Proud

After all those stories of ritual killings in Ilorin I was not so keen on going there,  but now I am back I am so glad I visited that place.

It is a nice quiet, big city. It is even clean if you compare it to Lafia. People are friendly and seem to be hard working. It was so different from what I know from my side of Nigeria.

I did go to Ilorin to get a clear view on the National Graduate Volunteering Program, the program I am working for as a teacher trainer and now also as a national coordinator. Through this program we want to encourage young Nigerians to help developing their country through education and community work. Right now we work with 7 NGV’s in Nassarawa, 9 in Kwara, 11 in Kano and 2 in the Demonstration School for Deaf Children in Kaduna. In each state there was supposed to be an international volunteer working as a teacher trainer, but only Lea and I were there. Now Lea has left Nigeria I am the only one working in all states. It is a busy future for me but that’s better than doing not much.

My visit to Kwara was to see if and how I can get new life into the program there. The former government neglected it and NYSC and VSO didn’t pull any strings to get it moving. So now I am the one trying and to be honest I am hopeful. The commissioner of the Ministry of Education made some promises that were really promising. Also CSACEFA was positive about their support for this program. It were nice first meetings with these parties.

On the last day I had organized, with great help from Matthew and Micheal, a meeting with the NGV’s in Kwara. They all came down for this meeting and they were so full of energy!

During the meeting we did a SWOT-analyses. Interesting statements came out of that. Very useful for further exploration. Some things like: using old national volunteers to monitor the new volunteers or during the send forth event in the end there should be a major item about CV writing and job hunting. Maybe even invite possible employers so the volunteers can present themselves.

Also a more urgent and more important item came up; there should be a solid framework around the NGVP in every state, a good job description for volunteers and a good memorandum of understanding for all partners in each state. All roles and responsibilities should be clear and monitored. It would be nice if the monitoring and evaluation would be imbedded in this all.

Very helpful and promising as I may say. Thank you guys! 

11 new faces

Last Friday I came back from a very successful visit to Kano. The purpose of this visit was to get the Science and technical school board (STSB) in Kano familiar with doing assessments and to assess 10 new National Graduate volunteers. After this I was supposed to introduce the selected volunteers to proper teaching.

So on Tuesday, Chinwe and I, left for Kano by private car. We were about to leave around 9 so we could do some preparation when we arrived in Kano, as Chinwe was on leave just before this trip. In the end we didn’t leave Abuja before 11 am, even more close to noon. The ride in the private car was easy going and we took our time as Chinwe ordered the driver not to go faster than 110 km/h. He seemed to have little problems with that, because whenever Chinwe was asleep we hit the 140 occasionally. After a short lunch stop in Kaduna we arrived in Kano around 6 pm. The first hotel Chinwe had in mind to stay was fully booked so we had to find another one, which was quite a challenge as the room rates were quite high and in all hotels the cheapest rooms seemed to be occupied. At Tahir luxury suites I tried to get a big discount by telling them we work for an NGO, and it almost worked. We almost got the NGO rates, but the manager didn’t seem to know VSO and wasn’t that interested in finding out about it. In the end we ended up in Green Palace hotel, a nice hotel in the same league as Crystal Palace in Abuja. The thing that is better in Green Palace is the food! I had pizza at the first evening! And for breakfast I could choose from tomato and cheese sandwiches to white oats or full English. Really nice, although we had to wait quite long for this good food.

The first day of the assessment started with a big surprise. The STSB didn’t short list 20 candidates but 34 and most of them just did show up because somebody told them about this. Showed up without first applying! Mmmm, what to do?  We had to bring the number down to at least 22 as we didn’t bring too many materials. So we decided to first test them all for their English skills. We let them write the essay first to preselect the teachers whose English is good enough. While they were writing the essays I could inform the STSB about how to do assessments and why we do assessments.

In the end all went well and we selected 11 new volunteers for the NGVP in Kano. The happy volunteers will have to start teaching on Monday. So before that they will have to get confident about their teaching skills. Quite a challenge if I may say so. To help them a little, I let them think about good learning and good teaching during a one day workshop about this. It went well, although the dynamics in this group were totally different than the group I taught in August. Is it culture? Most likely as in this group all except for one were Muslim and 6 are female.

preparing a new placement

Sometime you are wondering as a volunteer ‘what is my job about?’, ‘What did i come here to do?’ If you look at my first placement description you would think it is all plain and clear. I am here as a teacher trainer to teach national volunteers how to teach. There is not much you can discuss about this job description if your read it like that. Just visit the volunteers, prepare workshops and try to make teachers out of them. But …. Now after one year of trying it seems like things are not working the way it should. My program officer in Nigeria recognized the problems I mentioned and has some other difficulties with the program. So we decided to change my placement. Starting the New Year I will be starting a new placement as national coordinator for the National Graduate Volunteering Program (NGVP). This means I will be responsible for the current national volunteers working in the educational sector and I have to make sure that the program will be in hands of partners within a period of 6 months. This is quite a challenge, but I am not afraid of challenges as long as I experience support.

As I said officially I will start in January, but this morning I am already getting ready to leave for Kano. As we have a ‘new’ partner there who is willing to carry a part of the NGVP. We are now of to provide them with knowledge about assessment and we will help them assess their first national volunteers for this program. I also will provide the selected volunteers with a first workshop about teaching and learning. So in a way I already start my new placement this week.

How I will approach this new placement is still a blur. I hope I will soon get a chance to talk to the current partners and stakeholders. I also need to figure out how to build a proper network and where the educationists meet. Luckely I already met with the secretary of the Nigeria commission of education (NCE) at the annual JJCE meeting that was held in Lafia a week ago. Maybe that will be a start of my federal network.

just a day like that....

Sometimes my mind only can think about one thing and that thing is not …….. Today is a day like that. Nothing comes out of my hands. My mind is making overtime thinking about how I would like things to work here in the NGVP in Nasarawa and the other states. My mind is rambling about transport, guides to help successors, organizational issues, things that should have been done before I came into this country. It is wrong I know because I cannot change a lot. I cannot change the project bust still, I cannot seem to turn my mind of and just do what I came here to do…… teaching volunteers how to teach. There is so much more. Stop thinking about all that….. Stop attracting all the problems volunteers ventilate ……. Stop doing the coordinators job for the whole country…….. When is VSO giving the volunteers (including the internationals) full support? Support like a clear structure, an ear that listens, a person that is not to busy doing other (more) important stuff.  Luckely Habu is here to help me in Nasarawa. He is willing to learn and to do a lot of the administrative work, the only thing with him is he needs official orders from NYSC to do the big things. He also needs me to tell him what he should do, but I don’t even know what I need to do. I want to teach him my part of this programme so that when I’m leaving he can take over. Pffff…… want to do it all today…… impossible.   So I got home, on my way I met a friend and we chatted for a while. We chatted a bit too long for me to be in time at the tennis court. I had an appointment with Ali to play before the others would come, I was just 15 minutes late. Already far too many people were there. What to do? Stay and play a game or go home? I stayed, because Ali encouraged me to. We could make a double. Okay, I ll stay……. But when it was time for us to get into the court and the opponents saw that I was about to play, they walked out saying they didn’t want to play if I was playing. Signs all clear for me….. if a guest is not welcome the guest will leave.

Busy busy busy

Work is getting busy. That’s a nice change in daily activities, to be honest. Ever since I’m back in Nigeria, after my 7 weeks of unfortunate break, I am travelling a lot and busy managing the project in Nassarawa State. The week that I visited the schools for the first time accompanied by Habu, the desk officer of NGVP in Nassarawa, was lots of fun and good contacts. After that we had the first Quarterly meeting in Nassarawa State with all national volunteers on ground. Unfortunately only one principal was there and a representative of a principal. None of the principals managed to send community members. It will be a big challenge to get the SBMC up and running. I hope one or two schools will manage to get the community more involved in the school.

During the meeting we talked about motivation. How to get pupils motivated in your classroom and even to come to school? I answered, as I almost always do, with a question: What do you need to feel motivated? For me teaching is still the simple idea of giving somebody something that you want to give yourself. If you are motivated by getting positive feedback why would a pupil not feel the same? So we wrote down things that motivated ourselves and then translated them back into classroom/school situations. This is quite a different approach than usual in Nigeria, but the National volunteers responded well. Even the senior staff and principal agreed. Now hope they apply it in their schools.

The national volunteers also had to line out their planned activities for this year. Activities that came up were: initiating sensitization on STDs, realizing a library, improving the computer facilities, arranging speed bumps nearby the school, realizing a borehole and of course organizing sports activities in the school. I always get to positive fibes when I hear all these good intentions. And honestly most things will happen, that’s what I learned from my first year in Nigeria. It will maybe no go as planned but things will happen.

After this meeting I had to pack stuff to travel to Abuja for a workshop for all education volunteers. A nice opportunity to see everybody again and to ventilate all issues we see on ground. And there were some issues! It was good to talk and to feel we were listened to. In the end we had to form an interim committee for volunteers. This committee has to prepare a meeting for all volunteers to come together and workout a better way to communicate with the program office. We voted for 4 interim members: Kasia, Bola, Paul and I are now in the committee. We will manage this till February when the permanent committee will be chosen.

On the Saturday after the education meeting a group of us went to Dutse to celebrate Sallah, a beautiful colorful Islamic celebration. Sadly al was spoiled by bombings and shootings in Yobe and Borno State.

The Monday after Sallah I had a meeting in Kaduna at the Demonstration School for Deaf Children (DSDC), this school is just since this year part of the national volunteering scheme. I had to do a monitoring visit and had to figure out what went wrong in communication between VSO, DSDC and the volunteers. In the end it came down to a conflict resolution meeting and making a clear understanding of terms of references for volunteers and school. I think it was a good meeting and hope things will go forward.

Then last week when I was back in Lafia we had the annual JCCE meeting in Nassarawa State. A really big meeting which involved all ministries of education of the whole nation and all other institutions involved with education. About 830 educationist together in Lafia! I wish I had known what I know now than I would have been more active in networking. As I know now that I will be the manager of the exit strategy of NGVP. This only means that I have to find partners that are willing to take over this volunteering scheme as it is too big for VSO to carry. I have 6 months to arrange a new plan and find partners. I hope I’ll manage!

amazing things

When you do visit schools like I do, you see a lot of things happening. Good things and bad things. Last week I was visiting schools in Nasarawa: Kagbu, Laminga, Kokona and Obi.

In all schools I saw or heard some amazing things. Like In Kagbu it was quite clear that the children in SSS 3 weren’t able to read or write proper English. The level of English was estimated by my national volunteer as a primary school level. The national volunteer told me she was really worried about the level as well as about the discipline in the school, discipline of pupils and teachers. The pupils were not really motivated, or rather to say not at all motivated to perform well and attend all classes. There was no reason to because the teachers never asked them to do well and be on time. Also as a pupil in this school you know that you will pass each year and all the exams as long as you are in school on the day of the exams. Nobody will let you repeat a year and answers to exams are written on the blackboard. ‘Just copy the letters, you don’t need to know what you are writing.’

Then the next day after another ride in public transport, packed as sardines in a car, we went to Kokona. The place where, I think, the best performing school is within the series of schools I will visit this year. Why? Because the pupils are not indigenes of the community, they come from all over the state because of the good name of the school. Most children in the village do not go to school at all. So in this community the national volunteers have to work in and with the community to sensitize them about the importance of good education.

It is quite strange to go from one of the worst performing schools straight to one of de best performing schools.

Then there is Laminga a school with ‘big city’-problems. It is a school located rather close to Abuja and therefor attracts pupils from Abuja who dropped or kicked out of their schools. It causes problems like theft and violence in the community and on the school premises. While Habu and I were visiting this school none of our volunteers was present, which was a pitty, but we witnessed a terrible beating. I think 2 boys, pupils of the school, were caught red handed stealing from a small shop. They were chased onto the school premises till close by the principal’s office, where we were discussing the project. In front of the door opening 10 men started whipping the boys. I never had heard a scream like the screams of those boys. Never ever and I hope to never hear it again. After that they were brought to the police office. The principal, Habu and I started discussing this situation. I could see that Habu was torn between the principal and me; the principal justifying the whipping and me protesting against the treatment. Horrible.

Last but not least we went to Obi as big school in a community overloaded with schools. Obi has at least 4 secondary schools and the community cannot be much bigger than an estimated 8000 inhabitants. The government college in Obi is a co-ad boarding school with only 278 pupils of which only half is staying at the dorms, the other half lives in the village. The school has so much potential; the buildings are okay, they have a computer lab, a chemical lab with equipment and a library. The only thing is that the buildings are poorly maintained (like almost everything in Nasarawa) and the pupils are rather few. The teacher-pupil ratio in this school is one to 6; a good ratio to do some miracle teaching with activities and all. Look forward to working in this school, just like working in all the others.

It is clear I choose rather different schools to work in this year. Hope I can offer all of them the support they need and want.