January 4, 2008

I’m in Jos tonight, in a guest hospitality house of a Catholic center. We traveled up from Abuja this afternoon. I spent the whole day with Mary, her driver Ojo and Father Vincent’s next older brother Thaddeus.

All of my checked luggage was lost. It matters not though. Thaddeus will be following up on that, while Mary and I will continue to do our things in Jos and the village. I came prepared with enough in my carry on to survive. They just had me check my contact solution at the airport. I also have no pajamas until the sister gave me a housecoat tonight. Mostly, the items were gifts and fabric to give away. I was looking through the handcrafted items my mother sells. Among them were these wildly colorful baby quilts and braided rugs. Nobody in America finds them very appealing. But here in Africa, it is a different story. I think the items would go very well with people here.

I can see the likeness between Vincent and Mary. They are almost like twins in their opinionated commentary they carry with them everywhere. It is not uncommon to hear Mary give a frank commentary on what should be the case and what must be done and end in “...and you will do it!” The conversation is punctuated with a bit of name calling in a manner of speaking. A girl served me a donut on a napkin and she sent her to the kitchen “to do better than that, bush girl.” And when we stopped for Mary to “take lunch” at a roadside restaurant or a “Mamma Putt” as they call it, she asked for a table knife to eat her meat and they said they didn’t have one, she called over the waiter and gave him a hard time and then she called over the manager and told him that when he goes to the market on Saturday that he should look into some table knives. He agreed to do it of course, after she began the conversation by asking if they had no table knives because they were mamma putt.

Thaddeus is much more calm. He lives on the outskirts of Abuja with his wife and one child. Mary is a wonderful traveling companion. We’ve covered politics, religion, sports, the economy, trade, climate changes and so on.

The roads are full of people walking along side them. The women wear the beautiful colorful dresses all the time. They all wear them. There are very few who wear jeans. The men also wear beautiful traditional clothing and they should as it is likely the coolest clothing for the weather.

The weather is hot during the day. But it is not at all unbearable. It is cool at night. But it is dusty also. Where there is haze, smog and fog in the US to reduce visibility. Here there is dust in the air and it reduces the visibility drastically.