Fatima, the colonel’s wife, flew down from Kaduna in the North, where she lives, to visit her husband. She joined us for the two dinners we had together in Port Harcourt. She is a lovely confident well spoken woman, wearing the wrapped attire of the Muslim women with some beautiful jewelry.
We exchanging information about our lives and found out it was not all that different. They have five children. The eldest a daughter is just one month younger than Alison (we were pregnant with our first children at the same time) and is studying economics. Her eldest son wants to be a doctor. He always loved horses and rode them until he developed a skin allergy which makes it impossible for him to continue with it. Apart from raising her children, Fatima liked planting her own vegetables and even raised her own chickens. As pets they have cats and she and her children also find it hard to depart for the kittens after naming them.
Recently she started working for the government helping to organize the forthcoming elections. Her dream is to start her own small business. She is an independent woman who had to fend for herself as being married to a military man she ended up on her own for long stretches of time, while he served in the peacekeeping force in places like Sudan. She calculated that in the twenty years of marriage they have only spent ten years together. Yet one pick up that there is a lovely relationship between them in the way she knows what he likes to eat and shares food with him and how they support each others discussions.
One of the most beautiful images of this trip was the view from the plane over the Niger Delta. Snaking waterways spread as far as the horizon and the river flowing thick and full this time of the year. The dilemma of the farmers in this area is that there are no good roads to markets, as building bridges over all these tributaries will be extremely expensive. Most farmers here just plant for their own needs. However the argument is raised that all the money the government makes from the oil in this region should really be spent on upgrading the infrastructure and fighting the immense poverty of the population. Dotted amongst the waterways you see the flames of the oil pumps every now and then, burning off the gas.
Another problem is that of the fishermen in this area: the waterways are getting clogged up with spilt oil which is seeping into the soil and killing all the fish. The oil companies and government are blaming the local population for pirating the oil pipelines. They steal the oil to make a crude kind of fuel for vehicles. The colonel showed us some pictures of how they do it with big drums on fire. Extremely dangerous, and they are not really making much out of it because petrol in Nigeria is dirt cheap, sponsored by the government. It makes you realize just how desperate these people are.
The Mexican oil spill helped highlighting the oil spill in the Delta area, which has been going on for years totally ignored by the rest of the world. Whether something can still be done to save this sensitive echo system is a big question. If the big oil companies start to take a responsibility here like in Mexico, they will have to start with the people of the area, maybe create jobs to clear the oil spill and build bridges and roads. Or will greed still prevail?
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