Wednesday’s online Skype meeting between the UK-Nigeria illustrated the quality of the team that John Dada has been able to build at Fantsuam Foundation. For although three ‘main players’ from the organisation were unable to attend (namely Comfort, Kelechi and John himself), in their absence the weekly business was efficiently and effectively dealt with by Frances, Chollom, Ladi and John Irugua.
John Dada had sent apologies on their behalfs by email the previous day. They were all busy attending guests from the VSO offices in Ghana, Burkina Fasso, Cameroon, Canada.
John had also emailed the news for inclusion at the meeting that " New life is being breathed into Attachab with the arrival of a permaculture adviser from Abuja. He will work with our team for 2 weeks and come back periodically to supervise developments there "
Frances was able to add to this information by telling us that the person commissioned to do the building is a man from The Congo with many skills. She believes there are two or three workers with him.The first floor of the building is made of compressed bricks - the upper floor will be bamboo we think. We know from a previous UK-Nigeria meeting from John that he was expecting a delivery of bamboo and we are all interested to know why John choose bamboo as the building material - the team speculated that it may because it is cheap, strong and fast growing. I wonder if the fact that it is light was a factor in this choice as when I later asked Pam if two storey buildings were common in the region (I am not aware of any at FF) she informed me that the only ones she remembers are those buildings which had been originally built when the British were there. We will ask John for his rationale for using bamboo at the next meeting.
This week the majority of the meeting was spent receiving the latest update from Chollom about the progress of the Photo Printing Project. This is a research project for a client who wishes to learn if a sme photo printing business idea is feasible and if it could potentially also be replicated in East Africa.
The issue of Twitter was also raised again briefly with some training needs and a local trainer identified.
The remainder of the meeting was used to arrange a date for a face to face meeting between Frances, Pam and myself in London when Frances returns from Nigeria. The meeting will be a wonderful opportunity for us to hear the latest FF news from Frances and to receive the latest photos that she has taken/been given which will then be added to the Dadamac community Flickr for sharing.