Boxing Day Cultural Carnival

So on boxing day rather than having leftovers from yesterday’s roast dinner we headed down to see the cultural carnival. This is where every local government area in Cross River State plus some of the national states in Nigeria parade along the street in traditional outfits displaying traditional music and dance. It was something both myself and Leanne had really been looking forward to! So we were up relatively early and headed to Mary Slessor Avenue, where there was a judges station. The best display would be awarded first place, so by the judging station is the best place to watch the dancing! We had a great view in the shade from the street! We were all interviewed for the local television channel, so I’m probably even more famous now than before! We even managed to sneak into the press area to get some even better photos and view of the displays. It was a great few hours and a really nice way to see more of the traditions of Nigerian culture. We were all hot and exhausted after, so headed for a relaxing swim at Axari afterwards! An alternative but great boxing day! 

Leanne and Alan being interviewed for TV!

Love the bum wiggling here!

Bakasi sword dancers

The pride and passion of Nigeria

Love the accessories!

Christmas Day!!!

The temperature was 30 degrees, so it took some convincing for me to believe it really was Christmas day! But having a parcel to open from the very lovely Jackie Twitchett and Lerryn Gray helped me believe that santa really was around! I had a great little haul of Christmas gifts, I can make myself a nice cup of tea now thanks to Jackie and have great memories of the Grays to look at whilst planning my time here! Thanks guys! I hope the other parcels arrive shortly….

Then the celebrations began, we decorated the house and played Christmas tunes - which mainly referred to snow and cold weather we discovered! 

Food prep then began in full swing, we had 17 people to cater for! Luckily we’d divided up responsibilities, so we had a great feast of stew, chapatti, chuckalucka, chicken, moi-moi, rice and potatoes – food from around the world! 

Our christmas feast!

My christmas food - yum!!

Stacey and I were responsible for desert, so we had healthy fruit along with rice crispy cakes! The cakes had to be worth the 3 burns Stacey and I got trying to melt the dairy milk – we discovered that chocolate sold in Africa has an anti-melting ingredient, not useful when trying to make rice crispy cakes……. Nikki made a lovely lemon pie which was a great addition to the desert table (probably nicer than our rice crispy cakes to be honest). 

Thanks to Jackie we had crackers to pull, which was the first time some of our African and American friends has experienced Christmas crackers! And they came with the usual hats and awful jokes! 

The christmas crackers!

Our crazy christmas hats!

Leanne enjoying christmas!!

More friends popped by in the afternoon, which was lovely and I got to see Jack open his Christmas present via skype! I was very jealous of his dinner, he seems to have taken my place in the family by eating all the Yorkshire puddings!

The day was lovely, lots of fun, chat, laughter and games. Was exhausted by 11pm though and so full of food – slept so well! Was glad to have a fun Christmas and not to feel too homesick – would have loved to go home for 24 hours and see family, open presents and eat roast dinner though!

Biker's Day!

There is so much happening in Calabar for December and one of the events we went to was the Tinapa Biker’s Day – mainly because my friends Freddy, Icheneye, Gene and Raymond were part of the bike display! We had great fun watching the bikes zooming around and the stunts that the guest Ghanaian bikers could do – one called Survivor in particular was crazy! Then we rounded the day off with a bike ride ourselves – was great fun and I actually found myself enjoying being on a bike which I never expected to feel! Nigeria is making me braver! 

Lovely Leanne riding a bike with Gene: 

Crazy Survivor!

The converted biker chicks! 

GPI Staff retreat and my birthday!!!

I was lucky enough to be invited along to participate and lead some sessions at the GPI staff retreat, so on 18^th December we all packed up and headed off to Uyo in the neighbouring state for 3 nights. We had a packed schedule which included reflecting on the year’s performance, planning for 2013 and I had my very own session on Organisational Development to give. It was a great 3 days, with lots of strengths identified and plans made. The OD session went really well, GPI seem to sign up to the process and the work that needs to be done, and I had several volunteers for the OD committee which was a positive sign. I facilitated with just flipchart paper and pens – low tech is definitely needed here! Glad I adopt the pen and post-it approach back home as it gave me lots of experience for here!  Lots of the discussions help with the OD process and it was a great start for the work I really need to get stuck into for 2013. So all of you who think I never work – think again!

But of course we had a lovely afternoon off which co-incided with my 35^th (can’t believe I’m that old) birthday! We went on an excursion to Ibeno beach. Following an interesting journey in an old bus and lots of wrong turns, we finally arrived at the beach in time for some photos and a birthday cake! I felt like a total guest of honor as I cut my cake, had happy birthday sung to me and then was taught how to dance Azuntu and Atigy! It was a huge and lovely cake too! A really lovely and novel way to celebrate my birthday – no snow this year to get in the way of my plans! Then thanks to the power in the hotel I could also skype my wonderful parents, which ended my day perfectly!