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.