Well here I am again writing of yet another home in our journey around this wonderful world. After nearly a year of living 'on the move' we are finally settled! Where ever I have lived throughout my life I have put effort into making it my own, a few things that have followed me on every move is, my books, my pictures, art, grapefruit spoons and my tea of the moment (which right now is rooibos with flower petals of rose, bachelor button and lavender). It has always brought me a lot of joy to make my home lovely for my family and me. I must admit as the information coming in from Africa on what our house would be like worried me. I am usually up to a challenge but after living four years in our wonderful home in Calgary I was not looking forward to living in a fifteen year old flat. But I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived and saw how large, bright and well laid out it was.

The entrance of the house opens into the main living space which holds the living room, dinning room, and our computer area. This area has large windows all around and lets in a lovely amount of light. The main windows of the house are facing the courtyard of the compound. The compound is about three acres and boasts of fifty trees or more. Our windows rest just above the treetops allowing us to have light all day but we still see and hear the tree branches giving me the sight of nature all day! On my first morning in Africa the bright sun was lighting up my new home and a line from a favourite poem was brought to memory. 'A rose-flushed tender, a thrill, a quiver, When golden gleams to the tree-tops glide.' Jean Ingelow

A small toilet room is off on the left, right besides that is the door to the LARGE KITCHEN! What joy, working in a very small Asian kitchen last year only makes this kitchen feel more wonderful! It really is huge! The kitchen has large cupboard and counter space and a large island. I am able to have space to put my dehydrator, juicer, mixer/blender and sprouters. The kitchen window is over the sink looking out the back of our house to Nigeria..... always entertaining! Something I need, as we have no dishwasher. The laundry area is around a bend in the kitchen. This is very nice, as last year we had no laundry area in our flat. Beside the laundry area is a door that goes out onto the kitchen balcony. I have put a shelf there to grow my wheat grass. Off to the side of that is the pantry.

On the other side of the living area is a long hall, the girl’s rooms and their bathroom is on the right side and the master room and bathroom is on the left. At the end of the hall is the playroom. The nursery is a perfect size small and cosy, bright, sunny and sweet. The colours are wonderful in Davina's room. My Mom and I had sewn her bedding and accessories before she was born; I had fallen sweetly in love with this material long before I had become pregnant. When I found out I was having another lovely lady I picked up all the material they had left and lucky for Roger it was all on sale. My Mom added with every stitch creativity and it turned out splendid. Little did I know Davina's nursery would be relocated three times in her first years but her room has looked beautiful where ever we have landed. I think Davina's room is very suited to her.

Marion's room is large and wonderful for her play; she likes to set things up in scale and needs A LOT of space. Her antique bed (which my brother found in a dumpster and I refinished) came from Canada we have hung a bed net up for her as she was the only one getting bug bites during the night, it makes for a very fairytale sleep. The playroom is PINK and fun and right out of Ikea! It was fun putting this room together, with a extra curtain and some tools I turned a rather bulky unusable children desk into a fun hide out, which also is the 'garage' to the girls ride about cars. There is ample amount of bookshelves so a home for every book has been found with extra room for toys, crafts and such.

Roger and my room is beautiful. It is very bright. We have our own balcony and walk in closet. The highlight of our things from Canada was our bed ahhhhhhhhh what delight to be sleeping in my own bed!

This home has lots of outdoor balcony space and I have been very busy finding plants that I like and arranging them. Shopping for plants is an adventure in its own as there are no shops, just clusters of plants being sold on the sides of roads. It has taken some time to find the right plants for me as every vendor has different plants and often only one or two of the ones I want. I am done now and enjoying tending to them. I have found some wonderful artists who sell hand made garden pots. So my garden is special in it's own way with a touch of African art. I have found another roadside vendor who sells me cut flowers every week. Very tropical larger ginger plant flowers. The seller has come to know over the last few months the colours and types I prefer. He is a good business man as he has found my weakness to whites and reds and will have a few bundles of expensive ones around on the day I tend to come. (Just a note in the pictures of the main balcony it may seem as though my large plant in the corner is dying but really it is just shedding its leave due to transplanting it. When I went to purchase this tree there were two of the same type one was much smaller and I wanted the smaller knowing the roots would be younger and less likely to go through shock by being moved. But the gardener was sure that I did not know what I wanted and surely the white women would want the biggest and best! As hard as I tried to explain why I wanted the smaller he continued to argue that I did not know what I wanted! Finally I said I would take the larger! The seller was very pleased with himself confident he had sold me the best! Well all said I have a tree losing its leaves!)

The Compound is beautiful and very peaceful. For all the bustle and noise that goes on outside it is amazing how quiet it is in the courtyard. I love to sit under the canopy of the trees, listening to the birds watching the girls play at the park. It is amazing to see nature so different then in Canada but just as enticing. What a creative and generous God! To give us the gift of nature and beauty that spans the world from Canada to Africa!

There is one consistent thing in Africa and it is ANTS! Every day our little critter neighbours welcome themselves to the crumbs that fall to our floor and every morning we have a hunt! Marion’s favourite part of the morning is her job of killing the train of ants that are walking along my dinning room floor. After some time of researching natural ant killers Marion and I mixed up a concoction of all things ants hate.... It works so well I am thinking of patenting it, but I will let you in on the recipe just in case some African ants come to visit your home. For the base we used dish soap, and saltwater, we then added essential oils of clove (add the most drops of clove ants hate the smell), eucalyptus, tea tree, peppermint, and lavender, pour into spray bottle and go hunting. It smells wonderful. I have finally found a good use for coffee, to deter ants. I have added it to my indoor plants so the ants wont make home in the dirt I also added it to me wheat grass dirt, I think Roger is hoping the wheat grass will turn out tasting like coffee, might go down a bit smoother!

We have made a wonderful home here one that we love filled with our treasures and as Anne Shirley says, "provides scope for the imagination". I pray it will be a home that will be remembered fondly. I pray my family will grow in love for each other here in this home and that each of us will leave Africa sad to say good-bye.


Dining room


Living room



Kitchen


Kitchen


Kitchen/Laundry


Laundry and Rose's wheat grass station


Pantry


Girls Bathroom


Davina's room


Marion's room


Marion's bed


Playroom


Master bedroom


Master bedroom


Master bedroom balcony


Main balcony


Main balcony

I have a flat in Africa.... Okay so not as enticing as the opening lines of the movie Out Of Africa, but as amazing all the same. As I flew over Nigeria descending into Lagos I could feel my heart racing. My dream of coming to Africa had arrived. I was eager to get through customs and on to the bus heading to our new home. Travelling the hour from the airport to our home was like no hour I had ever lived before. The things I saw! People everywhere! Cars everywhere! Nothing was familiar! Everything was exciting! In that first hour I knew I would love living in Africa. We were very warmly welcomed by some of our fellow compound livers. Roger had done a wonderful job getting our flat fixed up, painted and cleaned. There was a welcoming card and gift for each of us from Roger. A very thoughtful and loving jester to his three overwhelmed girls. The first week was spent unpacking our things from Malaysia, which had just arrived. We were able to make a home right away, which helped us all feel settled. The girls enjoyed playing with their toys and sleeping in there own beds. We are still waiting on our things from Canada, it is all in customs and we are hoping it will clear this week. I am starting to run low on the food we brought from Canada in our suite cases. I will post photos of our flat later when I have everything set up.

We met many very nice people in the first week. They have all headed home for the summer months so things got very quite around here. It was a somewhat lonesome feeling for me. But I plunked down and set out a schedule. With the girls adjusted to time change and our house set up it was time to venture out! The first stop was the local market. Wow. The first thing to get use to is how 'white' I felt. Once I got use to being a light bulb I was able to get some shopping done. At the market you are never talking to just one person every decision is made by several people at once. I was bartering with one lady for some mangos and it seemed that every other lady in the area had to argue with me! I was almost in tears by their sterness and loud voices, resolved that I would not spend more then one dollar per mango I held firm. As soon as the deal is done they are the friendliest people! I went to the fish market this last week with my stewardess Patricia. The way she bargained I thought world war three was about to break out, I backed up towards the car but as soon as they struck a deal they were laughing and chatting with each other as old friends!
I am amazed at how many wonderful fruits and vegetables I can get. It takes a while to get it all cleaned. Upon our return from the fish market this week (we also went to the produce market) we gutted and cleaned the fish which took an hour, then I cleaned the produce which needs to be soaked in a disinfectant, bugs removed, dried and put away. A very big job when you eat eighty-percent raw food.

Another amazing thing I was able to do this week was spend some time at an orphanage. It is such an amazing place and I am so thrilled to be able to be a part of it. It is primarily a maternity clinic for low income women. They deliver about thirty babies a month and provide pre and post natal care for two hundred or so women each month. The clinic is run on the main floor of a very small building, the second floor is rented out and the income is spent on running the facility, the third floor is the office and home of the founder 'Mama', and a small baby orphanage of babies who were abandoned after birth or the mother died and the family never came to fetch the child. Also in the back yard a very humble shack was built to run a school for low income children ages three to seven. About thirty children crammed into this tiny hut (I have never seen such smiley children before). I had a wonderful chat with Mama on Saturday, she filled me in on her life's work. She was raised in Nigeria and trained in the U.K for mid-wifery she followed up those studies with a nursing degree then headed back to Nigeria where she started the clinic thirty odd years ago now. The whole community calls her Mama, she is showing signs of age and mostly spends her time on the couch with her feet up, but that does not stop her from caring for over twenty women a week. And she does a fine job running the place from up stairs (she has a large booming African women voice!)

Mama and the nurses were eager to get me involved and equally eager to have Marion and Davina join me. So Monday we went and played with the babies. There are eight right now and the room holds (cramped) twelve. Eight babies seven months and younger. With only two attending nurses these babies spend the bulk of their days in cribs. They are very well taken care of with feedings three times a day and a soft bed. But I could tell with in the few moments of arrival that all the babies were delayed in their development. Marion had brought a bag of baby toys that flashed and sang, the older babied were mesmerized. They had never seen any thing of the sort. Marion read books and sang with them for an hour and those babies kept their eyes glued to her the whole time.
I spent the bulk of the time cuddling the small babies, three days to two weeks old. I was holding this very sweet little girl, her name is Mary, she is two weeks old and weighs five pounds. As I was holding her I snuggled my lips into the nap of her neck and talked softly and kissed her I was so shocked when her eyes flew opened and she watched my every move. I realized she had never had that sort of affection. It broke my heart. When Davina was born Roger took two weeks off and the bulk of those weeks were spent with us adoring and loving our new baby. And now there is a sweet new baby named Mary with no one to sing sweet love to her in her first days, weeks, months, years? It was a simple morning of playing with babies in an over crowded hot orphanage nursery but I loved it and look forward to more involvement in such a wonderful place!

Back to compound living... Roger and I have started working out together three times a week Patricia comes at six am and we have a date on the treadmill! On the off days Roger and I take tennis lessons. Such fun! But after only one week of all this activity I slept wrong and pinched a nerve in my neck so hopefully this week we can carry on. There is a nice big pool where the girls and I swim almost every afternoon, Marion also started swimming lessons this week. She will be going twice weekly. After just one lesson I could see a difference. Marion has struck up a friendship with a very sweet five year old, her name is Sabrina and she is from Malaysia. Marion and her are very similar in character, quiet and thoughtful. Roger and I are pleased that Marion has found a friend so soon. Sabrina has four sisters, one also being Davina’s age so I think our families will become close. We went to the beach yesterday. It is about an hour out of the city and very lovely. We rented a beach hut for the day, which was a wonderful way to relax.

These three weeks have been incredible. It has been wonderful and I love it here. I am looking forward to the time of this been my home. Of course there is much to get use to. The noise never stops. There is a lot of poverty. There is nothing, nothing familiar about this place. This is Africa, not America or a wannabe. Nigerians are wonderful, very friendly, have the most beautiful smiles, they sing all day. I have much more to write but I need to make some dinner. I will write again soon on some more of Africa. I hope you enjoy the photos it is a bit hard taking pictures as most Nigerians do not like their photos taken.


Making waffles!








Marion and Davina's Play Room




Across the street from Ife Oluwa Orphanage


Birds for sale. $1 each...or $10 for Oyibo's.


"Under the Bridge" or "The Fish Market"






Patricia (in the pink) striking a deal for us.




Produce from "Under The Bridge"




Marion's first swimming lesson.










Eleko Beach














View from our beach hut. It's about $18 to rent one for the day.








Traffic jam or "Go Slow" driving home from the beach.