The week before we came there was a real storm that even knocked a couple trees down.  We turned out AC off and opened our windows.  It was so pleasant to listen to it and enjoy the cooling effect it had.  

Orientation Day 2

As part of our orientation we went first thing in the morning to the computer department to learn about using the internet here properly.  After that we went to the plumbing department.  To.....learn to use the plumbing properly!  Well, even though we are accustomed to indoor plumbing, many who come here are not so it's important to be taught!  We learned you must not wash anything down the sink except water.  Bethel here is all self contained and so they get the water from deep in the earth and draw it up and treat it just in case. Then after it is used it is treated it goes into the fields around us for farmers to use.  So they have to be very strict so that there are no blockages which create tremendous work for the plumbing department.  The water we drink is pure and safe though, it is so nice not to have to be careful of our water here!  Apparently the plumbing department used to show pictures to newcomers to impress on them the importance of respecting the plumbing here but we missed out on that.  Then it was time for the tour of the construction site with our safety brother.  The project here is not in full swing, at least not compared to before.  Many are going home or being reassigned so there will be many changes like that while we are here.  While we toured we saw this:

Sheetrock with insulation attached prior to installing!

Never saw something like that before!   We met this brother who is an inventive cyclist:

See what is on the back of his bike?

Here they have many insects and they have quite a variety of pretty butterflies:

Afterwards we were able to meet with our construction overseer and learn about what we will be doing for the next few months here.  Next was lunch, and then we met with a couple different brothers who gave us some more insights into life here in Nigeria and at Bethel.  

We were so tired in the evening we fell asleep right after dinner!  We only woke up to brush our teeth and then fell asleep again!  

Friday was our first real day of work.  More on that later!

(The brother has a saw on the back of his bike in the picture:)

Orientation Tour-Day 1

On our first full day here in Igieduma I took advantage my "I just got here yesterday and am so extremely tired" excuse (which also happened to be true by the way) and "slept in." Til like 6:45 a.m. Which is 15 minutes past when morning worship starts.  Morning worship starts at 6:30 a.m. here. Most places it is at 7 a.m. Here they have us start early to stock up time for our meeting night when we get off much earlier so as to be back from meeting before dark.

So we went on tour of the Bethel here.  It is so big.  The sister who was our tour guide told us how big but I've forgotten.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 and some acres. I think.  Anyways, it's big.    We met so many people.  The brothers here are incredibly welcoming and outgoing.  It seemed like everyone we came across we would shake hands with and exchange names.  We had a long morning of walking and meeting people.

Matt and me with our guide Sister Ebere. Ebere means Kindness

 Many departments have recently moved into new or renovated spaces also so there is a sense of newness and excitement everywhere.

Part of the printery building.

We toured the generator building.  Now, that may not seem exciting to you sisters and you may be tempted to skim past these next pictures but stop and think of this.  These 4 generators run on fuel stored underground.  Well over 90 percent of the time these generators are running.  A very small amount of time we receive actual electricity from the power lines.  This means most of the time our power comes from these generators and the fuel that feeds them.  The printery, the offices, the construction site are all powered by these.  And more critically to me, my air conditioner, laptop, iPad, hair straightener (which I almost might as well have left at home since its HOT season), fridge, lights, hot water and the list goes on, are all powered by these. I have deep respect for these machines let me tell you! I am just in awe that so much energy and expense goes into maintaining a comfortable, beautiful and functional PRINTING Bethel in the middle of the African jungle!!!  Now, for the pictures:

Remember there are 4 of these! But they don't all run at the same time, that's how powerful they are.

Oooooohhhhh

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh

See what I mean?  Now to you electricians and mechanically inclined brothers, you might appreciate talking to Matt about the essential details of this room.  It all sounded QUITE amazing but went a little over my head.  However, this building is HIGH on my list of favorite sites in Bethel for the aforementioned reasons. It's so cool that even I could appreciate how involved and amazing it was.

Last place we toured was the BEX building.  Which I was puzzled about too..BEX, what is this BEX?  It means Bethel Expansion.  So we went past their and saw some of the resident animals.

See the monkey trying to ride the motorcycle?

After our tour we had an amazing lunch.  We even had some ice cream.  It was more cream and less ice when we got to eating it, but it was still yum!  After coffee (and tea for Matt of course) with a couple we went on with our day which consisted of some of our home orientation.

Trip to Igieduma or "In Nigeria we are blessed with many bad roads"

Don't you love the post title?  That was a direct quote from one of the brothers that picked us up at the airport and I just thought it was great.  Although I didn't know how true it was until the next day when we traveled to the main branch in Igieduma.  There are 2 offices here in Nigeria, a small one in Lagos and the main one in Igieduma where we will stay while we are here.

We left Lagos at 6:15 a.m. Along with our driver we had with us a brother heading to the main branch and 4 brothers that were dropped off at Benin City for some other training.

As far as the traffic goes.  Perhaps the less said the better.  I have never seen such creative driving in my life.  Lanes are invented on a case to case basis.  It seems they have their own system however, people flash their lights as they come up from behind and honk to pass.  If you are behind a larger vehicle the driver or passenger will stick out his arm and signal you to wait or to pass if it is "safe."  Along the way we saw the sunrise.  I couldn't tell exactly where the sun was for awhile but then we saw it.  I'm not sure if it is the dust here or pollution but it was so obscured we could actually look at it with no problems and still see it clearly for the first time that I remember.

We passed many tankers on our way.  Most were still driving like this one.

Notice the highly inflammable sign.

Others were tipped on the side of the road and burned out.  Glad we didn't see one burning!

We saw many termite mounds of red earth.  I would have taken a picture but it is difficult from a moving vehicle on these roads. Each state takes care of its own roads, so some roads are good, such as in Edo state.  Others are not as good.  We found the brother's saying  of "In Nigeria we are blessed with many bad roads" to be true even though initially we laughed like it was some sort of quip.   It took us about 5 hours to arrive here, which is incredibly fast compared to some times.  The traffic was apparently not bad and there were no times we had to stop.  

We arrived in time for lunch and sat with a couple we have met on a previous assignment.  After coffee in their room we cleaned and organized our room, and rearranged our furniture.  This is our room as it is now:

From our door.

From our back door. (The back door leads to our balcony.)

Our welcome message. It stands for "Welcome to Nigeria Bethel" 

In the evening we went to a couple's room for dinner.  They have a wonderful hospitality arrangement here for new couples to be hosted by a more experienced couple to answer questions and provide a meal.

Next day was Day 1 of orientation.

Arrival in Lagos

 We arrived in Lagos around 3 in the afternoon (aka the heat of the day:).

View from the plane as we arrived.

After someone somehow had known who we were approached us and took our passports off to be stamped for the appropriate amount of time we made our way to the baggage claim.  While Matt collected our bags and I guarded the our carry-ons one of the flight attendants from our flight approached me and informed me that she was  one of Jehovah's Witnesses too!  She thought we were from looking at us but we had a study Watchtower out to signal our ride and that clinched it.  She was the first class cabin attendant and I just wish I had known that before take-off as there were several empty seats up there!;)  It was so nice to get a hug from her and just have that reassurance that we really are everywhere!

We made our way through the rest of the airport and exited, looking for our brother.  They weren't there yet so we were helped to make a phone call to check things.  After a brother assured us he would look into it then we made our way to some shade and waited for him to call back.  You may wonder how that works when you are in a foreign country with no phone but it's totally simple. All you have to do is stick out like a sore thumb and you will be bombarded with helpful offers and advice from loads of people.  Pick the one that is most persistent in lending you his phone, go down your list of "just in case #'s" and talk to one.  Then the guy will wander off and promise to come back when the call comes back.  He will because you tip him.  Then you will have your information and he will have your money! 

We waited for some time (which never happens by the way) but we enjoyed just people watching and we got caught up on studying our Watchtower.  We placed 5 magazines while we waited with the helpful folks who walked by and just as we ran out of water and Watchtower study articles our ride arrived.  I was rather relieved!  We made our way to the van and waited awhile more as they had to help some departing people pay for their extra bags.  In the meantime however, they bought us a refreshing coke!

Coke never tasted so good! They use real sugar here too, none of that corn syrup business.

When we were on our way to the branch office they were so kind and offered to help us out with a meal.  Perfect timing too because I had just started to really be hungry.  I don't get too hungry while traveling and the heat doesn't encourage hunger either so it had been quite awhile since my last meal.  Many of you may wonder about what kind of food there is here.  I don't have too much experience with it yet, but I'm happy to report my first meal was way out of my ordinary diet.  Guess where we went?  No, not McDonalds. Way too ordinary.  KFC! Yup. Kentucky fried chicken in Nigeria.  You may think that's not too exotic but hey, we don't have one back home in Worland! :D  Normally it wouldn't be my first choice while traveling to exotic locales, but we had missed dinner at the branch by a long shot and it was good! Then it was time for some sleep before the next stage of our journey.

P.S. I'm sorry not having lots of pictures.  It's not that there isn't anything to take pictures of, but we have to be careful of where and when we take them here outside of  Bethel.  Until we know more about whats acceptable we just have to store some things in our memories:).  We will share as many as we can and I'm sure over 3 months we will have some great ones!

Along the Way

We flew out of Salt Lake on Saturday afternoon and arrived in Atlanta.  We decided to have a long layover there, to break up the traveling and include a little sightseeing.  Our bags ended up NOT being checked all the way through to Lagos as we had planned, something about bag restrictions and possible terrorist threats.  So we ended up hauling ALL our bags up the stairs (Matt had an opportunity for a workout!) and onto the public train into Atlanta.  I imagine we were quite the sight.  We had to keep asking our way since we thought maybe it wasn't a great idea to haul out our iPads in the middle of the night in abandoned train stations and downtown big city areas.  Thankfully, the police force was on our side with some directions and our hotel really was quite easy to find.  If you ever have a layover in Atlanta the train is super easy to catch downtown and you just find yourself smack in the middle of all these hotels and around the corner from the Olympic Park and Aquarium.  It really makes for a great mini vacation!  The next day (minus the bags) we explored a bit.  We walked through the park and then had some breakfast.

Then we spent the whole rest of the day at the Georgia Aquarium. We saw the whole thing but it seriously took all day and we could have slowed down a bunch too.  First we watched the dolphin show, which was a-MAZ-ing.  Seriously.  It was so beautiful. I literally had tears in my eyes.  Um, I may have been the only one. I marked it up to the beauty but of course, I was exhausted and a teensy stressed out so that may have had something to do with it.

I crawled through a little tube thing to get up close with some South African penguins.  I was the only adult in there without a kid to be my excuse.  Oh well!

A main attraction of the aquarium is this viewing window:

Behind this 2 foot thick acrylic wall is a football field sized fish tank.  And some amazing whale sharks, which are the world's largest fish. Their mouths are 4 feet wide!

There are 4 in the tank in all.

It was a wonderful way to relax (minus the crying at the dolphin show) and get ready for our long flight to Lagos.  After we collected our bags we walked UPhill back to the train station.  On our way in it had seemed so easy to get to the hotel.  We needed our exercise anyway!

When we got back to the airport we saw a couple with a mobile literature stand just outside, so we visited with them a few minutes.  It made us so happy to see brothers and sisters along the way on our journey!  In order to get as much exercise as possible I refused to take the train around the airport and we walked the whole way to our terminal and then walked the whole terminal up and down. After some dinner I made some final phone calls to my family before we got on the plane and then it was time to take off!

An African Assignment

Well after months of preparation and waiting we are finally in Nigeria.  We hope you enjoy learning about West Africa along with us as we enjoy our 3rd International Volunteer Assignment.  3 different assignments on 3 different continents!  I was worried about the internet here but all seems well and so hopefully we can post regular updates.  The biggest obstacle to my blogging here will be the heat I think, it wears you out and so sometimes you have time but no energy to post.  We'll do our best though.  3 months will fly by!  As always we hope to hear from you if you have time, although we know you will all be just as busy if not busier caring for things back home! :) To make it more accessible to our friends and family we have continued to make it public or "googleable" :D Feel free to show the blog to anyone or help them to find it, we just ask again that in order for our experiences not to be taken out of context that anything (text or pictures) we post not be reproduced in any way.  I'll get to work on my posts right away!