A Bug's Life

This post is especially for our friends that dabble in the field of Entomology.  Especially our 2 little friends who live just around the corner from us back home. You know who you are!  (We miss you boys!)

In Wyoming we enjoy a wide variety of insects.  Correction, some enjoy them.  I personally do NOT like bugs.  I'm sure they have their place, but if they think that place is in my home then they have another thing coming!  I do have a soft spot for lady bugs.  Mosquitoes, we have found, are UNIVERSALLY hated.  In Nigeria we have mosquitoes.  Around here in fact, 1 in 4 is supposed to carry Malaria.  Thankfully, we haven't seen any yet and as far as we know, we haven't received any bites.  As I haven't seen any of these disease transmitters I have no pictures of them to share with you.  If I do see one, there will not be a camera in Nigeria that will be able to decipher what it is after I'm done "seeing" it.

Besides mosquitoes, we have an abundance of ants here.  Teeny fast ants that crawl in your room on your counters and in your closet.  There are big giant ants an inch long:

Eww! 

These guys can inflict quite the nasty bite we have heard.  Thankfully I've just seen the one, and it was outside.  Gigantic Ant is nothing compared to the "acid" ant.  What is an acid ant?  Imagine a bug that if you squash it, emits an acid that will actually eat at your skin.  Sounds graphic but we have been told that people have been disfigured if they get it on their faces and will certainly at least have a scar if they do not care for it properly.  It is bright red and black.  Oh and it flies!  We think we saw one this morning at our table but we double-napkin squashed it and so far so good.

Nigeria is also full of some very interesting looking bugs such as this well dressed Green Leafy Bug (no idea of the real name, just winging it here):

It reminds me of katydids and preying mantis bugs back home.  This guy was several inches long.  Now, what is a bug to do who prefers to hang out on the branch of a tree instead of the leaves?  Well, meet the cleverly disguised Mottled Bark Camo Bug:

He is maybe 3 inches long.

Other than these exotic varieties we have encountered some (thankfully) boring spiders, skinny millipedes and some sort of sand fly/flea that leaves lovely flat red blotches on your extremities that later turn in to hard bumps that itch.  I have a few of those itchy spots right now, just hoping that they are that and not mosquito bites.  I haven't positively identified any tsteste flies by sight, but we think Matt has had a couple bites.   We did see one HUGE sort of fly with legs that extended at least 3 inches out.  Can't think of what to compare it to at the moment. 

As long as you are a responsible bug spray wearer, keep your room clean and patrol for crumbs regularly, you have a good chance of avoiding too many bugs.

Outside, there are lizards in abundance that help with the bug populations.We have seen so many more bugs here than in Myanmar.   I'm chalking it up to living in the jungle as opposed to city plus there are not many geckos either.  There are fish in the standing water ponds that keep the mosquitoes at bay and bats that feast on them at night.

Well, that's all for this creepy crawly post!  

Special Assembly Day-Part 2

We are back with part 2.  It was so nice to be able to see the demonstrations and experiences here in Africa.

This young man is 12 years old and a regular pioneer.  He  has a goal to be in special full-time service when he is old enough.  We really enjoyed his experience.

One thing we appreciate here is that people speak English.  However, we hadn't realized that even though we speak the same language, because of our culture and backgrounds, we can speak the same language but the thought patterns are still different.  It's still quite a foreign way of thinking and everything is still new to us here.

We also love seeing people in their pristine outfits:

One of our beautiful Nigerian sisters from Bethel

I could totally get on board with these headdresses.  Can you IMAGINE how much time I would save on my hair? Never a bad hair day with these colorful headwraps!  It would be so handy to just twist one of these on and go.  PLUS during the day as my hair grows along with the temperature and humidity, you would never see it, the headwrap would come to the rescue.  Every morning as I enter the dining room I sigh, knowing that my frizzy hair is just on display for all to see! :-D  I wear a bandanna to work but its really not the same at all.

We realize most of you are dealing with extreme cold at the moment so I'm sorry to talk about the heat. However, I'm going to talk about it some.  It was difficult to deal with but we had come prepared with lots of water and we made it!  It's amazing how hot it is.  I literally could barely stand to have even my Bible on my lap it was so hot.  Favor fell asleep in the afternoon and was leaning on me and I had to gently adjust her so she wasn't on me.  I felt bad because I love kids but it was a self preservation kind of thing.  I really at a few points kind of wondered if I could make it, but then I reminded myself that there was nowhere else to go that was not hot so I had to stay put.  On the plus side, the humidity means our skin isn't chapped.  My hands look younger and don't crack or hurt.

Something we noticed as we came in was that the street is named Jehovah Witness Road:

If you zoom in on this picture you can see even another church has Jehovahs Witness Road as it's address:)

The Assembly Hall was there first so they got to pick the name!

The ride home was hot but we enjoyed the scenery:

Look, cows!  I know we are from ranching and farming country but even still, these are exotic African cows!

To cool down we went for a swim after we got back.  Later we fell asleep early, the heat really wears you out.

Since our Special Assembly Day in Wyoming will be held while we are here, we were very glad to have the chance to go here.  It was a fantastic day, and we feel privileged to have been able to go to an African assembly that we could understand!

Special Assembly Day-Part 1

Saturday the 8th was our Special Assembly Day.  We were excited and I have to admit, I was a little nervous about my first non-climate controlled African assembly.  We were able to find our bus to travel to Benin City Assembly Hall. If I had one word to describe this country I would say "red," since the earth is red and it turns everything red that touches it.  Give me two words and I would say "red" and "hectic."  It's a busy place and my mind has not adapted to it yet.  Everyone is going a different way and at a different pace. It's wonderful when you pull into one of our properties though.  The Assembly Hall is an oasis in the middle of the busy city. It's an open air assembly hall and has three wings that face towards the stage.

View of the central wing.

 We had been tipped off to the best side to sit on. (So as to avoid the afternoon sun.  Seriously very important.)  And a kind sister had lent us some cushions to sit on. Also, very important.  I don't know if you will remember from our last adventure in Asia, but I was delighted that everything was my size.  In Africa it's sooo not that way.  My legs dangled from our wooden benches.  Oh well!   

How the rows look.  See the baby being "packed" on the sister in blue?

Another tip we received was where the western style toilet was located.  YAY!  Seriously guys.  This is the sort of thing that can absolutely make your day a little better.  

As oebo (white) we are mini-celebrities around here and many have children that will come and sit with them, maybe then know them already, maybe they don't.  A young girl named Favor adopted us for the day.

Brother Bolaji (my co-worker in the warehouse), me and Favor

She was so quiet I had a difficult time understanding her, but she was very well-behaved.  At lunch time we went and sat on the grass to eat.

SHADE!

After everyone eats, some rest:

and some play:

After all the playing some need a bath!

It was so hot that day, these kids were delighted to cool off!

The kids here are CUTE!  

I'm going to stop this post here, more pictures of our day to come!

Ekoshea-Well Done

Another Yoruba word I learned during our first week is Ekoshea, which is is "well done" in Yoruba.  Again, no idea of spelling.  It sounds like Echo-shay.  It's a common greeting.  Yoruba people will say it to others in their language and others tell us in English, "well done".  It's nice to hear during the day. :)

Wednesday and Thursday flew by.  We had a couple over after lunch each day to get to know them a little better.  Also we needed help eating those cookies I made Tuesday.  No weight will be lost here if I keep making cookies!  Matt's helper on the Baler project is a brother named Chinedu.  Matt and Chindedu get along well  and he is a good worker.  He has been trying to learn English expressions and will have new ones almost each day for Matt. Last week's were "Easy peasy lemon squeezy" and "Okey dokey."

Thusday evening we didn't have meeting due to an upcoming Assembly.  So Matt and I went to play tennis.  Neither of us deserved an Ekoshea after that.  At least we got our exercise running after the ball that we didn't often hit! :)

Friday morning was very humid and not too hot.  Someone wrote this on a window:

Hope you can see it, it says "TOO COLD"

Too cold?  I think not!!  I guess they haven't been to Wyoming in February!  We got off work early on Friday since we work extra for our meeting times off.  Since we didn't take our time on Thursday, we saved it for Friday.  I went to the pool!  Then we had dinner and more pool time.  In the evening there was a gathering around the pool for a goodbye for a couple that's leaving this week.  I would have liked to take pictures but evening pictures are not easy and I don't have that mastered.  We had a great time and stayed until the extreme hour of 10 PM! It felt so late to me!

The next day was the assembly.  We got some good pictures that we will share next time!

Ekaro, Good Morning!

Our first full week was off to a bit of a rocky start because after going to bed early to make sure that I got my rest I woke up at 4 and couldn't go back to sleep. GRR.  Monday morning is safety meeting, and the first Monday of the month is the whole group together so you can't be late.  We tried to drink enough water and we are glad that we both have a place to refill our water bottles that is very close to our work areas.  In the evening we have Bethel Family Watchtower study.   We enjoy the singing very much.  They sing with great feeling here. The brother who conducted was wearing a traditional African outfit and looked impressive.

Some mornings when you wake up there is a beautiful mist/fog. Tuesday morning was a misty morning. I love that, walking to and from morning worship in the early morning mist.  It feels so jungley.  (My new word for the day.)

See what I mean? Practically paradise!

At work Tuesday my job was to measure and roll offcuts of wire.  It's very dirty work.  I was covered in red dust!  The mist lightens up mid morning and then it's pretty much just plain hot.  So I was glad when my overseer taught me to change ballasts in some lights!  (This means working in front of a FAN!)

Yay! It works.  Do you notice the fan behind me?? It's my favorite piece of equipment in the warehouse.

I started to learn some Yoruba words during this week too.  I'll share some as we go.  My first Yoruba word was Ekaro.  I have no idea how to spell these words, I'm just going with how it sounds to me.  It is pronounced Eh-car-oh.  It means good morning.  It's nice to know some greeting words because in Nigeria it's very important to greet people.   In the evening Matt went to play hockey.  I made croutons and cookies while he was gone.  He brought back a hockey stick and so that means he has to go the next week!:)

First Sunday

Sunday we slept in again and had brunch before meeting.  At one thirty we met outside to wait for our bus and happened to meet Charlie.  Our friends who have been here will remember Charlie.  The rest of you will meet him in good time.:)  We enjoyed seeing village life on the way to and from the Kingdom Hall.  I wanted to take more pictures but I'm trying to be cautious and take them discreetly.  (If you read between the lines you will see the word "sneaky.")  Anyways, here is one for you:

The round structure in the foreground is their water storage.  If you click the picture and enlarge it you will see a complicated gutter system leading to it.  When it rains they direct the water into the storage container.

The village area is busy.  It's always nice to see the lovely Kingdom Hall and grounds.  Everything is neat and orderly.  It is an absolute contrast to the area around it.

The Front

The Back

The Entrance, complete with wonderful new friends!

The attendance was 171 for the meeting, which we were totally impressed with.  They said that has actually reduced from about 250 in the past.  The reason for that is that the contractors that are working at Bethel are all Witnesses and so many were in the area and attending at the local halls.  As the work has reduced, they have slowly reduced the amount of personnel and so many are returning home.  At least half in attendance were children and many were not there with parents.  Many young children attend meetings and study here in Nigeria without their parents and later become Witnesses.  It is so beautiful to see.  One young man sat with us and was totally attentive.   Looked up every scripture and followed along perfectly.  With 171 in attendance you are doing well to squeeze in one comment!

Our meeting time is 2pm which is a little difficult because it is hot.  However, they do have fans so as long as you are rested you probably won't fall asleep during the meeting.  We were rested so we made it!  After meeting we Skyped for a few minutes, than ate dinner and went swimming again.  After that we went to the sauna.   Why would you go to the sauna in Africa in HOT season?  Peer pressure. Pure peer pressure. Other people were doing it so we did it too.  It's a really nice sauna with the plunge pool inside.  At first I wanted to leave, but then you get used to it and after you feel really nice and clean.  And we enjoyed visiting with the brothers we were there with.  Some have called it the Oebo oven.  Oebe means white person. I'm not sure if I am spelling it correctly or not. You pronounce it Oh-ee-bo.

Then it was time to get ready for our first full week of work!

First Saturday

On our first weekend (which by now is LAST weekend) catching up on sleep was the number one priority.  Saturday we slept almost until noon.  After we ate brunch we went out to explore a little bit.  We picked up some fruit that had fallen from the trees.  They have so many fruit trees here! It is so fun to be able to pick it for ourselves! There is a garden area for the International workers near the Bex Office, so I went to check that out:

We spotted an old piano in a room now being used for storage and I played that for awhile.  It's really out of tune, but that way I had an excuse if not everything sounded quite right! :D (And it did not sound quite right as I'm out of practice as much as that piano is out of tune!! Almost anyway.)

In that same building there is a depiction of what the branch expansion is planned to look like.  As it is mostly done, this is pretty close to what we see here now.  I thought you might like to see it:

Our room is in the orangish building in the upper part of the picture that has 4 sections. We live in the second section from the left facing the trees and pond. Can't see the pond from our room however.

This isn't the whole grounds and you can't see the recreational area here, but you can see the work that was done and all the essential buildings.  Everything with a bright red roof is new or remodeled.  As you can see it has been a MASSIVE project.  If you click on the picture you might be able to see more details.  The Bethel here is amazing.  I would venture to say that it is the most peaceful and beautiful area in all of Nigeria.  We love it here.

 After that we went swimming, and then we did some laundry.   Later on that night we went to an International Servant couple's room for dinner.  They are from Germany but have been serving in Africa for many years.  She made pasta by hand and baked it with cheese and all sorts of goodness.  I didn't want to stop eating!  After dinner they had dessert of baked banana's with chocolate and Amarula.  (I could barely eat it since I was such a pig about dinner.)  You wouldn't think that it could be so good, but believe me, it is!  We are going to try it ourselves tonight I think.

Next post will be about our first meeting in Nigeria!

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.