"Don't throw me bad juju"

Abuja, Nigeria:

It’s hard to believe my time in Nigeria is already halfway over.  Ten days seems a lot longer on paper and in the mind than in actual living.

It’s late in the evening, and I look in the mirror as I’m about to wash my face, and I stop for a minute, and I realize, I’m looking at the best version of myself.  I don’t remember the last time I had five days where I was working and actually felt like I was working on something, where I was asking questions about a place because I needed to know, or the last time I tasted a bowl of soup so spicy my nose wouldn’t stop running for two hours. 

My face is tired.  My hair is frizzy.  My eyeliner has run a little too far from my lower eyelid.  I feel all the kinds of full I usually can’t stand: too much food, too much feeling.  But it’s one of the first times in a while where I look at myself in the mirror and actually think I look beautiful.

I thrive in places where I am lost.  When I don’t understand half of what is being said around me, I laugh at the tone and the body language.  When eyes bore into my white skin because it’s the only kind like it for miles, I focus on the beautiful colors around me: in the clothes, in the market, in the flowers on the street, in the surprising shades of green throughout the city.  When I don’t know what food to order, I defer to those who do, and discover that I have found a new favorite dish.  Someone once told me while I was in India that the country made me glow.  The look in the mirror tonight is a similar glow; the glow of being somewhere new.

Abuja is a strange city for a developing country, or for anywhere for that matter.  It’s full of cars, not pedestrians.  It’s incredibly expensive.  There doesn’t seem to be a lot to do in terms of a social life.  I can’t figure out if the city was planned this way, or just haphazardly thrown together.  And on the surface, everything seems completely functional, until you realize the hotel guard dogs are not on a leash, and those giant German Shepherds really want your and your friend’s pepper chicken. 

Yet, Abuja fascinates me like all other new places I’ve been to.  I am struck by the small similarities that still exist between the African American population and what I’ve seen of the West African (read: food).  I like noticing how the earth can be so red and the bushes so incredibly bright green.  And I love looking at the National Mosque at night, watching its beautiful gold dome against the setting sun.

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t call Abuja a physically beautiful city.  What I would say though, is the people I have been sent here to work with are lovely, expressed by their generous surprise of a cake and a song on Thursday for my 24th birthday (unfortunately I can’t upload a photo here).

After five more days in Nigeria, I head to Ghana for a little fun, and then back to DC to the 4th of July (my favorite DC holiday) and unpacking my new house and to work.  I will try to write again while I’m here, but if I cannot—due to failed internet or the words just won’t come—know that even though some days are hard, I am glad to have my feet planted back on African soil, and I am glowing.