Super-Supportive Family and Friends

My sister always shows her love and support with a maximum of dignity and decorum during our Skype conversations. Here she's...well, nevermind, I don't even know.


My kingdom for Starbucks. What we have in Abuja is Nescafe, powdered or condensed milk, and sugar. Lots of sugar. And here he is dangling a latte in front of me. So thoughtful. I appear to be comatose or perhaps seizing in response.


Thankfully I do have one loyal supporter:


It's impossible for me to catch one funny photo of someone I'm talking to that's also a good photo of me in that little left-hand corner box. It's like a law or something.

Skype Chat with my Sister

Chuchi was very curious to learn all about my time in Abuja:


She calmed down a bit after a while though and got bored with my stories, so she started playing NASA and paging me from Houston.


Pelusa also said hello briefly, and she brought my father along to show him how to use Skype.

Campaign Culture

Democracy still has a fairly tenuous grip in Nigeria.

In 2005:

• About 40 percent thought the last elections were not free and fair;
• About 20 percent through they were free and fair with major problems;
• Only 9 percent thought they were free and fair (pg. 3, Brief No.35).

From 2000-01 to 2005:

• Support for democracy decreased from 81 percent to 65 percent.
• Satisfaction with democracy decreased from 84 to 25 percent.
• Belief in civil and political liberties declined from approx. 90 to under 50 percent.
• Those who want to give democracy more time to work decreased from 79 to 55 percent while those supporting change to another form of government increased from 17 to 39 percent.

Campaign culture here is still evolving. It's interesting to see trials of different models of management here -- ad hoc, etc. i.e. If I ask three people to discuss and plan this event without me, will they do it? Would a more hierarchical structure in which each person is requested to report back regularly be more effective?

What's emerging is something very different from anything our team has seen before, and something that they're working to assess and work with each day to meet set goals and objectives in the campaign. A lot of it is culture: punctuality is not particularly important here, and the relationship between employer and employee is complicated, etc. What's driving our guys particularly nuts, and rightly so, is the very different structure surrounding communication and decision-making. There's no campaign manager as we know it in the US, and communication is irregular even without the cell and power outages that can make getting a line to someone difficult.

There were some really positive developments today. The new researcher is really excellent. Very positive today, although a key member of personnel was two and a half days late for a project. (Not uncommon.) And, as always, I'm really enjoying getting to know the folks I'm working with, both US and Nigerian. They're remarkable all around.

Because it amused my mother so much I'll repeat the story of my first introduction in the War Room. G introduced me, and one of the editors immediately asked, "Is that 'Ms.' or "Mrs.'?" His neighbor continued teasingly, "Is she Muslim?" So now we remember them as my first Nigerian suitors.

Driving has been dangerous. C had to talk to our driver after the third time we made a narrow escape. He also has a habit of taking routes the guys, who've been here long enough to know Abuja decently well, are unfamiliar with. Often our seatbelts don't work, and that's when I cling to the door and pray. A woman in our campaign has been in two accidents in the last week, the second of which totaled her car.

Skyped/iChatted tonight with great success, or, at least, more success than G'd led me to expect from Skype in Nigeria. On iChat, my picture was clear; on Skype, his was. But on both audio was very good, unlike on the slower, wireless internet at the office.

Welcome to Abuja

The story of Abuja is really interesting -- until about 1976, Lagos, the port city, was the capital of Nigeria. It was decided that changing the capital would reduce regional and tribal bias, so the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was formed and Abuja was born. Abuja was built up from a small village, and it's still small by comparison to other major cities. Much of the population is comprised of civil servants who leave on weekends, making it somewhat of a ghost town.

Got in around 8:20 pm, passed through immigrations and customs along with my very nice but very confused Portugese seatmate and found our guys waiting for me with a car. Then there was the initially alarming incident in which C and an airport attendant 'chanced' one another. Chancing is when someone sees how far he can push his position. Picture goats ramming each other for primacy. It's almost violent. C lost. The attendant made us drive to a second loop, ten feet away, to load my luggage.

On the drive from the airport, about 40 minutes, the roads were completely empty, and dark, thanks to the failure of a transformer, and we passed the national cathedral, national mosque, national assembly, and the national stadium, which is used very rarely -- maybe yearly.

Dinner was good. We can eat the vegetables and fruit at the hotel, which is super-nice, and have a ready supply of bottled water, so hopefully I'll be able to leave mom's medicines packed.

Skype is up and running. Tested it the other night with K. It works beautifully. Download the software from www.skype.com and call me if I'm on: it's my two last names together without space or symbol.