Every Stone

Where we work: Photos of a rally, courtesy of G:

In case the video upload doesn’t work, click http://youtube.com/watch?v=TC7BGbDquzI.

Credit goes to G for these great images, taken on the way to — perhaps during or after? — a rally for our candidate, whom you’ll see pictured on the side of the bus: He also noticed that livestock transportation is heavily regulated and carefully conducted, as seen below:

Democracy still has a fairly tenuous grip in Nigeria. In 2005: About 40 percent thought the last elections were not free and fair; About 20 percent through they were free and fair with major problems; Only 9 percent thought they were free and fair (pg. 3, Brief No.35). From 2000-01 to 2005: Support for democracy […]

That was on the way to lunch. At lunch it was revealed that one of the guys won’t eat the chicken because of bird flu, and the other won’t touch fish because of the mercury. Naturally, all but totally cooked vegetables are also out of the question. Tofu, perhaps? Diet time. I learned something else […]

I posted a batch of pictures from today at my Flickr page and a video from today should also be working shortly in a post to follow…well, shortly. There was a huge event today honoring the late brother of our candidate at the center in his name, which is also our office building. There were […]

For some reason, Google thinks we’re in Israel. Too bad I don’t know Hebrew.

The story of Abuja is really interesting — until about 1976, Lagos, the port city, was the capital of Nigeria. It was decided that changing the capital would reduce regional and tribal bias, so the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was formed and Abuja was born. Abuja was built up from a small village, and it’s […]

I couldn’t help laughing every time the pilot made an announcement. He provided a detailed route for us — “We’ll be going tru Philadelphia and New York up ta Nova Scotia, all Nordern da whole way” — and told us that, ‘of course,” he’d “prefer that we keep our seatbelts fastened during flight.” When, having […]

The Nigerian Embassy is tucked away on International Court in far, far NW DC — that would be, as I found out yesterday, about 2 hours up Connecticut Avenue for those doing the rush-hour dash. It’s very simple beside sprawling Malaysia and the sign-happy United Arab Emirates, clean modern lines and glass. Through iron gates, […]