November in Nigeria

I arrived in Nigeria about 10 days ago. I got into Abuja the evening of 10 November. Up until the 1980’s, the capital of Nigeria was Lagos. But as that city is already huge, overcrowded, and located in the southwest corner of the country, it was decided to create a new capital (like Canberra Australia or Brazilia, Brazil) in the center of the country. So Abuja is a very new city with good roads and a construction explosion everywhere. This is where I will be based for the next year. All of the expatriates coming into Nigeria pass through here. Since we have 2 surgical programs in the country there is a huge turnover – surgeons and anesthetists typically go on missions during their vacations and thus only stay between 2 and 6 weeks. As a consequence, our house is HUGE – it kind of looks like a mansion from the outside, although the details of the interior are pretty simple. It is a duplex, with our Head of Mission, his wife and daughter in one house, and 4 permanent staff in the other, with people passing through and other visitors spread through the other rooms in both houses.

I stayed 1 day in Abuja and then flew south to Port Harcourt. There is a new administrator in this program and, as the person whom I am replacing in Abuja doesn’t leave before mid-December, I came down to help her get started before starting my own work. I will be here until the 27 November. For me, this is great. I get to see and understand our biggest program in the country before getting into the coordination work.

The main activity in Port Harcourt is surgery, and I spent 2-3 hours in the operating theatre yesterday, watching them repair a bad leg injury. I was right next to the head of the guy being operated on. He was under a spinal tap, so he was conscious – I even talked to him a couple of times. At the same time, I could see his leg, open about 8 inches with the skin and muscles spread apart about 5 inches in the middle to expose the bones. (He, of course, could not see this because of a curtain cutting off his vision of the operation.) The 2 orthopedic surgeons had a tough time setting the bone back into place because it had already started to heal in the wrong position. Then they put 4 screws into the bone and sewed back 4 layers of muscle, fat tissue and skin. I wasn’t sure how I would react to seeing the open wound and all the blood. At the beginning, I had to sit down on my stool a couple of times because I felt faint. But after about 30 minutes I was used to it. By the time they got to using the power drill for the screw holes I had no problems at all.

Port Harcourt is a very lively city, more so than Abuja. We have a limited area in which we can circulate in the city, but there are still some things we can do on the weekends. Last Sunday here was phenomenal. Sunday morning one of the surgeons made pancakes for the 14 people in the house. Then we were invited to lunch in a swanky chinese restaurant by the owner. After returning to the house, I went with the new Field Coordinator to explore the walking routes we are allowed to take. The limit of one of the routes brought us to a hotel/restaurant were we had a beer by the pool, returning home as required when on foot before sunset, around 6:30pm. Then most of us went out to an outside bar close to the house which has a live band every Sunday evening. The music was great and I danced all evening.

After returning to Abuja I will have a couple of days for a meeting between the current finance and human resources coordinator, a person doing some special human resources projects and me to get the conclusions of the human resources projects before that person leaves on the 30 November. Then I will tour our remaining 2 permanent projects in the north of the country before really starting my handover with my predecessor. Around the middle of December, Nathalia will leave and I will officially be in charge of finances and human resources. For the moment, I am on a contract here for 1 year, but I cannot really see myself returning to a very cold Europe in November – I will probably extend until March or April 2012 if all goes well.