1 - For the context of this blog see Dadamac - taking stock for 2013 paragraph on "Financial, organisational and motivational issues" which led to this statement:
I remember being challenged about what I was doing by a friend (a techie who helped me in many ways). His challenge related to what little difference I could make. Like me he had studied with the OU.
The conversation mentioned above happened some years after 2000, when my UK-Nigeria ICT, Education and Development involvement had become a habit. I'm not sure of the exact date, but I think it was probably a couple of years after the first Teachers Talking course. At that time my questioning friend and I were both members of the local computer club and each week he helped me with techie things. I used to tell him about other aspects of my UK-Nigeria involvement - because I needed to tell someone while I was back in the UK and he was kind enough to listen.
2 - What was the point?
My friend's challenging questions had to do with the fact that I was putting a lot a time and effort into my UK-Nigeria hobby/habit - and to what effect? As he saw it, Africa was a big place and my efforts had little effect. He was right. What did I have to show, and what was the point? Certain things had happened that would not have happened without me, but painfully slowly, and only on a small local scale.
3 - How had it started?
I had got deeply involved in the Nigerian side of Peter Oyawale's project, with minimal forethought and planning, following his murder. I had been driven by a wave of anger and deep sorrow about the way he had died, and the effect on his wife (my close friend Agnita) and their young children. When I came back from representing her at Peter's funeral in Ago-Are, Oke-Ogun, in 2001 I was stubbornly determined that although his killers had taken his life and his possessions they would not totally destroy the vision that he had lived for. People at the funeral told me they wanted his work to continue. I decided that if they meant it and were willing to continue working on the project then I would do what I could to help.
4 - Mixed motives
I put in effort because of my knowledge of Peter's vision and my relationsips with him and his family. Other people in Oke-Ogun put in efforts because of their different fragments of Peter's vision, and their own relationships with him or the project. We all had different ideas and motivations and something came out of it in the end. We set up and ran the Information Centre in Ago-Are, and we all learned a lot (directly or indirectly) as a result.
5 - My learning
My learning was unlike the learning of everyone else because I started with a different level of ignorance. My learning related to rural realities in Nigeria. I learned through repeat visits (where I was patiently guided and taught by my hosts and mentors) and through collaboration at a distance. Back home I used the Internet to learn about the theory and politics of "development", with special interests in ICT (Information and Communication Technology) for Development, and ICT in Education. I expected this theory to inform and accelerate my practical work. Instead I became intrigued and frustrated by the mismatches between the information I got online and the realities that I experienced in practice.
6 - Collaboration and responsibility
In Nigeria there were other mismatches. I came to realise that the people who became my collaborators in Oke-Ogun had less understanding of Peter's project than I had initially imagined. I had accidentally become a leader, when I thought I was simply playing a supporting role. If I had never gone to his funeral, or if I had walked away from the project, then nothing would have come of it. However, because I continued to support Peter's vision, and put in my time, money and effort, some other people, in Nigeria, did the same. Over a period of time my anger about Peter death burned less fiercely, but by then I was strongly connected to the project through my collaborators. I felt responsible for some of their involvement, and their investments of time, money and effort, and I wanted us to achieve something that would satisfy their varied expectations of what the project would deliver.
7 - A unique ICT for education and development project
It was a team effort. We began to have a shared history of collaboration, of problems faced and overcome, of helping each other in different ways and accepting responsibilites towards each other. We developed some very precious and intangible structures and systems that enabled us to get things done. Within the project we had rich knowledge and networks. In some ways it was all very complicated and in other ways it was very simple. It was about people, collaboration, and connections that could never have been maintained without a mixture of the Internet (to communicate between UK and Nigeria) and traditional systems (to communicate beyond the city cyber cafes and out into the rural area). It was a unique ICT for education and development project driven by the vision of a man who wanted to use ICT for education and development in his home area in rural Nigeria.
8 - A change of direction
At the end of 2004 a collaboration between IITA (International Institute for Tropical Agriculture), COL (Commonwealth of Learning) and OCDN (Oke-Ogun Community Development Network) brought new resources and a different emphasis to the project in Ago-Are. Our local project manager, David Mutua, was coming to the end of his time with VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) and we all welcomed the new collaboration. Big changes were on the way. Like David, I reached the end of my formal involvement at this point because I had no relationship with the leaders of the new project. I also reduced my informal connections when I realised it would cause confusion if I stayed in close contact with the people who had been involved in the old and the new versions of the Information Centre.
9 - Working with John Dada
I still felt responsible for some 'unfinished business' of the original project and the expectations that some of my friends had. Fortunately it was possible to take a few of those things forward in a different way under the umbrella of Fantsuam Foundation, thanks to my connections with John Dada, the work he asked me to do on Teachers Talking, and the development of Dadamac.
10 - No easy answer
When my friend questioned me I had no easy answer. I knew that back in the UK there were various labels and descriptions that people applied to me. Most people I mixed with in the ICT or "development" communities tended to assume I was part of some big UK-based NGO. When I explained that I wasn't, and they realised I was involved with something smaller, something more grass-roots and independent, and it wasn't doing it as my day job, they tended to assume I was a volunteer with a UK charity (perhaps a church-based one) that supported an individual school or hospital in rural Nigeria. When that idea didn't fit they'd think something along the lines of "philanthropist" or "one of those people who 'Lurve Africa'!"
11 - Learning together
All the labels people gave me were wrong. I didn't have any easy way to explain what I was doing. I had close friends in Nigeria and I was collaborating with them. In a way my home had become an informal UK office for some grass-roots projects, and my Internet broadband connection was a useful, although very distant, resource serving their needs. I was on a permanant learning curve, and other people were learning with me.
12 - Only fools and..
My friend had some idea of what my involvement was costing me, and his question made me feel foolish and defensive.
There is a saying that "Only fools and .... work for nothing". In fact there are two versions of the saying: one version is "fools and horses" the other in "fools and women". I'm a woman and perhaps I'm also a fool. I was working for nothing - in fact my work was for less than nothing. It was hitting my pocket in various ways. There was a loss of income (because I had gained the time and flexibility for my UK-Nigeria involvement by giving up my full-time job in favour of a collection of low-responsibility part-time or temporary "day jobs)". I saw my UK-Nigeria involvement as my "real work" although it was unpaid. I faced miscellaneous minor costs related to my UK-Nigerian involvement when I was in the UK and heavy costs when I visited Africa. (I have usually chosen to avoid keeping track of the expenses and the time I put in. I know the totals are higher than I would care to admit even to myself.)
13 - Possible answers
I have varous flippant but true answers that I give to myself and others when Iooking at some odd aspect of my life and questioning how it happened. I say thingis like "I don't tolerate boredom very well" and "At .... point I chose interesting over sensible". However I thought my friend deserved a better answer, so I thought about it carefully.
Was I just a fool, with a distorted view of reality and my own importance, doing something that was interesting but not sensible or useful? Possibly, but I felt there was more to it than that.
14 - A real reason
When micro-computers were new in the world I had met them through my studies with the Open University and then I had done innovative, self-directed projects related to digital technology and education (some evidence still remains, but under my previous name: Pamela Fiddy) It was the most intellectually satisfying and creative period of my life. Later my life took a different direction and those skills and interests lay dormant for many years. I had a "work history" with various interruptions, and many directions, rather than a career.
My involvement in Nigeria had set me on a steep learning curve, with welcome intellectual challenges and creative problem solving. It had even put to use my dormant skills and interests related to ICT and education. I had no way of judging if what I was doing was of genuine value to anyone else, although I hoped it was. However I was learning an enormous amount, maybe that was reason enough.
15 - The value of education
I decided to justify my actions simply on that account. I reminded my friend that we were OU alumni. Surely we had a shared belief that education is valuable for its own sake, and is something to be returned to throughout our lives. We had both benefitted from our OU studies. We had invested our time and financial resources into those studies. I was simply returning to that path, but in a more self-directed way. I was a student and I was satisfied with what I was learning.
I decided that in a way my UK-Nigeria involvement was equivalent to a post-graduate study programme, and my miscellaneous day-jobs were similar to working my way through college. That approach certainly freed me from the pressure of proving benefits to other people. As long as we believed in education "for its own sake" (as he did) and not for the "piece of paper at the end" then we could agree that my investment of time and money was justified.
Maybe I wasn't a complete fool after all. The OU had given me the confidence to be an independant learner along with an ongoing interest in distance learning, and the impact of ICT on the roles of teachers and learners. Nigeria happened to be the perfect setting for my field studies, and, for reasons of their own, my friends there were helping me to learn. It was an unconventional approach, but it seemed to be going in the right direction.