Merry Christmas from Nigeria

Here I am, trying to decide what to write that would be meaningful and interesting to a reader while accurate and concise. I have embarked on the greatest adventure that I could imagine and I am having a difficult time being able to capture it in words. What I am involved with is fulfilling every category of my lifelong dreams. Working here in the Niger Delta, a place most consider to be one of the dangerous places in the world, I am learning to call home. A powerful African political leader many falsely call corrupt on inept, I call a friend. Tasks considered by most to be over ambitious and unrealistic, I call my daily action items. Ultimately, what could easily be considered a plot to fictional adventure I call my life.
It has been a bit of time since my last blog entry; so let me quickly update the past ten days or so… Monday afternoon, Dec 21st, we gave a complete presentation to the State of Bayelsa Executive Council, basically everyone who runs the state. The presentation was by far the most significant public presentations that I have given in my life and it was a bit intense, could have gone very bad, but turned out pretty ok in the end. We walked out of there with what seemed like unanimous support, and we were majorly stoked. If I have not mentioned, our project consists of a simultaneous, state wide multiplicity of projects designed to reinforce the human infrastructure (the capability of the individuals) of the state of Bayelsa through communities centers with computer and vocational training, community level micro-banking, state wide teacher trainings, orchestrated statewide campaign reinforcing human values that are fading away, community level waste management systems and leadership training. Pretty cool stuff if you ask me…
The next couple days we worked around the clock in order to put all of our plans to paper and ended up with a 50+ page document describing the what’s and whys and how’s of the projects. That was a major pain. We are just finishing it tonight and good riddance. We will be giving it to the members of the committee who were appointed to analyze our project tomorrow.
Next was Christmas. We got a nice helicopter ride over the Niger Delta to Governor Sylva’s hometown of Brass, where we spent Christmas day. I must have eaten something not too rad and the 26th was feeling pretty gnarly. The next day I was feeling ok and we worked our way, in the chopper, to Calambar, the Capitol city of a different Nigerian State where they have a massive parade that is a pretty big deal around here. Whenever we travel with the Gov we are treated as pretty significant VIP’s, so of course while the crowds were thronging, we had a private, shaded seat at the center of the parade’s course. Also, when traveling with the Governor, one really has no idea what to expect from minute to minute, so, following course, right in the middle of the parade I was told to get up and I thought that we were leaving. Nope. Turns out that we were supposed to join the parade at that point and so we spent the next several hours dancing down the streets and celebrating the festivities.
We got back to Yenagoa, our hometown, and got back to work. The next day Jessica Davies, the VP of SCHAP and one of my best friends came into town to pay us a little visit. We actually really needed here to help us with graphic design stuff and I missed her a little bit, so it was super good to see her. We all got to work.
When we got here we had basically ZERO electricity, no food, no laundry, to transportation, no house service, no security, no security access and little general support and no Jess. By this time we have secured two full time house stewards, two new vehicles with drivers, a chief who shops and cooks, a washer machine, relatively reliable electricity personal security guards and now that Jess is here I may never want to leave… haha… just kidding, kinda. But seriously, we are really setting this place up so that we will be able to work comfortably and effectively, while also maintaining a welcoming environment for future American employees, volunteers and visitors.
Despite my enjoyment of the big government meetings and the vip treatment and the personal chief… my favorite part of the experience is being in the field as often as possible, learning about the lives of people and the nature of their communities. Feeling my understanding of conditions augmented dailey and therefore my ability to assist in desired and substantial development increased. I love the people here more than words can express.
I hope that everyone has had a wonderful Holiday Season and I will be sure to fill you in on the adventure that lie ahead.

Cheers.