A belated post that has waited a few weeks before an internet place could send it !!

It’s been a hectic few weeks again. I had a bit of time out in Jos countryside, in an area called Vom one week and in the familiar Shere Hills the week later, which was beautiful as you can see from the pictures. Back at school, I had a staff development day last week and then there was Children’s Day which was great fun. It was entertaining to see the children learning to do the egg and spoon, three legged race and the sack race as none of them had tried it before! But they loved it as you can see. One little girl, Judith, was so cute when we were doing the three legged race. She uses a wheelchair and can’t walk but she really wanted to take part in the race too, pointing to all the ties showing us that she wanted to tie her legs together! So we attached her foot to the chair and gave the wheelchair race an extra edge! She was so pleased to be like the other children who were having their legs tied together!
We also brought a horse along to give some of the children some rides, which went down well. I was in charge of the obstacle course but we had a few practices before the day so it didn’t go too disastrously! No-one ran in the opposite direction or twisted their ankles at least!

It was my house mate’s birthday at the weekend too so he has a big barbeque to celebrate. We partied into the night using the front room as a disco! We had to hunt around the place to borrow a generator for the night as the electricity has been terrible here recently. We have had to give up buying any kind of dairy or even much veg as it goes off so quickly. Its amazing how fast mould grows in a fridge that doesn’t turn on! We were excited last week as the power came on for the first time for a few days but then it was such low voltage it wasn’t enough to turn the fridge on and it took an hour to warm up the laminator! Not great for a laminating freak like me!

I don’t have long to go at school now so I am busy finishing off all the last things I have to make and write up! Better get to it!...

A traditional Igbo wedding and a school trip to go horse riding!

It's been a busy week. Last Friday Rose, a colleague of mine at school, got married, and the wedding lasted for two days! I went to the first day of celebrations, the traditional Igbo ceremony. The next day, they did the white wedding in the church , but I have already seen plenty of those back home ( !) and I had other plans at the weekend with a friend who was visiting. Perhaps the most interesting part of the wedding was the fact that the actual ceremony didn't take place until 7 30 pm even though it was scheduled to start at 2pm. Now that's a delay even by Nigerian standards! I arrived at 4 30pm anticipating a late start as everything runs on "Nigerian time" over here but there were still another 3 hours to go before we saw the bride and groom and the canopy was only just under construction. Still, most of the guests had arrived and the loud speaker was blaring out the music for us all to enjoy, including the surrounding neighbourhood as the wedding was being held by the roadside. ( as there was no room in the flat to house all the guests) So there was plenty going on. In fact we were all given our meals before the bridal party arrived and many guests even left before the ceremony began , once they had eaten and drank enough, which was probably a good job as there wouldn't have been enough chairs for everyone otherwise! Apparently the reason they took so long was that the bride and the groom's families were busy negotiating her bride price, which is still very important over here and is taken very seriously. Families turn up with a list of required items in order to hand over their daughter to another man's family and unless there is agreement, the wedding can't take place. I couldn't help thinking that this kind of heavy negotiation could have been pencilled in for a date preceeding the actual wedding day, but that's just how it's done here. Just a shame many of the guests actually missed the ceremony.

Once the proceedings got underway though, it became more interesting. I liked the fact that not only did the bride have to feed the groom their first food and drink as husband and wife, but also that the groom had to do the same for his wife! There was lots of dancing involved too which I had a good go at!

The other pics show the school trip to the polo field in Jos as I tracked down a contact there who was very kind in organising for some of our physically disabled kids to have a free horse riding session. I was somewhat nervous when i tried to put one of the bravest children, Judith, on the horse as the first one, only to find she started to scream and kick and didn't want to go near ! But after a few more minutes of stroking the horse she calmed down, and once I tried with another little girl Simmi, who was a bit nervous but happy to sit with me , Judith was desperate to climb on. In the end , most of them loved it and it was so rewarding to see their happy smiling faces. I want to try to make it a more regular thing, for their families to take them riding, as "riding for the disabled" is quite a popular thing back in the UK and it helps lots of children learn to balance and gain confidence.

So I hope this will be the first of many visits!

Beaming kids with their new machines!

I had planned to post some pics from my recent trip to Ghana and Calabar in South Nigeria, over the easter holidays, but the internet connection seemed to be having other ideas over the past couple of weeks so I have moved onto new pictures to see if the beach , rainforest and money photos were feted! It seems that they were as these have worked! Mind you, I have to make the photos as small as possible for it upload! Anyway, it was a great holiday all in all and I may add some pics at some stage!

Meanwhile, I am now back at work again , and Iwas very excited to return back to Jos to see a new DHL parcel full of the speech equipment I had ordered from home, via a charity donation.

As you can see, the kids are very happy with their new devices, and its been really rewarding showing the parents how to work the machines and record onto them, programme them with suitable pictures and talk about all the possibilities for the future. I have been visiting some of the children in their homes so that I can take photogaphs of all the familiar objects and family members for their machines, rather than just using generic pictures , especially since a lot of the picture symbols you can download aren't always appropriate for Nigeria. ( particularly food - can't find symbols of Yam , Akara or moi moi on line!)

It's going well so far, and I just hope the machines will cope with the fact that other children in the families will no doubt get their hands on them!

I also added a picture of me collecting water from the well in our compound. I sometimes forget to mention the every day stuff, and it was only after a conversation with a friend the other day that I realised that things like bucket showers and getting water from the well have obviously become a bit too normal!

And now the pics!

Back to Jos

Admittedly there has been a slight delay since the last post in November. I didn’t quite get around to it in December, and I went back to the UK over Christmas and New Year. I have now been back for three weeks and everything feels pretty normal again. I suppose you do get a fresh sense of African street life compared to life back home: the vibrant colours all the women wear, people carrying huge pots of yams on their heads as well as carrying babies on their backs, and the hustle and bustle of the lively street markets full of loud negotiations on price all seems a world away from Bolton! ( see the picture) But you get used to it remarkably quickly.

I have been enjoying life back at the school, and it has been great to see all the kids again. I managed to bring back a whole suitcase of new toys, games and equipment thanks to the great January sales, generous donations and presents from friends and family. So it has been lovely to watch the kids’ reactions to all the new things, and it has injected new excitement into the same old activities. I am still making them practice saying the same type of things, but if there are new toys on offer, it makes everything a lot more exciting!
I am lucky to have a full time assistant now, who is a natural with the children so I am training her up to be “me” when I go. We still spend lots of time in the classrooms though working with the other teachers.

Outside of work it has been great to meet up with my friends again, and I have seen lots of the other volunteers at the weekends as you can see. I am now living with two other volunteers….in house number 4 here!....and you can see the new place in the pictures.

This week there will be 40 volunteers all together in Jos as we are having a meeting with all the VSO volunteers in the central and northern regions in Nigeria. Whatever we end up doing for the seminars etc, it will be good to catch up with everyone again!

Finally, the pictures from my summer holiday in August!!

You can see my cute little neighbour, a baboon sitting on the roof on a car in Yankari National Park, above the Wikki Warm springs, Sarah relaxing in Jos and both of us with some of the village community at one of the projects she supports.

Arrival of the wheelchairs!

Another blog entry without pics. So I will be brief, as I know it’s a tad dull to just read text! The problem is , my camera is still in Gashaka Gumpti National Park and no doubt the chimps have got hold of it and are taking photos as we speak….Well actually, not any more as it has been retrieved by rangers at the park but I thought it was safer to get a friend to pick it up when someone visits, rather than rely on the Nigerian postal system…

I have spent quite a few weekends here in Jos recently and have decided it’s not a bad spot! I have had a couple of friends to visit so we went on the obligatory tour of the Museum shops, trips to the market for material (cheaper than Abuja!) and hiking trips to the hills near my house.

I am happy that the rainy season is finally over so I have been enjoying getting back into the swing of swimming, cycling and hiking in the sun! I have also done my fair share of travelling too, mainly for farewell weekends in (Kaduna and Abuja) as it seems that there has been an epidemic of volunteers leaving recently! A new batch of VSO volunteers are arriving soon and an American girl is joining me at my school until December so that should be good. I have also found myself a very handy Speech therapy assistant in the form of a retired doctor who has some time on her hands. She has been very busy making extra PECS books and other visual aids, but the only down side is that we can’t locate stick on Velcro anywhere so are trying to find other methods!!

The really exciting news is that the wheelchairs have arrived too! My boss is going to pick them up next week so the children are so excited. Meanwhile a friend of mine is trying to set up a Cerebral Palsy support group and we had the first meeting about it the other week, which was even filmed for the local TV network. Typically they turned up when I was mid speech and I just had to carry on talking as if a film camera hadn’t just been thrust in my face!! Unfortunately I didn’t get to see myself on TV as the electricity wasn’t on that night!

It’s a short week coming up as Thursday and Friday are public holidays as it’s the end of the Muslim fasting period Ramadam. I am hoping to go to Zaria with some friends , to see the Durbar there. I will describe it in more detail when I have actually been!!!....Watch this space…

Photos from Ghana

A break in Ghana!

Some might say the last few weeks have been a tad hectic. I am all for travelling, but I was actually strangely relieved to be back in my little house this week, without the prospect of moving for the foreseeable future. That's not to say I haven't had a fantastic time. As the photos show, Ghana is a beautiful country and it was great to finally lie on a beach and soak up some sun for a few days after the week long Pan African reading For all Conference in Accra. ( I presented a workshop there along with some colleagues from my school in Nigeria.)

No rest for the wicked though, so instead of staying in one place, and together with some friends, I toured the coast of Ghana , stopping off at castles, stilt villages and Wildlife Parks along the way. It's a shame that the wildlife proved to be particularly illusive, and I think the most we saw in Kakum National Park was a few butterflies! Still, it was a lush rainforest and it was worth it for the extremely high up canopy walkway..the only one of it's kind in Africa apparently.

The bad luck with Wildlife spotting continued with us as we reached Nigerian soil again. After visiting my school for a couple of days , we went to two different national parks in Nigeria, but were foiled from seeing elephants both times, even though we saw their footprints and droppings so we knew they had been there!! In Yankari Game reserve, the Baboons jumping around the car park made up for it, as did the Wikki Warm springs which are a constant hot temperature..great for the rainy season! We went on a two day car journey to get to Gashaka Gumpti National Park, and were proud to be two of only a handful of foreign visitors who visit each year. It's a wild and remote part of Nigeria , but the countryside is spectacular and it's an interesting place to visit as much as to meet the friendly local people as for the wildlife itself! ( although luckily a few monkeys popped into view at least !)

Perhaps the best part of travelling in Nigeria though is that you are generally made to feel welcome and important...great for your ego!

But the problems of lack of power and running water , and the bumpy roads with umpteen potholes are sent to try us!

I am now trying to adjust to getting back to work ...But it's great to see the kids again, and try out the new equipment that we have been donated from the US. ( a basic electronic talker and switch )

Near my new house, and some party pics...

I am now getting settled into my new house, and am enjoying the walk to work in the mornings. Luckily, I discovered a path leading straight from my house to the school…the only trouble is there is a river I have to cross and during rainy season it can get quite high. I am negotiating stepping stones on my way to work at the moment… and am hoping they won’t be completely covered over one of these days. The pictures show the views near my new place and also my outside kitchen, and the rooms inside. As you can see I am making myself at home there, and my 2 year old next door neighbour helps me out with the mopping!! He is always in my place shouting “ Aunty, Aunty!” wanting me to play games with him!
I am busy at work preparing for the conference in Ghana as well as all the usual things. And the big news is that the wheelchair request has been approved by the ministry so we are hoping that wheelchairs will be provided for all the physically disabled children by the end of August. But I am on the quest for more funding as there are so many other things we want to provide, including electronic talking machines and other aids for the physio room and for the parents to use at home etc! I will try to get into fundraising once I get back from Ghana I think. Any ideas for contacts, please let me know!

The other pictures are from a leaving party I went to in Abuja last weekend…the theme was “stars and stripes” as both the people leaving are American. I won the name the 50 american states quiz ( admittedly with a little help from a friend!) and my prize was a stuffed animal. I took in back home and was going to give it to the school but I thought the kids would fight over it so I gave it to Abdulai, my little neighbour..but he was so scared of it he started crying!!! Not a success….think it will be going to school after all!....

Special olympics... and a new wheelchair!

Just a quick post this time, to show you a few photos from the Special Olympics event they held at school today. The kids really enjoyed themselves, although it was a shame the rain came earlier than usual and rained off the last few events. They were all so proud of their medals, and loved doing the march past to mark the start of the ceremony, including lighting the Olympic flame. I ended up being the chief photographer for the event so I didn't actually have much time to take my own pics but here are the few I did take...

I have also included a picture of Joseph in his new wheelchair, kindly donated last week. Admittedly, it is not exactly made to measure, and he has some difficulty staying in it properly, not least because it is made of slippy material, but he was so happy the first time he had a ride in it, as you can see. His mother was so happy that they finally had a wheelchair for him she started to cry, as did his nanny ( the girl also in the picture) who is generally the person who has to carry him around at school! We are hoping that our request for some more lightweight wheelchairs from the Ministry will come to fruition....We shall see!

Life continues to be hectic but in a good way. I have just moved house for the third time in six months, but this time, it’s to my own place. A friend of a work colleague has built a house in his back yard, and I am the first one to move in. It’s a great little place, with three largish rooms and the only down side is that the kitchen is outside in a small shed. But I am now fixed up with running water and the potential for electricity…depending on whether the power is on or not! My boss has been a great help in collecting furniture for me to use, and even re- upholstered an old three piece suite for me to put in the sitting room. The only trouble is that my only means of cooking is an electric hot plate at the moment…not ideal for a country with unreliable electricity supply!

I visited Kano last week to combine a VSO conference with my birthday celebrations last Saturday. It’s a really interesting place to visit…a huge city of over 3 million people with sprawling old city area complete with the original buildings from over 500 years ago. In fact, there were buildings in the old market that were apparently used as the main depots for trading slaves. They are now used as money changing venues.
It was fascinating wandering around the narrow market alleyways bustling with movement. I nearly got my eye poked by someone carrying a long piece of timber on his head. Needless to say I got carried away buying objects from the market…I kept thinking that it was a birthday treat to myself….but it was nice to be able to see your things being actually made on the spot. ( such as the tie die cloth and the pot ( called a calabash…see pics) They still make the tie dye cloth in the original way and each die pit is owned by a particular family and passed down through the generations, over hundreds of years. But perhaps the best thing about seeing all these things was that you didn’t feel as if you were just another tourist…we were asked to sign a book when we went to the dye pits and I think we were the first tourists there for a while!

I was also lucky enough to have a birthday party arranged for me…I just had to turn up! A VSO friend helped to organise it , and asked a good friend of hers if he wouldn't mind holding the do at his house, complete with a pool! I felt ready to cool off in the water after a long day's sightseeing....!

It's been back to work this week though, and I am working of Saturday too as there is a family forum with the parents, to discuss issues around coping with children with disabilities. The next round of the Nigerian special olympics is also being held at school tomorrow so I will be hoping to get some good pictures of that....!