www.nbcnews.com/news/world/american-mis ... ia-n311721
The reason why this news is so particularly unwelcome for me is that it is one more click on the ratchet-jaw of inevitability, the final pinch which will be me having to leave the work and people I love in Nigeria because between criminals, terrorists, and corruption, we just won't be able to take it anymore.
If you read the news at all you have an idea of what a funked-up chaotic mess this country is. Institutions like the school I work at are islands in a wild and polluted sea of s*%t. Every school year we "increase security", but there is only so far you can go before the guards carry AKs, which goes against the Brethren ethos that founded the school. "Boko Haram" is usually interpreted as "Western Education is forbidden" (more literally, "books forbidden") and I work at the most prominent American school in the country in a city already declared to be BH's next target (although Islamists have been rumored to have been saying this for years, and here we still are).
Kidnappings of foreigners for money is practically an industry here. I knew a British surgeon who was kidnapped from his home, wounded by a bullet fragment in the process, and spent a week waiting for release. Meanwhile he tried to make friends with the kidnappers, who treated him kindly (if you overlook the fact that they kept him locked up and refused him medical treatment while his arm became infected). He asked them how they had come to such a desperate pass in their lives. One of them told him, "I went to welding school, but after I graduated I had no money to capitalize my business. So I went into the kidnapping business." The Dr noted that when the men received the money, they prayed over it and thanked God.
Many people here already think we're nuts for staying on, and you may be right. You have to consider that our lives are here. We have really good friends and jobs we both adore and that's saying a lot when there is so much here that completely sucks. Roads, medical care (a friend of mine was airlifted to Kenya for treatment a couple of days ago because the doctors here told them they just didn't have it here), schools are terrible, power cuts happen several times a day, food prices skyrocket, etc etc etc. There is every reason to get the freak out of here....except... we just can't. Push will really have to come to shove before we leave Nigeria. (For the first time EVER, Stag of the Dawn broached the subject of going someplace safer, say... Liberia; if Nigeria explodes. He has NEVER done that, always thought he'd be buried here. Just another *click* of the ratchet.
Well I'd better shut the front door. Thanks for reading while I rant.
