Today we got up, went to the office, and chose our personal ACD. I chose to keep woman in education as mine, as living in a household with two wives and fourteen children I wanted to do family planning for my Active Citizen Day. However, I feel this would have been too direct, and my family could be offended. Instead by choosing “Keeping women in education” it is a lot broader and would also cover family planning. You might be wondering what the hell an ACD is well here you go: it is a day where we chose an issue within the community we are in, and plan a day where we can try and tackle this problem or bring awareness to the problem. For example, to try and keep girls in education we could go around local houses and speak to the mothers about the importance of educating both their male and female children, or go to the market and speak to the fathers. An idea that I wanted to do was create a mural of powerful and respected Nigerian women across the world on the school wall. On our break, I went to the market with the tailor and bought some fabric. I left them with her as I needed a bag and she agreed to make me one. Unlike in England where you go to a shop and buy an item of clothing, here you must go to the market and buy the materials and then take it to the tailors to be made. You cannot buy clothing from the tailor, so it is a longer process than one would think to get clothes or bags. After this, we went back to the office, and luckily Cosmas had brought me food from the host family so that I could eat my lunch in the office and didn’t have just biscuits to fill me up until dinner again. We finished the training after lunch, today we were trying to learn the local language. After this, we all went back to Jamal and his counterparts house which was very nice, also it has an orange tree in the middle. He had an actual toilet which I was jealous of. We were all given an orange and even though, to my surprise, they were green, the oranges were ripe and tasted delicious. I asked Cosmas, and he told me that in Nigeria they don’t have orange Oranges they are all green which I found amusing, so from then on I called them Greenages. After this I went to jacks and his host family gave us Coca-Cola, Jack had one of the better homes with sofa’s, a toilet and working tv/ generator, again the green-eyed monster comes out when I compare it to my house. His family were lovely, and the children were well educated as there are only three of them. We couldn't stay long as the curfew was 7pm, so I left. Unfortunately, I didn't know the way back from the market, so I got on a motorcycle to the office as I thought I knew the way from there... I didn't. From the office I knew I had to get to the market but got lost on the way there, I was also nearly run over by a cow bolting from a house, and these cows have massive horns so would have been messy if I was slower. Finally, I found the market and thought I was safe from here but no… I got lost again. While lost I passed a massive crowd mourning the death of the local leader who had just died. I felt very out of place, and everyone was very tense making me feel the same as everyone stared at me as I passed the house of the deceased man. I eventually made it home just before it got dark. Today was a big stepping stone for me as I finally gave in and used a squat toilet (Hole in the ground). I won't go into detail on this. But not as relaxing as a normal one.
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AuthorThis blog is written by one of the owners of the site; Alex Hood. Currently studying English Literature at Brighton University and was given the amazing opportunity to work with VSO in Nigeria for three months over the summer. Archives
August 2018
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