Links tour

This week we have had guests from Ethiopia, VSO Ethiopia and partners were interested in the National Volunteering schemes of VSO Nigeria. We have had 5 weeks to prepare for this tour, VSO Nigeria didn't have time to organize all this as this month is incredibly busy so they hired a temporary tour guide, Betty, to organize all. In the beginning all went well there was nothing much going on. Joel, and other international volunteer, and I were helping Betty with the visits to the field as we both work with national volunteers. Joel is based in PanYam in Plateau State and works for Secure Lively hoods, farmers in his region use community volunteers to help during the farming season.

All well till Kenna, our country director, came back from her study tour to South Africa, there she got to understand that no VSO Ethiopian staff was coming but more federal ministry staff. She got nervous with this knowledge and we had to change our plans for te tour as we had to arrange a meeting with some persons at at least the same level as the guests. So we ended up having to arrange a meeting with the Governor of Nassarawa State, as I and Andy do have our contacts within that administration. Although our contacts told us that the Governor was travelling we still had to try to arrange this meeting.  A lot of stress that is what is gave us, especially Kenna.

During the week it still was unclear if we would or wouldn’t meet with him on the Wednesday. As we left for Lafia on Tuesday to guide the guests along two participating schools in Nassarawa we showed what the NGVP was all about. The National Volunteers in the schools were terrific in answering all the difficult questions the Ethiopians asked. They were especially interested in the NYSC in relation to NGVP and the training they get. During this day Betty got the question to organise a meeting with the Director of NYSC. She dared to say it was no problem we could just go there. I looked back at her and told her there where major security issues at that office and you cannot go in just like that with an international group. Thereby we have had big problems getting a meeting before so she couldn’t promise something like this. But in the end on Friday we had the meeting and it turned out to be an important one for me as I finally met the person who is the brain behind my scheme. I hope I will be able to speak with her more often as she can give me good background info and she can get me deeper into the NYSC organisation to settle this programme better.