Electricity: love it while you have it, but don’t expect it

In the past two hours the electricity has gone off and come back on three times. The first time I was in the middle of eating dinner, the second time I was reading the paper, the third I was washing dishes. Luckily I only had one plate fatality in the process. Each time it went, [...]

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Ghana failed

A tortuous trip to Lagos and back in one day resulted in every transportation company informing us that is impossible for us to enter Ghana. Under our time constraints we could not acquire Ghanaian visas. No one had a concrete answer for us about whether we needed one visa, two visas, zero visas. The whole [...]

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The Yorùbá food culture

Food–how we eat it, how we prepare it and who we enjoy it with is a window into every culture. Yorùbá culture surrounding food is quite different than the that in the United States and everywhere else I’ve been. The Yorùbás follow a certain set of customs when eating. While they are widely practiced, they [...]

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Finally, Money!

Opening a bank account was one of our first priorities upon landing in Nigeria. We went to the bank the first week in Ibadan, filled out the forms, counted our Naira and left with the understanding that sometime in unknown future we would have a bank account number and ATM card. Four weeks later, that [...]

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Church on Sunday

Like the vast majority of people on the University of Ibadan campus, on Sunday morning I went to religious services. My family is Christian and attends the Chapel of the Resurrection. The chapel is not far from our house – about a 10 minute walk. I put on an outfit I considered Church-appropriate, a blue [...]

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