My Retirement Challenge by Ann Saxton

The adventure begins...holding my breath we leave the plane and step out into the arrival queue, through customs and into the searing heat of an African day. I am jammed into the back of the truck with the luggage and wearily watch through the window the city unfold into modern tree-lined avenues and high-rise buildings.

The truck pulls up to a building I can just see above high walls and a toot on the horn brings a sleep-eyed, blanket-wrapped boy to open the substantial metal gates. We are inside and without questioning go inside the house. There is a girl who whispers puzzled questions to the driver and shows us to a bedroom apologising for the unmade-up bed but tells us to rest.

Amazingly, Jim lies down and is soon snoring softly while I am at the window watching the driver take the truck and all our belongings, passports included out of the gates.

It is very quiet, no one in sight and I am uneasy. Why are we in this building? Why are we not driving to our destination as planned? Are we being kidnapped? Will we be held to ransom and our families face the possibility of finding money for our release? This is Nigeria.

Slowly the building site opposite comes to life as workers arrive to breakfast at the roadside around a brazier with steaming sizzling pan stirred by a brightly clad woman with a baby slung on her back.

I am wondering how I can attract their attention when the boy by the gates springs into life and the truck re-emerges and in a few moments the driver is knocking at the door and we are released.
We drive through streets deeper and deeper into this city, the driver laughing at my abduction fears and explaining we were waiting for the money-changers to get to work and here we are changing pounds for these strange African notes. Then we are on our way to another city that will be our home for the next three months.

I breathe the scorching hot air and watch as an African day begins for farmers, builders and villagers on the ever changing scene passing the truck window. There are laughing children with shoes tucked under their arms - why don't they wear them? Because they will get dusty before they get to school. There are people selling maize and potatoes in towering artistic piles along the roadside, noisy markets with every type of merchandise you can imagine and on the road overloaded buses, trucks and motor bikes with whole families and their goat on board making their way work-ward.

The land looks dry and dusty but the mango trees are laden with red spikes of flowers and the heat sizzles around us. There are villages with straw roofs and adobe walls, mosques with towers and churches within walled compounds and people everywhere.

There is the school. We pull through open gates and into the school compound strewn with sand, tuck shop and abandoned cars. The covered veranda is suddenly full of staring, smiling people dressed in amazingly vividly patterned clothes. Then we are among them introducing ourselves. Suddenly I am clamped into a bear hug and swept into the air. A familiar face emerges as I am once more planted on the ground and it is the pastor we last saw in England with snow twinkling in his tight curls and laughing now as then. We are here to start our time as volunteer teachers and it's not even breakfast time yet.

We are here. My dream to teach in Africa coming to realisation. My husband trying to instruct computing without electricity and me teaching fine arts with no resources, not even a paintbrush, but making life-long friends in a culture really alien and with people who give freely and yet have next to nothing. An adventure indeed!

Ann Saxton
Kineton, St Peter's MU, Warwickshire, UK