Moving the office

Before I moved to Nigeria, my employer had to leave the synagogue of Enschede. So I moved out of an office once before. Now I did it again in Cameroon to enable our landlord to do some renovations. So, moving offices!

Planning to move; the Dutch way

The Finance Department
moving their confidential files

Start preparing your move months in advance. Look for a reliable company to move your things, make lists of things you shouldn’t forget to do or move. Find a company who also packs for you and provides boxes. Carefully pack your more important documents, mark and label all your belongings carefully. Make a time schedule what should be moved when.

Planning to move; the Cameroonian way

Decide on Tuesday you will move, pack everything (yourself) on Wednesday. Put as many books as possible in a carton, don’t even think about the weight of it. Buy some rice bags if boxes (or ‘cartons’) are not sufficient. Don’t worry about the weight again. Mark important things.

Fortunately in Knowledge for Children we can do all of this as a team, so the work was easy and even fun!

Moving; the Dutch way

Wait for the company you hired to move. Allow them to pack everything for you. See how they have to check the maximum weight of cartons. Watch them pack everything in a big truck carefully, saying it is ‘full’ when the doors can still close. End up sitting on the floor with a computer because all furniture already moved.

Moving; the Cameroonian way

What do you mean, it doesn't fit?

Call for some random boys from the street to carry your furniture down. Carry your cartons of books on your head. Pack everything in a pick-up, pile it up high and also behind the car. See some boys climbing on top of it to hold things together and get a ride to the new office, where they will also unload the car. Try to find your own cartons and furniture back and tell them where to bring it to. Find pieces of your bookshelf back in a different office. But, start work in the new work place just two days after the decision to move was taken!

So, who is saying in Africa everything goes slow?





PS If you are looking for Knowledge for Children, we are now temorarily in Kikkoo House Tambve, opposite Brasseries!

Commitment

As Knowledge for Children, we work with communities. Without parents and other community members, we can’t do our projects. They buy a percentage of the books, but we also need their presence to sensitize them on the importance of education and other relevant topics. Of course, we also work with the teachers in a school (if they don’t use the books we donate, nobody will learn anything from the books). And we work with authorities, traditional rulers, church leaders and the government to make our programs successful.

It is always interesting to see the differences in commitment between schools, villages, local government etc. For example, last year I travelled to donate books in a school and found only one parent. That means we can’t donate books and we take them back to Kumbo. The head teacher said all parents went to the farm, and we should come back on a ‘country Sunday’, the traditional non-farming day. But the day we visited was a country Sunday! So that didn’t work.

Last week my colleagues went to Islamic Primary School Tatum. Here, parents were waiting for them to come (instead of us waiting for parents). They were very committed and even managed to raise the percentage they needed to buy for next year on the spot. That is the kind of commitment we need to see.

During the last weeks we have been training teachers. Some teachers had to travel very far, but came well on time, joined the training, participated well. Others come from very close, show up late and sleep during the workshop. And then I don’t even talk about those teachers who can’t write English (‘Becous I laik child’) or have to teach according to the curriculum but don’t know what the word ‘curriculum’ means.

A similar pattern can be seen at the level of de government. Sometimes Inspectors come and disturb our workshops, or refuse to allow us to train teachers. I noticed that often these Inspectors are the ones looking for transfer. One even said; ‘I am personally really happy that you come and train, but I have to save my neck so I can get a transfer’. That means he is posted in some remote place where he doesn’t want to be, and doesn’t feel any commitment to the schools there.

Most of our teacher training was holding in schools. But in Ndu we needed the Council Hall to train. I arranged with one of the deputy mayors that we could use the hall for free. His colleague still tried to make me pay for it, but in the end we used it for free. So the commitment is at least there with this person. The same goes at the level of the Inspector of Ndu, who came to the workshop and sent a representative for both days. That commitment is very important to us.

It is always a challenge to work with these schools, parents, teachers and officials who are not committed, who are not ready to work with us and who seem to not understand the importance of education. But working with schools like IPS Tatum, or the mayor or inspector of Ndu is just a delight. It is also very motivational for us, we get the feeling that we do it together.

I always tell people that it is not MY child in that school. That the work we do in the school benefits THEIR children, THEIR communities. If a well-educated child can get a good job, he or she can also support the family and even the village much better. I just hope more and more people will understand this, and take the education of their children serious and seriously commit to it.