My first Nigerian National Conference

Yes I know it's been a while… again. But the reason this time was also a conference. This time, my first Nigerian national conference. It was great, for several reasons. I'll give you gist.

Got my first chance to travel up to the north of Nigeria - to Zaria. It was a hell of a ride, but fun because myself and 10 other Ife Aiesecers all hired a bus that took just us all the way there (like 12 hours on the road. There was a whole lot of sleeping on the way (I spent a good portion of the trip acting as a pillow), and singing by Busola and Fisayo. Unfortunately, because we were late leaving we had to travel and arrive in Zaria at night, which is not the best, but our driver was quite good and made up decent time on the way.

Arriving in Zaria and the conference site was somewhat of a shock for me. All these busloads of Nigerian aiesecers all arriving at the same time. To be honest I even felt a little intimidated. Now I know what it's like to be a trainee at a national conference. But I wasn't entirely alone as Ife now has a new trainee – Dinesh from India. He is loads of fun and I'll be seeing plenty of him hopefully (only problem is his traineeship is in Lagos). But he promised me some good Indian cooking (including butter chicken) at his house in Leki as soon as I get there.

Now, Australian aiesecers you'll laugh at this. Our national conferences are not cheap if you’ll remember, not less that about $350 Australian each time not including transport and other expenses. Well this national conference was the equivalent of …. drumroll….. $8 Australian. Yes that's right. We ate and slept and sat in sessions and partied for 8 dollars. Sure, us 9 boys were sleeping in the one room - 4 on bed, 5 on floor, sure the food was fairly basic. But really who can complain for that price.

Unfortunately I didn't get to meet all the delegates at conference because there just wasn't the time. It was only a 3-day conference (the national planning conference). But of course it was loads of fun and I did meet some very interesting people from all over Nigeria. There were delegates from Kano, Zaria, Jos, Benin, Port Harcourt, Awka, Enugu, Lagos, Ilorin, Abeokuta, Ibadan and of course Ife (though of course I suppose these names means little to anyone but a Nigerian).

Parties were very non-Australian. As in there was not much chatting, very little drinking, and almost 100% dancing. But they were amazing to watch and experience. One could stroll through the cool night air (it's damn hot up north, but cooler at night), and then step into the party room to be engulfed by the sauna that was created from the seething mass of bodies dancing to West Africa's finest music. Yours truly was of course again very hesitant about this, being the terrible dancer that I am, but on the last night I managed with the help of one fine girl who took pity on me. The politics of the dance floor I found quite amusing. Mainly because there are more guys than girls. And since the two go together dancing, there is a continual push by some guys to cut in on others. Ahhh it's hard to describe, but quite amusing. Ok I think that's as much as I can spit out now. Back to normal programming soon.