One of the things I do, when not making rugs and writing rom-com, is help people develop the skills to write about their own life experiences with an organisation I helped to set up called WriteOutLoud. Late last year, I and a friend and colleague, Mary Jane, flew out to join a conference in Nigeria run by CBR (community based rehabilitation) and run a workshop for the delegates. This is the first part of a travelogue I wrote about that trip:
There are no postcards in Abuja
'My favourite food,' says the man, reading earnestly from the card he is holding. 'Is the Irish potato.' He tells us how he likes it prepared and when he likes to eat it. He reads with great concentration, while around him his fellow delegates listen with equal solemnity and nod their encouragement.
He is a Nigerian film maker and we've asked him to write about his life, more specifically about his favourite food, a non-threatening, non-partisan, non-political way of creating something that we can all help him to edit and talk about with the rest of the group, so that he – and they - can hone their writing skills.
We are sitting in the foyer of a luxury hotel in the middle of Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, and my friend and colleague Mary Jane and I are running a drop-in writing workshop for the Afri-can Community Based Rehabilitation conference. It is hot and noisy and smells of all humanity in a way we are unaccustomed to in Britain.
We are here teaching people to write about their life experiences. Almost all the information written about aid, educational work, and medical, social and therapeutic projects overseas is delivered in a paternalistic, third person, distant almost god-like way. While the work may be life changing, the accounts are dull and dry, reducing the people involved to clients, numbers, outcomes and statistics. We have been invited to go along and show the conference that there is another way of writing, giving the people involved a direct voice, then backing up those first hand accounts and stories with supporting statistical evidence and the cold hard facts.
When he gets to the end of the first paragraph the man reads a second about the child abuse and the corruption in high places that have touched his life. Before the workshop began he had asked me to read the treatment of a film he wants to make about a prostitute and an abandoned child. I suspect as I read that the story is a very personal one.
His last paragraph is off task for the session and politely we tell him so. He nods. 'If you stick with the workshop, you will learn how to interest more people in the story you really want to tell,' we tell him.
He nods and makes a note. We talk about his tales of the Irish potato, rather than the sweet one, the one that he planted and cultivated under the Nigerian sun before the woman on his left reads her about cooking yams and buttered chicken for her family. Listening to his voice and hers tells us more about who they are and what they need, want and treasure in their lives than any amount of statistics. The power of writing in the first person, in their own voice, in informal simple language is not lost on any of them.
Four years ago I was asked to put together a memoir-writing course for people who had never lifted a pen in anger, who didn't think they had a story to tell, who believed that writing was for other people, and as a result have found myself listening to the amazing life stories of people who never expected to write about themselves let alone have other people eager to listen to them.We're run our courses in Universities, prisons, day centres for adults with physical disabilities, and women's group as well as Joe Public but the invitation to run a workshop at a conference in Abuja is the craziest gig we've had so far.
Four days earlier as Mary Jane and I prepare to land at Abuja airport the cabin crew warn us about the city; we have had nothing but warnings about Nigeria since we'd agreed to go.
We are supposed to be met at the airport. There is no one there.
Inside and out the night is hot, dark and humid. Crowds of people mill around the foyer and the dropping off areas in the half-light of a Nigerian evening. Taxis come and go.
We are the only whites in the building.
We have been warned to trust no one, not to get into an unofficial cab, to always agree the fare before we get inside, not to leave our luggage unattended.
Cars and mini buses cruise by at walking pace, the occupants giving us the once over.
The organisation that invited us has paid for our hotel in full, in advance before we left the UK. We have the receipt and a phone number. We ring them. The phone number is unavailable.
An hour later and we are our losing our novelty value with the locals.
We've got no money to buy water.
We ring again.
'He should be there in a few minutes,' says the woman.
We wait.
'He should be there,' the woman says a half an hour later.
'Well he isn't.'
'How many are you?' she asks.
'Four,' we say.
'The driver is on his way,' says the woman. 'He will be with you very soon. Maybe five minutes .'
We repeat this conversation with her several times over the next hour.
An hour later a man shows up in a mini-bus to take us to our hotel, though polite and cheery he offers no explanation. We ask him about Abuja, the first thing he tells us is how very safe it is, very very safe and a very good place, yes very good.
Abuja airport is around forty-five minutes drive from the city centre. A great four-lane highway rolls in fron nowhere into the city. Every few miles we come across night markets running along both sides of the road and down the central reservation. As the traffic slows at junctions and bottlenecks men weave their way between the moving cars carrying baskets of apples, lottery tickets and bundles of newspapers. As they approach we close our windows and stare fixedly ahead. All around people use their car horns to warn, to chastise, to indicate that they are turning or remind you that you are. After the first ten minutes my brain blocks it out, as our driver over and undertakes the great progress of beaten up cars, taxis, limousines, tuck tucks and huge lorries, pipping as he goes.
Ahead of us Abuja city centre is aglow, every building, the streets, the highways lit with as many lights any major European city. The buildings that are finished are huge, disproportionally so as if the city if inhabited by giants. The ecumenical church with its extraordinary tower and roof line seats 5,000, the mosque as many if not more – the Department of Defence offices sits alongside the highway, a great grey super-sized monolith that looks like a great ocean liner that has been beached amongst the office blocks.
On the major highways signs on the lampposts proclaim that tourism is life, the irony not lost on us; entry to Nigeria is strictly by invitation only. Nigeria is expecting a great deal from those of us who manage to get past her borders.
Our driver finally takes us away from the main highway into narrows streets, past smaller street corner night markets where men sell fruits and shoes. We arrive at an urban compound, which we assume is the hotel. It is surrounded by high walls and rolls of razor wire. Our driver presses on the horn until someone unlocks the gates and bleary eyed and disorientated we clamber out into the yard, dragging our suitcases behind us.
'Welcome welcome,' says the woman we have been speaking to on the phone. 'We are so pleased you are here.'
We thank her and ask to go to our rooms.'This is not your hotel,' she says. 'There is a problem, your hotel is full.'
We have a receipt. We have paid in full.
She nods. 'We will take you to another hotel.'
Wearily we climb back into the mini-bus.
We drive some more, through increasingly narrow streets, past empty lots and lots where huge elegant office blocks have been begun and then abandoned. We see fires inside; families are living in the shells of the buildings.
Finally we arrive at an hotel, uniformed guards lift the barriers and let us in. The façade is elegant. Each wing of the building has guards on its doors. Shown to our room, guided along marbled corridors to our suite, we're flagging.
As Mary Jane and I step into the two-bedroom suite they have found us, the boy who brought up our luggage switches on the air conditioning and the TV. The TV is tuned to the football channel. Arsenal are playing.
Nothing in Nigeria is quite as it appears. My room has Wi-fi but no windows, a kettle but no cups, a toilet but not toilet seat. The electrical wiring for the water heater is installed inside my shower cubicle.
'Welcome to Abuja,' says the porter, smiling broadly as he carefully sets my case down on the purpose built shelf. 'Your first time here?'
I nod.
'It is an amazing place,' he says.
Hope you’re well and enjoying the first of the sunshine!
