all Things @ly

An eventful AIESEC week here in Ife. First of all we had the LCP and EB elections. A somewhat more "informal" affair than at home in Australia. I am not exaggerating when I say the speeches of some candidates were woeful. More than one person standing for an EB position got and basically said "yeah well I don’t have anything to say but vote for me anyway". Nothing like the old Australian elections with 5 minute speeches, deathly silence in the room and the solid tension that hangs in the air. But I guess all positions were filled and Dele, the current LCP, was returned for one more year (as I used to say to Marty, double-terming LCPs are the way of the future).

Two days later AIESEC Ife had their annual formal dinner. Very cool affair with all ladies and gents dressing in their finest gowns and suits (well there were one or two boys in jeans) and pairing off to attend a formal dinner. It was a slow starting affair, with the usual "African time" start about two hours after the listed time. But I’ve been here long enough now such that I turned up just in time for the start of proceedings. The MC kept us entertained whilst we dined on nibblies, pepper soup, the usual Nigerian celebratory mix of jollof rice, fried rice, moin moin and various meat, then cake and ice-cream. There were also a few awards handed out for AIESEC achievements throughout the last year, an official hand-over form the old to the new EB and a kind of parting presentation for all the graduating @ers. I took particular delight in participating in the best dressed awards. I’m sure I would have won if it weren’t for my socks!!! And of course, this being Nigeria, after the dinner, the tables and chairs were cleared for us all to dance the night away into the wee hours of the morning.


A cool by-product of the dinner, was a chance for me to finally meet Chris, another Australian trainee here in Nigeria, but based in lagos. You see I’d chatted to him before he came to Nigeria on email but never met him since he arrived. I can’t describe how cool it was to hear that familiar accent, gist about all things Australian and finally have someone who can understand my humour (riotous topics amongst us included reminiscing about jokes from "the Castle", bogans, beer, etc.). Maybe this sounds an odd thing to be enjoying or making mention of, but I think any Aussie overseas would understand. Kudos to Chris who brought to the dinner same bottle of duty-free bundy rum. Though I think one or two girls may regret his decision. One particular AIESEC Ife member, who shall remain nameless on this forum, had a few too many swigs and spent the rest of the night hassling just about every girl in the place!