Blog 1: Nigeria

Hey there!

I’m Kimberly and I’m one of the girls who’s making a trip from Nigeria, where I am now, to Norway, where I will be in a couple of weeks. I suppose it will be a very instructive trip which will introduce me to a lot of different cultures. To give you the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the trip, I’ll post a weekly message on this blog. Here is my blog message of my first week live from Nigeria:

In the movie, of which you find a link at the bottom of my blog message, you can see Nuhu Ribadu, a very famous man in Nigeria. This man always had an important function in Nigeria what makes him very popular among the inhabitants. After living in exile until 2010, he returned to Nigeria to run for President. Therefore he joined the party ACN. He once became a symbol of Nigeria because he told the BBC everything about the corrupt government of the country since its independency. The movie shows us a visit of Ribadu to some local inhabitants and how they react on this visit.

I think this video is a perfect reflection of how Nigerian people are and behave: always with a big smile on their face. They are happy with every little thing they get or with what happens to them. Those little things in life make them happy and worth living for. In the movie I posted we see that the local inhabitants are visited by president-candidate Nuhu Ribadu. According to me he’s a very important person in Nigeria. Not only for politics, but also on a lot of other levels since he once joined the EFCC too. I personally think he’s a good candidate to become a president since he’s loyal, has a lot of knowledge and is “new”. And that’s what Nigeria needs at the moment since there’s still a lot of poverty in the country. About his revelation of the political fraud, I think he has done the right thing. Even though this action had a lot of consequences for him. He fought for justice and that’s something what’s worth fighting for. Nigeria needs those people, people who dare to stand up for their rights, who protect the country and its inhabitants, who are new and innovative. I saw a lot of poverty there, but it's remarkable that people are still laughing all the time. They appreciate the little things, things we don’t even see anymore. As you can clearly see in the movie they aren’t used to some things that we see as ‘natural’, for example a video camera. When Ribadu arrives, a video camera records everything that happens and how people react. In that moment you can see that they are impressed about what’s happening and they’re all trying to be a part of it. Their culture is so different from ours. It made me think about the little things in life and about the fact that we, in Belgium, are arguing about stupid political issues while there are countries with bigger problems who are just trying to make the best of it.

I’ll leave Nigeria with a big smile. It’s infectious, trust me!
I’ll talk to you soon, when I’m on my next “blogpoint”!

Bye!

This is the video I was talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iggr_cIwrJU

Kimberly Pauwels