Omnibus

Today has been a day of goodbyes; it was my last day at the eye clinic, and some of my friends and two of my roommates left school today. So, as always, upon saying goodbye to the people and places I’ve gotten to know so well, I’ve been looking back on my time here, and I realized there are some things I haven’t shared with you. So this post will be an amalgamation of all those things I’ve forgotten to tell you before.

I think particularly that the eye clinic has been such a huge part of my experience here, and I haven’t shared anything about it with you since those first couple of days. The eye clinic has proven to be one of the very best experiences of my entire life. I have come a long way since that first post about the clinic. I’ve made really good friends there, most especially Hadiza, Sam, Simon, Linus, Funmi, Blessing, Salisu, and Emannuel. The staff there really took me under their collective wing and welcomed me into their fold, and a few other clichés. It was amazing to me how much they just accepted the American girl who showed up one day. They taught me Hausa, and we joked, laughed, teased, and explained our different worlds to each other during the six weeks I was at the clinic. I appreciate all their help, kindness, and generosity, and I have been so impressed by the overall warmth and friendliness of the Nigerian people I have met here.

The staff at the eye hospital who I spent most of my time with.
Left to Right: Emmanuel, Salisu, Linus (bottom), Simon (top), Blessing, Hadiza, Lydia.

At the eye clinic I have done pretty much everything there is to do. I’ve worked on patient flow, bringing them into the exam rooms, and making sure they were in the right place. This was a bit of a challenge, given my very limited Hausa, but I know enough to tell the patients to come (“zo”), go (“tafi”), sit (“zona”), stand (“tashi”), and move down (“massa”). The patients were generally fairly delighted to hear the Bature speaking Hausa, and I was often told “Yau wa!” which means “well done” in Hausa. It’s also my absolute most favorite Hausa word, and I love to say it all the time.

A couple of the patients enjoying my Hausa skills

I have also worked on registration, and giving appointments. I’ve seen the screening for patient fitness before they are operated on. I have also spent a fair amount of time in the stores, taking inventory, receiving shipments, and more. I also spent two days managing the housekeeping department, which was a real challenge as they spoke almost no English. They were also brand new, and I don’t think that anyone had effectively explained their job description to them, so they weren’t happy when I came into the picture and told them to stop napping during their shifts. However, I eventually won them over by buying them doughnuts and letting them teach me Hausa.

I also had three major projects during my time there. The first was a study on the absentees. Every patient who has surgery is supposed to come back for a 15 day review and a 30 day review of the operated eye. However, unsurprisingly, not everyone shows up. So Senthil, the Program Manager, wanted to do a study on who isn’t coming, and how many people have been absent. So I went through their computer records of their absentees and cross-checked them with the actual paper files to make sure everything was right. After doing that, I compiled the data and sorted it by Local Government Area (sort of like American municipalities or counties) to see if there are people from certain LGAs, other states (people come from all over the north to the hospital) aren’t coming in higher proportion than their overall numbers.

Me reviewing the patient files for the absentee study

My second project was doing a survey of the review patients to see how the surgery affected their life. To be honest, this project didn’t work out as well as we had hoped. I think the translation was the major problem. The answers I got from the patients just didn’t make any sense to me, because they would respond to the question “what impact did the surgery have on you and your life-style” by saying “No impact,” which, frankly, I just don’t believe. Anyway, I complied that data into a spreadsheet, too, but I’m not as pleased with this project as I was with the other one.

Me visiting with patients in the men's post-op ward

My last project was the most fun to do. They have these cards with post-operative instructions—Do’s and Don’ts—for the patients. They are written in English, but do to the large number of illiterate people (and people who don’t even speak English, let along read and write), there are illustrations. However, these illustrations are cartoon-like, and they are of white people. They don’t necessarily look like what they are supposed to be depicting, and the people in them are not really something that the Fulani and Hausa men and women of Adamawa can relate to. So they had me take photos of real people, Nigerians who the patients will be able to identify with, doing the things the patients are supposed to do or not do. We arranged them all into the template, and hopefully they’ll print a copy or two to put up in the hospital. I’m hoping to be able to show it to you all in the US, but I was made with CorelDraw software, which I don’t have, and my computer can’t read the file, so I’ll try again on a computer somewhere else.

One of the pictures I took for the post-op photoboard instructions. This was for "get an examination if you feel ill"

I am really sad to be done with the eye clinic. I am going to miss the doctors, staff, and patients a lot. I think I will especially miss the people I worked with. However, the patients, inadvertently, taught me a lot about life and about rural living in the developing world. At the beginning of the summer session, KJ assigned me to define, among other terms, the words “victim,” and “agency.” We talked a lot about whether there really are victims or not, and about how, no matter how little a person has in terms of resources, wealth, food, shelter, and more, they still have agency. They still make choices for themselves, their children, and their families. They can use what little they have in many different ways, and each and every day they make conscious choices about how to do so. I think this assignment and conversation really influenced the way I approached my time at the Eye Hospital, because it was due during the first week, so before I really started there and got into the swing of things. Never once while I was working at the Eye Hospital did I feel sorry for the patients or think of them as victims. I was incredibly impressed by the way that the patients just carried on with their lives and made do with the resources they had after they lost the vision. I don’t think I would have approached the patients and their circumstances in this way had I not been required to think more deeply about the subject through the assignment and the conversations we had about it.

Most of the patients are completely blind (or pretty close to it), but they just keep on going. Not one of them just gives up. Before they came to the Eye Hospital, they were all still out in their villages, just living their lives in a new world of darkness. They still cooked, cleaned, participated in village activities, and generally went about their business. I was so impressed and inspired by the way they approach their lives. I know that it is because no alternative exists for them, but they all just accept the new challenges that come their way and keep on keeping on.

I think that one of the most valuable lessons I learned through this experience was not to view anyone as a victim. Looking at the patients and thinking that they have no agency does them all a real disservice. They may not have many resources, but they all make choices. They all got themselves to the Eye Clinic, and many mothers and fathers took days off from farming, working, earning, cleaning, and cooking to bring their blind children in to see Dr. Tulika. I think that in the West we often fall into the trap of sympathy and paternalism when looking at the lives of Africa’s rural poor. We think things like “oh those poor people” and “they are such victims.” But I think attitudes like that don’t reflect the reality of the lives of these people. The only people sitting around feeling sorry for them are Westerners. I have to admit that I used to see the world this way, but those little old Fulani women, tottering around the hospital, giggling from their toothless mouths, taught me a lot about the reality of life in the developing world. And for that, I will be eternally grateful to them.

Also, while I was at the clinic, I was lucky enough to get to meet Mr. Chanrai. I think I mentioned this in my first post about the eye hospital, but its funded by the Tulsi Chanrai Foundation, which is essentially the charitable organization set up by the Chanrai family, who are Indian businessmen and women. Apparently, they’ve done a lot of business here in Nigeria, and they wanted to give back, so they set up their Mission for Health (which is the Primary Health Project I talked about in my last post), Mission for Vision (which is their eye hospitals), and their clean water project in many different sites here in Nigeria. There are eye hospitals in Yola, Owerri, Calabar, Zaria, and another site that I can’t remember right now, and there are PHP in other states, as well as water projects, too. TCF already has many, many sites in India, and their Nigeria projects are doing a lot of good. Anyway, my time at the eye clinic coincided with Mr. Chanrai’s visit to Yola. He was here to attend graduation at AUN and go to the AUN Board of Trustees meeting (he’s a member). I got to meet him when he came to inspect the hospital, and he is really a remarkable man. You can just see how passionate he is about the work TCF does, and he loves the patients. It warms my heart to see successful capitalists giving back to the communities they work in.

Mr. Chanrai visiting with post-op patients during his visit to Yola

As I mentioned, he was here for graduation, which was on May 31. It was AUN’s first ever graduation, and it was a HUGE deal. The former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, who is immensely popular in Adamawa, and who is the founder of the university was in attendance. He founded the university so that there could be a world-class American-style university in Nigeria, and he provided pretty much all the money for it, too. He received an honorary degree. As did the Emir of the Adamawa Emirate. He’s about 90 years old, and I will add a picture when I get back to the US, because traditional Emir attire is, to be honest, kind of funny looking. If you can, try to google him. I don’t know if they have photos, but if they do, its worth looking at. The last person to get an honorary degree was none other than Desmond Tutu. Whom I love all the way into the depths of my heart. He also gave a speech, and I really liked it. He called on Africans to help each other, and he reminded westerners of our not-so-awesome history. He is all about peace, love, acceptance, and moving on. Plus, he is probably the cutest little old man I have ever seen in my life. His voice is incredible. If you haven’t ever heard it, you should YouTube a video of him speaking. There may even be a video of his AUN commencement speech; I wouldn’t know because YouTube, as well as pretty much any website besides Basic HTML Gmail, doesn’t work here. It was really fun to see everyone decked out in the finest outfits, especially because fine Nigerian outfits are so colorful, bright, shiny, and beautiful.

Peace and Me ready to head off to the graduation ceremony

Some of the excited graduates

Let me see, what else have I neglected to tell you thus far? Ah, yes, my class. In addition to working at the eye clinic, which was also part of a class, I took Intro to African Literature. To be perfectly honest, it was fairly disappointing. We read some good books, but there was no discussion in the class, and the professor required no critical thought from us. In fact, the only quiz in which I disagreed with the professor’s assessment of the book, he gave me a B on. On the other ones, I experimented by simply regurgitating exactly what he said in class, and he loved those ones. To me, that’s not a real lit class. Literature is supposed to make you think, challenge ideas, and have heated discussions with your classmates in which you discover more about each other and yourself. However, none of that happened in my class. He didn’t want to know what we thought. He wanted to tell us what to think. On the bright side, though, I did enjoy the books, though I thought the coursework was quite light. We read Things Fall Apart, Mission to Kala, Weep Not Child, The Beggars’ Strike, The Trials of Brother Jero, and Behind the Clouds. I think one of the things that most surprised me about the class, though, was reading the other students’ writing. I am honestly shocked at the poor quality of their writing. No one proof reads, no one spell checks, and no one knows how to form a sentence. I know that sounds really harsh, but the thing is that it isn’t their fault. Being the children of the wealthy and the elite, they had access to the best private schools in the country. However, even there, the quality of the education leaves a lot to be desired. Someone told me that there is no history class in secondary school. These students don’t even know their own past, and they are often more obsessed with getting good grades than with actually learning the material and being prepared upon graduation. It really makes me worry about what those kids who go to the public schools learn.

Being here in Yola has been a truly amazing experience. I’ve been lucky enough to see both sides of Nigeria. The elite, wealthy students who parents are almost all politicians and businessmen (many are in oil) who live completely differently from their counterparts here in Yola. The people of Yola, though kind, warm, and generous, have to watch their money, they work as farmers, laborers, salesman, and housewives. The difference in lifestyles, social strata, and resources at their disposal has been really remarkable to witness. I think that this exemplifies Nigeria well. It’s a place of contrasts, extremes, and stratification. But its also a place where some of the kindest people I have ever been fortunate enough to meet live, and I am so glad that I had the opportunity to come here. I don’t know if anyone who isn’t related to me reads this blog, but if there are any American students out there reading this, I would highly recommend studying abroad here. It’s an experience that I really could not have gotten elsewhere, and there is no way to learn from a book or a class or another person the things that you’ll discover about the world, Nigeria, and yourself here in Yola.

As I mentioned earlier, I am leaving Yola to go to Abuja on Monday morning. I’ll be working at the pediatric eye camp while I am there, and I am so excited to see the kids I met at the clinic get their sight back. I don’t know what my internet access will be like while I am in Abuja, but if I get a chance, I will update my blog about the eye camp while I am there. If not, I will do it when I get back to the US. I fly from Abuja to London to DC on Friday, and then I will be in DC Friday night because my flight gets in too late for me to catch one to Minnesota. I’ll stay at an airport hotel for the night and leave first thing in the morning for Minneapolis. I should be back in the Land of Lakes by midday on Saturday. Where will you be, and when will I be seeing you?!