The Queen's Palace

During my first few days in Nigeria I was given the nickname 'Queen of Jigawa!' This was because I was the first volunteer to be sent to Jigawa, the furthest, hottest and most Northern State. When hearing that I was going to Jigawa, Nigerian eyes would widen. All they could tell me was that it was 'soo far' and 'soo hot!' I was also being sent here alone, with my closest VSO an hour and a half away, whilst most others had support of other VSOs in their towns.

When I finally moved into my accommodation I realised that I was the Queen, as I had been given the most wonderful house to live in. Nigerian colleagues say that they have never seen such a house in Jigawa. So my house is nicknamed 'The Palace.' (It was even called a castle by one.)

This is the entrance to the palace. I am stood with the driver who 'picks' me in the mornings. One of the watchmen are opening the door for me in the background.

Jenny and Simon, visiting from Kaduna, are enjoying a G & T on my well. . . until a cockroach came and sent us indoors. The banana tree behind them is apparantly too small to fruit this year. The TV doesn't work yet, but I'm told I just need to register. I have a huge disk in the garden so I can buy a card for more channels.

This lovely kitchen has running water, a large fridge, a huge freezer, and a larder. The larder reminds me of my childhood readings of Enid Blyton. I did have large furry visitors the last couple of nights though because I left a bag of flour on the worktop!

The house is large and fully furnished. The 3 double bedrooms all have onsuite bathrooms! (Imagine the bathrooms looking a bit run down like the kitchen.) It is amazing because so far my electricity supply has been very good (I think because I am in the posh area of town), I also have aircon and fans in all rooms. When the water stops flowing I press a switch in the garden and it pumps water from the well or this other sort of covered swimming pool water storeage, so I am supposidly never going to run out of water. . . although I am constantly expecting my water and electricity luck to end soon!

But the most wonderful thing about my palace is the garden. It is truely magical, full of trees, bushes, flowers and wildlife .

For the fruit trees alone, there are no less than 4 mango trees, 2 banana trees, grape vines, 3 date bushes, a pawpaw tree, 2 orange trees, plus many others that I haven't heard or tasted yet.

I even have a 'secret garden' in which you have to open the gate and duck under the arch. I have now bought chairs and tables which are under a thatched covering inside here. In here, you are hidden from anyone who enters the high walled and guarded compound :0)

To get to the kitchen I have to go outside through a little courtyard that has a delicious smelling jasmine tree.

At the moment I am living alone, but soon another VSO will come a join me - a man from Uganda.

PS - Check out the weather on the right hand side of the page: Harmattan has arrived, which is the season where the winds bring dust from the Sahara desert. It was very misty today with a light breeze.

Colleges of Education

A fellow VSO who is working in a College of Education in a different state told me some shocking facts.

1. Teaching is the last resort career option. Anyone can get onto this course. It is often the option that students are forced to if they are not accepted for other courses.

2. Far too many students are accepted onto the course so it is completely overcrowded, with as many as 7 students to squashed to a small desk.

3. The students give the lecturers N20-30 during the assessments for the lecturer to turn their heads while they copy their friends. (Imagine out of 1000s of students how much money the lecturers will receive on the side)

4. Boys give the lecturers money to pass the courses, whilst girls offer sexual favours.

5. Girls who already have children have no option but to bring them to class. They are forced to breast feed their babies in the extremely inadequate and unhygienic toilet facilities. This is probably a stinking hole in the ground surrounded by 3 walls and a door hanging off. No running water nearby.

6. Especially some village girls who cannot speak English at all and have had very little education are qualifying to be Primary School teachers due to the above.

7. The lecturers freely admit to the above happening and don’t seem to be aware of how immoral it is. This is obviously the cycle that they went through themselves.

So this is the state of the teachers that the colleges are producing.

VSO say that this is corruption and not culture.

Schools in Kwara State

Last week I had the privilege of visiting Kwara State (western Nigeria) where they are tackling the education situation in a different way from our programme in Jigawa State and also started a couple of years before us.

Their State School Improvement Team (SSIT), supported by British consultants, have been focussing their efforts on training class teachers and they are also writing literacy and numeracy plans for years 1-6 for the teachers to follow (which I am now helping to edit). Their successes are also a result of all the government departments in the state working collaboratively together to make changes happen.

So, it kind of looks promising from the photo – classroom layout. . . group work . . . questioning skills. . .text books . . .class sizes.

BUT. . .

This school we visited (around 10am) had only ONE teacher in the whole school!!! 10 of their teachers were on some sort of summer course that had run over the summer holidays. The head teacher, who was also bringing 2 other teachers to schools, had broken down on the way and hadn’t made it in yet! So, here was a whole primary school full of children, with only a single year 1 teacher teaching her class!

I actually felt sick from the shock of what I was witnessing throughout these visits. This state, being ahead of the other 5 states (out of 36 states) that ESSPIN (Education Support Sector Programme in Nigeria) is working in, is the best that Nigeria has to offer its children!

With the children being more active you could also get a small glimpse of the poverty that they are living in . . . rashes on bodies, ripped and threadbare uniforms, sharing drops of water to quench thirst.

And truthfully, the quality of teaching we saw from a small selection of schools in the state is not even close to being as good as the quality of the resource shown in the photo! And although the teachers have welcomed the lesson plans and they are following them to some degree, they clearly have little or no understanding of them. And it’s no wonder when you remember that these teachers cannot even pass the level of literacy and numeracy of our Year 4 children.

But despite all this there was some sort of miniscule glimmer of hope in the fact that that Year 1 teacher was really trying her best, attempting to follow the lesson plan and to use child centred methods.

Schools in Jigawa State

Finally, after living in Nigeria for 9 weeks as a VSO Teacher Trainer, I have had the experience of visiting schools. The reason it has taken so long was because I arrived at the start of the school holidays and the children have only just returned to school!

I visited about 8 schools in Jigawa over a week and the photos below demonstrate the horrendous situation that the education system is faced with here (and I had a feeling that they were trying to show me the best of what they had).

This is a photo of a Year 6 class from a boarding school in the main town. There were 128 children in the class. They had to sit through 2 hours and 20 minutes of lessons before they were served breakfast. One of the other Year 6 classes that we visited in this school didn’t have a teacher, so this many children were just sat alone, waiting. . . Amazingly the head teacher didn’t seem to even realise there was no teacher until I asked where they were!


This is a class of around 100 nursery and Year 1 children from a rural school. It’s no wonder that when I and 4 other Nigerians swarmed into their classroom that it began a cascade of crying. They stopped fairly promptly when shouted at by the other adults. The concrete floor the children are sat on is in such a dreadful state, but actually this is an extremely minor element of the crisis these children are facing with their education.
This PE lesson (!!!) was typical of their teaching for all lessons. Words or sentences are written on the chalkboard and the children just chant them after the teacher, followed by very long explanations. Then a child is invited to the front to read the words and the class chants after the child. Following this they copy the writing from the board into their exercise books (if they have them). From what I saw, this seems to happen for all subjects, all the time.

Although I had heard and read much about the schools it still didn’t prepare me for seeing it in the flesh. What I saw was unbelievably and incredibly heartbreaking. Nothing remotely like schools as I know them. It brings tears to my eyes every time I think of it.

Language difficulties

I am getting used to the Nigerian accents and I’m even beginning to use this to tell the difference between some of the tribes. But I still feel as if we are both speaking different languages!

The Hausa tribe are easy to identify because they constantly muddle up the f and the p sound for example; the children’s farents; let me helf you; five foint three; how do you peel? The reason for this is because they don’t have the letter ‘p’ in their alphabet and the letter ‘f’ has a ‘pah’ sound. This has taken me a long time to stop focusing on it and get used to it.

Hausas also muddle up the ‘s’ sound with the ‘th’ sound. For example they may pronounce this as thith or somthing as thomthing. Although this is less frequent than the f and p confusion, it is still distracting.

The phrase ‘well done’ can be used at any time as a way of stating that everything is fine. You may hear it said when you sit down at the desk, after you have said hello to someone or after you have bought something at the market. It feels like I am being congratulated on writing my name or putting my seatbelt on!

There are over 200 Nigerian languages and the main form of communication between the different tribes is in English. As the standard of English varies Nigerians ofen shout at one another to make themselves understood, especially on the phone.

When speaking Hausa it is very important to pitch the word correctly. If you change the pitch of a syllable in a word it could mean something completely different. Because of this and the directness of the conversations it often feels like you are in trouble and being told off by. It also gives little scope for intonation for ease of listening.

I find it quite annoying that so many phrases in ESSPIN are written and spoken in acronyms. Some simple examples are that the Headteacher is called HT and the State Team Leader is called the STL. It is like speaking in code.

So it is no wonder that I am finding it difficult to follow any passage of speech by a Nigerian, not forgetting that they speak for long periods without stopping. And as I often can’t understand them, I am quite sure that they can’t understand me either. A proven example of this is after the volleyball coach had given his speech at the end of practise, I then went to him individually to clarify the times of the next practise. Even after a one to one conversation, where I double checked that I had understood everything he said, I turned up the next day at the time that it was just finishing! We clearly hadn’t understood each other!

Here are some interesting phrases that Nigerians use:
Let me ease my self – I need the toilet.
Go and pick Chioma/ Let me pick you – Go and pick Chioma up/ I will collect you.
On the computer / Off the light – Turn on the computer / Turn off the light
One-one / small-small / twenty-twenty – One / Small / Twenty
No, I’m satisfied – I don’t need a drink, thanks.
Greet Magaji – Say hi to Magaji
Uhhhhhh- HUH / exACTly / It’s true – Yes (in agreement) (You must emphasise very strongly where I have put capitals)