17th of October

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 to long for me to be in time at the tennis court. I had an appointment with Ali to play befor 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 as I was playing. Signs all clear for me….. if a guest is not welcome the guest will leave.

Amazing

I know and understand that religion is really important in this country. I also want to let everybody be who he wants to be, moslim, Christian whatever I don’t mind. I only wish that people also let me be who I want to be.

Last weekend I felt sick and didn’t know what to think about what I felt, so I started scanning the health handbook. According to the symptoms I had and the symptoms described in the handbook I most likely suffered Dengue fever. This sounds serious so I called a befriended doctor. He told me he wanted to see me before he could say anything; logic. So last Sunday we went to Dunoma for a drink so that we could talk about the symptoms and about other things. He was quite clear about his diagnoses, I probably was allergic to something because there is no Dengue in Nigeria (Wrong!! There is and there have been some epidemics here). He joked that maybe I was allergic to him because we didn’t see each other for quite a while. And yes, now a few days later, I think I could be allergic to him. Want to know what triggered this reaction? The other things we talked about.

Let me explain. After two Guinness doc tried to convince me of opening up to God in the spiritual way, as I was already living a Christian lifestyle. He started talking about the true meaning of religion, about the difference between Islam and Christianity. That everybody needs to be Christian as that is the real spiritual way. Believing in something after death gives meaning to life. According to him moslims are believing a manmade religion as Mohammed didn’t belief in God as the father of Jesus. Also Mohammed promised marriage after death, which in Christianity is impossible as everybody will be equal in heaven. So far, so good.

Then he started to explain that people, like me, who don’t believe in after death are fatalistic and not more than cockroaches. Living without a purpose is not worth to be called a human living. So That was his first statement against me. I was to be compared with a cockroach. Maybe I should have walked away then, but I stayed. Little bit intrigued by his next step. His next step was comparing homosexuality to pedophilia, kleptomania, rape and murder. Mmmm, for somebody with friends in this segment of humanity this really hurt me. Comparing my friends like that. I told him that he hurt me twice in just a small amount of time, but he just went on explaining his statement on homosexuality. He said that God gave us a free will and rules to live by. We have to learn to control the free will. Like murderers have to control their free will to kill another human being, homo’s need to control their own free will to have sex with the same sex. The only think I could think of with my upset mind was to say that his comparison was unequal as murder, rape and theft are not in a consensus of both parties and homosexuality is. So the fact if it is free will or not still makes it not comparable to his examples.

Now he is confused that I don’t want to see him anymore. How can I have a nice drink with somebody that really hurt me on the inside? He says he apologized for his behaviour. How can you apologize for something you believe in. The only thing I can do is let him be and he has to let me be.

after the assessments

Workshops for new national volunteers, young people about to become teachers without any or with small teacher experience. That is quite a challenge. Where do you start with a group like that and what do you choose to do when you only have a total of 4 hours to teach about teaching. I choose to teach about good learning and how to establish that with good teaching. I tried to make clear that teaching is more than just lecturing. That teaching is hard work and a noble job.

The 20 selected youngsters (3 women and rest men) where eager to learn and very participatory, so the time flew. On Wednesday I had 2 hours planned with small group discussions, educational dialogues and lectures. Two hours to get participants to reflect on their own learning and how they can motivated good learning as teachers. It was exhausting for them and giving me energy. It gave me nough energy to do another 3 hours on Thursday, which I filled with group work and discussions. I organized a carrousel or busstop system so all participants were able to go through all assignments. It was a day to get them to think about different ways of teaching, about different seating arrangements and about their own way of addressing pupils. I think it was a success although this day was even more exhausting for the participants. I keep admiring how Nigerians can concentrate for long periods at the time. Maybe that is a good thing about the teaching style here. Everybody learns to adjust to the lecturer. I hope the photo’s give a little idea about the workshops.

My workshops about teaching were not the only thinks going on on those days; Mrs Awakassien, Chinwe and Victoria also had to take parts of the workshop. Issues as volunteering, the programme and inclusion where addressed by them.

Lost in time

This whole week I’m involved in the assessment and basic training of new national volunteers. It’s a nice process to be involved in. It is good to see 30 young persons (between 25 and 34) enthousiastic about helping others in their own country. During the first day we did a whole day of assessments. NYSC and vso got 12 people to be the assessors, most of them untrained and un-experienced.(I was one fitting into that category.)

A little info about the content: for the people that are international volunteers; it was sort of the same as our assessment to become an international volunteer. For all non-vso people; I cannot exactly tell you what we did because it was the same as our international vso assessment.

I say it was sort of the same, because we now had to assess 30 persons instead of 4 to 7 in a real international assessment setting. So imagine 4 groups of 7 participants doing the ‘production line’ activity, one group after the other. Roughly that would take 30 min per group. So with simple maths you would know 30minx4=2hours. On the agenda it was scheduled for 1 hour.

Then the participants had to take place in a group discussion. The plan was to have 4 groups, we reduced it to 3 to safe some time (as we lost quite a lot of time during the first session). For this session the scheduled time was again 1 hour; the real time needed 3x25min=1hours 15 min, but at least we safed some time, we only  lost 1 hour and 15 min in our schedule. After the lunch the participants needed to write a small essay to check if their language skills are accurate enough to be teachers. This took them 30 min and after the essays the individual interviews were planned.

The assessors were paired up. I was paired up with Giwa, a NYSC guy who also did this for the first time. But we turned out to be a team. I was the main interviewer but he really listened and asked the right deepening questions. This session started when we were scheduled to deliberate on the out-come of all sessionsL.

In the end I started to add all out-comes of all sessions to get a rather objective sight on who we should or should not pick. We had to pick 20 of which maybe only 14 will really get a placement. So to speed up the process we picked the people with the highest score. We shortly (we is Chinwe, ms Awakassien and I) debated on the women issue (one out of four did not belong to the highest scores). But I kept to my pass and I said 75% of the females entered just like that, so don’t bother about 1 that didn’t make it.

Ms Awakassien announced one on one if people were selected or not. (As Dutch and tactless I can be I would have just use the X-factor method; just say which numbers are trough and which not.) But with already 3 hours behind on schedule, we had to do it one on one. It took and other 2 hours. In the end we got in the car around 19.30. I had to be in the office before 7.30 that morning, so you could say it was a long day.  

Sometimes after days like this, I wish Nigerians would be able to plan better, but then again now I have something to write about. Thanks for that.

BTW: I am really pleased with the outcome of the assessments. I really think we got a strong group of new teachers out of this all.

Happy Days!!!?

If this day tells me about the whole week this week then I know I’ll be having fun this weekend no matter what! Manashi just left my office with a big big smile on his face. And I am now typing this with maybe an even bigger smile. After hearing Manashi’s story about his school up in the Hills (read Ogbagi) and all his paper work to get clarification and approval of the community school I asked him if he ever thought about working together with the other Eggon Community school nearby Lafia. Maybe by working together he would be able to get support. Then I told him that I could go to the director of inspectorate to ask if he knew how I or Manashi could best get in touch with that school to talk about collaboration.

I knew the director came from up the hills himself so maybe he could also help in another sympathetic way and he did! Without asking he offered to look at the situation and write a letter of recommendation to the local inspectorate office. He was willing to talk to Manashi (in their local language) and explain clearly about the procedures of becoming a center for the West African Examinations. Really nice! Along the way the director of schools (also Eggon) came in and asked Manashi if he was there during a meeting in which he had to reregister his school for the new system. Manashi told him he attended the meeting too late and did not get any information of what was told during the meeting. It seemed that Manashi was working with the old structure and old papers and nobody in the area office bothered to tell him. So we went back to my office to set a new action plan and I went to the Director of planning and information to get the right form so Manashi could carry it right away whitout first climbing the mountain to get 5000 Naira and come back to collect the form. I explained the situation to the Director and he helped right away!

Never thought that I could have this much impact on Manashi’s life work just by knowing people in the office. All those hours of ‘just talking’ and ‘doing friendly’ where not useless. The network I built finally helped somebody that needed help really bad! Happy Day 1!!!

help....... or not

The Ministry of Education in Nasarawa started the preparations for the new strategic plan, the State Educational Sector Plan (SESP) and the State Educational Sector Operational Plan (SESOP). UNICEF is asking different states to do this planning so they have an out-line on which they can base their funding to the states on and to get insight on where different states need to build capacity.

A few weeks ago a colleague of mine asked me if I was willing to join the group to plan this SESP, and I said; ‘yes, of course, whenever I can do something to make education better I will do.’ So a month past without any sign. Then I started asking what was going on and if I could do something already. The director of planning and information told me he would tell me if I would be able to help. Okay so again a few weeks past and I knew already that the time span of this project was till the end of November. So I started asking again how they were thinking of doing all the research needed for the programme before November if they didn’t even start forming a research team yet.

We have to wait till after the next workshop. I was like why would UNICEF plan two workshops 2 months apart from each other and not expect anything to happen in between? But now it is a week before the second workshop and they have a lot to do. They have to form a research group and do a baseline analysis on the education in Nasarawa. Yesterday I was invited to be at the opening of this week; to know more about the process and activities. I was allowed to observe, so I did. And during my observations I saw things that I wanted to question. So I did Question the thing after the workshop in a one-to-one chat with a guy from the federal ministry. He did find my questions reasonable and put them there were they belong, the director of planning and information.

Today on the second day of this workshop, I settled myself in the back of the room just like yesterday and started working on my laptop while waiting for everybody to come in. O yeah one thing that was mentioned yesterday was, Be Rigour (time and deadlines are there to be worked with) In other words be on time and deliver results on time!

Not to day! After agreeing on to start at 9 o’clock this morning, only 4 participants and no organization was on time! Is this leading for the rest of the programme? But I was there five minutes past 9 and I was there till 10 minutes before 10. I was told my presence was not needed anymore. Yesterday I should have seen enough to understand the process and activities. So with other words, the director of planning and information didn’t want me around during de SWOT-analysis. Am I to critical?

same-o same-o......... Still waiting

On days like this (a day of waiting for telephone numbers, permission and a meeting with the PS) I'm often thinking how this programme could get shaped. Almost always I get hopelessly lost in my thoughts about the possibilities, chances and things that go wrong. Every time when I try to shape the project for my own state (Nasarawa) I feel I have to ask and wait for proper information from the layer above. The layer above me is only too busy to provide me with the information I need. There by I sometimes think that the federal layer is not sensible of their importance to the state level. I have to wait for information to be able to arrange things on state level. For example in this period; I want to do preparations for next academic year. For those preparations I need information from different parties:

• a list of schools and accurate phone numbers from SUBEB and MoE,
• a definite indication of number of new volunteers  
• the planning of state level so I can plan my activities around that.
• The plans they in general have about the programme (because the info about the future keeps changing)

In the meanwhile I’m trying to write a planning with roles and responsibilities with it. I don’t see who is really coordinating this whole project. I know I offered to do it in Nasarawa State, but who is doing is in general? Without a national coordinator it is hard to coordinate stuff on state level unless I start my own thing. Who is keeping everybody involved? I honestly don’t think Chinwe has time enough to coordinate this whole project, I also don’t think Mrs Awakasien has the time and I don’t know anybody else that is involved on state level. Somehow I think the placement Lea and I have is not the right one in this project at the moment. Right now I think this project needs a capacity builder at State level working together with Mrs Awakasien to coordinate this whole programme. For me it feels like: ‘how can an arm function if the head is not there’.

The last time I had this feeling I left it laying aside for too long and waited till I bursted out into tears on the phone with Chinwe. I don’t want that to happen again, but I also don’t want this feeling again. This feeling on waiting for stuff you need and knowing you won’t get it in time. For me time is running out to do the assessments in the schools because schools are closing soon. Also it’s getting really close to the date that was set to have the recruitment week. Still stuff needs to be prepared. I see a lot of work ahead that could have been done a long time ago if the planning was done.

On top of this all, I saw on www.nysccds.org that the programme will be expanded to Jigawa, while in a stakeholders meeting before this launch we decided not to expend to other states and decreasing the number of schools. Thereby Lea told me he will retire from this work in December. How will do his work in Kwara? How will pick up the work in Kano?

For your eyes I may probably see to many lions on the road, but for me it really hinders me in getting my mind set to get to the job I’m here for. I feel I cannot face my national volunteers while the programme feels like a mess. Every time when I see them or speak to them they ask me stuff and I have to tell them I don’t know. That doesn’t feel right.

As I just wrote in the third section one of the solutions I can think of is a capacity builder in NYSC Headquarters to help coordinating this project. This only works if NYSC agrees that they are the leading party in this. If not VSOVSO to handle. That other partner could be a new NGO especially developed for national volunteering or an existing one that wants to partner up. Or VSO needs to great a new PM-job to manage all national volunteering within VSO organisations. This last idea will fit into the new strategic plan (if VSO international agrees on these plans). The last solution can be to have this programme on a small scale and have an international volunteer manage the project.

I don’t want to be to negative and I want to keep thinking about the chances this project has, but for now I feel useless and am (for the second time this month) thinking of going home if nothing is changing soon. It was wrong to invite Lea and me for these placements and just let us do anything we would feel like. This did result in Lea only working for 40% in this project and me searching for any other work I can find (organizing workshops which are not really in my job description, taking part in strategic planning, initiating stakeholders meeting, ordering you all around).

By rereading this blog/letter I realize that the biggest problem for me is that I am a team player and I don’t function very well when I cannot share thoughts. I need somebody or a team to crystallise ideas and shape them together with others. Is this then my downfall? Can I change my way of working? Do I want to change my favourite way of working? I don’t know I think it is one of the basics of VSO, Sharing skills tells me that I have to work together with others. There is nobody to share something with. Or is this the main reason why VSO changed their motto into ‘People first’? with this motto you don’t have to share explicitly anymore.