2013

In the last days of the year, it is the time to look back. So, what did 2013 bring?

• People! This year was a year in which I met so many wonderful people. Fellow volunteers in Nigeria, colleagues, national volunteers, people in the street. It is always nice to come back to Ilorin after a trip. It takes me at least 15 minutes to get home from the main junction (normally less than 5 minutes away) as every shop owner on the way wants to have a chat and a dozen of kids run to me to hug me.  
• My parents in Benin. Never expected, but they made it, and they loved it. And I loved showing them around in this part of my life.
• Education. I learnt so much in this year about education in Nigeria. I have seen a lot of challenges and hopefully also a lot of opportunities. It is not always easy to prepare volunteers to teach hundred children. Or to support them in teaching practicals with no materials. I hope my colleague and I can help them a bit to improve education.
• Volunteers. I am so proud to see what a big impact the national volunteers make. I hope to contribute a little, but they are the ones who do the job. So I am very proud of them when I hear that instead of 40% now 95% of the students in a school is passing exams. Or to hear from school principals how big their impact is on students but also on colleagues.

But also,

• Corruption. Especially crossing the border, it is an ongoing frustration.
• Heat. I really remember my first night in Ilorin. No power all night long, so also no fan all night long. Welcome to Ilorin!
• Lack of water and power. An ongoing issue in our house. I get used to the lack of power, but being without water is still difficult.

 

Maybe I can just sum up 2013 in one word: Nigeria. Nigeria is a world on his own, with so many nice people, so many people who want to improve the country, so many smiles, so much support, so many hugs, so many remarkable moments, so much to learn. But also, so little light, so much corruption, such bad roads, so many oga’s on the top with not much capacities for their jobs, so many jobless youth, so many children out of school.  I am happy to support the positive sides and feel really blessed to be able to do that with my colleague. I hope we can make a difference for some people together.

So, that’s the resolution for next year. Together with my counterpart, our national volunteers, VSO and everybody else who wants to help, continue to work for a better education in Kwara. I hope 2014 will bring us more visible results and a better life for at least a few people in Kwara state. I belief that all together, we can make a difference. Will you join us?

 

*I will be travelling in Nigeria over Christmas and New Years. This was most likely my last post for 2013. I wish you all a merry Christmas, but especially a very happy, healthy and delightful new year!*

 

 

Twins

The people in Kwara state are mainly Yoruba. The Yoruba of Nigeria are getting the highest number of twins in the world. About 4,5% of all babies born have a twin brother or sister. (In the Netherlands this is less than 1,5%).

Twin brothers are immediately recognizable by their names. The one who is born first is called Taiyewo (or shortened to Taiwo or Taiye for example). This means ‘the first to taste the world’. According to the story, the second one born (Kehinde or Kenny) sends Taiyewo to check out if life is ok. By the way he cries, he is supposed to inform Kehinde about the situation on earth. The reply determines if Kehinde will be born alive or stillborn.

In traditional Yoruba religion, it is believed that twins share one soul. So, if one of the two dies young, the balance of the soul is disturbed. In case one of the twins is passing away, a wooden figure is created to symbolize the dead child. In case both children die, two figures are made. The figures are treated by the parents as if they are real children. Rituals and prayers are performed for the child's birthday and other celebrations or festivals.

I am not sure how many people are still making these twin statues, treating them like real children. But, I can see a lot of Taiyes and Taiwos and Kehindes. So, the Yoruba seem to still get a lot of twins. People here tell me it is because of the yam they eat.

This sounds a bit strange, but I found some articles on the internet that says that a specific kind of yam is having something in it what resembles a fertility hormone used in the west. And in western countries, people who use fertility drugs do get a higher percentage of twins as well. So, it might not be as strange as you would think at first! (Especially as it seems that the number of twins among Yoruba’s who left Nigeria is pretty similar to the rest of the population of their new country).

Anyway, I decided to not take the risk and not eat too much yam!

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!