We were going to train some of the National Youth Service Corps 'corpers' who have been recruited to support our project. All Nigerian nationals are called up to do a year of service after graduation, often working in schools, local businesses or government agencies, with an element of community development thrown in. It's an opportunity for them to give some time to the community and gain work / professional experience. It is often in a completely different area from where they originate from, so they also get to experience living in a different part of the country.
We had been postponing the training and the market assessment work that needs to be done out in the field due to the elections, but once we heard that they had been delayed until the end of March we realised we could quickly get some things started.
So, on Tuesday I left the office with the driver around 9am and we picked up the project coordinator and three volunteers.
It was a nice drive, and we drove right past Zuma rock - the famous rock that is said to be the geographical heart of the country. According to my guide book it is 1km long and 300m high with sheer cliffs on all sides and vertical lines carved into it by centuries of rainfall running down from the summit.
After a quick stop at the College of Education in Minna to do some photocopying, we headed to the hotel where the training would be. At the College I was fascinated to see how many of the female students had babies strapped to their backs. It looks like they just take them to class with them. In The Gambia I had seen female employees bring their babies to meetings and training sessions, but for students to bring them to college seems excellent. The babies are often so quiet, and if they are unsettled then often the whole group will take responsibility for calming them, and it is seen as completely normal for the babies to be there. Quite unlike the UK I think.
Anyway, once at the hotel we started the training straight away. 16 young people on the first afternoon and 18 on the second day. I did a quick intro to the project, showing them the work that was planned, and how this all hung together as a global project, and then we started training on some skills. They will be supporting the team to undertake the market assessment so we focused on observation skills, market mapping and research skills.
I did a session on listening skills, or active listening. It was really different to what I would usually train on or focus on so I actually really enjoyed doing it. I ran a couple of exercises to test their listening skills, including one where they worked in pairs and one person had to draw a picture that the other described. There were three rounds, on the first the drawer could not ask questions, on the second the listener / drawer could ask closed questions and on the third round the drawer could employ all the active listening skills and use of probing questions etc that I had just run through in my presentation. It worked really well! It was also a nice activity to do as I had the after lunch slot, so it kept everyone awake and engaged after a heavy Nigerian lunch.
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| My drawing activity |
The second day of training went well. I didn't have sessions so I fitted in some meetings from my hotel room, and just popped in and out of the training. One of the volunteers did a nice exercise at the end where he got everyone to tape a piece of paper to their backs with their name on. They then had to go around the room and get everyone to write one positive thing about them on the piece of paper, and they returned the favour. At the end each person read all the statements that had been written about them, preceded with 'I am...' so they would be reading statements like 'I am a good speaker, I am well dressed, I am smart' - it was really sweet!
On Thursday we had a day in the new local office the team have established and did some planning. I also got to see more of the town - much bigger than I expected, and to drive around in a few keke's (pronounced keh-keh) - the little auto-rickshaws they now use instead of motorbike taxis.
On Friday I had some more online meetings, and more planning time. My driver came and collected me at around 2pm but we didn't set off until about 4:30, so I got in last night at about 8pm, had a nice cuppa and went to bed - tired but in a nice way.
Next week my whole (global) team are coming to Nigeria so we are doing another trip out to Minna (a day trip this time) and lots of meetings, including a mid-year update call to our donor. It will be a good but busy week I am sure. Ken, my counterpart who is based in Cambodia will be staying for two weeks and advising the Minna team while they undertake the market assessment, so he will travel back to Minna in the second week, and I may well end up joining him. I think the three hour drive to Minna will soon become very familiar!
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| My hotel room |
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