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.

Kagbu new style

Today was the first day of my week full of school visits. Yippie! It has been a good first visit. Saw Fatima teach, have had good feedback on how the school is running. Have been able to answer some questions and put action to others. YES!!! Happy about those two. They are really trying.

Also Habu is really trying. He is even helping me out; He is pro-active and he is pointing out certain things I forget or the things I maybe should say different to get more results. Habu is a good guy, a guy I need to stay on my feet in this programme. Maybe he is even the guy that should run this whole program as a coordinator. Hope I will be able to get him ready for that roll befor I leave.

Thanks for this perfect day! Even tennis went well!

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.