Had a lovely weekend, went to the Drill Ranch on Saturday to
see the Drill monkeys and to try and reserve some accommodation up in their
forest – Affi Mountain for Christmas. The monkeys are an endangered species and
are only found on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. The ranch is run by
an American NGO called Pandrillus and they are breeding the Drill Monkey with
the hope to release a group back into the wild shortly. Affi is quite booked up
so am crossing my fingers that we manage to get a spot there over Christmas!
Watched lots of football on Saturday – all the premiership
matches are shown here and I can always find someone to accompany me to watch
an Arsenal match!! A lot of Nigerian’s support Chelsea as they have 2 Nigerian
players but there are lots of Arsenal and Man U fans too. Thankfully not too many
Tottenham fans so it was a celebratory environment when we beat them 5-2! Then
I experienced my first Nigerian nightclub – went out with our neighbour Phillip
and two other VSO volunteers based here in Calabar, Michael and Paul. We met a
few other people too, it’s so easy to make friends – I could go out every night
if I wanted / could afford to! The music was good and we danced the night away
til 3am!
Woke up on Sunday to see my ceiling fan moving – we had
power!!!!!!! A momentous moment, so I jumped out of bed to charge all my
electrical appliances and had made the most of the power by watching the boat
that rocked (a funny movie) with Leanne.
In the afternoon I
went into work to join my group for this week – silvers. I’d given them an
assignment to think of questions they wanted to ask me and things they wanted
to know about the UK, and boy did they think of lots of questions. I was
grilled on why I wasn’t married and had babies, what food we eat, what the
weather was like, what clothes we wore and on the legal system! I was very
proud of the girls! After my interrogation we had a lesson on human sexuality
and the changes to our body and lifestyle over the years. Apparently 31-40 is
when you start to get wrinkled skin, grey hair, become a grandmother, get ill
more often, have backpain, and maybe early menopause – so lots to look forward
to (though pretty sure the grandmother thing is off the cards!). No one here
believes I’m turning 35 next month anyway, so I’m thinking of losing 10 years
and going back to being 25! Can’t believe my birthday and Christmas is almost
here……..
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