Home and Away



Working at my laptop in lounge area.



Collecting water with Kalif ,a biology teacher.





This is my bedroom with Mosquito net.



1^st February 2011 (Martha’s Birthday)

Today we met up with the boys and staff of Dawakin Tofa, where we are staying to see the first assembly of the year. The Principal Mr Musa Idris Musa welcomed us after the boys had been led in prayer for around 10 minutes and the national anthem had been sung. The Press Club then gave their weekly news roundup including their interview of the three visiting head teachers from England. They outlined the similarities and differences between the school system in Nigeria and UK. There then followed a message about where happiness can be found...

After a final prayer we attended a staff meeting informing the teachers of the problems with the electricity and water. The fact that public schools had their old bills paid off by the state but that the Science & Technology Colleges would not. This gave rise to a heated debate which lasted ten minutes or so, and then the meeting finished without any resolution.

Visited the town market today to buy our usual tomatoes, chillies, onions and garlic. We bought some sesame seed snacks from a little girl carrying them on her head. I liked them, they had a toasted flavour. One old man came up to me and started having an argument about what only heaven knows. People still stop and stare a great deal at us. We have been told that it might be assumed by the locals, that my two female colleagues would be considered as my wives, just because we walk together. This might seem strange to us until I explain that the overwhelming majority of men in this part of Nigeria would have more than one wife! It is very common for a man and wife to decide together that the man can marry a second, third, fourth or even more times. It is an outward sign of his wealth that he can afford many wives and many children.

2^nd February

Visited our first school that we are to be working with. It took nearly two hours to get there! The Principal showed us around his school which is a technical school and specialises in teaching trades to boys such as block walling, carpentry, electrical engineering and agricultural tooling. They have very few resources compared to the other schools we have seen, but the Principal is resolute in looking after what he has. Nigerians are very hospitable and before we left we were given a ‘Malting’ which is a non alcoholic drink that looks like beer but is not. Muslim people do not drink alcohol.

Our next school was south of the city and is similar to the boys school we are staying at. Another boarding school specialising in science. They have had a new ICT suite built which is really fantastic. However it has not been commissioned yet, but will be a great resource. We also learned that even though the government may choose schools to build such suites they do not come with software or internet access or have the electricity to run them. Let’s hope this won’t happen at this school.

3^rd February

Visited our first girl’s school which was great to see. Most girls may drop out of school after the primary age, but more and more are starting to attend secondary schools. There are only a few day schools, no boarding. The girls all wore Islamic dress with white Hijabs.  They all looked a bit like Our Lady or young nuns and had different coloured piping on their clothes depending on whether they were juniors or senior science or senior technical. They have up to 90 girls in a class. 10 rows of 9. They copy a passage from the board in English even if they do not understand English and then learn it by rote. Those that can assimilate the information will go further up the education ladder! We really enjoyed all of our visits and hope to work with the schools over the coming weeks.

We also met some of the NYSC student teachers and will be travelling to Abuja on Sunday ready to give them some training on Monday and Tuesday next week.