Africa to Asia....

Well, hello from Kuala Lumpar! Ok, not exactly KL just yet, but I will be there tomorrow for the next 3 days, as I have been sent here for some meetings. So, currently I am sitting in a beautiful boutique hotel in Singapore with fast internet and actual 24 hour electricity supply!!!...although I am only here for another 6 or 7 hours before I have to catch my morning flight to KL, and due to the jet lag, it doesn’t look like I will be sleeping, hence why I am writing now in the middle of the night! I haven’t been back to Singapore in a few years, but it is nice to be in a place where you can walk around at night without much concern for personal safety. This was relatively last minute, as I was not told about the meetings in KL until Thursday while I was still on mission…so had to hurry back to Abuja to pack and leave yet again…I wish I had more time here as I really need a new laptop, as my personal one is getting a little slow, but it will do for now I guess! I am told that I will be back to KL in a couple of months, so maybe I can plan to stay for a day or two in Singapore again. I will say one thing, I flew over on Qatar Airways through Doha, Qatar, and it is an incredible airline, with 5 star service, even in economy! And Doha looks like a really nice place to spend some time, so will have to come back for sure!

This whole last week has been an adventure, as I was up north in Nigeria in the Maiduguri state (Nigeria is like the US, in that the country is broken into 37 states), so we traveled through 5 to get up here, on the border between Chad and Cameroon on a polio mission…this is basically the last place in Nigeria before it hits Niger and the Sahara Desert so you can imagine just how hot it gets, although right now is rainy season (even though they only get about 60mm of rain a year) but it really cold in the nights. We (myself, and 2 others from my office and our driver) visited Local Government Areas (LGAs) which are basically where local governments have set up housing (mud huts actually) for people to live…based on the conditions that they live in, it becomes a lot more understandable why polio is still a huge problem, and actually getting worse, as it is understandable that yellow fever, measles and malaria is also expanding. They have no drainage system as it is really flat, so when it does rain it just accumulates into these big holes of water, breeding malaria infested mosquitos…so fingers crossed I don’t get it, although I did get bitten quite a few times…the mosquito nets for sleeping just have so many holes in them… While we were there, 2 new cases of polio were discovered in areas that have not actually had polio in over 4 years, so not good…however this actually isn’t true…what we are finding during these missions is that the health care workers that we use to go into the villages haven’t really been doing it, and have really just been pretending to pick up samples for testing, but taking the money for what they are supposed to be doing. Nigeria just had their national election last year, so there is a lot of money, and some commitment from these new governments to support the initiative, however they aren’t doing enough…the more you travel here, you really do see that Nigeria is a very wealthy country, with a lot of resources, however, those who really need them don’t have any access to them. As mentioned in the last blog entry, dealing with men is an interesting endeavour here, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be…I was actually able to speak on my own behalf, however whenever they actually had questions or comments they were always asked to the men I was traveling with, and not to me, but I was still able to answer. I only had to wear a full head covering in the field, but in meetings, I just had to cover the shoulders down, so not too big a deal…although it does get really warm outside in full covering! I also don’t have as many photos as I would have liked to take, as we were asked not to take photos in the villages, but still got some decent shots, which I will add in due course (most likely once I am back from this next week of circling Asia and Africa)! Fortunately, in this whole mission up north, we had no bad experiences, and this included actual good road conditions..we had one close call, but our driver Cola (very common name here) saw a bit of a commotion happening ahead on one of the small roads we were driving on, and did not think it safe to continue. So, he pulled a bit of a manueuvre and turned us around…we read in the paper the next day that the driver in the one of the cars just ahead of us was shot and killed by the gangs that were waiting ahead as he tried to outrun them. Basically, this is a fairly common thing up here, as the rebels cross over from Chad or Cameroon trying to get whatever they can from those who choose to drive up there…it was the middle of the day, so really hard to imagine, and really too bad, but good thing for Cola…he has been doing this for 20 years and is from here, so he knows what to expect everywhere! But we were fine, and the 12 hour road trip each way was actually really nice. We got to see a lot of the country, and it really is beautiful as everything is just so green, so really pretty.

I will be back in Nigeria on Thursday as I have more meetings in the south of Nigeria until next weekend…so lots of moving around! But, after that, as far as I know, I am staying in Abuja for a little bit…until a meeting in mid September in Botswana! I am still in the hotel, as not enough time to search for a flat, but I am beginning to accept the fact that I may just be living in the Hilton for the next 10 months, and it really isn’t all that bad!

I hope you are all well…I will get the photos downloaded over the next couple of weeks and update my photos for everyone to see.