World Cup Fever

Even when the world cup isn't on, the first question asked of someone from the UK visiting Nigeria is often "Which football team do you support?". Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United are all very popular among Nigerians, and on our street you can watch the most obscure British football games that probably wouldn't even be shown on tv in the UK. (This is probably something to do with rights... showing my ignorance of football here).

The excitement and momentousness of the first world cup held on African soil is not lost on Nigerians and the spirit here is very much one of 'Africa United'. Unfortunately last night Nigeria lost to South Korea, which means they haven't made it through the first round. But they will continue to support other African teams. When the opening match between South Africa and Mexico started I was in a workshop in Abuja, and the facilitator asked us to go outside and gather stones for an activity. This turned out to be an error as quite a few participants never made it back after being distracted by the match!

Nigeria and England's first games were both on the same day, and I watched the Nigeria game against Argentina in a crowded bar in Abuja, the room was filled with green shirts, plenty of passion and a few oyibos... here Bash refuses to take his eyes off the screen for a photo.

Unfortunately Nigeria lost, the general consesus was 'they done try-o', and there was plenty of hope for the other games.

After the game we hot footed it across town to the British Village (residence of the High Commission staff, and generously free for poor VSOs to use the pool) where they'd invited half the American embassy staff to watch the game. We scored - the Brits cheered, they scored - the Americans cheered LOUDER. Still they didn't have a baby dressed in an England flag, or this many flags... we even had party poopers with the England flag on thanks to Richard the third (there are three VSO Richards,, numbered in order of arrival).

 

We couldn't watch the last 10 minutes of the game due to poor tv reception, but as much as we hoped England might score when we weren't looking it wasn't to be. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for our game in five hours. 

In other news, there are four new volunteers arriving in Kaduna soon, and a new Abuja volunteer visited us last weekend to learn about how to live in Nigeria - we spent most of the time watching football, which I think she found very useful! 

I also had malaria but am now fully recovered - it's just like having flu here, but felt much scarier than that to me. Luckily Hope for the Village Child have a clinic and I was tested as soon as I felt ill, so I was able to take the treatment straight away and only suffered a bad fever on the first night. 

Have been feeling very nostalgic about Glastonbury this week and wishing I was there. More news of my house mate dancing at the Hausa theatre and earning his keep to follow soon... 

ABC, easy as 123...

May was a hectic month at Hope for the Village Child. Most people were busy visiting communities before the roads become impassable in rainy season. I was occupied with writing a fundraising proposal, and helping with fundraising visits in preparation for the reading festival which took place last Saturday. The reading festival was definitely the highlight of the month for me, and is the reason for this post.

The story of the reading festival


A couple of years ago HVC received a donation of hundreds of books from a bookshop which was closing down. They were mostly good quality children’s story books of the kind most children from poor rural communities would never see. HVC’s education coordinator Faith and a VSO volunteer sorted the books into categories, and created libraries for 16 schools in rural communities.

When I first heard this, I wasn’t that impressed, until I realised that these schools would otherwise have no story books at all - the schools have some text books from the government, and some from HVC but pupils are mostly taught by copying the teacher’s notes from the board – to really inspire children to enjoy learning these kind of books are vital.

When the libraries were constructed, the key objective was to encourage the students to use them, and this was the inspiration for the reading festival, which is now in its second year. It is a reading competition; each school with a library had one representative from year one to six. The youngest children only had to read letters of the alphabet chosen at random, but the older students had to read sections of their favourite book chosen by the judges (in order to prevent children memorising their books, although this does happen).

My role for the day was to be a judge on a panel of four, including Monique, a teacher from the Netherlands, Lynne and Sadiq.Here's the judging panel choosing a page for one student.

And a student from Panja reading her book.


The children were incredibly confident and clear, even those who were flummoxed when told to read from a page that they hadn’t memorised! Whilst most year one and two students could recognise letters of the alphabet, the level of reading done by year six students was much lower than I’d expected, reflecting the large class sizes and teaching by rote which they have to contend with in rural schools when learning to read.
The photo below shows children in the year one class at Panja school, one of the best performing schools in the competition. I've included this to give you an idea of the class sizes, note the number of pupils per desk.

The winning students from each year were given a prize of a new book; interestingly most of the winners were girls. Overall the day was a great success, and a way to encourage parents to support their children’s’ education. Monique said the overall standard had improved a lot from the year before, which was a really positive comment to end the day with and shows the impact which the libraries and HVC's education support to schools has made so far.

In other news from May, I attended my first Nigerian traditional wedding,here's me in my outfit with my colleague Stephen. Weddings here often have colours for family and friends to wear, for this one the choices were cream, lemon green or gold.



The wedding was swiftly followed by a roast dinner at the residence of the British High Commission in Kaduna. The kind of cultural juxtaposition faced only by VSO volunteers!