Thursday 31 May 2007
Tuesday 29 May 2007
A weekend in Kagoro
It's Democracy day today. The day of the handing over to the new president. Which is exciting mostly because its another day off! ( And also that it is the first handing over from one democratic government to another as democracy has not been around here for long...some would say it still isn't but that's another story best left to world news reporters!...)
Yesterday was Children's Day and the outgoing president Obasanjar decided to make it a public holiday but failed to tell us until last Friday. My boss had to make last minute notes to send home to the parents to let them know that suddenly the children had 2 days off this week. It suited me fine as i was going away this weekend ( again!) and I didn't have to rush back on Sunday. A group of 14 of us ( VSOs) converged on my friend Hiromi's small pink house in the beautiful but tiny village of kagoro, only 1 1/2 hours away door to door.
It was her last weekend in Nigeria so we made the most of it with a hiking trip up her nearby mountain culminating in the obligatory trip to the local bush bar as a reward when we returned.On sunday, the few of us who stayed on joined Hiromi at her NGO's party for Children's Day where local children's drama groups performed small sketches and songs on a stage outside.They were amazingly talented, and even did the sketches in two languages for our benefit. Suddenly the rains descended and an army of small children were herded towards two small dark rooms ( no electricity of course!) with barely enough room to turn around. As I said I worked with children in a school I was told to entertain one group of children whilst my teacher friend Siv took the other lot. I decided to fall back on the old favourite of impromptu action songs, and went through a number of verses of " If you are happy and you know it" and " the hokey Kokey" before almost losing my voice over the sound of the rain! Luckily it didn't last and later the children were able to continue with the sketches.
It's back to work tomorrow so I had better go and do some planning!...
Pictures are taking ages to upload today, so watch this space...!
Yesterday was Children's Day and the outgoing president Obasanjar decided to make it a public holiday but failed to tell us until last Friday. My boss had to make last minute notes to send home to the parents to let them know that suddenly the children had 2 days off this week. It suited me fine as i was going away this weekend ( again!) and I didn't have to rush back on Sunday. A group of 14 of us ( VSOs) converged on my friend Hiromi's small pink house in the beautiful but tiny village of kagoro, only 1 1/2 hours away door to door.
It was her last weekend in Nigeria so we made the most of it with a hiking trip up her nearby mountain culminating in the obligatory trip to the local bush bar as a reward when we returned.On sunday, the few of us who stayed on joined Hiromi at her NGO's party for Children's Day where local children's drama groups performed small sketches and songs on a stage outside.They were amazingly talented, and even did the sketches in two languages for our benefit. Suddenly the rains descended and an army of small children were herded towards two small dark rooms ( no electricity of course!) with barely enough room to turn around. As I said I worked with children in a school I was told to entertain one group of children whilst my teacher friend Siv took the other lot. I decided to fall back on the old favourite of impromptu action songs, and went through a number of verses of " If you are happy and you know it" and " the hokey Kokey" before almost losing my voice over the sound of the rain! Luckily it didn't last and later the children were able to continue with the sketches.
It's back to work tomorrow so I had better go and do some planning!...
Pictures are taking ages to upload today, so watch this space...!
Thursday 24 May 2007
Monday 21 May 2007
Working hard!
From most of the posts so far I have probably given the impression that I am permanently on holiday. Let me reassure you that this is not the case. It's just that I am sure you would find it incredibly dull if I kept on posting pictures of the school. I had a hectic week last week with a visitor with me every day, either other VSO volunteers or other interested parties! ( ie a german girl working with an NGO here who is interested in doing speech therapy as a career) It's always good to have other people around to bounce ideas off, and also as an extra pair of hands when you are trying to work with a group of children! We are one staff member down at the moment so it's all hands on deck, especially with the little ones.
I have now done two workshops for the staff at school, and this time we managed to rig up my camcorder to the newly purchased TV which proved very useful not only to show certain therapy techniques ,but also the staff loved watching themselves, as I filmed them on the school trip to the wildlife park.( I had not been able to show them until now!)
Since word has got out that a speech therapist is in town, I have now ended up going out to a mainstream school to assess and work with some children there, and I am also working with a 46 year old man who had a head injury last year and has lost most of his speech. So any of you adult therapists out there, any tips please? I am trying to remember back from Uni days, with no equipment bearing in mind! But its working so far as he is responding to using photographs of his belongings, and we are making a communication folder for him. He gets incredibly frustrated that he gets stuck on a word and keeps repeating it, even though he knows it is not what he should be saying. I am working in conjunction with the teacher in the reading clinic as he is using Hausa with him, so at least its not all down to me!
Anyway, sorry this is a bit full of work news. The photos show my visit to Akwanga last weekend for a friend's birthday, luckily only 1 1/2 hours away. We visited a few local villages where the people are incredibly friendly, and at least here I can go back and give them the photos that I take of people. I also went hiking in the hills near Jos again which looks even more stunning now its rainy season...luckily only raining in the late afternoon at this stage. Not looking forward to the constant rain expected in July and August!
The worst thing about the rain is that generally it means that there is no electricity afterwards, so it's candles all round and if you had planned an evening of laminating ( oh the joys!) , it just isn't going to happen! Actually last week I had quite a few evenings out as I had plenty of visitors...always a good incentive!
Arrgh! This computer won't let me download the photos.....I will have to do that later!!
I have now done two workshops for the staff at school, and this time we managed to rig up my camcorder to the newly purchased TV which proved very useful not only to show certain therapy techniques ,but also the staff loved watching themselves, as I filmed them on the school trip to the wildlife park.( I had not been able to show them until now!)
Since word has got out that a speech therapist is in town, I have now ended up going out to a mainstream school to assess and work with some children there, and I am also working with a 46 year old man who had a head injury last year and has lost most of his speech. So any of you adult therapists out there, any tips please? I am trying to remember back from Uni days, with no equipment bearing in mind! But its working so far as he is responding to using photographs of his belongings, and we are making a communication folder for him. He gets incredibly frustrated that he gets stuck on a word and keeps repeating it, even though he knows it is not what he should be saying. I am working in conjunction with the teacher in the reading clinic as he is using Hausa with him, so at least its not all down to me!
Anyway, sorry this is a bit full of work news. The photos show my visit to Akwanga last weekend for a friend's birthday, luckily only 1 1/2 hours away. We visited a few local villages where the people are incredibly friendly, and at least here I can go back and give them the photos that I take of people. I also went hiking in the hills near Jos again which looks even more stunning now its rainy season...luckily only raining in the late afternoon at this stage. Not looking forward to the constant rain expected in July and August!
The worst thing about the rain is that generally it means that there is no electricity afterwards, so it's candles all round and if you had planned an evening of laminating ( oh the joys!) , it just isn't going to happen! Actually last week I had quite a few evenings out as I had plenty of visitors...always a good incentive!
Arrgh! This computer won't let me download the photos.....I will have to do that later!!
Tuesday 1 May 2007
Back to school.
It’s been a hectic few weeks since Easter. The elections passed smoothly but I suppose the real test will be when the government actually hands over at the end of May. I spent the rest of the Easter break visiting other volunteers at their placements , and in Abuja, the capital but headed back to Jos in time for the start of term last Monday. Mind you, I am not sure that anyone told the parents as only about 5 kids turned up on the first day! We don’t operate normal term times as its as NGO and offers year round provision for children with special needs but parents generally assume it’s the same as government schools. It was a good job their weren’t many kids last week though as I was busy planning my first workshop for the staff at the school and a few extras who wanted to come too. I knew I would be doing something for the staff development day last term, but it wasn’t until last week that I found out that I was doing the whole morning’s presentation for 25 or so people!
I also had to move house last week as my room was already booked for a family for the next two months, before I arrived. The new place is sweet though. It’s surrounded by mango trees and has a country cottage feel to it. It’s in a much larger compound than the other place and a big bonus is that there is a nice hotel nearby where I can get nice food and drink if I’m in the mood for some luxury! I am getting used to the lack of running water and electricity and have been getting back into the art of water conservation. As soon as it starts raining I immediately put a bucket outside to collect rainwater….comes in very useful to flush the toilet and doesn’t waste the "good" stuff!
It’s been good to get back into work again, and the workshop went well despite a few teething problems….basically I tried to cram too much info into one morning. But as you can see from the photos , people seemed interested in it and I tried to make it as interactive and practical as possible. I even did a fancy PowerPoint presentation but rather regretted it as we needed to put the generator on to power the laptops which ended up being too loud and distracting. Next time I will either try to borrow a projector or give up on the idea! I borrowed some extra laptops and copied the workshop onto each one, but then as each laptop was slightly different, it was a bit of a nightmare trying to get everyone to move the slides on at the same time, and swop between mini video clips and back again! I tell you, technology is not always a good thing! But it added interest and a bit of reality to the whole thing, as I was supposed to be showing the staff how to do PECS. ( the Picture Exchange Communication System ) …which is basically teaching kids to exchange a picture for something they want, and then making sentences using pictures to talk about all sorts of things. You wouldn’t think it would take over a morning to explain, but trust me, it’s more complicated than it sounds!
I have been with other volunteers a bit recently which has been fun. There was the dutch party at the Dutch Embassy in Abuja at the weekend for Queen’s day, where we all had to dress up in orange , and then various volunteers have been visiting my place to do placement visits. It’s always good to have visitors and it encourages me to check out all the Jos highlights! I also saw a bit of Nigerian culture the other day as one of the guys at school invited me to see his dance group performing traditional dancing...a bit like a African version of Morris dancing!!
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