Tuesday July 22, 2008
Today was our first full day in Abuja and it was definitely an eventful day. Benedette’s uncle Ifeanyi Umeh returned to take Mrs. Strahn, Mrs. Jones and Alberto to exchange money. In Nigeria, it is not the custom to exchange money at a bank or hotel. One has to go to a money changer. There are many money changers alongside the roads but Ifeanyi took them to a building with very tiny rooms and took them around to find the best exchange rates. Most of us had deliberately brought money in small bills, mostly twenty dollar bills. It turns out that to get the best rate we needed to exchange 50 or 100 dollar bills. The smaller bills do not exchange at the same rate and some of the money changers didn’t want them at all. If it hadn’t been Ifeanyi we would not have been very successful. He worked very hard to get us a good rate.
We then started our official SAGE day with a morning conference titled the International Conference on Youth Employment and Social Responsibility. After such a long trip here and not much sleep, the conference seemed long. It was supposed to start at 9:00am but on Nigerian time, we didn’t start until 11:30. We also met a Nigerian SAGE team teacher and student we had been corresponding with about sharing products on each others websites. Jasmine and Tenzin sat in the lobby with the advisor and student and looked at each other’s websites and talked about how we market and sell products through our websites.
We had lunch and about 3:00pm we boarded buses to travel to a village on the outskirts of Abuja. The village name was Esu Ushafa and the village is very proud that American President Bill Clinton visited when he was in Nigeria. President Clinton visited the chief of the village and when we also went to visit the chief’s “palace” to meet him he talked to the group through a translator and said how proud he was the American president had been to his village and now American students had now also come to visit. He brought out the signed photograph for all of us to see and then asked to have a photograph taken with the American students. All of our Santa Monica group and also the team from Holy Angels High School in New York had our picture taken with the chief and Curt DeBerg the founder of SAGE. In the background of the photograph you can see his residence name Esu Palace Ushafa. We walked down two of the village streets and it certainly provided a myriad of new experiences. We ended at the pottery center where there were several artisans demonstrating how they make the pottery. Former President Clinton also visited the center and they were very proud to show us his signature in their guest book.
After we returned to the hotel, some of us had dinner in the dining room but many of us were tired, went to our rooms, had cup of noodles or other snacks and rested up before we all got together to start working on our projects for Country Day tomorrow. We had 3 more blackouts and one lasted for about 5 minutes but usually it is only for a few seconds before the auxiliary power kicks in. Sonam and Tenzin also played a few games of ping pong. For Country Day we are making belts and sashes of red, white and blue ribbon with the American flag and the flags of each of our individual heritages on them as part of our demonstration and presentation tomorrow. Monica and Mrs. Jones worked on the new PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow’s event and the rest of us practiced our presentation for the competition. It is now 1:10am in the morning and we are due downstairs tomorrow morning at 8:00am for breakfast.
This is an amazing experience and a view of another world and another way of living. We will definitely more truly appreciate many things that we have taken for granted but be assured we are safe, well fed and relishing our adventures. Goodnight one and all.
Today was our first full day in Abuja and it was definitely an eventful day. Benedette’s uncle Ifeanyi Umeh returned to take Mrs. Strahn, Mrs. Jones and Alberto to exchange money. In Nigeria, it is not the custom to exchange money at a bank or hotel. One has to go to a money changer. There are many money changers alongside the roads but Ifeanyi took them to a building with very tiny rooms and took them around to find the best exchange rates. Most of us had deliberately brought money in small bills, mostly twenty dollar bills. It turns out that to get the best rate we needed to exchange 50 or 100 dollar bills. The smaller bills do not exchange at the same rate and some of the money changers didn’t want them at all. If it hadn’t been Ifeanyi we would not have been very successful. He worked very hard to get us a good rate.
We then started our official SAGE day with a morning conference titled the International Conference on Youth Employment and Social Responsibility. After such a long trip here and not much sleep, the conference seemed long. It was supposed to start at 9:00am but on Nigerian time, we didn’t start until 11:30. We also met a Nigerian SAGE team teacher and student we had been corresponding with about sharing products on each others websites. Jasmine and Tenzin sat in the lobby with the advisor and student and looked at each other’s websites and talked about how we market and sell products through our websites.
We had lunch and about 3:00pm we boarded buses to travel to a village on the outskirts of Abuja. The village name was Esu Ushafa and the village is very proud that American President Bill Clinton visited when he was in Nigeria. President Clinton visited the chief of the village and when we also went to visit the chief’s “palace” to meet him he talked to the group through a translator and said how proud he was the American president had been to his village and now American students had now also come to visit. He brought out the signed photograph for all of us to see and then asked to have a photograph taken with the American students. All of our Santa Monica group and also the team from Holy Angels High School in New York had our picture taken with the chief and Curt DeBerg the founder of SAGE. In the background of the photograph you can see his residence name Esu Palace Ushafa. We walked down two of the village streets and it certainly provided a myriad of new experiences. We ended at the pottery center where there were several artisans demonstrating how they make the pottery. Former President Clinton also visited the center and they were very proud to show us his signature in their guest book.
After we returned to the hotel, some of us had dinner in the dining room but many of us were tired, went to our rooms, had cup of noodles or other snacks and rested up before we all got together to start working on our projects for Country Day tomorrow. We had 3 more blackouts and one lasted for about 5 minutes but usually it is only for a few seconds before the auxiliary power kicks in. Sonam and Tenzin also played a few games of ping pong. For Country Day we are making belts and sashes of red, white and blue ribbon with the American flag and the flags of each of our individual heritages on them as part of our demonstration and presentation tomorrow. Monica and Mrs. Jones worked on the new PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow’s event and the rest of us practiced our presentation for the competition. It is now 1:10am in the morning and we are due downstairs tomorrow morning at 8:00am for breakfast.
This is an amazing experience and a view of another world and another way of living. We will definitely more truly appreciate many things that we have taken for granted but be assured we are safe, well fed and relishing our adventures. Goodnight one and all.
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