My Life in Pictures- Obafemi Awolowo University

Since the most common thing friends say to me is, "I just can't even begin to visualize what your day-to-day life is like there!" the next few posts I'm planning to help people get a visualization of my life in Ife. I’ll start with photos of buildings around campus. As I’ve mentioned before, I'm working out of Obafemi Awolowo University, and the campus is a massive walled-off area that is clean, orderly, and beautiful. Good roads. Near-constant electricity. Fairly-reliable water. Safe and secure. This year the university is celebrating its 50^th Anniversary. While I’ve not seen any other campuses in Nigeria (and thus have no comparison), I’ve been told the architecture here is quite unique. As I’ve been walking around, I’ve snapped pictures here and there, so here are a few buildings around campus.

The library:

 

The dramatic arts building/amphitheatre:

 

University Hall, aka “The Senate Building.” It’s really long, so I tried to capture a few angles. The last one is the new end of the building, I think it was built recently:

 

 

  

 

A view from one of the Humanities buildings (where I take Yoruba lessons):

 

The College of Health Sciences, which is where I’m based, from afar, from the front, and with the main entrance: 

 

I love how everything is "open air" here, so you walk out of the office into an open corridor. I’m on the second floor (Read: “first floor” for most anyone who isn’t American), and if I walk out of the office and turn left, this is what I see:

 

Then if I walk down that hallway and look out to the right, this is the view: 

 

Walking to the end and making a left, I see this:

 

And the view out to the right from that walkway is this:

 

That leads me to the “Gates Office,” which is where the population and reproductive health program is housed. “Gates” = Bill and Melinda Gates, because a lot of funding comes from their foundation, as well as Johns Hopkins. Here is the entry into the office suite:

 

My workspace is in my supervisor’s office, which is really nice because he spent time and money to make it so. Hooray for AC and an electric water kettle! My desk is on the right:

 

So that’s a little glimpse into the world I inhabit most days. I’m thankful to live in this beautiful place and look forward to being surrounded by the “buzz” of a college campus once classes resume!

(View of campus from the athletic fields. In the back you can see University Hall on the right and the dramatic arts building just left of it. It's the rainy season, so the sky is usually gray, but soon enough I'll have more sun than I could possibly want!)