Sorry for late post - wifi.

Somehow, neither of us are adjusted to the time zone yet and after a few previous days of early wake ups, the 8 am wake up for church was still rough (well 8 am, in Haleigh’s case, Aayush was woken up to the front desk calling him at 8:37 am with Chika and our Uber downstairs. However, he didn’t go to bed until 4 am so major props to him for even coming tbh.)

We were a little late to church but it really didn’t matter because the service was like 2.5 hours long. It was very fun and celebratory with lots of music and dancing. There was a point where people could give “testimonies”, or basically hardships they had encountered this week, and most of them were about family members that had health problems and had to be hospitalized, it seemed to be a common theme, unfortunately. The topic of the service was raising children that praised God, so not super relevant to us currently, but it was very cute to see the kids sing and interesting to hear the parenting philosophies here.

Everyone was eager to shake our hands to welcome us and we took many pictures. We weren’t sure what denomination of Christianity the church was, but interestingly there was no communion and they passed out lemon lozenges instead. They also gave us orange juices in a bag, which Aayush generously carried, of course. He would also like it to go on record that when he thought they only gave us one package of digestive wheat biscuits, he graciously gave it to Haleigh (turns out they gave us two). We socialized afterwards, where Aayush got another “Namaste” and Chika’s friend got very close to spelling both of our names right on his own when putting contacts in his phone (“Heyleigh” and “Ayush”), much to both of our surprises.

On the uber ride back, we were pulled over by the police, but not for any reason, just routine checks for license and registration. We also had an interesting conversation about Nigerian government. In church, they kept saying how bad things are and it’s the government’s fault, which prompted Aayush to ask if everyone was in agreement about that. The answer was a resounding yes. During the 2023 presidential election in February, there was unprecedented levels of youth voting and everyone in support of the candidate that had actually done effective work for Nigeria as a senator. However, the elected president ended up being a man with a lot of alleged collusion and mysterious history, and they had announced the results at 3 am while everyone else was sleeping. The other candidate contested the results, but it has been in court since February with little progress. Everyone we’ve talked to has complained about the current president, particularly how much the value of the Naira has gone down since he was elected, impacting everything from the cost of living to the number of cars on the street due to gas prices. Since June 14th alone, it’s depreciated by 21% in the “black market” and 66% in the “official market”.

For lunch, Haleigh had French toast, sausage, and Cadbury brand hot chocolate, all of which pleased her greatly, and Aayush stuck to his jollof rice and plantains. We both took much needed long naps this afternoon to rest up for the week and did some work on data analysis. And Haleigh finally had hot water so could wash her hair after 9 days. And the most important news of the day: Aayush beat Haleigh by four seconds on the crossword.

We also forgot to post some pictures from trainings yesterday so here you go: