My first month!

I am SO sorry that I am now into my second month here in Nigeria and this is my first blog…I don’t even have an excuse since my evenings here are consumed with drinking coffee and watching One Tree Hill, two of our well treasured luxuries here in Ogugu. So I will try and cover all the main things that may slightly interest you about the time I have spent here so far.

It’s SO warm. Imagine being inside a volcano, beside an oven and a fire breathing dragon, eating a vindaloo curry. That is only a tiny fraction of how hot it is here. The only time we stop sweating is when we turn the generator on in the evening so we have electricity, which means we have the fans on. This is always a wonderful part of the day. Apparently rainy season begins soon, not sure how I’ll cope with that since there was a glimpse of thunder and lightning last week and I put my fingers in my ears and closed my eyes haha. So I thought I would start by talking about the weather, since that’s what people tend to talk about a lot in Northern Ireland haha.

I’m in a village called Ogugu, and it’s in Kogi state, which is in a country called Nigeria, and for the people who don’t even know what continent I am living in now, it’s called Africa. There are two other wonderful Mission Africa gappers here with me, called Mel and Will. They are both English but that’s ok because God loves us all the same. Mel and I live with a lovely lady called Asabe. She is Nigerian, from Jos, but works here in Ogugu for Mission Africa. Will lives next door in his own little house. We all get on really well; they have been so welcoming to me and made me feel really at home here.

One night a few weeks ago, Mel got up to go to the toilet at about 1.30am, and casually woke me with the sentence, ‘Lynz,I don’t mean to alarm you but there’s a small snake in the bathroom…I don’t know what to do…’ Can I just say, it wasn’t small at all. It was a snake and it was a decent enough size to scare us all silly. So we shut the bathroom door, and put a towel under the door to stop the snake from slithering out. We woke Asabe who has a MASSIVE snake phobia, and was no comfort in this situation at all. We woke Will, but he did not find the courage to try and kill the snake himself. So the next decision was to go to the Reverends house, which is next door to ours, and ask him to come and rescue us. Wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and carrying a machete (yes our Reverend-in boxer shorts, with a machete), came to the house, opened the bathroom door, the snake rapidly slithered towards the Rev, and the Rev swiftly whacked the snake with his machete until it no longer was a slithery snake.

Now I’ll tell you what work I have been doing here. My main work is with a programme called the Circle of Hope, which is a programme that works with many of the orphans here in Ogugu. Every week I visit the orphans in their schools and do bible studies with them and pray. On Saturdays we do ‘The Saturday Programme’ where the orphans come, sing songs, play games, do crafts and lots of other really fun activities. After the Saturday programme which is for the primary school orphans, we have a Circle of Hope choir for the secondary school orphans.  I’m really enjoying this work and it’s so great that the children here have these opportunities. All of the orphans that are on the Circle of Hope programme are sponsored mainly from the UK, so they are able to get their school fees paid and have food, and a little gift at Christmas etc. Many more sponsors are needed as there are so many orphans here that aren’t on the programme so when I return to the UK I will be asking you all to sponsor an orphan from Ogugu!

Mel has been running a Mums and toddlers group every Monday at 3, and I have been helping her with that since I arrived here. It’s for single mums, and it’s really chaotic, especially with all the toddlers and babies being noisy and cute, but mainly noisy. We do a bible study and craft. Sometimes we perform puppet shows which Mel and I enjoy seemingly more than the mums or the toddlers. Many of the mums weren’t able to stay at school once they had their babies, so aren’t that strong at reading or writing. So starting next week, I am going to begin doing a little English lesson with them. I am really praying that this will impact them greatly and I hope it is a success.

Another thing that I have been doing here is teaching drama lessons in a primary school called QIC. The lessons are going quite well, and I really enjoy teaching them, but some of the children are really naughty! Here in Ogugu the teachers don’t think twice about using the cane to scold the children, so it’s a real challenge to get them to settle whenever I am obviously not going to use the cane. I have been helping out Mel at a health clinic she does every other market day, and it’s really fun! Mel is training to be a doctor, so she advises many people at the clinic about their health and often gives them free medicine, as people here don’t really have money to buy such things. At clinic, Mel does the doctor things, and I write the files for her ha. It is really interesting work.

The latest thing I have done is join the church choir! It is really fun, and I will hopefully one day be as respected in the choir as Mel is, as she had a solo in church last week! There are other Mission Africa gappers in Jos, and next week they are travelling down here to Ogugu and staying for 3 weeks. The main work that we will all be doing together is going to be a week long Easter kid’s camp for over 100 children in a nearby village. It’s going to be great fun, and lovely to have more white people here with us, as I have only seen 2 other white people besides myself in the past month haha. Its great though and I’m really enjoying meeting lots of Nigerians and befriending them. There are always people from the village coming and going from the house which is really nice.

One of the women, who we know well, is called Aunty Faith, and she has invited us to her wedding at the end of April. We are going to be wearing outfits made from native cloth, and it is going to be a massive celebration over two days. We can’t wait for it!

Sorry I have written so much, I was just making up for a month of no information given! I hope you are all enjoying life wherever you are reading this from. I’m having a great time here, though I do miss everyone at home so please keep in touch because I love getting messages and hearing from you all. Please keep praying for Nigeria and all the work that is going on here. We can’t do it without God’s strength so thank you for all your prayers thus far!

Until next time, goodbye and God Bless from sunny sunny Africaaaa ♥