19th - 31st July

19/7 – With the prospect of a 5 hour church service coming up, we decided to travel to Holley Memorial Hospital to visit Campbell. Thankfully he had recovered well over night and his blood sugars were getting back to normal. He will stay under the supervision of the medical electives for a couple more days.

What’s more saddening though is that Billy and Linda left us today to go back to the UK, this is the last time we will see them in Nigeria, so this is a massive thank you to the Abwa crew for being complete legends! We spent the rest of the day with HMH girls playing games.

On the way home the car decided to spin out of control and we narrowly avoided hitting a tree. Once we got home (in one piece) the team had their first experience of Ogusi soup, yum!

20/7 – After sending the Summer team to have their first experience of working in a Nigeria school (they took over my bible class with primary 6) I got to work transforming the centre in an Exodus/Egyptian wonderland. Of course it was with the help of Banksy who painted giant pyramids and made some very cool palm trees. I’m really looking forward to the next week, it should be such fun.

21/7 – Today was the start of ‘The Great Escape’ holiday bible club (wittingly named because of the Exodus theme). The plan was to have the 93 orphans who had all be given written invitations. With this being Nigeria, hardly any of them turned up, so we decided to just take the first 100 children who arrived, this (as we found out later) would be to our peril.

He children loved the songs; jumping up and down and shouting as loud as possible is right up their street. They were also fascinated by the puppets. Despite the change of plans the groups were split easily into the relevant age groups. From there, the kids did craft, games and worksheets. This is were things started to get a bit chaotic; more children turned up and orphans began to arrive and were left out so things became a bit stressful.

Tomorrow we will only have orphans, no matter how few. I am also introducing a coloured elastic band wearing system (inspired by Reading Festival).

22/7 – After the chaos of yesterdays moving around class rooms, the wristband system was introduced (red bands for over 15s etc). Unfortunately this wasn’t really the problem. Once we moved into different rooms to do group activities other children were interested and do not understand the concept of invite only ha ha! Tomorrow we will keep everything in and just outside the centre; its really important for us to be placing all our attention on having fun with the orphans and not trying to shoo away other children.

23/7 – As the holiday club was up and running (quite smoothly by now) we had time in the morning to attend the graduation at St Theresa Primary school. Graduation is a big event in these parts; the children from nursery dress up to graduate to primary school and the primary 6 year children do the same. We were told the ceremony would be over by 12, however, mass was only finishing by that time so we didn’t get to see the really good bits!
About 40 orphans came to the club today which was a great number because we could keep them in the centre (avoiding a lot of chaos with other children). The children love the songs; they’re learning the words really quickly and shouting them out with aplomb! The local volunteers are even beginning to loosen up and jump around with the children. This to me is the best part as Nigerian adults are usually so strict and ‘adult’ around children. This experience for the children will have a big effect on them when they turn into adults!

24/7 – As well as an awesome day at the holiday club, the children had another new experience; during sports outreach we introduced the rugby ball! The lads found it hard to grasp the concept of throwing the ball backwards, but I was pleased that so many of the children wanted to learn how to play properly. They certainly loved the idea of dragging people to the ground and jumping all over each other.

25/7 – As it was market day we decided to take a group trip onto the main road to see if we could get the summer team kitted out with some traditional clothing. Sam’s relative Faith has just learnt how to tailor so she offered to do it for the girls, the boys also found some cloth at ‘mama Jay Jay’s shop’. I also went to the guy who sells football shirts and placed an order for the new Arsenal 3rd strip (since they are only a tenner a pop!). Come 1.30 we were ready for the last day of the holiday bible club. A really lovely moment today was giving out gifts and prizes to the orphans. It was also really great to see the volunteers having a great time with the kids on the last day!

26/7 – This Sunday we had been invited to the nearby U.E.C. church that Elder Rueben attends. It was the official welcoming of the new Pastor; he attended my pastors training and he also spoke at our U.E.C. church, and he spoke with a lot of sense! Unfortunately it wasn’t the incoming pastor that was speaking this morning but an evangelist from afar! The service lasted 3 and a half hours, at least the food at the end was good.

After returning home, we got the bat, ball and stumps out and had a jolly good game of cricket! This of course drew lots of attention and within minutes there were swarms of children. It was nice that both girls and boys joined in. We played for hours on end and the children really enjoyed lobbing balls at each other!

27/7 – With the medical outreach fast approaching it was time to transform the centre from a children’s holiday club venue into a medical centre.

After tidying up the centre – removing pyramids and taking down palm trees – it was time to return to the football field. It was a week since I had coached the senior team because I had been busy with the holiday club and sports outreach. The boys were pleased to see me back and we hit up some big training!

28/7 – Today was the start of the medical outreach, so I was handing over responsibilities to Mel and the Holley Memorial Girls. Today was devoted to doing eye tests and giving out glasses. We knew the demand for glasses would be high in a place like Ogugu, but when we rolled up at 7.30am and there were already 200 people waiting outside, we got a bit worried!

Thankfully Reverend Okoli had been waiting at the centre with early arrivals to take their names and put them in order of their arrival time. This, I believed, would stop any chaos. How I was wrong. Someone (mentioning no names) decided to wreck the system by letting people in ahead. As you can imagine, this created a storm, and before you could say retina, we were physically pushing people out of the door.

After a typically chaotic start, the girls managed to get through 140 patients and give out 106 pairs of glasses. All the credit has to go to those girls, well done! The summer team also did a great job entertaining the crowds with songs and dramas.

In the afternoon my junior team took to the field to play a group of boys from Emenega (near Unyi-Ogugu) and earned themselves a 2-2 draw.

29/7 – Another day, another long queue of inpatient punters waiting for an eye test. Thankfully most of yesterday’s crowds had been satisfied so the numbers were significantly lower! After sorting the crowds out, we set to work entertaining the vast sums. Our efforts were aided by my purchase of a mega-phone from a local shop (although I never thought such a purchase was possible in a place like this). I took the opportunity to do a open air sermon, Nigerian style!!

The football session today was very short as it was one of the hottest days I could remember! So after bathing off all the sweat, the group played a few games. The best game involved picking up a cereal box with your teeth!

30/7 – Summer time is truly here! Today we were up at Faith Gospel Nursery and Primary school for graduation ceremony. We were invited by Sam and Joy because their youngest son – Joshua – was going from nursery to primary. The ceremony was really good fun, with lots of dancing and singing. The best part of the show was the drama that the children put on (It was all in Igala, but it looked funny and the costumes were brilliant).

We’re getting very used to being introduced now as part of the honorary guest list!

31/7 – It’s the last day of August and it’s hitting home how close it is until I leave Ogugu and return to the UK. I’m obviously excited about seeing everyone at home but I know I am really going to miss everyone (Nigerian and Non-Nigerian) I have met here.

I was in Ankpa today looking for socca (football boots) to give as a prize for the winner of the organised football tournament coming up on the 8th August. I was also with Jay Jay who wants to do a post graduate degree in the UK; although he is only in his first year of university in Nigeria, I though it would be good to research the possibilities with him at the internet café.

In the afternoon I was invited to play for Ugbele FC against Okpo FC. I managed to get in one half before my legs gave way. It’s hard keeping up with fully grown Nigerian men, but I was pleased with my performance in midfield and I even managed to test the keeper once.