Achieving Zen in Zaria

Note to self: It pays to nail down the details of international travel before you actually get to your destination.

Following my exit from Gulu last month, I was so focused on American food, family and friends, I didn’t get around to focusing on this latest Nigeria journalism training until I was almost headed to Dulles last Tuesday. In fact, it wasn’t until I’d been in Abuja for a full 24 hours that I learned the workshop on TB and HIV reporting wouldn’t even BE in Abuja. It’s actually taking place in a city called Zaria, about two and half hours north of Abuja.

That was welcome news. Other than The "Great Gulu Outward Bound Caper," most of my time in Africa has been spent in capital cities….Accra, Addis Ababa, Abuja. While I was in Uganda, Kampala was a total lifeline, because short trips there gave me a brief respite, a welcome reminder of the urban life I’d left behind in DC. I think it’s safe to say that going forward, if I were ever to actually live in Africa, it would have to be in a capital city.

That doesn’t mean I’m not down for traveling just about anywhere on the continent to do journalism trainings. But I’d have to know that at the end of a few weeks or so, I could head back to home base. So when I learned the workshop would be in Zaria, where the only TB/HIV hospital in Nigeria is located, it didn’t faze me. After all, I’ve stayed at Northern Uganda hotels I wouldn’t house a dog in. I’ve curled up in a tight ball in the center of a bed with sheets so suspiciously gray, I spent the entire night trying to will myself to levitate about a half inch above the mattress, better to avoid the virulent case of eczema, psoriasis or trench rot I’d surely develop. I’ve hovered under mosquito nets with my iPod going full blast to drown out the mosquitoes buzzing around my head.

Surely, the Teejay Palace Hotel in Zaria, Nigeria couldn’t be any worse. (Life Lesson Number 2: While traveling in Africa, if you should come across a hotel with the word "Palace" in its title, better you should slit your own throat than book a room there.)

Of COURSE it could!! Come on, people, don’t act like you aren’t aware that “Misadventure” is my middle name! My first clue about what to expect came during the drive up to Zaria. I slept most of the way thanks to the last stages of jet lag, but when I was conscious, the surroundings looked eerily like Gulu. Still, I’d been told Zaria was a university town, so I rather naively hoped the best hotel and conference center in town would offer decent, if spare accommodations.

Right now, I’m sitting in one of the “suites” at the Teejay, and I’m reminiscing about sultry nights in Gulu. That’s because the local mosquitoes have begun their tactical offensive, aptly titled, “Operation Bite the Shit Out of the African American Woman Who Keeps Bringing Her Ignorant Ass Over Here For Us to Feast On.” Because it’s a suite, I have a bedroom AND a sitting room. Of course, the sitting room has no air conditioning, which should preclude any actual sitting there once the temperature reaches 108. Mercifully, there’s a wall air-conditioning unit in the bedroom.

Imagine a jackhammer going at full blast right next to a cement mixer in the middle of Manhattan rush hour traffic. That’s what the air conditioner in this room sounds like. That is, when it’s not lurching to a halt like a derailing freight train. Then there’s about 10 seconds of silence before the cement mixer scenario kicks back in. But there’s a plus side…..the electricity just went off, so that may provide some blessed quiet until somebody can go fire up the smelly diesel generator.

Besides, total darkness prevents you from seeing the lone towel in the bathroom that’s so stained, it looks like the entire defensive squad of the New England Patriots wiped their sweaty groins with it. Thank God for facial cleansing cloths and Wet Ones….they’ll last me until I can buy some towels tomorrow….that is, I HOPE I can buy some towels………

Okay, why am I dumping this on you, gentle readers? Surely, you’re somewhere out there thinking, “What the hell is Rachel moaning about NOW???? Nobody forced her to go back to Africa.” But the thing is, I’m really NOT complaining about the situation. I’m merely writing about it to process yet another milestone in my psychosocial development. You see, about 20 minutes ago, I discovered that the Teejay Palace Hotel has wireless Internet. I’m sitting in my noisy-assed, mosquito infested bedroom typing this posting to you while I’m on the Internet. In Zaria, Nigeria. (Which if Gulu is Satan’s Buttcrack, Zaria is most assuredly his left armpit.)

Being connected to the outside world while bracing for a week’s stay at Motel 666 somehow helps ameliorate these temporary discomforts and assaults to my finely-tuned aesthetic sensibilities. First of all, I could probably buy the hotel with what I paid for this laptop. Second, I can communicate with anybody anywhere in the world with it….something that about 90 percent of Africans still don’t have the ability to do. Third, I get to add another notch on my travel belt…another district heard from, so to speak.

But most of all, tomorrow morning, I get to jump right back into journalism training mode, talking with my African colleagues about the thing I love most…writing, reporting and telling stories. I get to tap into my own growing sense of awareness about major issues in the world, and I get to urge those journalists to share my enthusiasm about making a difference through their craft. I get another chance to add meaning and measure to my time on this earth, and to avoid the fate of people like the whining crybabies the Roman Philosopher Seneca wrote about, the ones who spend so much time bemoaning the passage of time that their lives and energies are completely wasted.

Basically, I’ve had to go all Zen about this experience before I go all crazy because of it. Been there, done that, got the nervous tick and the deflated ass to prove it. Going Zen feels a whole lot healthier.