Thursday 29th July - 2nd day of the workshop

As we started getting ready for bed on Wednesday night we discovered that there was no water. This was not uncommon at the Guest House and usually Aliu, whose main job was to provide the security at the premises, would make some adjustment to the plumbing that would at least make water available, even if only for a short period. On this occasion however although he tried, no water came so he went to get a plumber. We wondered whether it would be possible to get a plumber so late at night but Aliu found one who came to take a look and see if the problem could be resolved. Unfortunately the problem could not be resolved and for that night we made do with the buckets of water we had saved in anticipation of water shortages.
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During the night I tossed and turned worrying about how we would manage to get ready for our workshops the following day without water to at least take a bucket bath in the morning.
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When she had learned after the opening ceremony that team members were not very impressed with the food at 'Tasty Menu', Mrs Alfa, the Education Secretary for Yola South, who had visited us in London with the Chairman of ADSUBEB, Dr Bakari, between 2nd July 10th of July, offered to bring us breakfast the following morning. True to her promise, she called in the morning to say she was on her way. I told her about the water challenge we were facing and she said she would bring some jerry cans of water with her as well as our breakfast, but by then Aliu had fetched pails of water and put them outside our rooms to make sure we had water for our baths.
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The breakfast Mrs Alfa brought was quite a feast. Akara, moin moin, chicken stew, bread, eggs and yam are some of the things I remember. She stayed to visit with us for some time and it was quite late when we eventually left the guest house for the workshops that were due to start at 10 am.
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We had been keen to get to the workshops on time because the previous day's ceremony had started late even though the some of the participants had been there quite early. But the plan for the workshops required the photo copying of the documents we had produced on my laptop the previous evening and printed out on the printer I had brought along with me. These documents included: our summary of the participants expectations of the workshop; the programme for the workshop; resources to use in the leadership and learning styles games that Bode had introduced us to; the ICT skills audit I was planning to use in the workshop I was going to be facilitating with the ICT teachers and the participants register we thought we should take.
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The ADSUBEB office was not equipped for copying in large quantities however and the machine in the Chairman's office soon ran out of paper. One of the officers went to buy a ream of paper for us but by then the machine was jamming so it was suggested that we do the copying at a photocopy shop nearby the ADSUBEB offices and this is where the pictures below were taken.
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I was impressed by the poster about enrolling girls in schools on the wall of the shop. The machine in the photocopy shop was also painfully slow to me but it did produce good copies and eventually I had enough copies of the Skills Audit for all the expected 42 participants. I filmed the photocopy machine to take the edge off my impatience with its sluggishness that was going to make us very late for our workshops, but the young woman who was operating the machine very efficiently clearly did not like being filmed so I have not included that footage here.
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The staff bus that had been allocated for our transport then took us to the Aliu Mustafa Model Primary School where I got off to face the ICT teachers who were waiting for their workshop. Dayo and Tony were taken back to Yola North for their workshop with the Integrated Early Childhood Development teachers. Bode and Funke's workshop was taking place in the conference hall at the ADSUBEB offices where the opening ceremony had been held. It was already after 11 am by the time I arrived!
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After a quick introduction and an apology for being so late, we reviewed the expectations that had been listed in the workshop the previous day focusing on the ICT related items that had been listed. The team of volunteers had thought it was important to do this in order to signify to the participants that we had taken note of what they had said and to let them know which of their expectations we hoped to be able to address. I then handed out the Skills Audit that I had adapted from one used in the UK. There were just about enough copies to go around and it took some time for most of the participants to complete. This generated questions such as what is SEN and what does NC mean as well as discussion about what ICT is and what is the role of the ICT teacher. None of the teachers had seen the National ICT Curriculum for Nigeria even though I was convinced that there must be one just as there was for other subjects in the Basic Education curriculum.
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There was a short break during which the participants were served a tasty ring doughnut and a soft drink. There was also a break for prayers and at about 2.40 the participants lunch arrived. I was just about to tuck in to a plate of white rice with red stew and a couple of tiny pieces of meat when the staff bus arrived with Bode and Tony to pick me up. We went back to the ADSUBEB office to pick up Funke and Bode and were then dropped off at the Guest House where the lunch that had been prepared by Safaratu who had been engaged to cook our food for us. It was a tasty meal with a variety of food and a delicious fruit salad.
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After our very tasty lunch, we reviewed the participants feedback that the other volunteers had collected from their workshops. I had not collected any feedback but resolved to begin the following days workshop by collecting feedback on how the first day of the ICT workshop had gone. We were all very pleased with how the workshops had been received. The volunteers working with the education secretaries, supervisors and headteachers (Bode and Funke) said it had been great fun working with the participants and in particular watching them playing in the war zone trying to take each other's paper swords. The War Zone was part of the leadership and learning styles exercise that Volunteer Bode Ladele had suggested and taught us.
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We made some plans for the following day's workshop and, although we had not finished, we thought it best for Tony to start making his way home while it was daylight. We saw him off to the gate of our compound where, fortunately, there were some okada (motor cycle taxis) waiting and Tony was not adverse to riding one. There are no taxi cars in Yola so an okada was the only way he was going to get back to his accommodation that evening..

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The sun was setting on the land of beauty as Adamawa state is known when we finally went inside to continue planing the following day's session.

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It had been another busy day. The volunteers had worked hard and now had a better understanding of the parameters within which we were going to be working.

Wednesday 28 July - 1st day of our workshop (part two)

After the initial interaction with the workshop participants we went with Asma'u Joda to the Centre for the Advancement of Women and Adolescents.

Asma'u is one of the board members of the Centre and is keen to see the Centre revived. As a big fan of Asma'u's, I wanted to see as much of her as possible because she was about to travel and not going to be around during our stay.
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The Centre is a bit run down and in need of reviving. Its condition is reflected, to some extent, in the signboard above the entrance. Resuscitating this Centre would be a nice project for volunteers interested in going to Adamawa to work on a practical project rather than the education and professional development we were there to do.

I was also hoping that it might be possible to persuade those members of the Centre's board, who would be around during our visit, to hold some kind of event to mark the beginning of the 'Decade for African Women' that the African Union has declared 2010 to 2020. The start of the decade was going to be marked in London on Saturday 31st of July by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILFPF) and had I been in London, I would have wanted to participate.
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At the Centre, Asma'u told us something about the Centre's focus on rescuing young women from early or forced marriages and where this was not possible to ensure that marriage did not mean an end to education. I am afraid that by this time I was feeling quite tired and was dozing off while she was talking. I should have used my tape recorder because it was a fascinating story.

I had not slept much during the night at Crystal Palace Hotel because I had been trying to make use of the wireless internet access that was available somewhat intermittently. Nor had I slept much on our first night in Yola, partly because we had stayed up late getting to get to know each other and when the others had gone to bed, I had stayed up even later trying to write this blog.

From the Centre for the Advancement of Women and Adolescents, Asma'u took us to her family house where we were amazed and impressed by a gourd tree in the front garden and an ancient turtle that roams around the garden and is said to live on the contents of the gourds.

The turtle was a very impressive pet and a good subject to film with my Sony Cybershot camera as it lumbered around the front garden and drive to the house. I am very grateful to the old thing as I always am to whatever makes me get my camera out because once it has been out for the first time it is easier get it out on subsequent occasions and I did a lot of filming on this trip. We were told that the turtle is very shortsighted and I couldn't help wondering how it had managed to survive being hit by a car coming into the compound.

Asma'u was treating us to dinner and the prospect of a home cooked meal was a welcome alternative to a meal at 'Tasty Menu'. We were not disappointed. We were served good food and stimulating conversation. Fish pepper soup was followed by rice and chicken stew with a lovely fresh salad. For desert we were offered one of the simple fruit salads that I have come to associate with Asma'u and Adamawa consisting of watermelon with peeled, diced oranges and bananas. We were also offered some of the yogurt that the Fulani are renowned for but my lactose intolerance (or milk phobia) meant I declined this treat that other members of the team clearly enjoyed.

With satisfied stomachs we eventually left to return to where we were staying, to try and sort out what the participants had put on the "post its" they had been given to write their expectations of the workshop.

The "post its" had to be sorted and analysed in order to plan the programme for the workshop sessions the following day. It was after nine o'clock when Tony finally left to return to where he was staying in the home of the long term VSO volunteer with ADSUBEB, Paul Wildlenberg.
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There had not been enough room in the Guest House for all of us because in addition to us there were two Korean agriculturalists and somebody from the UBE Commission in Abuja being accommodated there. Funke was in one of the two bungalows that made up the Guest House where the Koreans were staying while Tony, the only man among us, was staying with Paul in a house that was a short ride away from the Guest House. It was not an ideal set up but it was what we had to work with.

Eventually the expectations were sorted and a satisfactory plan for two of the following day's workshops was agreed. The same plan would be used for the workshop with education secretaries, supervisors and head teachers that would be facilitated by Bode and Funke; and the workshop with Integrated Early Childhood Development (IECD) teachers that would be facilitated by Dayo and Tony.

We had the skeleton of a plan for the ICT Teachers workshop that I would be facilitating but I was not satisfied with it and so stayed up to do some more work on it and prepare the Skills Audit that I wanted to use as a starting point. I was dozing off as I finished work on this and finally plopped into bed after 1 am.

It had been a long day and the team had worked very hard indeed! I was impressed. They had lots of good ideas, knowledge and skills to share with the workshop participants. I was confident that the two workshops the other volunteers were going to facilitate were going to be a success but I was not so confident that my workshop would be able to deliver what the participants were expecting.

Wednesday 28 July - 1st day of our workshop (part one)

Wednesday 28th of July was a long day.

We were picked up at 9am to go to 'Tasty Menu' for our breakfast. The staff bus driven by Abubakar was the same one that had picked us up at the airport the previous day and driven us from Abuja to Yola on the January placement.

At 'Tasty Menu' Funke had the rice flour pancakes and said they were quite nice. I had white rice and stew but Dayo and Bode were not impressed with the food and opted for a 'snack' from the downstairs 'eatery. They had fish pies which they said were quite tasty and it does seem that pies in Yola are of a superior quality to the meat and fish pies I have tasted in Lagos. I look forward to tasting one of those fish pies before I leave Adamawa this time.

'Tasty Menu' seems to be quite popular in Yola. During our January placement we had all our meals there. On Sundays, we saw young couples and families come there for what was clearly a special outing. Unfortunately however, the food there was not as good as it had been on our previous visit and perhaps, because most of the volunteers were women with more discerning tastes, the prospect of having all our meals at 'Tasty Menu' was quite daunting.

From 'Tasty Menu' we were taken to Adamawa State Universal Basic Education Board (ADSUBEB) headquarters and show into the Board room which is also the Chairman's office. There we were welcomed by Asma'u Joda (in the picture on the right), a non executive member of ADSUBEB who is largely responsible for introducing DIFN to ADSUBEB and facilitating Diaspora Volunteering to Adamawa State.

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Asmau is a formidable and very well informed woman who is also very passionate about education and gender equality. These are qualities that she shares with the Chair of ADSUBEB Dr Salihu Bakari.

I was pleased to see people like Asma'u and Mustafa Ahmed (PA to the Chair of the Board)who were now old friends, as well as several other familiar faces of people whose names I did not remember. I promised myself that in addition to learning a few more words of Hausa, on this visit, I would also remember more people's names.

While we waited for other board members to arrive, we watched BBC News that was headlining the visit to India of UK Prime Minister David Cameron.

When all the Board members had arrived and were seated, the first event on the programme Margaret Leneke had given us, the meeting at the Executive Chairman's Office, got under way. The Chairman gave us an introduction to education in Adamawa State and thanked us for coming. When he invited me to make a response, I introduced myself and thanked the Chairman for welcoming us to Adamawa. I also said a little bit about the January placement and the impact it had had on me and my work in London as Programme Leader for the BA Education and Community Development at the University of East London and a Trustee of the Africa Foundation For Development. I then invited each of the members of the team of Diaspora Volunteers to introduce themselves which they did very eloquently. When Tony said he was a Tiv from Benue State, the Chair asked him where the cattle were. This it turned out was a joke about an occasion in the past when Fulani had left cattle with Tiv people while they went to war only to come back and be told by the Tiv that they had eaten the cattle. For this reason Tiv are referred to by the Fulani as Munchie men in what had become a shared a joke.

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These introductions turned out to be a useful rehearsal as, after some refreshments consisting of half a deliciously seasoned free range chicken, we were taken to the conference hall where the workshop participants were all assembled in tiered seats for the Opening Ceremony . We were shown to seats front of a table on the stage raised well above the floor of the hall. Board members were seated behind us on the stage. Christian prayers were said at the beginning and of the ceremony and Christian prayers were said at the end of it. The National Anthem was sung and Dr Bakari made a long speech in which he welcomed the participants, thanked us for coming and emphasised to the participants how valuable he regarded the work we would be doing with them. He also referred to the 10 week strike in the State which had ended only recently. Once again, for the third time that day, we introduced ourselves. Having been somewhat unprepared for the formality of this part of our programme, the previous introductions we had given turned out to have been useful rehearsals for this main event.

After the formal introductions, the board members left and the participants who had travelled from all over the State some making journeys that took as long as 4 hours in some instances, were given their lunch.

Once lunch was over, it was time for our interactive session and an introduction to the use of "post its" for sharing ideas. Participants were given a post it each and asked to write down what they hoped to get out of, what was being referred to as, 'the 10 day workshop'. They were asked to stick these statements on sheets of flip chart paper around the hall so that other participants could take a tour of them to see what other participants had written. Observations from participants were then invited. After some comments from the audience, the session was rounded up and we left to visit the Centre for Women and Adolescents before going to dinner at Asma'u Joda's family home.

........ to be continued

Tuesday 27th July 2010 - The journey to Yola

We left our hotel in Abuja for the airport at 9 am. Our flight was due to take off at 11.15 and arrive in Yola at 12.15 according to the tickets with which we had been issued. We made it to the airport in time despite some hairy moments in heavy traffic. Fortunately the traffic was not as heavy as that coming from the airport and, after checking in with all the processing being hand written, paying for our excess baggage and going through security, we had just sat down in the departure lounge when our flight was called.

The plane we boarded was going to Maiduguri as well as Yola but we did not realise until we were on board that it would be stopping in Maiduguri before going to Yola. I assumed that it would go to Yola first because Maiduguri is almost as far North as you can go in Nigeria.

On board we noticed the Nollywood film star Aki of 'Aki and Popo' and he graciously allowed himself to be photographed with some members of the team. In this photo he is with Olufunke Osinake who was the first to recognise him.

The flight to Maiduguri took about 90 minutes and from Maiduguri to Yola was about 45 minutes. We left Abuja at 11.30 and must have spent about 45 minutes in Maiduguri while passengers got on and off and the plane was refueled.

This must have been the regular route because when we got to Yola, Agnes (the ADSUBEB Staff Officer) and Abubakar (the ADSUBEB Driver who had driven us during the Diaspora Volunteering Placement in January 2010) met us at the airport at 2.30 and Agnes told us that this was the time that flights from Abuja usually arrived. It was certainly a relief to see them because we had been worried that as our flight was arriving much later than specified on our tickets, there might not be anybody to meet us, or that they might have been hanging around the airport for a long time.

It was raining when we left our hotel in Abuja and all the way to the airport. At the airport, we made a dash for the terminal because of the rainfall. Inside the terminal, some of the staff handing luggage were clad in bright yellow cover all rain coats and there were plenty of umbrellas passing around. When the time came to board we regretted that our airline IRS had not supplied umbrellas for its passengers the way that some other airlines had. We ran to the aircraft and tried to huddle under the umbrella of the crew member checking boarding passes at the bottom of the plane's staircase before running up the aircraft stairs and into the plane out of the rain. Fortunately, we were not expected to identify our luggage on the tarmac before boarding as is the usual practice in Nigeria. The photograph shows the mirror image of the plane on the wet tarmac.

It was also raining heavily when we got to Maiduguri and we watch anxiously as a passenger who had difficulty walking was driven to the stairs of the aircraft in a private care and, while his companion looked on and got absolutely drenched, the crew and ground staff struggled to find a way to get him out of the car and up the aircraft's stairs. Eventually two of the ground staff carried the man onto the aircraft and helped him into a seat. All were greatly relieved and good humoured despite being absolutely drenched.

From Yola airport Agnes drove us to the ADSUBEB Guest House where we would be staying and gave us a chance to get acquainted with our accommodation and get some rest.

Later that evening we went to Tasty Menu for our evening meal, but the other volunteers were not impressed with the food there and it was definitely not as 'tasty' as I remembered from the January placement.

Margaret Leneke, ADSUBEB's Chief Education Officer, who has been responsible for the logistics of this placement, came to visit us and give us the programme they had devised for our placement. She said that we would not be doing workshops in Song as had been intended because it was too far to travel and that they had planned for all the participants from across the State to come to Yola for the workshops which would be streamed and take place at three locations. The Education Secretaries, Supervisors and Head Teachers workshop would be in the conference room at ADSUBEB offices. The Integrated Early Childhood Development (IECD) Teachers would meet at the Central Model School in Yola North while the ICT Teachers would meet at the Computer Centre at the Aliu Mustapha Model School in Yola South. Wednesday the 28th of July would begin with the formal opening of the workshop.

Monday 26 July 2010 - Volunteers meet up and have their 'In Country Induction'

The volunteers meet up in Abuja. All together for the first time. We are Bode Ladele, Dayo Ajayi, Funke Osinaike, Tony Yange and me - Abiola Ogunsola. Yomi Oloko the programme manager has arranged for our 'In Country' induction at the offices of Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in Nigeria.

We have an informative meeting with Kayode Akintola who is Programme Manager for Secure Livelihoods, and because our placement is focused on education, we also met with Belay Addise who is the Programme Manager for Education.

Kayode began the induction by asking us what we already know about VSO. I was surprised at how little I know considering how much involvement I had had with VSO over the past year.

After the induction, we return to the Crystal Palace Hotel where we are spending the night before leaving for Yola. Unfortunately we do not manage to have dinner together and miss an important opportunity for the kind of bonding experience that made the last placement to Yola in January 2010 so successful. Despite this, the team members are all very smart interesting people who are keen to be of service to Nigeria by supporting education development in Adamawa State. Because Adamawa State won first prize for their Universal Basic Education (UBE) programme, they are a model for other States in Nigeria.