Last night we had hot water in our bathrooms for the first time in 12 days! Hooray!
This has been a most productive week! Saw special education faculty at the Oyo College of Education two hours south of Ilorin where they primarily train teachers to work with HI, VI, and IDD children. They gave Jonathan and me a royal welcome, with books that they have published for use in Nigeria, as well as a tour of their facility, which they are proud of and do good works in. But, the facility and materials are out of the 1950s when compared to the West. They know it and want to move ahead, but I am told there are limited resource for all of education in Nigeria since the oil money apparently doesn't go there!
Yesterday we meet some people at the Kwara State Ministry of Education who will be very instrumental for the programs that KWASU wants to do. The Commissioner was very impressed with an evaluation center and teacher training in that a friend of his just confided that he has a son who is struggling to learn to read, though bright. Aha! A learning disabled child in the midst of the friend circle of a person here who can get something done about LD children and other high incidence disabilities.
We also discussed LD and BD with the Special Needs Unit Chairperson, who had never heard of those disabilities and wants to learn. And, then we hooked up with UKAid, an organization working with the Ministry of Education on raising the skill levels of all teachers. They want to include the research-based methodologies for LD and BD in their future in-service trainings for educators, so Jonathan is "on a roll" now!
I am including some pictures this afternoon before I return to the bungalow to do some laundry and work on my letter of introduction to the First Lady. Apparently I may be able to meet with her before I fly back to the States next Friday., arriving Moline Saturday noon. Despite the difficulties living here, I will return in March per plans, and it won't take too long to "get into the Nigerian ways".
The photos are: Grade 5 Malete public school class; the outside of the Malete school; a Self-contianed classroom of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) students at a Christian primary school in Ilorin; a class of Hearing Impaired children and their HI teachers and principal in a Muslin primary school in Ilorin; my roommate Phil(omina) from the University of Alberta in Canada in one of her gorgeous Nigerian dresses, a sample of the type and colors that she wears every day; a street scene here in Ilorin; and a shot of the lake a few blocks behind the compound with a mineret in the background. (Now my task is to get them loaded in the right order!)
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