Shopping and American Food!

Note: You can click on any of the small pictures to see them full sized.

Sunday July 27, 2008

Today is our first full day without any SAGE planned activities. We were supposed to go on a tour of Abuja to replace the trip to Yankori National Park but of course, again, this is Nigeria so when it came time to meet for the tour, it had been cancelled. To be fair, it might have been because many of the teams were leaving today and the buses were occupied taking teams to and from the airport. In the end it worked out well for us because everyone slept in very late and got some rest.

Towards the middle of the afternoon the New York team asked one of the buses to take both U.S. teams to the “hut” village near the Sheraton hotel. This is an area that has a large number of tiny shops shaped like huts that sell African and specifically Nigerian trinkets and arts and crafts items. As you walk around the area the shopkeepers use all kinds of cajoling techniques to get you to come in and look at their wares. Some shops specialize in jewelry, others in African art, some in fabrics, and many in stoneware, baskets, wood, leather (often snakeskin) items. You must bargain for everything. Prince is a member of one of the SAGE Nigerian teams (not a competing team) and he went with us to to be sure we would get fair prices. Prince is 14 years old and displays maturity way beyond what we would expect in the U.S. When we would be given a price he would look at them and tell them to give us a “better or real” price and was a tremendous help to all of us.

It started to drizzle heavily so shopkeepers magically produce umbrellas and hold them over you as you walk to encourage you to visit their shops. Ms. Kemp purchased some African art and asked the shopkeeper to hold it for her in exchange for borrowing his umbrella to walk around.

There was a beautiful and very friendly cat strolling the village. She was one of the African cats that are very sleek and trim with a small head and very large ears. It turns out she has five kittens that play and live in one of the shops. She was very friendly and let Mrs. Harrison hold her while she purred away.

After leaving the arts and crafts center, we decided to treat ourselves by having a late lunch early dinner at the Hilton Hotel so we asked the bus driver to take us before he returned the New York team to the hotel. The bus took us on a short cut to the hotel which was down a muddy, unpaved road. It was 5:00 pm when we got to the Hilton and we arranged for the bus to pick us up at 7:00. The Hilton hotel is a beautiful hotel and very much what one would expect from a “high end" hotel. Ms. Kemp felt right at home. Interestingly enough, unlike the Sheraton, the Hilton does not have metal detectors or screening when you walk into the lobby. After the bus left, we walked to the restaurant that we had been told served hamburgers and french fries but when we got there, we found out they were closed for lunch and didn’t reopen until 7:00pm for dinner. We were so disappointed but the ever resourceful Ms. Kemp, found out that we could order food out by the pool so to the pool we headed. IT WAS GREAT to have American style food again. We ordered hot wings, roasted chicken, penne pasta, and hamburgers with French fries, onion rings and sodas. It was so good!

When we got back to the hotel we mostly just relaxed but some of us spent time with team members from South Korea. They taught some of us a card game which is mostly a game of bluff. Now we understood why there was so much noise, shouting and cheering from the South Korean rooms. Turns out one of the team members is a magician so he dazzled us with magic tricks.

It’s time to say good night. Tomorrow Benedette’s uncle is taking us on a tour of Abuja. On Monday we have an appointment at the US Embassy in the morning, and then a bus is taking us to a SAGE team school just outside Abuja. This is the school that we began corresponding with a couple of months ago. The school is on a break but the teacher (Amaka) is bringing some of her students so we can share information and establish a closer connection so we can work together after our team returns to the United States. As soon as we are done there we will return to the hotel to pick up or luggage and head out to the airport. We want to be sure to be there very early because our travel agent has let us know the flight is oversold and not to cut our time too short to get there. We are going to err on the side of caution and be there 3 hours ahead of time.

Bye for now. We love and miss you all but we are still having an amazing experience in Abuja.

News Flash: Team USA Santa Monica Places 3rd in World Cup Competition

It is late and details will be posted soon but we wanted everyone to know that the Santa Monica team has received third place this evening. Team Nigeria placed 1st and Team South Korea placed 2nd with Team Singapore receiving 4th place.

The competition was very tough and many teams were deserving of a place in the final four so we were thrilled when our names were called. In addition, Team USA Santa Monica received the second place award for SAGE World Cup Environmental 2008 recognition for the team's efforts to ban plastic bags in the City of Santa Monica.

The closing dinner, competition and awards ceremony were held at the Sheraton Hotel. All teams had to go to the dinner prepared to present since the final four were not announced until after dinner. One team at a time was announced, they then had five minutes to set up and then it was ready, set, go! After the judges finished scoring that team, then the next one was announced. That way no team had the advantage of having additional time to get ready. It also kept the suspense going up to the very end.

Follow-up Details: Friday was a long day. Today was the 2nd set of national 1st place teams along with the two national 2nd place teams that qualified to compete with the 1st place teams. Fours teams are to advance to the final four; two teams from yesterday's competion and two team's from today's competion.

Again the day was running on Nigerian time so this last round of teams presented much later than scheduled. The teams that presented today were very strong teams. Team USA New York presented and had tweaked their presentation to an even higher level than when they presented the previous day in the national 2nd place round competition which advanced them to the 1st place round.. Team Singapore consisted of three young men almost as diverse as the Santa Monica team. One was from China, one from Malay and one from Nigeria. It was quite an interesting mix of accents when they presented. The Nigerian team was terrific. Yesterday we presented after Nigeria’s national 1st place team but we think this national 2nd place team is even better. It turns out that this “2nd place” team is last year’s SAGE World Cup Champions! They are so young!! They range in age from 12 to 15 years old. Because of the high poverty and low percentage of children attending school, their high school is more comparable to our middle school. Brazil and Ghana also presented. The Brazilian team speaks limited English and spoke from notes. During the judges questioning they were given additional time to use a translator to respond to the questions.

After the final teams presented, we finally had lunch. Originally we were supposed to be at the Hilton for the final four event, then we were told the finals would be here and dinner would not be part of the event, then we were told that we would be going to the Sheraton, have the finals and then have dinner. What can we tell you but that we are in Nigeria and “everything will be ok”.

Before it was time to head out to the Sheraton, our team got together and decided to amp up our presentation just in case we moved to the final four. This is something we wanted to do on our own so only students were in the room working on it. We worked hard and then asked the our teachers and Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Strahn to see it. Mrs. Harrison gave each of us pins that said "Imagine, Believe, Achieve" and said that we had already done all of these whether or not we placed in the final four. She started to cry and then when we all held hands before we left the room, we shared what the experience had been for each of us and then we all started to cry!

The teams started loading up the buses at 4:30pm in the pouring rain which was the first significant rain we’ve experienced during the day. While we think LA traffic is bad, it will look pretty good after Abuja. Rush hour traffic, the pouring rain and Nigerian drivers combine into an exciting thrill ride. There are almost no traffic lights, lane markings mean nothing and it seems to be one long game of “chicken” with horns blaring constantly. Cars pass within less than an inch of each other. When it’s time to make a turn, there may be 10-12 “lanes” of traffic all weaving in and out of each in 4 or 5 directions, all daring each other to cross their lane. With all of that, we have yet to see a traffic accident or fender bender on any of our trips out on the roads. Since it was raining and our bus was packed we soon noticed the windshield fogging up and wondered if there was a defroster. Just as we were becoming concerned, the driver took care of it by wiping off his part of the window with his hand!

When we got to the Sheraton, all cars and buses were inspected and wanded before they are passed through the gate. As we entered the lobby all hand articles are put on a security screening belt and we must pass through a metal detector. The room was very large and set for a giant buffet. Turns out the food was pretty identical to the food at our hotel with the addition of lamb, roasted potatoes and roasted chicken. Dinner was now to going to be served first with the final presentations afterwards. It was hard to think about eating with everyone so nervous but soon the room was alive with the buzz of hundreds of voices mingling, celebrating, taking pictures with other teams, exchanging email addresses and business cards, etc. Again we are in Nigeria so there was lots of time before dinner. We would periodically think that dinner was about to start because the music would stop, we would be ordered to our seats, we would all return to sit for 5 minutes and then the music would start up again, nothing would be happen so we would all get up and start mingling and celebrating again.

After dinner and lots and lots of speeches, the finals began. They pulled the final four names one at a time from a bowl. Only 2 teams from each day would advance so when they announced on the first pull that South Korea would be presenting, we were sure we would not be making it to the final four because we were sure the national 1st place team from Nigeria would also advance out of our first day competition round. It was disappointing but we all began to relax. After South Korea presented they pulled the next team which was Team Singapore from the 2nd day. When they pulled the 3rd team they announced Team USA but didn’t say which one and we assumed it was New York since they presented on day 2. When they finally announced Santa Monica, we were so surprised that we shrieked out even though we had vowed not to do that because in many countries it is considered inappropriate to be demonstrative. We quickly set up and off we went with no power or equipment failures!!!! The judges questioning afterwards was quite challenging and one judge was critical because he insisted that our store and café were not a “continuing business” (one of the critical SAGE criterion) because it had been established before SAGE was in existence. He did not know that the criterion for creating a new business each year came about largely because in the original start up of SAGE, only already established school based business enterprises were part of the SAGE project. We saw the judging card afterwards and that judge and the judge sitting next to him gave us zero points in that category. Oh well, while it’s frustrating, with so many judges, one or two judges can’t really determine the final outcome. The last team called up to present was Team Nigeria, (last year’s World Cup champions and this year’s Nigerian 2nd place team). There was definitely a “home team” atmosphere of jubilation in the room as their team took the stage. They are amazing. The term "tiny but mighty" definitely describes them. After they completed, the judging cards were collected and we heard more speeches and special presentations and awards while the tally was being done.

You’ve already know the results from the earlier post above so we won't repeat them here. After a few more photographs and exchanges of congratulations and best wishes, it was time to quickly board the buses and return “home”. It took us about 45 minutes to get to the Sheraton and only about 10 minutes to return, the difference being no rain and no rush hour traffic since it was after midnight. We were all exhausted but caught our second wind when we got back and stayed up way too late on our computers in the lobby sending messages back home.

Our Hotel

We thought it might be time to share a little more info about the hotel. The Bolingo Hotel is a Swiss operated hotel in Abjuja located 1 block from the British Embassy and just about 2 blocks from the U.S. Embassy.

We can begin by sharing that a five star Swiss hotel in Nigeria equates to a low level Motel 6 look –a-like in the U.S. Our rooms are pretty tired looking, with walls that look as if they have not been painted for some time. Since it a somewhat older building the electrical upgrades consist of conduits on the surface of the walls with big box outlets. The interesting thing is that each outlet has it’s own on/off switch just like a light switch. The hotel sprinkler system consists for red water hoses on every floor.

As we have shared previously the high speed wireless internet in each room seems to be not. At least a couple of floors do have long Ethernet cables but you have to look around the tops of the walls in the area of the closet to find them. We searched all of our rooms, all of the Holy Angels team rooms and have determined that most rooms and floors do not have service. The lobby is a hotel hotspot but while the wireless signal reads excellent connection, the pipeline is slow during the day and it is impossible to connect. It is usually late in the evening before you can connect.

In addition to the multiple blackouts we experience, all of the lighting throughout the hotel is dim which seems to be typical of everywhere we’ve been including the airport. It’s reflective of the challenges Nigeria faces in its ability to produce and distribute adequate and reliable electrical resources.

Even though all rooms have a king sized bed, apparently it is rare that two people stay in a room. We all had only one towel, (no facecloth or hand towel) one coffee cup with spoon, one glass, etc. We pretty much have to beg for an additional towel. Each day is a new adventure when we come back to our rooms. Sometimes both towels are gone replaced by one new towel. Other days, we have our original towels left in place and no clean ones which is better than other days when we come back and there are no towels at all.

The beds are really hard and the pillows really flat. Some of us love the beds but most of us hate the pillows. Mrs. Strahn fried her hair dryer on the first day when she forgot that when using an international adaptor, you’re not supposed to use the high heat setting. She threw it away and when Mrs. Harrison returned to the room the housekeeping staff (all male) asked if she meant to throw it away and could he have it. When she said yes, he returned a few minutes later to ask for a note stating he had permission to take the dryer.

Yesterday there was an electrical surge during one of the presentations accompanied by a loud bang and the plug on the av cord no longer worked. One of the Nigerian SAGE officials asked for a pair of scissors, cut off the plug, stripped the wires and stuck the bare wires back into the outlet. Worked like a charm!

The dining experience has also been different. The restaurant seems to only serve buffet style for all meals. As we seat ourselves, we are each brought one bottle of water. The whole restaurant area is open for seating but there are not really enough tables for all of us to eat at once. That wouldn’t be a problem because with so many people in line, tables are always opening up but…they never reset the tables as they are emptied. Tables are not reset until after the dining period is closed. The buffet serving dishes are somewhat small and food can run out quickly. The serving dishes are refilled very slowly and sometimes not at all. The students (and many adults) have been a little challenged by the food choices. They tend to be pretty much the same for every meal with only minor variations and most dishes have a very ethnic flair with lots of goat, cow tail soup, and “mixed meat” stew. Even the dishes that are “American” style such as spaghetti are spicy and really do not resemble their American cousins. With so many countries and cultures represented it must be difficult to provide foods that please everyone’s palate. When they put out trays of cold food, pasta salads, rolls, desserts, etc. the trays are wrapped tightly in plastic wrap but no one removes the wrap. There is a small side table with rolls and butter, fresh fruit salad, desserts etc. and it is pretty well emptied by the students before the first 20 people are through the main line.

Mrs. Jones orders café au lait from the coffee bar and it’s very good, fresh and hot. When Mrs. Harrison ordered plain coffee from the same place, they poured water into the electric hot pot on the floor, put instant coffee into a thermal carafe and when the water was hot, poured it into the carafe and then very ceremoniously poured the hot instant coffee from the carafe to her cup.

The Olympic sized pool is about the size of a large home pool, the recreation center consists of a ping pong table and a swing set. Understand that this is the third best hotel in Abuja (Hilton is # 1 and Sheraton is #2) which probably makes it the third best in Nigeria though we don’t know much about the hotels in Lagos which is a larger, more vibrant tourist area. The rooms here are supposed to cost $200-250 and night and the Hilton starts at $300 and quickly goes to $700 a night. It is interesting though how quickly you adapt to the eccentricities of the hotel and it almost becomes home even with all the flaws. But we will really be glad to get home to our own beds, towels and pillows. Good night.

Competition Day!

Competition day has arrived! This morning the national 2nd place teams competed for the opportunity to participate with the national 1st place teams. Nigeria and the United States team from Buffalo, New York emerged victorious. Both teams look like they are very capable of competing with the other top teams. After lunch we had the drawing to determine the order of team choices for presenting in the first round. For example, whichever team drew #1 had first choice of presenting today or tomorrow and in which time slot. We did not draw #1 but we did draw early enough to be able to choose to present today and to choose the next to the last time slot. We wanted the last slot but it was already taken and next to last is ok too except the #1 Nigerian also chose to compete today in the time slot before us. They are a very, very strong team.

In Abuja alone, there are 57 SAGE teams in addition to the other teams throughout the nation. The #1 Nigerian team is from Abuja and faced very stiff competition to get to this event. The #2 Nigerian team is last year’s SAGE World Cup champion so one can see how they are so consistently strong. The SAGE entrepreneurship curriculum has been adopted in 500 Nigerian schools and has been identified as a significant means to empower the youth of the country as a catalyst for change and in the years ahead to move the country forward to become a major economic player in the global marketplace.

The top two teams from today and the top two teams tomorrow will complete in a final round, head to head at the Hilton Hotel late tomorrow afternoon. After the afternoon’s competition we will have our closing event at the Hilton Hotel including announcement of the winners and the fireworks party afterwards. None of us will know which top four teams will advance to the finals until after we get to the Hilton which means every team must leave here prepared to present a second time.

Two really strong teams presented just before us. South Korea had a very strong professional presentation. They have a business that connects small time inexpensive publishing venture with business advertisers with minimal advertising budgets and connects them to the right targeted youth market for future loyal customers. The Nigerian team has a business to sell CFL light bulbs. Nigeria’s primary stumbling blocks to increasing the standard of living for all Nigerians is clean water, reliable energy, and stopping the Aids epidemic. The presenters referenced what we have already learned first hand by saying that in Nigeria, reliable electricity is a ‘maybe, maybe not’ proposition. We had already one blackout during one of the earlier presentations. The use of incandescent light bulbs further taxes an already overloaded system.

Our presentation today was fraught with challenges from the moment we started. To begin with, due to speaker problems, the sound system was disconnected. Speaking without microphones was not a big issue for us because the room is small and we’ve learned to project our voices but we had counted on the sound system for the music background for several slides and also for the sound in several of our video montages. We have 5 minutes once we enter the room to distribute our annual reports, set up our technology and prepare for the presentation. We must start at the moment they tell us “go” and not before because the judges need the time to look over our annual reports and our media packages. Because Jane enters the room to distribute the annual reports by using the “hawker” and announces the annual report to the judges, (critical to a component introduced later in our presentation) a SAGE college mentor misunderstood and stopped her because he thought she was starting too soon. It was quickly corrected and Jane went on but it was a distracting start. Then the LCD that we had connected our laptop wouldn’t power up. It looked like we weren’t going to be able to start. It finally seemed to see the signal and we were ready to go when it went out again. After a several minute delay, we started again. Then halfway through the presentation, while Jasmine was making an entertaining but defining point, out it when again! When there are technical difficulties the time is paused but we don’t get to “go back”. This time it appeared that the LCD was not going to come back up and there was no backup machine. Fortunately we had brought our own LCD for practicing so Ms. Kemp had to grab the key to Alberto’s room, run upstairs, get the projector, race it back downstairs, bring it into the room and then we had to go through all the steps of connecting it to the hotel system and to our laptop. Luckily Tenzin, Jane, Monica and Alberto are technological wizards and were able to get the job done as efficiently as possible under the circumstances. Unfortunately because of the down time it’s hard to regain the momentum. We were offered the option of starting all over again or picking up where we left off. After some discussion, we decided to leave the decision in the judges’ hands. They unanimously opted to have us start a few slides back from where we left off. Disconcerting but we handled it. What else could we do?

When the presentation is concluded, the judges have time to ask probing questions that are intended to test us beyond the presentation. Just as we started the questioning period, we had another blackout. Thank goodness it was after the presentation and not during our closing “pledges”. They are a powerful conclusion and to have possibly lost the impact due to a power outage would have been more than a team should have to manage. At least during the questioning there was no need to stop again since there was plenty of daylight in the room but it was one more distraction. We are reminded every day that Nigeria is a developing country.

We left our LCD up for the last team of the day which was Tanzania. With no backup projector, they would not have been able to present unless they used ours. Then for some reason, their laptop would not connect to the LCD. Fortunately they had their presentation also stored on a flash drive and Tenzin brought up his laptop and connected it to the LCD and the Tanzanian team was set to go. We can only hope that our “grace under fire”, our backup preparations in case of emergency and our willingness to share our equipment with another team did not go unnoticed by the judges even if it’s not included in the judging criteria and the scoring rubrics.
We’re not sure how we feel about the results of the day. We undoubtedly feel the Nigerian team will move forward and the 2nd team choice could be us or could be South Korea. We’ll find out tomorrow afternoon. If we do move forward, we are assured at least a 4th place finish. The first through fourth rankings will be based entirely on the final presentations. Previous scores do not move forward. We’ll see.

Tonight was definitely “let-down” night as we took a night off from practicing. After dinner we mostly hung out but later in the evening we got our second wind and moved down the lobby to try and connect to the internet and connect to many of you. The internet has been a challenge which is why the blog postings have been delayed and the photographs often come later. During the day the internet connections seem to slow down so much that it is impossible to connect. If we’re on battery power, we use it all up just waiting to connect. It’s not until around 11:00pm that it comes back up. It’s still very slow and loading pictures is sometimes impossible. Work in progress I guess. It’s pretty funny to see us over the lobby trying to find the best hotspots. Tonight Tenzin found the direct Ethernet outlet under the concierge desk and quietly connected. It was still slow but definitely more reliable than the hotspots that really aren’t so hot. 

It’s way past midnight so time for us to wander up to our rooms to sleep and await whatever tomorrow brings for us. It’s great to read your comments on the blog, keep them coming.

Country Day

Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Today our day started with the breakfast club, everyone came down at the same time. Will miracles never cease!

Today is the day we visited the Cyprian Ekwensi Centre for Arts and Culture. We boarded government school buses for the ride to the center, located about 10 minutes from the hotel. The building seems to be an old tired building that is struggling to make ends meet while trying to provide a center for the preservation of Nigerian history. The lighting was dim and the cases old, not unlike many struggling small museums in the US. 

After we toured the museum we set up our “country tables”. Each country’s team had a table where products, or foods, or crafts were displayed and shared with all the participants. Each country also dressed according to their culture. After we all had a chance to visit the tables, ask questions and share cultural information we then took our seats for the program. 

The program consisted of each team doing a short presentation about their country and their community including political structure, cultural icons, music, dance, etc. and then doing a short dance or song that was representative of their country or community. A significant point to our presentation was the cultural diversity and the immigrant foundation of the United States. We each made sashes or belts or necklaces with ribbon and strung them individually with all the flags from our countries of heritage, introduced ourselves individually and explained our flags. All of the country presentations were so interesting and the colorful clothing of many of the countries lit up the hall where we were meeting. It was a good thing something was bright because the hall was dim, the stage was huge and deep and it was difficult to see or photograph the dancing. So sorry that we do not have any good pictures to share. As a conclusion, a professional Nigerian dance troupe including drums did an amazing performance. The entire hall came alive. It was exciting, vibrant and wonderful. Everyone cheered them on and we were sorry when it ended. That is saying something about how good they were because until then we were beginning to fade and suffer from sitting in chairs too long. We boarded buses and returned to the hotel for lunch. This was about 3:00pm. We are beginning to understand about Nigerian meal time and we now pack snacks where ever we go.

The last team that is going to arrive came in today which is South Africa. Unfortunately due to a number of Visa and financial problems, several of the original teams confirmed to attend dropped out in the last 2-3 days including the Ukraine and China. Even the New York team was only cleared with their visas the day before their plane departure. We were really lucky because we didn’t have any problems at all and had all our documents in plenty of time.

After lunch our team began practicing before we were to go the judges briefing and to watch the 2nd place national teams compete for the one slot to compete with the first place teams tomorrow. After we were ready to go back downstairs, we found out that tonight’s event is postponed until tomorrow. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of explanation and we are discovering that in Nigeria you just have to go with the flow or you become very frustrated. 

We almost had brief moment of thinking we were going to go out to the Sheraton Hotel for hamburgers or spaghetti or French fries but we had to abandon that plan when the bus was called away to pick up a group at the airport. Oh well, it sounded wonderful but we knew it was going to be expensive so it probably worked out for the better though we are still keeping it in mind for the weekend.

We were also disappointed today to find out that our trip on Saturday to the Yankori National Park has been canceled and replaced with a tour of Abuja attractions. It’s not that we don’t want to see Abuja sites but we were planning on doing that with Benedette’s brother on Sunday. Apparently after “Nigerian discussion” it was determined that it was too far to drive to the park and get there in time to see the wildlife before they retreated into shade to escape the heat. This is apparently not a good time of year also because many of the animals have moved to other locations for the summer season. It was a disappointment but we are excited to learn that our contact at the US Embassy has arranged a special tour/event for us at the embassy on Monday. On Monday we may also be visiting a government school just outside Abuja. This is the same school with a SAGE team that we had communicated with by email and that we met in the lobby of the hotel on our first morning. Both of our teams are trying to find a way to partner on a major project together next year.

After dinner at the hotel, we again started preparations and rehearsal for competition tomorrow. We changed many of our slides and dialogue, rehearsed, and rehearsed and rehearsed and timed and timed and timed ourselves over and over (as soon as our time is up we’re cut off even if we are not done). Alberto and Mrs. Jones were down in the lobby searching for new images to add to our PowerPoint. We need to tweak some of our slides and dialogue to bring in a more international perspective to the work we have done. When we are in the United States competing with other US teams it’s ok to be more local but in an international event we need to be sure our global perspective is clear to all.

We are all beginning to fade with some of us taking cat naps between our speeches or while the slide is tweaked. Pretty amazing to see us all sprawled over the floor and bed seeming to be pretty well conked out but when it’s each person’s turn to do “their thing” up they jump and dive right in. You can really tell we are a team because we really help each other and keep each person motivated. 

Tomorrow is a big day. Goodnight to all.

P.S. Don’t forget that you can “comment” on our blog just by clicking on the comment title. It will open up a comment window where your can read other people’s comments and add your own. You do need to set up an account. It sometimes takes a couple of hours for the comment to show in the system but you can be sure we will see and read them.

Day 1 SAGE

Tuesday July 22, 2008
Today was our first full day in Abuja and it was definitely an eventful day. Benedette’s uncle Ifeanyi Umeh returned to take Mrs. Strahn, Mrs. Jones and Alberto to exchange money. In Nigeria, it is not the custom to exchange money at a bank or hotel. One has to go to a money changer. There are many money changers alongside the roads but Ifeanyi took them to a building with very tiny rooms and took them around to find the best exchange rates. Most of us had deliberately brought money in small bills, mostly twenty dollar bills. It turns out that to get the best rate we needed to exchange 50 or 100 dollar bills. The smaller bills do not exchange at the same rate and some of the money changers didn’t want them at all. If it hadn’t been Ifeanyi we would not have been very successful. He worked very hard to get us a good rate.

We then started our official SAGE day with a morning conference titled the International Conference on Youth Employment and Social Responsibility. After such a long trip here and not much sleep, the conference seemed long. It was supposed to start at 9:00am but on Nigerian time, we didn’t start until 11:30. We also met a Nigerian SAGE team teacher and student we had been corresponding with about sharing products on each others websites. Jasmine and Tenzin sat in the lobby with the advisor and student and looked at each other’s websites and talked about how we market and sell products through our websites.

We had lunch and about 3:00pm we boarded buses to travel to a village on the outskirts of Abuja. The village name was Esu Ushafa and the village is very proud that American President Bill Clinton visited when he was in Nigeria. President Clinton visited the chief of the village and when we also went to visit the chief’s “palace” to meet him he talked to the group through a translator and said how proud he was the American president had been to his village and now American students had now also come to visit. He brought out the signed photograph for all of us to see and then asked to have a photograph taken with the American students. All of our Santa Monica group and also the team from Holy Angels High School in New York had our picture taken with the chief and Curt DeBerg the founder of SAGE. In the background of the photograph you can see his residence name Esu Palace Ushafa. We walked down two of the village streets and it certainly provided a myriad of new experiences. We ended at the pottery center where there were several artisans demonstrating how they make the pottery. Former President Clinton also visited the center and they were very proud to show us his signature in their guest book.

After we returned to the hotel, some of us had dinner in the dining room but many of us were tired, went to our rooms, had cup of noodles or other snacks and rested up before we all got together to start working on our projects for Country Day tomorrow. We had 3 more blackouts and one lasted for about 5 minutes but usually it is only for a few seconds before the auxiliary power kicks in. Sonam and Tenzin also played a few games of ping pong. For Country Day we are making belts and sashes of red, white and blue ribbon with the American flag and the flags of each of our individual heritages on them as part of our demonstration and presentation tomorrow. Monica and Mrs. Jones worked on the new PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow’s event and the rest of us practiced our presentation for the competition. It is now 1:10am in the morning and we are due downstairs tomorrow morning at 8:00am for breakfast.

This is an amazing experience and a view of another world and another way of living. We will definitely more truly appreciate many things that we have taken for granted but be assured we are safe, well fed and relishing our adventures. Goodnight one and all.