another day, another problem in Nigeria!

So, more adventures in this wonderful country of Nigeria!

We were on mission just a few hours north of Abuja, in a really nice area called Jos. We had just started a campaign to immunize kids against polio, measles and hand out malaria nets. Everything was going great…we had just taken a little side trip to visit the farm where I get all my organic fruit and veggies delivered from and met the people who run it, when they warned about some problems happening in the village below. Jos was having their elections on Thursday, and while in many areas these things go rather smoothly, Jos is a little different as it is not the most religious tolerant city. Mainly a Christian state, however as the north is predominantly Muslim, they are trying to take over all Northern states and make them Muslim…on this day they elected a Christian leader in this local government area, where it had been predicted (I.e., set up) for a Muslim to win…well, for whatever reason a Muslim did not win, and a Christian was elected…so basically, all hell broke loose. It started out rather innocently, just some verbal arguing, workers at the farm started to come and see us and ask what was going on, and at this point we really had to clue… but very quickly we started to see a lot of smoke not too far ahead of us…the Muslims were setting fire to garbage, houses and cars in the Christian areas, and to retaliate the Christians were doing the same in the Muslim areas..but then from what we hear, things went really wrong…2 muslims were razzing a church and a few of the local boys from the neighbourhood (Christians) were trying to defend their church…well, they were shot and killed,a s was the pastor of the church…so much for peaceful demonstrations….from the information we were getting via text message (from the Deputy Police Officer), all roads in and out of Jos were now being road blocked, and because we were in a marked UN vehicle, there were chances there could be problems, so we were told to go to the Military barracks and take cover, until we could be guaranteed safe movement out of the state…this was also made difficult by the fact that we had a muslim driver with us, who did not feel safe driving us there, nor did he want to enter the barracks (as the soldiers are primarily Christians)…I may be sounding as if this was really no big deal, but all of this was happening over a 4 hour period, and there was utter confusion at different points…our only communication was with our Abuja base (4 hours away) who could not get a clear idea of what was going on…the more time passed, the more things got shut down (they shut down all telecommunications, so our mobile phones were not really working), and even our high frequency radios in the car were compromised! At no time did I actually think we were in any real danger, but knowing that we were in the same area where there was active gunfire on other human beings just because of a silly election (that really in the scheme of things does not mean much – it is of course always about the money here). We finally made it to the barracks and it was a very odd sensation being the only female and hundreds of men just sitting around staring at you, I at least was with Thomas, another white guy (that is our WHO polio photographer based in Geneva), who has become a good friend during my time here, and he has lived and worked in Pakistan and Iraq, so he was pretty comfortable throughout the situation! We made it back to Abuja safe and sound yesterday evening, after a full day of just sitting in the army barracks being stared at, and we decided to go out for a few (or a lot) of beers! The update on the situation is that the violence is still ongoing, we have evacuated all staff from the area to Abuja, and there are over 80 people dead in the area, and it is not foreseen for the violence to end…the problem is that this is an ongoing battle going on for decades, and usually it is left to just sort itself out, so I can’t imagine how many more people are going to lose their life for this, but those who die, are said to die for a cause “martyrdom”…crazy shit is all I can say!

This will never come to Abuja, thankfully, as the military would not hesitate to just shoot and kill anyone who caused any problems! Nice to at least be in the capital city, where all we really have to worry about are house invasions and car jackings!

God bless Nigeria!