madame secretary and her laptop

First, I want to thank the Almightily God for granting me a safe trip to Abuja!

Abuja is HOT! At least that was my first impression when I arrived in the airport. I have been told that this is nothing because when it really gets hot, I will want to run out of the city as fast as possible. My bags etc. arrived safely (which is good news) and the office picked me up. Had a good ride into the city as Mr P and I jisted (chatted) about Nigeria and Abuja happenings. LOL @ my uncle being worried because I had not called. I actually wanted to surprise my family by navigating to their house independently. It was great to see my family, of course my little cousin Jare was a little too excited to see me when he attempted to carry me into the house. It felt good to be home. J Within 48hrs I had Suya! Yep, I didn’t even have to wait one week to meet my quota. The spices, the onion, the meat...I was soooo happy. Not the best I have had (Suya @ Ikoyi Club in Lagos is just unbeatable) but it tasted good. Turns out that my love for Suya is also shared by some of my cousins so lets just say the Suya did not sit idle for too long ;)

The week was already off to a great. I went to my office building and everyone was soooooooooo welcoming! Within I hr, I was transported to a nearby hotel, which would actually be my office for the rest of the week. We were facilitating a workshop for all the partners involved in a literacy project for girls and women. I was immediately put to work; welcoming participants, handing out resource materials and assigned as the rapporteur for the entire week. So jet lag also kicked in around this time and if I said having to stay super-alert to keep detailed notes of everything was a challenge, that would be the understatement of the year. I don’t know how many sweets I ate that week but lets just say my dentist would not approve.

Participating in the workshop was an enlightening experience! Reflecting on the technical proposal my-super-awesome team developed in April, one could consider this a next step in the process if the proposal was approved. Basically bringing the technical and planning partners together to outline dates, develop resource materials that would be used, assign roles, etc. Thus, it was good to see how it all came together afterwards. Of course, not without some challenges.

Development reports talk about national partners and ngos collaborations with the UN and other multilaterals but they don’t really discuss who these organizations are and I got a first hand experience understanding who these key partners are and their role in bringing projects to life. There were so many acronyms…it was hard to keep track of the organizations.  Each morning, I would read my report of the day before, like everything! From the opening prayer to the closing prayer…everything that happened. My report I read on Tuesday was not well received and I was advised to improve on the flow and summarize better. They also warmly made fun of my “Americana accent.” I made the recommendations and the following report was not only well received but the chairperson personally came up to tell me how impressed she was. J Of course, there was now pressure to maintain that standard. Considering how much time it took me to work on that particular report and the amount of sugar it also took to stay away throughout the day so as not to miss out any discussion, it felt like the longest week of the year!

I was practically glued to the laptop the entire week. Well, when I was not being silly with my camera.

I’ll end this post by highlighting the all participants in the workshop were Nigerian. In fact, one could argue that I was the only “foreigner” in the room. It was interesting to see how an initiative that was financially sponsored by a large pharmaceutical firm, coordinated by a multilateral development agency was being fully developed and implemented by the nationals of the country it was serving.  Even the representative of the pharmaceutical firm was Nigerian. All the participants were very informed about the way things operated and resources they could tap into for different aspects of the program and were focused on developing a contextually and culturally relevant project. I don’t know what I was really expecting to see when I walked into the meeting hall but it was interesting to observe the process and activities being directed by national stakeholders.

My cousin Jare and I about to enjoy some Suya! :)