yo zatur dau’u
on Fantastic Voyage (Nigeria), 10/Aug/2010 21:45, 34 days ago
I have been angrier than this following a professional experience, but probably only about three or four times in my life– and on one of those occasions I literally sat and my desk and cried tears of wrath before kicking my printer too hard and hurting my toe.This is an angry, angry man– I hear you say.  Perhaps so.  Await my colossal axe murdering spree with nervous tension.  In the meantime, be thankful that, however meagre and pointless your professional skills may seem, at least nobody despises them quite as much as they do mine.There’s a team of people who are paid to be trained and deliver training to teachers in Nigeria.  Let’s be clear about what they’re paid for at this point: their actual job is to become experts in good teaching and management, and to support its development.  They’re intended, essentially, to be the future of teacher development here.  This is a good thing, and I’m excited to be working with them; before coming, a small part of me (like some small animal that only comes out at night) quivered a little, thinking I couldn’t offer them that much.  So I was excited and relieved to see them in action and in training and realise that, like an England football manager who’s capable of adapting his tactics to the opposition, my age old ideas remain unused and unusual and generally plausible in the modern world (if we take that to mean Nigeria and the UK).Any of you who have read this blog with a little assiduity may have realised that I have not enjoyed my job here as much as I’ve enjoyed being here.  At least part of the reason for this is that, while I’ve never really wanted any job I’ve had, I at least want to be able to do a decent fist of whatever role I’m condemned to: but here I don’t seem to have any role at all, and certainly not one that anybody is prepared to talk to me about.  So I pushed to be able to deliver a training session to said teacher training group, to look at some clear deficiencies in their approach to their work.  Highly unusually for me (given that I basically don’t like other people, and am secretly a massive control freak), I was even able to identity some aspects of this that I thought someone else – namely theever-extraordinary Jenniferwould deliver more effectively than me.  I duly planned with more misplaced intensity than Goebbels; copied everyone I could imagine into emails about every aspect of it; spent a lot of money on texting the participants to ensure they knew as much as possible about it; held (this was a weird experience) meetings with my chosen life partner to coach her in training techniques and plan together for her sessions.And what’s the primary response?  At the end of the workshop, when the group’s spokesperson stands up, moves to the centre of the room and addresses me – what will she talk about?  If only I felt some lingering suspense.  It is, of course, that she has been paid so little money (in addition to her salary, of course) to attend today’s workshop that she would prefer to have thrown it back at me.  That for me to offer her so little money to attend a workshop is an insult.  For me to let her know, by text message, about the workshop is offensive.  That I should be grateful to her because she has persuaded everyone else not to give me the money back, but instead to wait and hear my excuse for offering this paltry sum and how much I will now offer them before doing so.(The situation is, of course, solved by my colleague from the funding organisation funded– assuming all readers of this are known to me – by your own fine government profoundly apologising and promising to ensure that their allowance is doubled and they’re never offered so little again.)How much was their allowance?  1,000 Naira.  That’s right: the same amount as our daily volunteer allowance, which is already at least double the amount an average Nigerianfamilyreceives each day.  This is for attending a workshop delivered where they would be working anyway, and instead of them doing any work, and directly targeted at their work, and at a time when they don’t really have much work to do.  I have no doubt the same attitude would prevail in some parts of the UK.  I have no doubt that, tomorrow, I’ll swallow the massive hit my pride has taken and deliver the second day and smile and smile and not be a villain.  I have absolutely no doubt that the fault really lies with the funding organisation and the cultural system they’ve inculcated, not the individuals at whom I currently, inwardly (and, to Jenny, outwardly) seethe, boil, and bluster.  I came here to find out about this kind of vicious, shitty pointlessness– and how I’ll respond to it.  So I’ll get through: I’ll make it all some day (I count two Pulp references in this entry.  I’m proud.).But right now…I shall do such things.  What they shall be I know not: but they will be the terror of the earth.