Valentine's Day in Abuja

Valentine’s Day is BIG in Nigeria – and every bit as commercial as in the UK. I’ve received offers on my mobile phone for special Valentines romantic dinners (sadly, only from the phone company rather than from secret admirers) and there are signs and flyers for ‘Valentine promos’ all over the city. A taxi company is Lagos is offering Free Valentine’s Day taxi rides and there is a Valentine’s Day designer fashion sale at our local mall. There are also a number of less romantic articles in the press today - from health warnings (St. Valentine’s Day: Beware of HIV/AIDS), to the bemoaning of Valentine's Day as a 'moral holiday' that leads to an increase in teenage pregnancies, shotgun weddings and drug-taking - which will result in girls and boys dropping out of school and becoming 'streetwalkers, pocket pickers or unskilled labourers in sweatshops' (an example of Nigeria journalism at it finest).

The staff at the High Commission got into the Valentine spirit this week – the wonderfully named ‘BHC People’s Committee’ organised a talk yesterday entitled ‘Love Your Neighbour! Relationships in different cultures.’ Four members of staff, each from a different state and ethnic group, gave a description of traditional courtship in their culture. What was striking was that all of them confessed that they had had to research the topic by consulting their parents and grandparents - love is as likely to be conducted via social media in modern, urban Nigeria as according to traditional rituals, although the involvement and approval of one's family remains a very important factor even today. In the majority of ethnic groups, it is senior male members of the groom's family that visit the bride's family to discuss the potential marriage, although we were told that in Yorubaland it can be the mother of the groom that undertakes this role. One of the most interesting talks was about the courtship tradition of the Tarok people of Plateau State. The potential groom has to build two huts in the village of his prospective bride and then has to farm for a number of years before he is eventually given the seal of approval by the girl's family. The other Nigerians attending the talk hooted with laughter at the amount of work the groom had to put in before being accepted - quite a contrast to the Tiv tradition of elopement, described by one of the other speakers, where the young man and woman disappear in the night to get married. Providing the families do not hunt them down and bring them back, the wedding is accepted and formal arrangements are worked out after the elopement. It struck me yet again how incredibly diverse Nigeria is - these were just some examples of the different traditions within the 36 states. I had assumed that most of the attendees at the talk would be British, keen to find out more about the country in which they were living. But actually the vast majority of attendees were Nigerian locally-engaged staff, who were clearly very curious to find out more about the different cultures within their own nation, and asked lots of very direct questions (at what point can the couple sleep together? is the bride accepted if she is not a virgin? is it true that a Yoruba woman needs to know if she can get pregnant before getting married?), which prompted much interesting and amusing discussion.

I asked one of the High Commission drivers yesterday about Valentine’s Day – would he be sending any cards? Yes, to his loved one and his sister, who live outside Abuja.  When I asked about the postal service – how long does a card take to arrive? how much does it cost? -  he explained that actually he wouldn’t be sending a card, but a text. Because the postal service in Nigeria is so unreliable, he said that the only way to ensure a card arrives is to send it by DHL or UPS. This is very expensive, so some people tell their loved ones to forget the card and just send the cash that they would have spent on the card & delivery instead (via an ATM transfer), and then send a text to let them know the money has arrived. A pragmatic if perhaps less-than-romantic approach.

Simon and I celebrated Valentine's Day this evening by heading out with some friends to a fantastic fish restaurant on the outskirts of Abuja, rather oddly located within the confines of an army barracks. Security was tight (I only realised later why this was the case; there had been a bomb blast here on New Year's Eve in 2010), but there was a great atmosphere and it did feel the nearest we've come to authentic 'Nigeria' since we arrived. Huge fish (we had croaker) are tended by an army of women on large open grills in the middle of a covered courtyard. Little bars with plastic tables and chairs have been set up all the way around the outside, so you choose your seating area and then order your fish which comes either 'grilled' or 'spicy'. Although we were half-blinded by the wood smoke, it was great fun and the fish was delicious. 

The only downside to the evening was that it took us almost 90 minutes to get home - a route that should have taken about 25 minutes. We had travelled to the restaurant in convoy with a group of friends, but the road seemed pretty easy and we told the others we would make our own way back (not least because it took us forever to leave the car park due to some extraordinarily stubborn Nigerian parking/driving). It was only as we came down the expressway that we realised that Abuja suffers from an acute lack of road signs. We completely missed our turning back in to the city and found ourselves heading out of town at a rapid pace. The problem was compounded by the fact that there was no way of locating our position on our map and no means of exiting the expressway until we were almost at Kubwa, a satellite town 25 km away - when we saw a lone sign with an arrow pointing to Abuja. We eventually made it safely home about an hour after everyone else - but took some consolation in the thought that this will at least this will be a Valentine's night to remember.

(Photos taken by our friend Paul Edwards).