Theo en Geertje in Benin

Een bijdrage van mijn ouders:


Voor het eerst naar Afrika, naar Benin. Wat een ervaring! Als eerste was het natuurlijk heerlijk om Esly te zien. Van te voren vroegen wij ons af, of we zouden kunnen gaan snappen, waarom zij helemaal verknocht is aan West Afrika. En wanneer je haar zo ziet, ziet hoe zij met de mensen in Benin omgaat, dan snap je het direct. Ze laat zich niet als blanke behandelen, ze is 1 van hen. Ze kletst met iedereen, en iedereen kletst met haar. Er wordt gelachen en ze pakken elkaar vast. Want de mensen daar hebben veel warmte te vergeven. We hebben bovendien niemand horen klagen, niemand! Mensen zijn tevreden met het weinige dat ze hebben. Ze zijn gelukkig op hun manier.

Toch denk ik dat er dingen zouden moeten veranderen. Onderwijs is gratis, maar zonder schooluniform kom je niet op school, en soms is dat beetje geld er gewoonweg niet. Ook de gezondheidszorg zou verbeterd moeten worden en ook denk ik dat er vuil geruimd zou moeten worden. Het gekke is, dat er geen woningnood is, althans volgens henzelf. Maar wij hebben plekken gezien, waar een hoekje in de natuur was afgezet, soms van steen, maar soms ook alleen van palmboom bladeren, en dat was dan hun huis...

Tijdens het bezoek aan het slavernij museum voelden wij ons schuldig. Toen we dat noemden, werd er simpel, maar recht uit het hart gereageerd; daar kunnen jullie niks aan doen toch... En men ging verder met de orde van de dag. 

Met kleine dingen lieten mensen ons voortdurend voelen dat ze ons

Eten op straat

respecteerden. Door heel veel mensen werden wij mama en papa genoemd. Dat is een eretitel, en zo klonk het ook. En wat werd het gewaardeerd, dat wij gewoon op straat in een "restaurantje" iets wilde drinken of eten. Net als iedereen, en niet enkel op zoek gingen naar de super de luxe plekken. Want die zijn er ook. Maar die zijn niet voor de gewone man te betalen. 

Kortom; we hebben het fantastisch gehad. Ik zou een ieder dan ook aanraden ooit zo'n reis te maken, maar zorg dan wel dat er iemand is die je de weg kan wijzen, die weet waar de bijzondere dingen te zien zijn. En ga vooral met de mensen op straat in gesprek.

After eight months...

When I was participating in the trainings VSO is offering before your placement, they were telling us that the first six to twelve months it is very hard to get anything done. Now that I am in Nigeria for eight months I do definitely agree. The trainings we did with our national volunteers in the first months were nice and useful. But if you look at the higher level, nothing was really happening.

It is only now that I can see things starting to move. On the one hand it is because the ‘oga’s on the top’ of the Ministry are getting more and more aware of the program. They see what is going on and how we try to help them. At the same time, I also see that I start to understand more and more of the program, the Ministry and the situation in Kwara.

I can see more and more challenges in secondary education here, but also more and more possible ways to do something against these challenges. I don’t have the illusion we will solve it all. But if we can solve one problem for a few students, teachers or even one school, that is quite something!

Personally I find it very useful to live as a ‘normal’ Nigerian, in a house with often no light, a street that floods when it rains and so on. I saw a company from Lagos presenting new educational methods to the Ministry this week. Their program looks great, but it needs a digital whiteboard. I have seen quite a few schools in this state, most of them are happy if they have an old-fashioned blackboard and chalk. Many schools have no light, there are no teachers or textbooks. And then you want the Ministry to invest in digital whiteboards and expensive software?

Hopefully, as a VSO volunteer, working very closely together with my Nigerian colleague, we can think about some projects which will really work well, and will be easy to copy to other schools. So, projects which don’t need elaborate technological materials or big investments.

But to make anything happen, we will need more time than the four months my initial contract would still be. So, most likely, I will extend my placement here and stay in Nigeria. This will mean my colleague and I can continue working together on the future of the Nigeria Graduate Volunteer Program, and we can support VSO and the Ministry in developing more projects in the state. To be continued!

Training on inclusive education

In the past two weeks, we had six days of training of volunteers. We travelled out of Ilorin to train NYSC corper volunteers. And we had two days of training with our National Volunteers.

It is always very inspirational to work with the volunteers. They are the ones on the ground, they are teaching and they get confronted with many challenges. I hope we managed to give them some tools to deal with all the challenges they experience.

One of the sessions we did in each training was on inclusive education. We discussed with our volunteers how you can make sure every child in your classroom gets the opportunity to learn. We discussed about differences between equality (treating everyone the same) and equity (creating the same result for everyone).

After some theory, we discussed some examples. Children can be disadvantaged in so many ways, there are slow learners who are seen as a burden by the teacher, girls who are ignored by the teacher, poor children with no money to buy whatever needed to go to school (sometimes including breakfast), children in a wheelchair or children who moved from another state to Kwara and can’t speak Yoruba.

One example was about a 15 year old girl who lost both her parents from AIDS. She has to care for two younger sisters and a younger brother, what is not easy to combine with going to school every day. Besides this, her classmates don’t want to sit next to her because they know her parents died from AIDS.

I found it interesting to see what suggestions people give to deal with this situation. Every group was saying you as a teacher have to sensitise the classmates (and maybe also their parents) about HIV and the fact that even if she would be HIV positive you will not get infected by sitting next to her in class. Many groups also said they will try to support her, council her, help her in planning her days or seek help from family or NGOs.
So far, so good. But, how about the suggestion: we have to test the four children and if they are HIV negative we have to share their status with the entire community. Maybe my idea of privacy about this kind of things is very European, but I am not convinced this is the best thing to do. By testing them, and only them, I think you stigmatise them again. Especially if you are fifteen years old, you are very likely to have classmates who are sexually active and might have gotten infected as well. So, even though we said in the beginning you don’t have to treat everyone in the same way to reach the same result for everyone, I think in this kind of cases you have to treat them all the same.

Looking at the very positive reactions we get from the school principals, it seems like our volunteers are learning a lot during all our trainings. I hope also this time they learned a bit about how to deal with all the different individuals in their classes. And no, it is not always easy. If you teach eighty or even more than hundred students at the same time, it is of course difficult to make sure everyone is carried along. But I am sure they will at least do their best to teach in a child centred way and to be aware of problems children might have and how to deal with it.

Volunteer's impact

This week, the sixth team of National Graduate Volunteers in Kwara is starting their service. Twenty people will be teaching mathematics and science subjects in schools in the rural areas of the state. Their impact is much bigger than you might think. Look at these examples from last year:

One of our volunteers has been teaching physics and chemistry in a rural secondary school. He says: ‘Before I was sent as a volunteer to this school, there was no qualified teacher for physics and chemistry. The teacher for these subjects only had a secondary school certificate. He did not teach practicals, I am not sure if he was able to do that himself. But the secret of chemistry and physics is that if you don’t pass the practicals, there is no way passing the subject’. Students are performing much better now. Before about 40% of the students passed the external exams in these subjects. Now about 90-95% passed. This is a great result, especially if you keep in mind that the equipment available for teaching practicals is very limited.



Soap making workshop

A group of volunteers have been teaching soap making to a big group of students in a girls school. One of the volunteers says: ‘Recently I was at the market and a girl started shouting at me; Aunty Aunty! I was looking who it was and asked her if she knew me, shouting like this. The girl said; yes you taught us how to make soap. And look, I went out to buy the materials and I produced soap and I sold it for fifty naira!’

These two examples are showing very direct impact the volunteers have on the students with who they work. But what do you think about this:

 

A volunteer is teaching in a very rural school. She says: ‘My school is facing a lot of challenges. It is very far out and teachers don’t want to go here. They are business minded people. I try to convince them that the children in the school are more important than business. They find it hard to understand that I volunteer. I work very hard but earn much less than they earn. I hope that I can inspire them to give priority to the students. Assisting others is a gift and hopefully our efforts will bring real changes’.

I hope the new team of National Volunteers will be able to have at least as much impact as the previous team. Because all together, we can bring change!

Sounds of a Sunday

The sounds of a Sunday morning are different all over the world. This is what happens in Ilorin:

At 5AM the mosque is calling for prayer. This happens every day. There are two mosques within hearing distance of my bedroom. They both call for prayer, just after each other. Recently, they became louder, sometimes we can hear the entire prayer. Unfortunately it is all in Arabic.

Then, around 6 the first church starts. No bells like in the Netherlands, but the drums of the church and the enthusiastic singing and praying of the people are loud enough. I can’t understand every word, but I can easily recognise Amen and Hallelujah. On a Sunday morning, this all goes on till the afternoon, or even longer. There are a lot of churches close to my house, so you can always hear one.

Next is the family of the security guard who wake up. He plays his radio very loud, their little girl is crying (her name is Obedience, I can think about only one name which would suit her less than this; Patience). He might talk on the phone. The dog might bark.

Outside the gate, life also starts. You hear some goats, maybe a dog. A lady is passing selling groundnuts: ‘buuuuuy groundnuts!’  I can’t see her but I know she carries her business for the day on her head. Her change might be in the corners of her wrapper skirt.

In our house, life on Sunday starts later than in the rest of the street. But, you can still hear the sounds. In case there is light, you hear the fridge turning on. Power might be too low, so it also clicks off again. This can go on for hours. I can hear Stacey trying to make tea. As our stove is sometimes a bit problematic I hear the clicks of the stove when you try to light it without success.

As soon as you go out, you can hear the children: ‘Oyibo!’ and the other neighbours: ‘Happy Sunday!’. Maybe this is something we should try in the Netherlands, wish everyone you meet a Happy Sunday. I am sure you will enjoy your day much more!

Adventures on the road

Travelling in Nigeria is always an experience. Long distances or just within the city, you never know what will happen. The quality of roads, cars and driver is a guarantee for adventure. But, many more things can happen. Let me give you two examples from last week.

I spent last week in Abuja, the capital city. Contrary to Ilorin, Abuja has an expat scene. So after going out, we were invited to an expat party. (Yes, at a swimming pool). We as VSO volunteers do obviously not have our own transport. So the ride offered by some other people was very welcome. We were one person more than seats in the car, so one girl offered to sit in the trunk of the car. You see many Nigerians doing the same.

But of course, a car full of white people gets some attention from the police at various road blocks so in the end we got stopped. To sum up the long discussion in a few sentences, our driver got accused of treating his wife as an animal, putting her in the trunk. Some policemen were pretty relaxed and were making jokes with us. Others were more stressed and one of them jumped in our car and told the driver to go. In the end, people from the other cars, working in embassies and the marine, came and told the police we were together. The girl had to sit in the car, but putting four people on the backseat, or two in front, is no problem. So in the end we made it to the party.

This situation was a bit scary, especially as the VSO driver with who I came from Ilorin said at some point; if I see these people with guns and no uniform I feel safe, I know what they are doing. If I see police I feel unsafe because you never know if they are really police and what they want.

 

Second example is totally different. Nothing scary, but pretty annoying. Travelling back from Abuja to Ilorin takes 7-8 hours. At the moment we leave the car park in Abuja, the woman next to me (who claimed the seat in the middle of the car) told us we have to pray. This is nothing special in Nigeria, so she started praying out loud that the road to Ilorin was covered with the bloooood of Jeeeeeesuuuuus. This took about five minutes. But then, when we really left Abuja, she started talking about God. For 7 hours. The two ladies in the back were Muslims and she was telling that she did respect Muslims, but well, they don’t know the love of Jeeeeesuuuuus. I tried to sleep, but her voice was too loud. The lady at her other side tried to read her book, the two ladies in the back were just talking to each other. And she was just talking. I had a hard time not asking her if her husband was very happy every time she travels to Abuja so he has some rest for a few days.

I thought it was just me getting annoyed, but after she dropped the other passenger and the driver said; we have a headache! She is just talking talking talking! And so loud! And only about herself and her relationship to Jesus…  For seven hours, can you imagine! (Yes I can, I was sitting right next to her, remember?).

 

Big advantage of this trip, I was extra happy to arrive in Ilorin. Not only that we made it safely again, but also because I could finally escape the preaching lady!

Cotonou, c'est aussi chez moi!

The Lonely Planet for West Africa summarises what each country in West Africa is famous for. According to Lonely Planet, Benin is mainly famous for Voodoo, slavery, the kings of Dahomey and Angelique Kidjo. Nigeria on the other hand, is famous for corruption, email scams and writers. This gives you a very different first impression of the two countries. And believe me, it is true!


View from my hotel room

I visited Cotonou for the first time in three years. It was amazing. It is really weird to realize the big differences between two neighbouring countries. Simply the atmosphere is incomparable. It’s hard to define the difference, but I can really feel it when I am there.

And of course I loved seeing my friends again. It is amazing how the little baby who was just born last time I saw him, goes to school now and speaks better French than me. I loved eating pizza at the beach, enjoyed a great buffet with loads of Lebanese food and shopped in the new hyper marché. Of course, Cotonou is the economic centre of the country and I should not be surprised I can find more western products and food than in Ilorin. But still, it was great!

 

It was interesting to see how Cotonou is developing. In some areas, so many new building arose that I hardly recognised it. New roads and fly overs are making the traffic easier. Power is much more reliable than it was some years ago. My friends told me there are still power cuts, but they last only a few hours and are not on daily base. Compare that to Nigeria where we often have no power for a day or more. (And keep in mind that Nigeria exports power to neighbouring countries).

It seems like the government in Benin is doing a quite good job, while in Nigeria things seems to slow down. For example, a company has been assigned to repair the road between and Ilorin and Abuja several times. So far, nothing has happened.


With my good friend Armand

I think I understand what the problem is. When I crossed the border between Nigeria and Benin, at the Benin side the most heard words were: Bon Arrivee! Welcome in Benin! Only one official tried to get money from me.




Travelling back to Nigeria, the officials stamping my passport at the border were ok, but as soon as we passed the border, problems start. Here people don’t say Welcome in Nigeria, they say; what do you have for me? And the poor taxi driver had to pay. All the time. Within 500 meter he got stopped probably 10 times, not by officials but by normal people. They have a kind of a golf club with nails in it and if you don’t stop they destroy your tires. So, what can you do? Telling them you just paid 10m before (what the guy saw of course), doesn’t help, you have to pay. The police sees it and the only thing they say is; ‘Anything for us?’ so you have to pay again.

When I was living in Benin in 2006 I never expected to go to Benin to be in a ‘normal’ and ‘developed’ country. Or that I would go to Cotonou because of the variety of food. Or the great condition of the roads… But now… Spending months in Ilorin changes everything! So, hopefully again in September. It feels like home. Because, well, Cotonou, c’est aussi chez moi!



Pizza at the beach