safe haven

  i find my island of serenity here around the people i grew up with, in a place that seems to be resistant to the ruthless forces of change(it is but an illusion). no matter how long i'm gone for, when i get back i always feel like i have merely missed a few spicy details from everyone's life, that can be caught up on in a few isolated moments of conversations with my friends, and which i usually get to hear in the first hours of my being here. people don't seem to forget me and i certainly don't forget them. yet even in this private paradise peace is disturbed by perturbing incidents. in my description i tend to leave out the dark aspects, because we do want to remember the good and forget the bad. bare in mind that nigeria is a third world country filled with poverty, corruption and violence and it has but a handful of laws meant to protect the inhabitants of it's lands (and even so every law can be bypassed if the right strings are pulled). in the years i've seen tragedies played out in the lives of the people i felt close to.
not so long ago, in the middle of night, my friends house was attacked by armed robbers. a group of 15 armed men walked into their compound and tried to break into the house. they managed to make a hole in the wall and through this they hoped to get into the house. the owners of the house were awakened by the noise. my friends father got his rifle got down in front of the hole and waited.  the moment the first robber popped his head through he took a shot and killed him on the spot. he kept on shooting at anything that moved outside. this managed to keep the robbers out of the house but they stayed out and shot the house. later the police found over 200 shells outside of the house. all this time the police was waiting outside the gate too scared to come in. the robbers ran away taking the corpse with them. because of the bullets that were used the robbers were most probably from the army, explaining why they took the body. there was no further investigation and nothing could be done.
sometime it seems that we are so far away from the rest of the world and civilization. what seem to be everyday things are hard to buy in shops. ham and cheese are luxuries not talking about "good" shampoo’s, washing powders, foreign ice cream, sweets, juices etc. petrol can be bought mostly on the black market, meaning from a guy who sits on the corner of the road and sells petrol in plastic bottles of 2.5 liters for more then double the price. light and water are seldom seen at home. the phone line supplier just went bankrupt so most people only have mobile phones which they themselves started working about 6 years ago ( not counting the one the size of a medium suitcase). medical services are basic, meaning that if you have a cold or malaria you can probably get help. yes we do have hospitals but.... let me leave that unsaid. in medical emergencies most foreign or rich nigerian people are flown out of the country. nobody in the right of mind would go to the hospital here. so we privileged people have a choice but the average nigerian's last chance is a medical system comparable to the one that was available in poland around the times of world war one (plus antibiotics). to make a long explanation short i have seen light go out in the middle of an operation and there was no way to make it come back, so the operation was finished in the best way possible using candles as lighting.