ba kudi fa
on Fantastic Voyage (Nigeria), 02/Jul/2010 15:57, 34 days ago
So, there’s obviously always something pretty darn cool about children.  They basically rock.  But this one was awesome.He lives at an orphanage in Zaria (of which more below).  It’s a pretty brilliant place: the school room alone is significantly better equipped than the other schools we’ve seen and is part of a small community where the children are looked after, given a lot of independence (if they want it), and supported into homes – for which they have a massivelyhigh success rate.  It and the home next door are also unusual in this part of the world in that they accept children regardless of mental / physical disabilities, so a number of the children have been abandoned, found, and brought in.  Anyway, the boy here (who didn’t tell us his name) was magnificently cheeky and cute, and got away with stealing my water bottle, hitting me with it in the course of a game I never fully understood, and getting money out of some of the Nigerians with us largely by being cute and holding my hand a lot.  It wasn’t a remotely emotional attachment, though (on his side, at least): he charged off to the shops as soon as he had his N15!It’s an incredibly money / business oriented culture.  The only books for sale in most places are biographies of people like Trump and Branson (and occasionally Clinton et al),‘how to get rich quick’ books, and business / leadership strategy.  I dug a pre war book on Hausa legends out of the VSO office which is brilliant, but some small part of me suspects that I may be better versed in the ways of Spider and Hyena than most children we encounter. The only children’s books we’ve seen (apart from one comi-tragically old tome about personal hygiene which were being used in a lesson we interrupted) were – distressingly to my sensibilities – like little Ladybirds (for those of us who remember them), and all of Graeco-Roman myth or the Grimm fairytale ilk.  The turbulent recent history means that most roads and buildings are named after either the last British here who heaved Nigeria into independence, or generals from one regime or another, or Rich Men.  There must be some named after footballers somewhere: that’s the other god here!I’m thinking about that a lot as we’re warming up to our roles: partly because the common coinage of stories is so good for teaching and learning; but mainly because part of the systemic issue of the education system seems to me to be this dichotomy  between‘Western’ (i.e. British colonial identity around 1950) and Nigerian.  There’s no doubt, I think, in the minds of most people we work with that their picture of Westernism (that isn’t a word, but I think it’s a nice equivalent / inside out puppet to Orientalism) is what they do aspire to, and it’s certainly what they talk about a lot.  But (part of) the effect is that it allows a binary to be created between that and traditional Nigerian culture– obviously closely tied to religion, particularly Islam – and hence those people who feel close to those roots want to avoid (in some cases oppose) the education system.  I’ve absolutely no doubt that there’s no chance we’ll be able to do anything to address that, but it’s good to be dimly aw are of it.  And I really, really want to explore what a truly‘Nigerian’ education would look like with some of the specialists and trainers I think I’ll be working with.Anyway, that’s only interesting to someone who’s on the cusp of working within it.  Self-indulgent.  What’s interesting (or should be) to anyone, everywhere, anytime is Zaria.  I’m having this odd sequence of experiences at the moment where every place we go in Nigeria is even more exciting and lovely than the one before.  With Zaria, I’ve reached the point of idly contemplating moving there.  This remains unlikely, but it feels just so vibrant and op en and much more rooted than other places we’ve been (certainly Abuja).  There’s a few photos I’ve put on here of the old city –through a gateway (they like their gates here) which is part of the old walls and onto the Emir’s palace, which is the pretty building.  But we’ll explore it much more in the future: it’s only an hour’s bush taxi away from Kaduna so I envisage many weekends getting to know it better.  It’s also got (according to an ex-student) the second largest university in Africa.  The bookshop sells mostly dusty economics books and large pink cards, but the sculpture garden (like that at Akwanga College of Education) is wonderful.  Like the city walls, the sculptures are mostly baked mud, which crumbles over time: the walls, being about 500 years old, are mostly dissolved– there’s a plan to restore them – and there are places in the garden where sculptures plainly used to be.  I love that: it makes it all very usable and timebound, rather than the British urgently precious approach to buildings and artwork (and books– my biggest bugbear!).What made being in Zaria even better (apart from getting to stay inthe Kongo International– no UmBongo but lots of mosquitoes) were the school visits.  There’s too much bubbling joy in my chest connected with all of this to communicate anything coherent for the moment: the basic facts will suffice.  Schools serve small communities; the ones we’ve gone to have both been for rural villagers, so they’ve been a fair distance off the road (we’re very lucky being funded by a programme which has 4-wheel drives with  air con and drivers popping out of its ears).  The buildings are usually like those in the locality– the rural ones made of mud bricks, or layered onto awooden structure, which produces very smooth walls, with corrugated iron roofs.  Some have furniture (usually long desks, meant for about 3 people with smaller bums than mine); others don’t.  They’re mostly in a pretty poor state of repair, with bits of roof falling in and walls being cracked, etc.  I have to say, though, that with the biddability of Nigerian children (which is just extraordinary), the open spaces, and the walls and floors on which it’s easy to write with chalk, that I’d be quite happy to teach most things here.  But the teaching (as it’s a ‘Western education’ they’re supposed to get…) is delivered through lecture, and occasional opportunities for the children to rehearse saying things in a chorus.  It’s dead cute to listen to, but it doesn’t deliver much learning!  Teachers are terribly poorly trained, and paid significantly less than we– as volunteers – are.  I might bang on about that another time, but probably not.What the children can all do (along with peering with fascinated, frightened eyes and shrinking into the shadows as soon as you look directly at them) is stand and say, in chorus‘Good morning, sir’.  The greeting is generally drawn out, with a very luxurious‘orn’, but the ‘sir’ is like something from a sergeant major of good Buckinghamshire breeding on acid - ‘SAH!’.  One school we visited– the one there are pictures of here – was built entirely by the community, with no government funding at all, and served about 4 villages around it, in miles and miles of lush farmland.  We were the first non-Nigerians ever to visit the area, so even the chief (the old chap in the pictures) was a bit excited to see us.  It’s an absurd experience to be such a celebrity, and one funny thing is that when we returned to Kaduna and not everybody froze in the middle of their actions to stare at us – grinning or open mouthed – I felt a little neglected!  I think I’d turn into Katie Price with alarming ease.Anyway, as below, the internet here is very good but barely coping with this stupid laptop’s childish demands (now itunes wants something, too), so let’s see whether it dies when I try to put this lot into the ether…