The Little Things

As the old adage goes, “You never miss what you had until it’s gone.”

No one truly appreciates the depth of meaning found in those words better than an expat.  No matter where they use to call home, every expat misses some small seemingly insignificant trinket, habit, product or custom that once brought them unrealized joy and is only now, in its absence, truly appreciated.  I am no exception.

Never before did I realize the many little niceties that I once experienced on a regular basis as being a source of joy until they were no longer available.  Some of them are just little things; little things that, now in their absence, hold so much joy.  It is this odd phenomenon that I suspect causes what has heretofore been referred to as “culture shock”.  It’s not that the newly experienced culture is actually shocking; it’s more that the absence of those seemingly insignificant, but ever familiar, “little things”, joys, if you will, becomes so shockingly apparent and only further punctuating the fact that you are truly out of your element.  That being said, allow me a moment to share with you some of the unrealized little things that are now unavailable…

1.        Bacon.  I had anticipated that there would be a strong possibility that bacon, my salty crispy chewy porcine joy, would be scarcely available and quite expensive.  What I did not anticipate was its total absence.  I mean really, I haven’t seen it and cannot find it anywhere.  I did however, hear a rumor that one can get it on the black market in Lagos (about 800 km = about 500 miles).  Imagine that- bacon on the black market!  People, I have gone for exactly 33 days, 7 hours and 39 minutes without bacon.  I am nearing critical mass.

2.       Post-it notes and other general office supplies.  So I went into a “stationary” store (this is what they call book stores that also carry paper, pens and school supplies; mind you, these areas/stores are usually about the size of a walk-in closet and only usually carry the barest minimum items) with a list of items I was in need of in order to begin organizing the office files and office in general.  I asked for the items on my list and almost immediately became aware that there was no way on God’s green earth that I was going to find them in this store (my first clue was the way the woman looked at me as if I had a tree growing out of my forehead).  My list was simple: 

Post-Its, *Notepads, *Stapler & staples, Fine point pens, Tracing paper, Masking tape, Magazine racks, Hanging folders, Manila folder, Labels (for printing on… you know like Avery’s but I’d have been happy with generic), *Paper clips

Like I said, a simple list.  The items you see with an asterisk are the items that the store carried.  Come to find out, these items are also the only items I could get when I went into the nearest major city, Enugu (about 70 km =  about 44 miles north of Abakaliki).  Now if these seemingly simple items were that hard to acquire, how hard to you think it is to get my hands on a business card scanner, a three-hole puncher, or even correction tape?  Yup, next to impossible.

3.       Grocery store meat.  You know, the kind sitting in the less than eco-friendly Styrofoam trays and is tightly wrapped in cling-film?  Yeah, that stuff.  Whether pork, beef, chicken, chopped, ground, steak or cube, it cannot be found here.  If you want meat, you have two options; Option One: go into the open air unrefrigerated slaughter market (a favorite hangout for many of Nigeria’s flies and God knows what else) and choose from one of the many freshly (or not so freshly) slaughtered meats available all the while accepting any of the likely repercussions of said decision; Option Two: call the local butcher and arrange for him to come by your house with a few of his animals (chicken, goat or cow), choose one (hoping your choice was the healthy one of the group) and have him butcher it on site for you all the while accepting any of the likely repercussions of that decision.  No butcher in white apron, no bell to ring for service, no Styrofoam or cellophane involved.  For the most part we have become vegetarian.

4.       A top sheet on the bed.  Now I know a few of you, particularly the bachelors, will say, “Big deal!  I’ve been sleeping without a top sheet for years!”  And no doubt you are correct. However, you are also doing so BY CHOICE.  I do not even have the option. 

When we first arrived, I noticed it and asked if our housekeeper would please put the top sheet on the bed.  Her response was, “Sorry, Madame Lady, there is no.”  Okay, so I thought, well, when we go into town I’ll just buy a new set of sheets and that will be that.  Nope.  Went into the store, in Enugu, and the sheets are actually sold with a contents label reading, “Contents: Sheet- 1, Pillow cases- 2”.  Like I said, you sleep that way by choice; I do not.

5.        Dr. Pepper.  Yeah, I know, I didn’t tend to drink a lot of carbonated beverages when I lived in the US.  But there was a time when I lived on the stuff.  My favorite of these, Dr. Pepper.  I mean, if I could’ve figured out a way, I would have mainlined the stuff!  Every day I had at least three or four of them.  Some folks smoked cigarettes; I drank Dr. Pepper.  And yes, I did notice that doing so usually made me ill either from the carbonation or the excess sugar or the caffeine.  After many years of drinking, I finally made the decision to clean up my act, and went cold turkey.  For four years I didn’t have a single Dr. Pepper.  In fact, I didn’t have a single soda at all.  After a while, I allowed myself one or two per year but that was the limit and I was okay with it. 

Now, I am here in Nigeria and my soft drink options are Sprite, Coke and Fanta Orange.  Yup, that’s it.  Even if I wanted a Dr. Pepper I couldn’t find one.  They don’t have them and don’t even know what they are (You guessed it, I asked and got another tree-in-the-forehead look).  And yes, I know, I quit drinking them so I really shouldn’t miss them all that much but I do.  Besides, it’s not the actual having that I miss; it’s the option to have that I miss.

6.        Grocery stores.  It seems odd to me that I would miss such a thing.  First of all, I mean, y’all know me, I didn’t do the cooking- Kurt did.  The kitchen was his room.  He did the cooking, the shopping and the cleaning (or his flimsy version of it).  I went into the kitchen for beverages, extra napkins or a forgotten fork.  Secondly, what could be joy inspiring about walking through aisle after aisle of overpriced food items while listening to Celine Dion or Elton John.  What’s so great about price checks, crabby unionized cashiers and long lines at the check-out stand.  I’ll tell you: EVERYTHING.

Here in Nigeria, I still don’t cook.  I do, however, have to do the meal planning and shopping for the house.  This means I go to the open-air market or to the “supermarket” for everything. 

I think that based upon a few previous descriptions and your own imagination, you can kind of guess what the open-air market is like but allow me to fill in a few blanks: 

• Wednesday is fresh vegetable day.  Any and all available fruits and vegetables can be purchased at their peak on Wednesdays.  There isn’t a lot o selection and often the quality is rather substandard by US FDA regulations but it is what it is.  If you seek veggies on Thursday through Tuesday, you will not find them.
• Don’t wear your pretty shoes.  Because Abakaliki has some of the worst roads in all of Nigeria, more often than not, nothing is paved and you must therefore play hopscotch with the various mud puddles, pot holes and gravel mounds in order to navigate your way around.
• Prepare for sensory overload.  Crowded doesn’t even begin to describe what it is like to be in the market.  Literally there are times when you will have complete strangers hip to hip (or worse) with you as you walk, shop, haggle etc.  There are cars and Kaykays (three wheeled taxi cabs) driving in any available space with little regard for pedestrians.  The noise is deafening; what with all of the horns, yelling, haggling, hawking , meeting and greeting, babies crying and everything else, it’s like being in the Rainforest Café times 10!

As for the “supermarket”, well, the local ones are a lot like going into a convenience store/Bodega that isn’t in your regular neighborhood: you don’t know where anything is and they never have your brand.  There isn’t a lot of variety in the “goods” department.  I mean, when shopping for, say for instance, toilet paper, one is not faced with the dilemma of which brand to choose, soft or strong, or what’s on sale- you get what’s there and usually what’s there is one brand (I call the brand Sand de Cooch).  Period.  More often than not, there are one or as many as three brands, depending on the item, available.  You choose among them and hope for the best.  

Add to that, the store also sells furniture.  Seriously.  Furniture that looks like something you’d find in some small discount furniture warehouse run by a rather heavily accented oily guy with body odor, too much jewelry and in desperate need of manscaping, who assures you every two to five minutes that he can “make good price for you” on his “one of kind” pieces.  Stuff that you truly hope is “one of kind” because the thought of there being more than one of that five color pleatherette living room set is nightmare inspiring. 

I miss grocery stores.

7.       No exchange rates.  In the US the dollar is the dollar.  Even in nearby countries, the dollar is the dollar.  In fact, more often than not, the dollar is of greater value than the local government currency.  While the latter is still true in Nigeria, it is also true that using or even showing US dollars is a good way to get kidnapped or at the very least robbed.  No kidding.  Unless you are dealing with a bank or even one of the very reputable black market money dealers, usually Housa in origin, then you just stuff your American money away for use in an emergency and prepare to use Naira.  Dealing with a bank is quite expensive as the exchange rate is based upon the bank’s exchange rate and house fee and fees differ from bank to bank and from day to day.  Dealing with a Housa black market money dealer is a bit better as the rate is fixed per day (they actually have black market exchange rates printed in the newspaper right next to the bank exchange rate, no kidding) and then you can even negotiate the “transaction fee” which is typically 100 or 200 Naira.  The exchange rate has, for the last few years, been between 150 to 160 Naira (₦) per dollar.  Being aware of the exchange rate is very important if you are trying to buy anything since haggling is also very important.  One cannot haggle the price of something if one does not understand the exchange rate and if one does not haggle one will get financially raped (no, this is not too harsh of a word) and all of this must happen very fast.  So, if you can’t count, add, subtract, multiply and divide quickly in your head, you will be among the fiscally violated (I learned this the hard way after not haggling because I didn’t understand the exchange rate and therefore purchased a 1.5 pound catfish for ₦2400 or what amounted to about $15.00). 

That's a lot of work just to buy a pack of chewing gum.  Just say’n.

I miss the dollar.  The dollar is a dollar- for now.

8.       Stable electricity.  No kidding, don’t laugh.  It seems like one of those inalienable rights or something, like “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” but; just like those famous words, that’s only true in the US.  In Nigeria, and especially in Abakaliki, electricity is so unstable that it is absolutely expected that the power will go off and stay off for the majority of the day.  That means, no refrigeration, no A/C, no lights, no charging mobile phones, plugging in computers, using the copy machine, no hot water (hot water isn’t heated via gas), no TV.  Every dwelling has a generator back-up because of the unstable nature of the electricity.  Fuel for the generator is quite expensive (around ₦400 to ₦600 per liter = $2.53 to $3.79 per liter and that’s a lot of money for a country that is the third largest producer of the world’s oil.  Incidentally, Nigeria’s electrical grid is powered by fossil fuel as well); and if the generator goes out or runs out of fuel, then you are truly SOL. 

Speaking of TV…

9.       My DVR and watching a WHOLE program on TV.  I’ve been here in Nigeria for just shy of a month and in that month there hasn’t been a time when I’ve been watching a program or movie on the TV and the damned electricity didn’t go out right at a crucial point in the plot.  I’m not kidding here.  It has happened every single time.  If I had my DVR, I could just schedule my programs/movies and just watch them when I want to.  If the power goes out, I could just watch the prerecorded program when the power was restored.  No big deal.  Again, I have no options.  And before you make the same suggestion that some others have of, “Just go online and order from Netflix or something,” read on…

10.   Fast reliable internet, please!  I miss this as much as I miss bacon- no kidding.  Remember about a year or two ago before wireless internet was widely available and you had to buy one of those things that looks like a slightly larger version of a thumb-drive?  Yeah, that’s what I’m dealing with here- except slower- a lot slower.  Like 1995 dial-up slower.  But slower.   Downloads take a minimum of four hours and uploading anything is just as speedy.  Order from Netflix or something, you say, HA!  That would be a neat trick.

There are about six internet/mobile phone providers here and you literally need a different provider depending upon where you are or want to go (No kidding, my phone service provider is Glo and Kurt’s is Airtel.  I have a week signal or no signal upstairs and his is strong but if we go down stairs mine is strong and his is nonexistent).  As is slow wasn’t enough, the networks from which these various internet providers operates often go completely down.  There have literally been days when there was no internet available at all- from any network.  “Get a satellite system,” you say.  Satellite systems are very expensive, even for companies, and because of the storms with heavy wind and rain plus heavy cloud cover, satellites don’t work any better than the plug-in/dial-up thingy.

11.   Having familiar medications available.  Recently, I had an allergic reaction to something I ate.  I had horrible head to toe hives for about 24 hours; my skin was red and blotchy, super itchy and swollen.  My hands and feet were swollen so big I could barely walk or make a fist.  My ears were so red and swollen that I looked a bit like Buddha- just without the smiling. 

I took the OTC Benadryl that I had brought with me from the US only to read on the package that it was expired by about two years and therefore pretty ineffective.  Doubling my daily dose of Zyrtec, which was not expired, didn’t prove any more effective than the Benadryl.  When I finally got to a pharmacy the next day, and asked for Benadryl (hopefully not expired either) I was told very sternly, “We dough not have dat fancy bran medicine he-ah!  We only have dis bran, only.  You have rash?”  When I replied with, “Yes, I ate a green pepper here and it gave me the hives,” her response was, “You from US.  You Americans too delicate.  Always too sick, too much rash, too much delicate.  Too much an-tee-bee-otics for everything make you delicate. Tcck.” 

Well, my delicate American ass misses familiar medication and a dispensary without judgments.

There are a lot more things that I miss.  Too many to mention, really, and conversely a lot of things I don’t miss.  For instance, I don’t miss the 15 pounds I’ve lost since I’ve been here and didn’t really notice I’d lost until I put on a pair of jeans I’d brought with me.  I don’t miss how inventive I’ve become in absence of otherwise readily available supplies and entertainment (it’s truly amazing what one can do with notepads and; my love for reading has become more voracious than ever before).  I don’t miss how sharp my mind is becoming and how quickly I can calculate things in my head that I never really did before (why did I need to?).  I don’t miss how spoiled and how dependent I was upon so many things (my current phone calls and texts- that’s it).  I don’t miss the complexities associated with making shopping decisions that are ultimately pretty silly in the big picture (I mean really, how many kinds of mayonnaise does one really need?).  These are all little things and I am reminded everyday just how little those things are.  I am forced, to my benefit, to remember that that is exactly what they are:  Little. Things.

Like I said, there’s a lot I don’t miss.  So I submit that a new adage must be coined…

“You never miss what you didn’t have until it’s gone.”

(Okay, I still want my bacon, Dr. Pepper and to not have road rash from toilet paper, though, damn it.)