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Chris, thank you for "Sometimes WAWA was a good thing"

Your comment set my mind spinning.

One of the things I had to cope with in Nigeria was a quickly growing sense of internal cynicism.  "If something appears to make sense today, just wait, you will eventually discover it doesn't - doesn't either."  How to deal with the sense of futility...

'Slice of life':  I was sitting at the table in the house at my school playing cards with Michael.  Michael was an ex-pat, not PCV.  We enjoyed the card game sent by my parents.  The electricity was off - which probably means it was a break in term time and the Headmaster didn't have the electrical plant going. The room and table were lit by a kerosene lamp.  A battery driven portable radio was on at the far end of the table.

At some point we heard the silken voice of the announcer: "The World Service of the BBC."  I can't recall exactly the exact words, we were told Biafra had declared itself independent from the rest of Nigeria.  

I remember it clearly.  Michael and I stopped to listen.  A brief pause... Nothing seemed to be different.  Both of us shrugged and one of us said, "Whose deal?"

It was as though the independence, or announcement of the independence, was another "something else" to be thrown on top of the already enormous pile of "something else".  

The kerosene lamp lit us, the radio carried on, one of us dealt the next hand...  and life sort of went on.

How to deal with what you describe as "WAWA", how to deal with my sense of cynicism?  My cynicism was with me when I left Nigeria.  I had no idea how to deal with it.  I still don't.

Bill


==Reply from Chris==
I sent Bill an email.  The short version is that I was extremely lucky being surrounded with the Nigerians I worked with and it was a good fit with my personality.  One of my group spent a week with me. At the end, he said we had done more things in a week than he could imagine doing in months. I was not stuck in a school without transport.  My house was in the small city of Ikot Ekpene, I don't think I ever played cards at night, but I did read.  This was not a typical experience, I wanted to extend my tour.

Then I went from the Light to the Dark Side after Ikot Ekpene. The PC African desk head, said that Somalia was a tough place. "Hey, I just came out of Biafra, roadblocks, detained once as a "strange face" and had literally stopped over 60 angry men waiving machetes from hurting each other in a land dispute.  How tough could it be?"  Since this is a postcard, let me say it was rough.

How many PCVs left Nigeria before their tour was up, 5% tops? There were 100 PCVs in Somalia and something like 40% could not finish their tour.  Peace Corp training could not prepare anyone for that cultural environment.  I recognized that few Somalia PCVs, had found their Ikot Ekpene's. I didn't.  The only reason I survived a year plus, was that I left rural developement and became a roadie for "The Many Mushrooms", a PCV rock and roll band for the last 6 months of my tour. I got to sit at the Lido in Mog listening to people play tunes.   It was not playing cards, but it was pretty close. "John Smith left yesterday, medically unfit. Want another beer?"  

I still have my humor, although my honor is a little ragged around the edges.   --[[User:Rcollman|Chris C.]] 21:04, 3 January 2008 (EST)