With someone from here traveling to Australia at the end of this week, it is good to have the chance to send some letters with a little news from this end. Am grateful for your patience in waiting for replies to both emails and regular mail – bless you for your care.
Nigeria as a nation. Today Nigeria celebrates 47 years of independence and many are thanking God for his hand on this nation. Despite the challenges, our Lord has dealt kindly with this country in limiting power struggles as well as thwarting those who would seek their own way at any cost. God has been good and shown His mercy. Here in Kaduna, the community remains thankful for peace, though this is not the case in some locations elsewhere in the country. Sabotage and kidnappings continue against oil interests in the southern Niger River delta region, as well as political power struggles and a measure of instability persisting in the wake of elections earlier this year in other selected regions (e.g. Ekiti State, towards the south-west of Nigeria).
New academic year. The school’s new academic year has now been underway for two weeks, and matters are looking encouraging. We started as usual with a round of staff meetings before the students resumed in mid-September, the meetings including a staff seminar, this time on ‘problem ownership’. Several staff saw this tool as potentially helpful for classroom management situations as well as for their own lives in the community. Enrolment figures are looking healthy, with just a little less than last year and more enrolments still anticipated, especially into the most junior class (where the students are around 11 years of age). Interviews for staff have been held and three new teachers have commenced duties, maintaining previous staffing levels. The College is looking forward to these new staff significantly contributing to the lives of the students very soon.
Student activities. Plans are underway for some nine excursions and two seminars, scheduled to hold for the students over two days later in October. These are an excellent way for the students to see in practice what they have learnt about in theory in the classroom, and include the Fine Arts department at a university in Zaria (1½ hours north of Kaduna – for Visual Arts), the National House of Assembly parliament building in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital (2 hours south of Kaduna – for Government), granitic exfoliation on the Jaji rock formations near Zaria (for Geography), and an agricultural farm/ research station, also near Zaria (for Agricultural Science).
Encouraging results. Final touches are also being put in place for an Awards Afternoon at the end of this coming week, where student excellence achieved in the last academic session will be recognised. Results from one lot of external exams also reached the school last week – those from the oldest junior class, where students are around 15 years old – and these are encouraging. Results from the tertiary entrance exams for the most senior class are yet to be released to the school, but individual students have been downloading their own off the web, and so far, these too have been looking good. Our God is faithful.
Beyond Kaduna. It was a delight to get away over the long summer vacation, for a few weeks in Benin and Togo. This provided further valuable insights into where people in the region are ‘coming from’, especially with regard to the inherited effects of slavery and tribal rivalry, as seen today. Also recently, it has been a pleasure to meet two new CMS Australia missionaries – Alan and Helen Wood will be lecturing at a theological college near Zaria.
May the Lord continue to strengthen and give discernment to us all as we seek to serve Him.
Nigeria as a nation. Today Nigeria celebrates 47 years of independence and many are thanking God for his hand on this nation. Despite the challenges, our Lord has dealt kindly with this country in limiting power struggles as well as thwarting those who would seek their own way at any cost. God has been good and shown His mercy. Here in Kaduna, the community remains thankful for peace, though this is not the case in some locations elsewhere in the country. Sabotage and kidnappings continue against oil interests in the southern Niger River delta region, as well as political power struggles and a measure of instability persisting in the wake of elections earlier this year in other selected regions (e.g. Ekiti State, towards the south-west of Nigeria).
New academic year. The school’s new academic year has now been underway for two weeks, and matters are looking encouraging. We started as usual with a round of staff meetings before the students resumed in mid-September, the meetings including a staff seminar, this time on ‘problem ownership’. Several staff saw this tool as potentially helpful for classroom management situations as well as for their own lives in the community. Enrolment figures are looking healthy, with just a little less than last year and more enrolments still anticipated, especially into the most junior class (where the students are around 11 years of age). Interviews for staff have been held and three new teachers have commenced duties, maintaining previous staffing levels. The College is looking forward to these new staff significantly contributing to the lives of the students very soon.
Student activities. Plans are underway for some nine excursions and two seminars, scheduled to hold for the students over two days later in October. These are an excellent way for the students to see in practice what they have learnt about in theory in the classroom, and include the Fine Arts department at a university in Zaria (1½ hours north of Kaduna – for Visual Arts), the National House of Assembly parliament building in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital (2 hours south of Kaduna – for Government), granitic exfoliation on the Jaji rock formations near Zaria (for Geography), and an agricultural farm/ research station, also near Zaria (for Agricultural Science).
Encouraging results. Final touches are also being put in place for an Awards Afternoon at the end of this coming week, where student excellence achieved in the last academic session will be recognised. Results from one lot of external exams also reached the school last week – those from the oldest junior class, where students are around 15 years old – and these are encouraging. Results from the tertiary entrance exams for the most senior class are yet to be released to the school, but individual students have been downloading their own off the web, and so far, these too have been looking good. Our God is faithful.
Beyond Kaduna. It was a delight to get away over the long summer vacation, for a few weeks in Benin and Togo. This provided further valuable insights into where people in the region are ‘coming from’, especially with regard to the inherited effects of slavery and tribal rivalry, as seen today. Also recently, it has been a pleasure to meet two new CMS Australia missionaries – Alan and Helen Wood will be lecturing at a theological college near Zaria.
May the Lord continue to strengthen and give discernment to us all as we seek to serve Him.
Joan Mackie CMS Nigeria
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment