Thread by @ShoutsAndMiras

Good evening folks! I want to tell y’all a story. It is full of first times. My first trip to rural, northern Nigeria. My first real encounter with a person living with HIV. My first (and only) experience with burukutu. And possibly, the first seed of TJ sprouting in my head.

It was 2008. I’d been working at the Clinton Health Access Initiative for 3 months. We lived in this building in Wuse 2 that we called the Iraqi palace, because it was huge and had marble floors- though the A/Cs and other electronics had all been fried during a changeover mishap.

We had a gateman named Salisu who was from Kano and in love with me (and who later broke free from the quasi-slavery or being a gateman in Abuja and ended up becoming a driver for a family in Maitama) and a “house boy” and a gardener who were cousins from Bauchi State.

One day the gardener, lets call him G (how can I forget his name? His cousin was named Timothy...), asked to speak to me. He said “Ma, please, when are you going to come to my village to teach us about HIV and AIDS?”

I tried to explain that this wasn’t really what I did at CHAI.

G wasn’t feeling my answer. My friend and colleague Andy, who considered himself a “man of the people” (and who really was to be fair - he would hang and smoke weed with anyone, and even dated a supermarket security guard and paid for her to go back to school), perked up at this.

Andy said “I know enough about AIDS, sure- I‘ll come out.” G was elated. I wasn’t sure CHAI would be cool with an unauthorized trip to a random village but Andy had lived in Botswana & Sierra Leon before this and he seemed confident so I tentatively said “yeah, I’ll come too...”

First, G said, we were going to have to travel to his village to request the permission from his king (in retrospect I guess this must have been a village Sarki) and select a date for the training that would be agreeable for his highness. We would also ask the local ECWA pastor.

G said we’d have to leave VERY early on a Saturday morning to we could get there in the afternoon- then we would see the king, spend the night with his parents and sister, and return to Abuja on Sunday morning. Andy and I agreed to make this first trip on the following weekend.

As we got to the end of the week, Andy started to get a little sketchy on the details of the trip. He told me this was my idea, & I didn’t really need him to come along too, right? I lamely responded “uhhh... you know more about AIDS than me and you’ve done this stuff before...”

4am on Saturday rolls around. I knock on Andy’s door and call out “it’s time to go!” No response. I try the door. It is locked. I call his phone. I can hear it ringing in the bedroom. He lets it ring through. I call again. After three rings he turns off his phone. What to do?

G kept calling me to say “we have to go!” I didn’t have the heart to stand him up, even though Andy was standing us BOTH up, so I picked up my backpack and headed out the front door. G was waiting for me outside. First, we took a bus to Nicon junction. I think we paid 50 naira.

Then, we took another bus to Mararaba. This was my first time in Mararaba. Even at dawn, the place was hoppin! We paid another 50 naira for the second trip. The third leg was a bus driving to Jos. I think we paid 1,000 (maybe less? It was 2008) and up we hopped into the bus.

I was used to paying 1,000 naira per hour to a green taxi guy who would wait outside the nightclub for me until 5am! I did honestly not know about this second, parallel economy that existed in the same spaces that I occupied. I was clueless and naive.

Back on the bus, 2 chickens had escaped their bondage and were running back and forth over all the passengers’ feet. Where was the A/C? Where were the seatbelts? Was that chicken shit or sweat that I felt on my calf? Were my belongings safe? What exactly had I gotten myself into?

We made it to Jos, got down and entered a car heading to Bauchi. I think this time we paid 400 naira because we weren’t going all the way. We dropped down after maybe 30 or 40 minutes, in what looked like a deserted stretch of road. Somehow, miraculously, a few bikes appeared.

Come on, said G. The only way to my village is by bike. We paid another 100 to each rider and off we went, into the bush, down a series of cow paths. The village was called Boi. And Boi was it hard to get to!

When we got there, everyone was out to receive us and amazed to see this baturia show up. I guess G had told his parents we were coming, and word spread quickly. We went to his parents’ compound. I would be sharing a room and a bed with his sister. They had lunch waiting for us.

A few things stood out:
1) ALL the women did was cook. From dawn to dusk, they were either washing & prepping, or cooking & pounding, or tending the fire. It seemed like hard work.
2) everyone just threw their trash over the side of the compound wall. This seemed... not great.

3) G had gotten married about 5 months before, and his wedding presents were in the sister’s bedroom which doubled as a storage room. I kid you not, every single one of his presents was the same set of plastic kitchen flatware. With the same exact floral pattern on it.

It was as if some traveling salesmen had come through the village and sold his entire stock to the guests of G’s wedding. I guess when you get married in the village, there isn’t really a registry right? G was really proud of all his wedding presents. I tried not to giggle.

I put my things down, we had lunch, and then it was time for a tour of the village. Somehow this place had a NEPA connection, AND a Primary Health Center! At the time I didn’t think much of it but in retrospect I’m really impressed. This place was off the beaten path, guys.

We went to the house of the King, and after the obligatory waiting (you must always be the one to wait, I have learned from experience) we were brought in to meet him. The room was dark, with low ceilings, curtains for doors, and a dark green felt carpet covering the ground.

I greeted the king in my stilted Hausa and then G explained our mission. The King granted is permission to hold the event in 4 weeks’ time. Success! But that also meant I would have to come back here again... yikes. We spent the rest of the day visiting the pastor and the PHC.

The ECWA pastor told me he would be thrilled to support this training, and would encourage his congregation to attend. Man, you ECWA people are everywhere. It’s impressive. I was confused at this point that everyone was speaking Hausa and yet we were talking to a pastor.

G explained to me that even though Hausa was most people’s first language, they were a Christian village. This was the first time I realized that there are Christians in northern Nigeria who are indigenous to the area and not southern transplants. Never stop learning, right?

When we got to the PHC it was locked up. After 5 or 10 minutes we were able to locate the youth corper who said she’d been posted there. This was my first encounter with NYSC. On paper, PHC Boi was listed as an HIV testing center. Did she know anything about this?

The corper said that her boss had the key to the place but he rarely showed up, so she didn’t go inside the clinic very often, but that in any case the building wasn’t connected to NEPA and the pharmacy was empty. She asked if I could bring test kits when I came back.

I said I’d try. Technically CHAI buys test kits (or they did in 2008) but we never actually laid our hands on them- they went straight to NGO partners or the ministry of health from the port. And anyway this was definitely not an official trip. My boss didn’t even know I was here

After we left the PHC, we went back to G’s parents’ compound. By this time it was almost dusk. The poor women of the house were still sweating over the fire. We ate this jollof rice-and-pasta-cooked-together thing. I had never eaten rice and pasta together in the same meal. OK 🥴

After dinner, G wanted to show me off to his friends in the village. There was no light but a few people had gens running. We hit “the strip” and headed toward the noise. This was Saturday night, after all! A group of guys was drinking something out of a calabash.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Burukutu,” they told me. “It’s a local beer made from fermented grains. Can you take it?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

*swigs from calabash*

*laughter and a rush of voices talking in Hausa all at once*

“But you can’t take this, can you?”

“What is it?”

“Palm wine, distilled into a liquor”

“I can.”

“Sure?”

*swig*

Y’all - that moonshine tasted like rubbing alcohol. I think that’s the kind of thing that can turn a man blind. Or mad. Or both. I kept it down but I couldn’t stop my whole body from shuddering.

There was much jubilation and applause after I drank the moonshine, and now a crowd had formed around us. An old man turned to G and said something in Hausa.

“G, what did he say?”

“He said ‘there’s no way this baturia will eat dog though.’”

Dog?!! 😳 As in, man’s best friend?

Well - I felt this was sacrilege. But I also heard that inane brash voice in my head, the one that always tells me to do stupid things (the voice that told me to start a tomato company 6 years later), calling me:

“Prove them wrong. Do it, Mira. You don’t know this dog. Issok.”

I looked at G, and at the old man, and at the plate of what I assumed had been regular cow or goat suya in front of him.

I said “Oh, so you think I won’t eat dog? Watch me.”

I picked a toothpick, speared a piece, dunked it in pepe, & popped it in my mouth.

Chew, chew, swallow.

Cheering erupted behind me - my coolness had been cemented in the village of Boi. Was it the dog or the moonshine that made me feel so dizzy? I didn’t know. I washed down the meat with another gulp or burukutu, and that was our cue to head home. It was almost 9pm now anyway.

Village life is pretty slow after dark - if you know, una know now. We got home and I crept into bed next to G’s sister, who was passed out hard after a long day in the “kitchen” (ie over the open fire). I lay on the bed in the silence and darkness and heat, and eventually slept.

and now, I think we should all take a cue and go to sleep too. I’ll share part two of the story (when I came back to deliver the training) later this week.

Goodnight, amigos! 😘🌙😴

Ok. It’s been a busy week and this story takes time to remember because it happened 10.5 years ago, AND it also takes time to write it out on twitter on my phone, but let’s do this.

I passed the night, fitfully, next to G’s sister. I was afraid I might kick her in my sleep, or disturb her in some other way. Even my breath felt too loud & invasive in the still, thick air. By dawn, the sister was up: back at the fire to make breakfast & warm water for bathing.

The family offered me hot water for a bath, but I declined. I somehow felt shy about taking a bucket bath in the corner of the compound, even though everyone else was doing it and the area was partitioned off with a curtain. I wasn’t even planning to poop, let alone bathe here...

Breakfast was probably akara. We ate, packed, and began our journey back to Abuja. G told me that in this part of Bauchi, there were many secret caves in the hills that surrounded us, where his ancestors had hidden from slave traders coming north from the coast.

I was fascinated. Of course, being naïve as I was back then, it hadn’t occurred to me that this place where I was had played a role in the multi-century slave trade that I’d learned about in school. I asked if I could see one of the caves but G said they were full of ghosts.

The farther we retreated from Boi, the safer I felt- I hadn’t realized how nervous I’d been on the trip. When we got to Mararaba, I felt almost elated. I walked in the front door of the Iraqi palace and saw Andy sitting at the dining table. He looked completely unphased 2 see me

Andy, what the f*ck! I cried, as soon as I’d put down my bag. You were supposed to go with us! Andy shrugged, gave me a little smirk, and said “I never said I was going.” What do you do when someone just decides to misremember what happened? I spluttered, and lapsed into silence.

Well, are you going to come back for the actual training?

Nah.

....okayyy...

Now I was concerned. I know I was working for an HIV organization, but I really didn’t know that much about HIV! My job was to quantify the amount of HIV drugs the country needed each year.

I basically triangulated data from hospitals, the federal ministry of health, and NGO partners to try and figure out how many people we had in the system, and what drugs they needed. But that was basically excel work. It definitely didn’t qualify me to teach anything to anybody.

Plus, there was the issue of the test kits. The pastor & king both said they’d spread the word about my training, & the corper from the PHC wanted us to test people. But I didn’t know how to get my hands on test kits, how to perform a test, how to counsil people getting tested...

Ironically, I was also the person in charge of buying a lot of the HIV rapid test kits for the country, but again this was a theoretical excel-based exercise for me. I know it sounds dumb but I had never really considered the people who were going to use those test kits before.

And, we bought them for the ministry of health and other NGO partners and they went straight from Apapa to the medical storage facility of whoever we were buying for. Even if I’d wanted to divert test kits somehow, I wouldn’t have known how to do it.

I remembered that I’d seen Boi Primary Health Center listed in this one NGO’s list of supported facilities. So I decided to call up the NGO and ask them if they could send test kits there. The program coordinator said sure, we can do that, no problem. Yes! I was saved.

Then he added, I just need to know what the initiative is so I can tell my boss, and we’ll need a letter from your organization so we can release the kits. Sh*t. This whole thing was unofficial.

I was terrified of my boss. This was a man who a year later would tell me “Mira, I’ve been a doctor since before u were born. If I ever catch u saying something bad about me, I’ll take it as an act of racism & report you.” This is also the man who became the first investor in TJ.

I hadn’t told my boss I’d left Abuja via public transport to go to a village called Boi with the gardener. Technically, we weren’t allowed to go outside of Ring Road unless it was for official work purposes. I could not imagine asking him for HIV test kits for this inane mission.

So, I abandoned the idea. I rummaged together a poster and some t-shirts. I started googling “how to teach people about HIV” so I would have an idea of what to say. I learned how the disease can & can’t be transmitted, I learned why the drugs are so important to take consistently

As our return trip to Boi drew ever nearer, I sank into a lower and lower gloom. G was SO excited. Andy thought the whole thing was hysterical. I felt lost at sea. Finally, the day came.

4am 🚨beep🚨beep🚨beep🚨

(This was before iphones, remember, so we still used alarm clocks)

I got up. I felt like a fraud. G was waiting for me outside, and Salisu was at the gate to see us off. I had my T-shirts & my poster and this dark, heavy pit in my stomach. The trip, which took 8 hours, was a blur. I think my seat was too hot because the danfo engine was faulty?

I don’t know. All I know is that we made it there, that second time, and we went to G’s parents’ place to eat lunch as we had before, and then it was time for the training. The pastor was there, as he has promised, and he even said he would be the first one to get tested. Tested.

I mumbled something along the lines of oh... umm, I wasn’t able to get any test kits. Sorry about that. But, uhh, I can teach you guys about HIV...

The crowd of 20-30 ppl seemed visibly disappointed, once the bad news had been translated. I want to digress briefly at this point.

It’s important to remember how much stigma is associated with HIV. I know a man who lost his job just because he got tested. I’ve heard of women who are dying who won’t get tested because their husbands (who infected them) will throw them out of the house if they test positive.

These folks took a big risk even just by showing up at their own local clinic. Wanting to get tested is associated with promiscuous behavior even in the US - I ask for a test once a year even if I haven’t had a new sexual partner in that year, and the doctors look at me sideways.

So now, here were the 30 bravest residents of Boi before me, outing themselves as caring to know about their status, which was about as good as shouting to the world “I’m a sex fiend & my addiction will literally kill me!” -and all I had were tshirts. I passed around the tshirts.

I unrolled my poster and started trying to “teach” my audience about HIV. What it is, how you get it, how you don’t get it, what it means if you have it. At one point I distinctly remember telling the group that you can’t catch HIV from sharing a toothbrush.

This immediately sparked questions.

But we’ve been told that you shouldn’t share a toothbrush! What if the person has open sores from their disease?

My internet research hadn’t really talked about that. The article is read simply said that the virus couldn’t spread from saliva

Was I giving bad information? Was I putting people at more risk? I didn’t know, so I just kept ploughing on. Eventually, I ran out of things to say. My audience applauded. This was the first time I saw how much slack Nigerians are willing to cut you if your skin is white...

The crowd started to disburse and I looked to G to see what would happen next. But the corper came up to me before I could reach him, and said “ma - see these women in the back? They want to talk to you. They are HIV positive and they came to hear you speak.” OH EM GEE.

...

The women seemed, from my memory of this event, small, and frail, and old, and timid, and tired. I felt even more afraid than they looked. The corper translated their Hausa for me. They were thanking me for coming, and for educating people about HIV. Ok, this wasn’t so bad.

Then, the woman in front pulled two plastic bottles out from her wrapper. She spoke in quiet Hausa to the corper who then turned to me and said “please, she wants your help. These are her HIV medications. She says she ran out of this one, but she still has more of this one left.”

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod

I had no idea what advice to give to this woman. I didn’t even know what the drugs were that she was showing me. In retrospect, I’m guessing that one of them might have been a fixed dose combination antiretroviral drug, & maybe the other was cotrimoxazole or some anti-bacterial.

I held her hands, and tried to put on a brave face, and said “I am not a doctor and I can’t give you advice. I think you need to go to a secondary hospital for advice. The closest one to Boi is [insert name]. Can you go there, or to the clinic that gave you these drugs?”

The corper said something to her in Hausa, and she smiled and let go of my hands, and melted away with her two HIV-positive friends. At this point G came over and told me come on, let’s go see the king to inform him how the training went. G seemed perfectly happy with everything.

I was still in a daze as we re-entered that dark, low-ceilinged reception room. The king received us graciously and the next thing I knew, I was being presented with two chickens as a token of his gratitude. I hadn’t come with a single gift for him. Shame spread over my cheeks.

I whispered “na gode” and did my best to keep breathing. The chickens were tied together by their feet, & G carried them home to his parents’ house proudly. My head hung low. When we reached the compound, I thought I would feel better if I gave his parents the chickens, so I did.

I felt marginally better because they were thrilled, but still pretty awful. I’d probably left everyone at that training worse off than they would have been if they’d never met me. I probably should just crawl over the compound wall, into that crazy pile of trash, and die.

That evening, while there was still light outside, G showed me his wedding album. His wife was so pretty, they both were so young. The white wedding, the court wedding, the traditional wedding, it was all in the book. His happiness was flowing through his skin, even in the photo.

Again, the rice-and-spaghetti dinner. Again, the restless night on a sweaty mattress, next to G’s sister. I remember the big black cauldron which was always either on the fire, being scoured, or getting ready to return to the fire.

Next morning, we went to see a few more of G’s friends before returning to Abuja. He’d come home on my dime both times, which was no big deal for me - I think the total transport to and fro was maybe 5k for both of us, which I could easily afford. But for G, it was a big deal.

It didn’t occur to me that for him, going home twice in a month was a really big deal. Because normally, G would make it home maybe once a quarter. Maybe less.

Anyway. We made the rounds to see some of his friends before heading back to Abuja.

One of his aunties had an adorable 4-year-old daughter. The grown ups were busy chatting in Hausa so I decided to play with the daughter. She hadn’t noticed me when we first arrived, and as I made my way to her, she looked up at me for the first time.

... and she started to hysterically cry and hide her face in her mother’s wrapper. I don’t know which of us was more astonished. I’ve been babysitting since I was 14... what did I do that was so threatening? Every now and again, this little girl would poke her head up at me.

Each time she caught sight of me, she would set off on a new bout of tears and sobbing. Eventually, her mother stopped chatting with G and caught sight of what was going on. It was almost like a game of peekaboo, but with an exceptional about of theatrics.

Pretty soon, all the adults were in fits of hysterics themselves, laughing & slapping each other on the back. Baby & I did not get the joke. What was going on?

Between gasps, the mother managed to squeeze out “she thinks you’re a ghost- she’s never seen someone like you before.”

A ghost! Amazing. This ghost Aunty, once she learned the problem, managed to make enough silly faces at the baby that she was eventually able to win her trust, pick her up, and hold her in her arms.

By the time we were ready to go,
I had made a new tiny friend.

It’s crazy. That girl, who thought she saw a ghost in 2008, is 15 years old now. I wonder where she is: Boi? Bauchi? Jos? Abuja? I wonder if she has any recollection of that experience. You never know what memories kids will hold on to...

This time, when we returned to Abuja, I knew I would not have to go back any more. My mission had been accomplished. But something inside me had also shifted. It dawned on me that places like Boi were the general rule of Nigeria, not the exception, and that Abuja was a bubble.

It dawned on me that I cared very much about whether the woman who had those two bottles of pills was able to find out what to do about her problem, and how to get refills. It dawned on me that my job, which had seemed prestigious up to now, felt kind of dull.

I can’t say this is the point when I realized I wanted to start a company in rural Nigeria: it wasn’t. I can’t say that this made me a better, more diligent employee at my job: it didn’t. I remained an Abuja party girl for another 6 months before I got really serious about work.

But I think this adventure was full of some important, early data points about Nigeria for me. And eventually I started to really look at all those data points and see the picture that they were forming, and I guess that’s when I realized what it was I really wanted to do.

I wanted to not feel helpless. I wanted to help other people not to feel helpless. I wanted to give people the things they need to take control in their lives. And in today’s society, a lot of the time that means money. And I wanted to do this in a way that wld give me money, too

So I guess the idea of what I wanted Tomato Jos to be was floating around in my head before any specifics (tomatoes, paste, etc) really came into focus.

Anyway, I’ve just bee typing this all from memory so I don’t really have a tidy way of closing the thread, except to say:
1. everyone should get tested for HIV once a year, whether you think you’re at risk or not. The more we normalize testing, the better it is for society.

2. Don’t forget to hydrate! It’s hot out there.
3. You might not always realize why things are happening, but they’re happening for a reason.
4. Just because someone says you can’t do something, doesn’t mean you should do it to prove them wrong. I still feel bad about that dog 💔

5. While I’m making PSAs, EVERYBODY SHOULD FLOSS! Flossing is even more important for your health than brushing your teeth.

Ok on that note, I’m going to brush my teeth (AND floss) and hit the hay. Goodnight everyone!