Saharan dust that turns the air a shade of orange and covers everything (including the inside of your lungs) in a thick layer of grit. And the sunsets are amazing.
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Just as we were about to start, Andrew appeared on the other side of the fence, waxing wroth. Why had we broken into his field, who did we think we were, we had no permission to play there etc.,...
You move to a country like Nigeria, and you instantly don’t want to conform to, or believe any of the stereotypes that your pinko-lefty-post-colonial-post-modern-feminist-queory-post-structuralist...
I never did do the conference in the end. I’ve spent most of the last week, including all of the weekend, feeling rough as hell. Like having bad flu but without much in the way of a...
'she was overtaken with flouncy teenage indignation'. DR meets the students. The students are turning out to be the usual mix of committed, disinterested, pleasant, arrogant and outright...
'the senators asked to vote on this bill must have been mystified', DR reports on the fight to make homosexuality in Nigeria even more illegal. I read an interesting story the other...
'when she walked out she did so limping heavily and ostentatiously, when she’d walked in not limping at all'. Things get a bit 'domestic' in Nigeria. In other news, Julius has...
Last week I almost got arrested. Actually, that’s not quite true. It would be more accurate to say that I drove a policeman around for about half an hour asking him to arrest me...
Our resident screamer has been upping the ante of late and I heard a live performance for the first time the other night. George had just finished moving to the third bedroom (a saga in itself,...
Trebuchet's Academic in Africa is amazed by the talents of Nigeria's ambulatory merchants and sedentary guardsmen. Plus nostalgic reflection on Wine Gums. There are a huge number of things...
Second week of term, and we start to acclimatise ourselves to having all of these damn students around. Although the first intake (ie. the 17 that have already done one term) have been pissing...
I’d like to share a story with you. It comes from an online newspaper here. Suspected ritualists on Tuesday in Lagos beheaded an unidentified man and chopped off his manhood. Residents of...
The first week of term has arrived, and with it about 100 students. Frankly, this is a bit of a shock to the system. And not just mine, the whole delicate ecology of the university is...
I have missed being here, and it is good to be back. I think I have missed the life and the people rather than the place itself though. The familiarity which has made it so easy to settle...
It is both a curse and a blessing that we don’t know what other people think of us. I am much better than I used to be, but I know that I still spend much of my time in conversation with an...
The rage has been building. For the last few days I have been incapable of driving here without the stupidity of it all getting to me. This morning, for example, I was genuinely nearly...
“So who would win, a man who knew kung fu, or an adult male chimp?” “The chimp would kill you.” “Even if the man knew kung fu?” “It would not matter if he...
For the last six weeks I have lived in Nigeria as an illegal immigrant. My visa (which I don’t think ever technically allowed me to work here anyway) expired on the 6th of June, and no...
Deprived of cultural stimuli we appreciate every cultural artefact in a much more intense way. Saturated with cultural stimuli that intensity, in one sense, is diminished. That’s not to...
News of my atheism seems to have spread. I’ve not exactly been evangelical about it – in fact I’ve barely mentioned it. But when a colleague with whom I have never even...
“The matriculation ceremony really isn’t about the students,” David said, and boy, was he right. The whole thing took around 3 hours and of that their part took about two and...
Last Saturday I was supposed to hand out fliers for my university to students taking their JAMB tests. This is the Nigerian equivalent of SATs, and you have to take it to get into college....
Ill again. After 2 and a half months I hadn’t been sick once, and now it’s twice in two weeks. This time I think it’s a mixture of something I ate and the fact that I got eaten...
We are having a matriculation ceremony on Thursday, and suddenly the university is a hive of activity. I swear more has been done in the last week than in the previous two months. Most if it is...
When strange rituals become rules, and rules become superstition. I have a list in my head of things that make a good man. The ability to play a good F chord, all frets barred, no muted...
The university hostels back on to a slum. This is in the “Life Camp” area of Abuja. I have no idea why it’s called that, but apparently it’s where all the workers...
An academic navigates the great and small encounters of Ex-Pat life in Nigeria. Yesterday, I loaned my car to Joy and Julius. She said it was her birthday, and it seemed like a good idea at the...
The university is open, and the experience has been, somewhat predictably, a mixture of the shambolic, the absurd, the vaguely promising and the outright perplexing. We have a programme for the...
eith and I have decided that the problem with Nigeria is the finish. Or, as Peter would put it, the last ten percent. Now, I (to borrow from Said) am temperamentally and philosophically opposed to...
