St Pat's day celebrations.

Nigeria is definitely a country of contrasts. One minute you can be negotiating the delights of the public transport system here (I am beginning to wish that my legs were slightly shorter)….and dealing with the fact the shops in the town centre may randomly go on strike just the moment you have set off to do some shopping…and the next minute you can find yourself in an ex-pat compound where there is a posh swimming pool, a bar with food and drink on the house, and a band playing irish music to celebrate St Patrick’s day! I had a fun weekend in Abuja ( the capital) this weekend as there were parties going on with all the irish expats and volunteers around to spur everyone on. ( I was at a house party on the photo) It’s great how everyone is so welcoming and there is always a place to stay even with people who you have only just met!! I think they are used to the VSO volunteers moving around in groups at weekends!

Life at the school is taking shape. My room is gradually being transformed from a poultry shed to a working office / therapy room. The paint went on the walls this week and I even got to choose my own curtain, which is actually bedspread material but who’s to know!...The next stage is to connect the room up with electricity although the generator isn’t used all the time, and the mains electricity is hardly ever on at the moment. I am glad that my job here doesn’t rely on electricity as it is really frustrating for anyone who works in an office environment to have to cope with. It doesn’t help that since generators are run on diesel, which is getting more and more expensive, many places can only afford to have the gen on for a short time.

As for me though, I am starting to run some language groups ( luckily as english is used throughout the school I can run them in my own languge) and have started some of the non-verbal children off with using picture systems to try to communicate, which is going well so far, but it's very early stages!! I need to convince everyone that these systems can be used all the time and not just during speech sessions or as a fun game!

The photos show a couple of children during assessment, and the scenery around the school - very countrified for a city! You can just about see the school in the background on one of the photos.

The photos...

Hiking in the Hills

I had a busy weekend meeting up with fellow VSO volunteers, and as it was Jenny's birthday we celebrated by splashing out on lots of great food in the posh places to eat and drink here. Any excuse to be honest! They left on Saturday night giving me time to catch up on some sleep ready for hiking the next day ( with a groups of French expats who have set up a hiking group). I felt like Indiana Jones bashing through the undergrowth at times ( and I have the scratches to prove it!) but it felt like a real adventure. The landscape was a cross between Arizona ( as I imagine it to be with all the cacti etc), inland Australia and the foothills of the Alps. ( ie very up and down!!)

Settling in.

A Short post this time. Just a couple of snaps showing Speech and language Therapy Assessment in action! The little girl wearing the Snow suit ( over her school uniform no less and it really isn't cold in the slightest!) is discovering how to play with the Pop up dragon game and is in my new Speech Therapy room. We now have mats and a table. Hopefully paint for the walls, some curtains and some more rugs will be next on the list, depending on funding! The little girl in denim has Autism and is particularly intrigued in part of a game I brought out! She loves anything that is brightly coloured.

The picture of me swimming was taken last Saturday when I tagged along to a birthday party by a freshwater lake with a group of other ex-pats and Nigerians I met. It was cold, but refreshing as us Brits say. Not everyone ventured into the water though!

Time to head back to my place. I volunteered to help make 5o Gold medal ( cardboard medallions) for the Special Olympics Competition this weekend as I foolishly let on that I brought a laminator out with me! So that's my evening taken up!

Greetings from Open Doors Special Education Centre, Jos

It’s true what they say about Jos. I can’t believe I can sit here at night without the fan on, and not only not be sweating profusely like in most other places in Nigeria, but also to be contemplating the possible need for another layer if I go outside. It’s still red hot during the day though, despite you needing a sleeping bag at night. But that’s enough about the weather!… I am downloading some more photos to go with this post to show you all some pictures of life at the school. I have only been there for one full day but I already feel quite busy! The plan is to screen the 80 children and young adults in the Special Education Unit over the next few weeks , most of whom have been diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, Autism, Down’s Syndrome and /or Moderate – Severe Learning Disabilities ( still referred to as mental retardation over here).
I have a “counterpart”, Ogbonna, who will take over when I leave and he’s highly trained in Special Education. He will also be an invaluable interpreter when I try to do language assessments in a few of the different Nigerian languages!! Even though they use English in the school as the main language, I think it’s still important to assess the children in their first language even though it makes life more difficult …
I was also pleased to hear that Ogbonna’s keen to try the Picture Exchange Communication System with the non-verbal children, and that he’d heard of it. It can sometimes be hard to sell it to people, as they think that teaching children to use pictures to communicate will stop them learning to talk when actually the opposite is true…
The teachers I have met so far also seem keen for me to work alongside them in the classrooms which is encouraging.
Well that’s enough about the Speech and Language Therapy side of it for now!!
To explain the first picture; It's the Baptist Mission guesthouse and I am staying in a small little annex which is round the back . This feels like luxury compared to Marilyn’s house in Lafia. For a start, I have running water, although admittedly I can’t drink it and need to remember to boil and filter it. And although there are the inevitable NEPA stoppages the owner of the guesthouse has a generator which is switched on until 9pm. After that, it’s just pot luck whether the electricity lasts. So far so good tonight, probably because it was off all day! I even have my own sofa and armchairs, and a spare room with 2 bunks, as it’s meant to be a family annex. There are no rules here and I can come and go as I please, and it feels quite safe as it’s a small enclosed compound with a guard at the gate. The down side is that I can only stay for 6 weeks so my boss is trying to arrange something else for after that. I might be able to get a place with another VSO volunteer who’s supposed to be arriving in May or June…but who knows what will happen! I might have more of an idea where would be good to live by then.
All in all though, I have been impressed with Jos so far. It’s much smaller than I thought it would be, and more countrified. The landscape around the school is almost Mediterranean , with the rocky hills , Cacti and flowering shrubs…will have to ask experts what they are…all I know is that there are lots of purple and pink trees/ shrubs/bushes…Okay so I’m not a great horticulturalist...but you get the picture! There are also a few expats around , and bizarrely I actually ran into someone I met at a VSO course back in June before either of us knew where we would be going! She had made the “pilgrammage” to Jos from the heat of Kano further north, in search of ice cream, chocolate and fresh salad that you can only get in Jos!