Workshops Begin

As we were going over the training manual, both here at in Nigeria, I wondered how it would take two days to cover the material. It appeared we would have enough for a half day of presentations, and the rest of the day for the role play and demonstration. I figured one day would be plenty of time.... But I soon learned why we needed two days.
When we arrived at 8:45am the morning of the first training (scheduled to begin at 9am), we were greeted by a grand total of 5 people. We were expecting 50. Since we were a few minutes early, there was still plenty of time. We got everything set up, registered the people who arrived early, and the director of the center gave me a tour of the facility. By 10:30am, less than half of the people had arrived for the workshop. We started at 11:30am. We had asked the site to provide some cowpea that we could use during the demonstration portion of the workshop. But the cowpea they brought was so infested with bruchid insects that there was no way we could use it for the demonstration. I could actually hear them chewing inside the bag! It was unreal...
I had an extra ziplock bag in my backpack, so I saved a few to use as a teaching tool during my presentation on the bruchid insects- so it actually wasn't all bad!
When people finally did arrive, Dr. Musa, our team leader, was less than pleased and gave a 20 minute speech about how it was important to arrive on time and how can we ever teach our children responsiblity if we are not responsible ourselves, etc, etc. It was AWESOME! Then, he repeated the speech in hausa, just to make sure they got it. Everyone arrived on time the next day.
One thing I did notice, though, even though they were late, they were excited about the workshop and the front rows filled up first. They were attentive and engaged in the presentations. It was actually quite refreshing.
We ate lunch at the workshop site. We had steamed rice with a quarter chicken covered in a spicy red sauce. They gave me enough rice for about 4 servings. Oh, and Fanta orange pop.
After the workshop, we took a group picture. This would end up being a tradition at the workshops. One man asked for my business card, so I gave it to him. You would have thought I was handing out gold! I had a much longer line than I had cards, so I wrote my contact information on the blackboard...and made a note to mention it to the office in case one of them called!