27th March 2009

Abuja

Well, it’s been quite a while since I checked in. I’m hoping that the internet will return, but for now there’s an internet café in town. Since I last wrote things at work have been fairly busy and I had a good weekend in Abuja the weekend before last. In honour of St. Patrick’s Day there was a party at a compound that belongs to an Irish construction company. We (myself along with a group of other volunteers) had food and drinks (including pizza, which made me very happy) all evening and chilled out by the pool. The following day we went for a late lunch at a famous fish restaurant, which is on an army barracks. A huge courtyard was full of smoking grills covered with large croaker fish. One whole fish was enough to share between 2 and we feasted on it with chips. It was yummy and, of course, very spicy. That evening the extortionate price I paid for some palm wine reminded me how expensive Abuja is, but I did treat myself when I found a shop that sold imported foods (tins of tuna and strawberry jam). The journey back to Abuja was quite straight forward. I made my way out of the city on a bus (a small Nissan van full of people – the one I used on my inbound journey kept stalling and passengers had to quickly jump out and give it a push) and got to a motor park in Nyanya. There, I was directed to an old Peugeot 505 that took me all the way to the Akwanga roundabout. From there I donned my crash helmet and caught an Okada back home.

Down to Work

The last week has seen the return of Tashi to the team. He’s just finished his teaching practise but is now back to work in the Centre for Research and Documentation. Among the team’s jobs is to enhance the teaching of literacy and numeracy in primary schools within the state, to expand and increase the capacity of HIV&AIDS services within the college campus and to carry out needs assessments that lead to effective training of pre and in-service teachers. For the past few months, CRD has been working on an externally funded project to make and distribute around 800 desks and chairs as well as blackboards to a host of primary schools around Nasarawa State. They have seen the project through, from a needs analysis of primary schools, to developing and submitting a proposal for funding, working with carpenters, to distributing the products when completed. Everyone is very proud of this achievement but are happy to see it wrapped up this week.

The CRD is part of the College of Education, Akwanga, and is very keen to increase awareness and mainstream HIV&AIDS education amongst its 13,000 students. So, we have been writing proposals for funding to develop youth (or peer) educators within the college, to produce educational resources and improve access to medical services. Hopefully we will be successful. As well as this, we are about to start working with the college’s demonstration primary school to determine what kind of further training the teachers there require. The CRD team have come from a variety of backgrounds, so we will also begin by ensuring everyone is aware of how to assess and evaluate teaching when we carry out our needs analysis. I guess we’re hoping to be a friendly Ofsted! I’ve also been helping an English lecturer here with a project that he’s going to present about the teaching of oral English in schools. Of course I’ve taught English, but English as a foreign language is a whole other kettle of fish. Any TEFL resources will be greatly appreciated!

Weekends in Akwanga

I’m spending the weekend in Akwanga as I did last week. A neighbour in my block of flats has been a very good host and we often sit outside in the evenings drinking palm wine or cola. Last Sunday I went with him and his family to the Catholic Church on the campus. The service is similar to the Anglican services back home and the hall (a lecture hall during the week) was packed, with people flowing out of the door. Religion is often a topic of conversation here and people are either Christian or Muslim but I’m known as a ‘free-thinker’.

That weekend I also went for a walk with Eriye to a Fulani village situated not too far from the staff quarters. The Fulani people are a roaming tribe. The men herd cows across the country for grazing while the women and children stay at home. I’ll post some pictures of their homes in the future, but they were very friendly and allowed us to take a papaw (not sure if that’s how to spell it) from their tree. On our journey there we also came across a huge mango tree. Despite throwing stones and sticks at it, the fruit was very stubborn and refused to come down. Luckily, some boys were walking by and one of them climbed it and threw some down, much to our delight.

Food

Back at home, my cooking has been a bit better. I now have a bowl of porridge with freshly picked mango on top for breakfast. Lunch is leftover dinner, a sandwich or fried yam and akara from the shops here. Mum and dad will find it funny to hear that I made tuna pasta the other evening and sat down to watch an episode of Hustle from a DVD that a friend lent me! I tend to have pasta, noodles, rice or couscous with vegetables (beans, peppers, tomatoes, and onions), tuna or egg for supper. Eriye has also treated me to her yam and red sauce (a very spicy tomato sauce). I hope to get my oven fixed soon too, because I bought a baking tin and ingredients to make a cake. The diet here doesn’t include much sweet stuff, which means that Nigerian teeth are very strong and can open bottle tops (don’t worry, I won’t be trying that with my weak sugary white man’s teeth!).

And finally…

Finally, I watched a hilarious movie this week called The Gods Must Be Crazy that I highly recommend everyone watches. It’s from 1980 and set in Botswana and I can’t believe I’ve never seen it before. What a treat. I also watched the Michael Moore film Sicko, which I also recommend. It made me feel very proud of the NHS – Nina, it wasn’t your hospital featured was it? Anyway, all is good, ‘Mungo-dey Allah’ (we thank god), apart from the extraordinary event of a cold that I’ve been suffering with this week. I didn’t have one all winter back home, and now, with it rarely cooling below 30 degrees at night time, I have one! After couple of restless nights I now feel much better though. Over and out.