Nigerian Food

So I thought I would tell you all a little about the Nigerian food...because it's well tasty!!!!

So hear is a run down of my top 5 Nigerian foods:
 1. Pounded yam and Egusi soup- This is the first Nigerian dish i tried and it delish, its serve separately. The pounded Yam looks like a big ball of mashed potato. The Egusi soup is made from ground watermelon seeds, mixed with spinach stuff, and some red oil. Mmmmm its amazing!

 2. Moi-Moi- This is basically ground beans which is then boiled in a bag. They serve it with a boiled egg inside but its melt in the mouth stuff. Also if left to go cold it hardens and is a pretty good afternoon snack.

 3. Beans Porridge- This basically looks like someone's thrown up on your plate but it tastes pretty good. Again the main ingredient is beans, but it is a porridge consistency. Often made with either yam or potato to fill it out a bit. Its also good if you spread the beans porridge on bread.

 4. Fried Yam and red soup- Yam is a similar consistency to potato apart from its a bit harder and comes in massive tubular shapes. So fried yam is basically like having a big circular chip. You eat it with Red soup which is made mainly of red oil, tomato paste and spices.

 5. Okara- Again this is ground beans...its amazing what you can do with beans! But this one they put bread crumbs around it and fry it. It's quite common as a breakfast food, and is again pretty amazing.

So there we go you now know a little more about Nigerian food, and all of the delicacies your missing out on :) Fortunately not been offered snails, snake, or random meat yet but im sure ill have to stomach somethin gross soon.
x

Me and Henry hard at work

climbing the palm tree

Happy New Year!

Hello everyone. Thought it’s about time for another short update J Hope your all doing well, and enjoying the New Year.

I’m back in Ogugu now. We had a really warm welcome back from everyone, which was really nice. Even got a hug from Elder Rueben, which was strange haha. It was nice to get away from all of the mayhem and madness going on in the big cities, and get back to the simpler village life.

The day that we got back there was a big football match in Ogugu, between Ogugu team and Ogugu Old players (veterans). It was a big occasion with a lot of the village coming out to watch, maybe 500 people or so. My friend Old Skool, was the commentator for the game so when he spotted me in the crowd he announced on the speaker that “he was being joined by our football analyzer from UK Mr. Will” it was hilarious, it was basically me and Old skool having banter over a speaker system, and trying to offer some sort of half decent commentary. Never had myself down as a commentator and I’m pretty sure its not a gift of mine, but it was good fun J

In the first week back we had Billy Abwa, the ‘Advance’ coordinator for Nigeria come and stay with us in Ogugu. It was really nice that he came for 2 reasons; firstly his purpose for coming was to finish the final touches on my room and the house next door, which is nice. But secondly it also gave us a great chance to chat to him and make sure that all our plans are all ok. He also brought a projector with him, so I took the opportunity to do a film night for the football boys, in the centre. So I had like 30-40 of the footy guys round to watch a good old 007 James Bond classic. Its was a good evening, and Billy finished by giving a really challenging gospel message, and they all seemed to take in what he was saying.

When Billy was here we also to a trip into the ‘Bush’ we went to quite a remote village where one of the circle of hope boys, Henry, who is staying with his grandparents. I might just tell you a bit about Henry, both his parents died of HIV when he was young, he then moved in with a relative here in Ogugu, but he was being badly abused by the relative, because he is HIV positive as well. Since Circle of Hope heard his story, they have provided a house for him and also reunited him with his brother to be room mates, and they provide money for food, clothes etc. Henry is now a really happy young guy, and a really fun guy to spend time with. So yeah we went with Billy to visit him where he was visiting his grandparents. It was a fun day; we went through a village called Japan, which was weird. We met all Henry’s family and one of his cousins was climbing palm trees to tap the palm wine. He used like a bark rope, which he circled around himself and the tree, to harness himself to the tree. It was so cool watching him climb these big 30ft trees, but I couldn’t just watch I had to try it. Turns out it’s a lot harder than it looks! But I tried and got a good 12 ft off the ground.

Anyway I’ve been pretty busy since getting back. I’ve been organizing a football competition for 4 junior teams in Ogugu, 3 of which I have been helping to coach. The competition has been running for 3 days now and finishes in 4 days. The first prize is a set of football shirts, which I collected from you kind people when I was at home. There’s been a couple of problems with the competition, some of the teams have been using some foul play, trying to bring in older players from other teams, and lying about the ages of some of the players, to try and give them the advantage. Which has been annoying but on the whole the competition is running smoothly, and fairly, so I’m hoping that it’ll continue in this way.

I’ve also started doing HIV tests, and councelling more regularly, which has been really challenging work, and quite humbling. But it is really rewarding work. Unfortunately because of the elections, school isn’t resuming till February now, so all of the school HIV awareness things which I had planned I have had to put on hold, for now.

I really need to stop writing soon, but I’ll just mention one more thing before I go. I’ve had this idea since coming, that on market day we can set up a health clinic stall, which offers free HIV testing and councelling. The market day is like the biggest event in Ogugu, because so many people are traders and farmers. The market comes to Ogugu every 4 days, and the village is always bustling with people. So I thought it makes sense to go and offer the HIV test. The problem is that HIV stigma is so great here, that if people think that the stall is just for HIV stuff they will avoid it like the plague because they don’t want to be seen attached to anything to do with HIV. So the idea is to offer some other basic health tests (blood pressure etc) so that it is seen as more than just a HIV place. We have a team of doctors coming soon, so I am hoping to start the market day stall with a bang and have the 7 doctors offering free clinic, tests, medicines etc, to really make people aware of the stall and what it offers. So I have been making arrangements for the first market day, which is on the 24^th Jan. I am really excited about the opportunity to do this, and if you can please pray that it would be a success, and that we would be able to offer the HIV test and councelling in a discreet and stigma-free way.

Anyway thats all for now...hope that didn't bore you too much! 

bye x