Visiting a remote village

Whilst this visit happened during the Disability and You tour, and because of the tour members, it deserves its own post.

In the Asaba leg of the journey we were joined by a large bunch of JCIs who were largely students at the local university. The JCI were funding and organising a de-worming programme for young people in remote villages in Delta State. The road show crew were invited to briefly visit one of these projects as they were promoting deworming health techniques and demystifying the deworming tablets.

The village was away from Asaba town and we had to make a 10 minute trek from the nearest road (which was a dirt track). The short walk was through beautiful, lush vegetation, throguh mango trees, papaya trees and yam and plantain plants and other huge trees. Kids were running around and playing in a clean, pretty, spacious, if basic, environment and lived in mud-walled houses. There were little kids everywhere and they were particularly interested in me. As I approached them calmly they ran away screaming, scared of the stranger! So, of course, I chased them around for about 10 minutes in the baking heat.

When we arrived at the village meeting area there were dozens of people (mainly women and very young children) crowded under a thatched shelter. An old, short man holding a stick and a small wooden gong instrument acted like the town-crier. He paced around, keeping the crowd in order and translated the words of the health adviser – not simply into the local language Igbo, but expertly into a rhythmic story-telling language (so I was told by a "metropolitian Igbo" speaker). As an oyibo (the Yoruba and Igbo word literally meaning white person), I was quickly called to sit in the shade and suddenly a tiny little baby, barely able to open its eyes was placed in my lap. With young women cooing around me, and this gorgeous 2 week little baby in my arms, I couldn’t help but be moved.

The Doctor talked about the importance of basic health care and swallowed a deworming pill as encouragement to the children. I asked around for the mother of this little kid, but all I got was a pretty young woman trying to swap mobile phone numbers with me.

The driver came and called us for us to move quickly as we had a long journey ahead of us. The mother collected the baby and we rushed off.