Caboose

The College of Education in Akwanga has three VSOs working there, I’ve visited them before. Sue had organised a two-day workshop for the education volunteers and their counterparts (the Nigerians they work with) to share skills and experiences. I was invited along to provide IT support, producing a CD with all the documents that people had brought along.

Accomodation had been organised for us at the Roma Z guest house in Akwanga and we even had our own armed guard from the (in)famous Mobile Police (Mopol). Tracey did an excellent job of chasing up the staff at Roma Z to make sure everything was OK, especially the water supply.


It was the first time I had seen Pete and Mary since the end of in-country training. As well as being useful from the point of view of people’s job the workshop was a great chance for everyone to swap stories from their placements.

When the workshop finished on Friday a few of us decided to stay in Akwanga and visit the Farin Ruwa waterfall on Saturday. Although I had been before it was interesting to see how much it had changed after some rain, here are before and after pictures:

One of the biggest difference is the lack of dust in the air, so you can now see the waterfall from quite far back up the road and from the waterfall you can see much further down the river. The villages on the way to the waterfall look less dusty too.

Tracey announced that she’s going on a trip to visit Ine down in Akassa, in the Niger Delta, in a couple of weeks and was looking for other people to go along. I didn’t have to think about it for very long before agreeing to go, a whole week away should be a nice change.