First week of work.

Having waited for a week for my boss to return, i was looking forward to the classic mistake made by all volunteers of trying to get something done. Most of the in country training was based around lowering our expectations of actually what we would accomplish here, and featured an unhealthy obsession with putting everything on a flip chart (its the classic workshop approach, learning only occurs if it is captured on a flipchart).

Surprisingly there was actually a lot for me to get involved in and I look forward to producing my first website (this doesn’t really count). Other than that I seem to either be solving world peace or making a lot of tea in the future. I think I at the first high of the vso process, which has been promised to last a week maximum before reality kicks in and I enter the long slow march to the depression stage.

Below is a chart of the promised stages of the first few months of the volunteering experience. If you manage to avoid depression in the first few months, the instruction is clear that this is not a cause for alarm, depression will definitely hit later in the year.



But at the moment I am happily lurking around the euphoria stage, things are going well and I am looking forward to a weekend of watching England lose to Argentina at rugby and many cold, overpriced*, Stars in Abuja.

Star is the local beer, if you want to imagine what it tastes like think Budweiser with less character, however each Star is carefully matured for some months under a source of dirty water to give it that unique rusty cap and dangerous water borne disease flavour that we have grown to love.

*250N, £ 1, 25% of a day’s pay depending on what tariff you use.