Approaching the halfway point

We are nearing the end of week 2.  This week was about immersing ourselves in our projects while still managing to have some fun. 

 

We have had a very good week with our friends from NISD (The New Initiative for Social Development).  Recall our key objectives:  drive the development of a strategic plan, help improve their monitoring and evaluation of projects, and assist with their accounting needs.   My teammate Sundar trained their staff for three days this week, mostly on Excel, as they will leverage this for their project and accounting needs.  I worked on the strategic plan.  I’ve had quite the education about how NGOs work.  For instance, today I had a phone interview with one of their major donor agencies - Department for International Development - and we made a personal visit to the Permanent Secretary for Ekiti State’s Primary Healthcare Development Agency.  It’s very different from the corporate world that I know.

Outside of work, we’ve had plenty to keep us entertained.  I knew before the trip to expect the unexpected, but never did I think that I would play golf while here!  Yes, there is a golf course here in Ado Ekiti and we got the opportunity to play it twice.  The biggest difference is actually the greens – they are made of dark hard dirt.  The caddie uses a carpet on a pole to smooth the surface between ball and hole.  I’m not sure what happened, but on Sunday I actually had 3 pars in an abbreviated 7 holes.  And the course wasn’t that easy.  See a couple of pictures below. 

  

On Wednesday evening we played golf again but it was followed by an evening dinner and dance party at the club.  We all had a lot of fun dancing and mingling with the locals. 

  

 

On Tuesday evening we had a team meeting followed by a birthday celebration for Cinthia Murillo who is from Costa Rica.  We even managed a birthday cake for her!

A few other random notes and observations:

-          The way Nigerians greet you in the morning is, “How was your night?”  It is a nice and different greeting.

-          The bed in the hotel is the firmest (hardest) mattress I’ve ever slept on.  It has taken some getting used to.

-          Power outages happen all the time.  I had read about them but they are more frequent than I imagined.  Most places have generators and the power usually comes back fairly quickly but they are incredibly common.

-          I have started to sample the Nigerian cuisine.  Probably the most common Nigerian meal I’ve had is a pounded yam, eguisi soup, and chicken.  Most meals are very spicy so I have to have them turn it down.  You eat with your hands.  A pounded yam is a big white round ball that you take a piece off of, roll it into a bowl, and dip it into the soup which is actually more like thick stew.  Eguisi is a seed similar to a pumpkin seed that is ground up and put in the stew with some vegetables, sauce, and the meat which is often chicken.  There is a ton of chicken here in Nigeria!

Nigeria #ibmcsc