School for the Blind and Deaf, Oshogbo and of course work too

Hi everyone,

It has been a full work week. As we get close to the final of our assignment we really needed to put ourselves into that and we made good advances on our final recommendation paper and now we are about ready to present to Ekiti State government and ICT department. Our main focus is in establishing a new smart card that will carry biometrics into and will be used by the elderly citizens to identify them and receive their monthly payments. The expectation is that later this will be used by all Ekiti population.

School for the blind and deaf

On Saturday we went to the School for the blind and deaf in Ikere-Ekiti to do volunteer work out of our consulting assignment. It was a blast!!!  We divided our 15 team members into 5 teams of 3 to perform different tasks that would help the school and leave something concrete after our passage. Setting up computers and printers (Braille) adapted for visually disable, talking about personal hygiene, washing clothes, fixing the bedrooms and my team, which was responsible digging a gutter to help on erosion control and help the rain water flow to go around the school and not pass thru its complex. The team was me, Bob and Bouke and besides being really hard to dig in a 35o C weather we did our part really well and all of us got some blisters in our hands to remind us of how hard we worked. After that we went talking to the kids and that was very pleasant. They were all excited about our visit and wanted to know all about us and we sure wanted the same. The communication was hard, but we managed thru sign language and writing. We could tell they really loved the songs some of our girls taught them and all the time we spent there. We even had to force them to go to lunch as they wanted to be around us as much as they could. After some time talking a football game was settled and me, as the Brazilian guy, had to participate and correspond to the expectations.. Gladly and surprisingly I scored twice (I've celebrated pointing up my finger like Ronaldo…LOL) and the game between the IBM team and the school kids ended in a tie (2 x 2). Before the game something happened and it really touched me, so I have a special section below for that:

Samuel, Gabriel, football, CBDV…going from a sad to a happy story

Before the football game between IBM and the deaf kids, two of the blind kids approached me in the middle of the field (they have spectacular other senses that compensate the visual disability) and asked if I was the Brazilian guy. As I said yes, they them asked me: Sir, do you think that visually disable people could play football? I immediately responded that sure they could and that there are special ball with bells inside and special rules for the game. I then explained the little bit I knew about that and told them that it’s even a Paralympics official sport and Brazil was champion in more than one occasion. Bottom line, yes guys, you can play and you should be playing!!!

Suddenly they started smiling and anyone could tell they were happy about the good news. They never ever heard about that before (remember, we are in a remote location within Nigeria). Then I’ve promised them that I would find those balls and the rules needed for the blind to play football and I would send this to them, even if that means sending later from Brazil. Later I talked to the school’s Principal. That was now a matter of honor to me. These kids have being listening to their deaf friends playing football every day and they should have the same opportunities for having fun as any other kid.

Got back and started thinking on how could I get that material for the kids and then I founded the CBDV (Brazil’s confederation of sports for the visually disable) website and send out a note to them, telling this story and asking them if they could donate at least 2 balls to us and if not, if they could tell me where I could find them, so I could buy it myself. This was Saturday.

Monday, got to the office and logged on to the internet and my email account and there it was: email from Sandro Laina, president of CBDV. Sandro told me that he read my email and was happy and emotional about it - specially being him blind and a former national team football player - and that he and the confederation would be very glad of helping us, sending the balls, rules, videos and 2 Brazil’s 3 times Paralympics champion’s team shirts, signed by all the players. YEAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!  At this point my heart was filled with joy!!!!

Now I’m working with Sandro and my IBM manager, Thiago - who offered his help for getting this done -  to ship this box to the school. Sandro also asked me for help in getting in touch with IBM Corporate affairs for a sponsorship to bring/promote football for visually disable people to Africa, which he told me was the only continent where nobody plays this sport. I’ve already started the contacts with IBM with help from Thiago.

Well, if from all of the things I came here to do, I get only this one done, I’ll be amazingly happy and felling that I really accomplish something important!

Thank you Sandro and Thiago for all the help!

Oshogbo

This Saturday we went to Oshogbo, a place with a lot of African/Nigerian culture and art. In Oshogbo we visited local artist Nike’s gallery, workshop and her house, where she offered a nice Nigerian lunch (tried lizard meat) and a taste of music. They also gave us some Nigerian names and mine is now Olusegun, which mean victorious. After lunch we went to the Osun Groove, which is a sacred forest for the Yoruba people and we did some site seeing of both the forest and art sculptures that are in the forest. Then we had a group of local dancers and acrobatics doing a presentation to us that reminded me of Capoeira. It was a cool but tiring day.

Talk to you soon!!!

Thanks for the Pics

Special Thanks to Rodney and Christina for letting me steal their pictures and post it here.

All other will have their chance to help me too!!!

Weekend and Monday work and trips

Hi All,

The past weekend was pretty great. We where taken to the Ikogosi Spring Water resort, which still under development and its planned to be open in about a month. The main activity they have in there is to see nature (forest and so) and the 2 water sources, “gift from nature” as they say, that come out within the park. One is hot (40o C) and the other cold and it meet at a certain point making it nice and warm. The water we’ve being drinking is taken from there and is called Gossy water. We walked thru the enterprise and talked to the director who is coming back this week to meet us at the hotel and gather suggestions. After that we went to another park in Ipole-Iloro, and hiked to Arita waterfall and took some pictures. A very nice Saturday.

On Sunday, a couple tailors came to the hotel to take our measurements and the fabric we bought at the market the other day so we could have our custom made Nigerian/Yoruba suits. The hard thing in this for me was as I wanted to have one made for my wife I had to combine the measurements from the other girls to try to make if fit her well. I hope I got it right, because if not, I’m in trouble… LOL.

Monday.

After coming to the office we worked a bit and then we where taken to a village in another town so we could meet the elderly and ask questions about how the process of social welfare payments work for them and their expectations on how could it be improved. I loved it! First of all, what a nice clothing they had. All different patterns and colors. When we got there, the plan was to talk to 5 of them, but as time went thru, others started to come in and we had a full house, actually front yard. Every time one of them started to talk they prayed for us, which was very nice, and then gave their opinion.  They were so respectful with each other’s opinion and always waited for their turn. All of this in Yoruba language, which was later translated by our guide and partner Yemi, from ICT. The moment I really liked was when we talked about our thoughts on biometrics for identification and they really cheered up, so we knew we where going in the right direction on our solution to avoid fraud on the payments. Thank you Babas and Mamas!!!

Well, being able to meet the people that will be helped by our project has put a more human face to the job and made me really happy about our work and this whole program. This is my ultimate goal here. Helping this people that really need our help! J

On the way back we stopped by a Senator’s house, so we could check out some local art, which was also pretty cool and then got back to the office, and then to the hotel a little later. But work was not done.

During my research about biometrics I was able to contact Anand Paul, who sent us some links to good documentation on that matter and Dennis Carlton who referred us to Bill Willis, a biometrics/smartcard solution expert consultant. So we met with Bill and gladly he cleared out some of our questions and also told us that what we need done is totally doable! UHUUUU!!!

It’s great to work in a company that even when you never met a person and they are far, far away from you, they are always willing to help and making their best. Go Big Blue!!! 

Thank you Anand, Denny and Bill!!! You’re now part of the CSC Nigeria 6 team efforts and we really appreciate it!

Boa noite a todos!!! (today its in Portuguese as I’m homesick)

Work, Valentines Day, Fabric Market and Bar

Friday!!!

This week has been great....lots of work at ICT and lots of fun too.

The Nigerian people are very friendly and all of them seems to really like me more when I say I'm from Brazil...we seem to have a good connection and they laugh a lot when I speak my real bad Yoruba, especially when I tell them that their Yoruba is good, in poor Yoruba......LOL

Mr. Fatai Rolling Dollar

At ICT we have reviewed our SOW and defined what we are really going to deliver. We are going to provide them with and roadmap to implement a identification system for the elderly citizens and some kind of smartcard payment scheme for the same elderly. Now we are working on finding suitable solutions for their needs.

On Tuesday that was a Valentines day party at the hotel and was a lot of fun. Most of us went to the party and danced with our Nigerian colleagues and amongst ourselves. How good is to meet new and interesting people? I love it!

Me, Bouke, Christina and Mithilesh stayed a little later than the others and our friend Ayo, who is our concierge here introduced us to Fatai Rolling Dollar, Nigerian Music Legend, who also played a couple of songs. He was very nice to us and we could see why he is so famous....the guy is 87, but you could not tell by looking at him. During the party I've danced with lots of Nigerian and made all of them say: VAI CORINTHIANS! as I was dressed with my Corinthians shirt and they were all asking about it. Nice nite.

We went to the market to buy fabric for our Nigerian style suites.

Folks from our group around and Ojo, our driver laughing at us...

The kids really liked us

Tonight we went to a bar and listen to some more Nigerian music and I was able to get a CD from the artist, Queen Roseline Iyabode, who was singing just for us.


 
The Yoruba Talking Drums

After dinner with the team, where I ate a whole fish, I came to the room, chatted with my lovely wife for more than 50 min. on Skype (I miss her) and now I'm writing for you guys.

Tomorrow we are going to a warm springs and I believe will be fun.

Od'aro kosi la ala to da (Good night and have and sweet dreams)

Let's work!!!

Tuesday

Ek'asan! (Good afternoon)

Today we have woken up and came directly to the Ekiti State ICT department to start the real work. After a introduction of the Organization layout by the ICT director, Mr. Toyin Oloniteru, who has been with us all these days, we split into our sub-teams, so me, Leslie and Rodney talked to the head of the Ministry of Labor, Productivity and Capital Development, who is responsible for the Social Security payments, Mrs Olabisi Fatoba, who explained to us how things work today and provided some material that we asked for. We have also talked to Yemi Ojudu, ICT Senior Tech Assistant who also cleared a lot of their expectations and then we worked among ourselves on updating the SOW we received, document the answers provided and establish a to do list.

Now we are heading back to the hotel, will have dinner and discuss a little bit more the project with the whole team to get some insights. A productive day!

Mari e ni'gba mi!!! (See you later!!!)

PS: my man Daniel, from CDC, left today...good trip my friend!

Press Conf, King's Palace, Gov's meeting, Café Pilão and Yoruba boy from Brazil

Monday

Remi, from IBM Nigeria Corporate talking to the press

Press conference in the morning. All the press from the state was here and we all introduced ourselves to them. It’s funny to be a star, with all the cameras and microphones.... LOL --- photos later....

After the press conference we went to a very special visit. We went to the Ado Ekiti King’s palace – they have a lot of old tribal royalty throughout Nigeria – It was a surreal experience and very interesting! I promise to post pics and film later. When I bowed to him and said a word in Yoruba, he and all of the tribal council really laughed hardly....cool!

After that we met again with the Governor, but this time at the main government building – very nice and big office – where he talked about his expectations regarding our projects and again I was very impressed by his very great communication and knowledge about everything that is going on in the world….he was even talking about Embrapa and how Brazil is a big agriculture power and how they want to implement the agriculture technology we have in Nigeria, especially in the Ekiti State….I’m really start thinking he will be president some day. Very bright man and it seems he is really trying to make something of his mandate.

We got back to the hotel and after a quick sub team’s meeting we went to the supermarket – always escorted by AK47’s security – and both some stuff we needed. I wanted to buy some coffee paper filters, but they don’t have such thing in here, so I both a t-shirt and made myself an old school filter and after dinner me and some of the guys drank the real coffee, Brazilian Café Pilão special Intense blend!

A couple of beers, listening from some Marcelo D2 from Christina’s iPod (Brazil is really out there) and now I’m here writing back to you guys….tomorrow will be the meeting with our clients and then me, Leslie and Rodney will start the real work for CIMS project. 

Ah, and last but not least, my Nigerian friends from both the hotel and the government are giving me some nicknames like: Neymar (don’t like it – LOL), Brazil 2014 and the one I really liked: Yoruba boy from Brazil!!! hahahahahah

Thank you Mr President!

Something that I forgot to tell....

During our dinner we were talking that one of the girls should sing Happy Birthday Mr. Governor, just like Marilyn Monroe sang to Kennedy and then when we where leaving the Governor’s residence we were all saying: Thanks Mr Governor, happy birthday, and then when was Mariana turn she said: Thank you Mr President and he answered: Not yet, not yet! Big laugh from everybody    LOL

First weekend - Go Super Eagles!!!

Ek'aro!!! (Good Morning)

Oh, what a weekend!!! It’s has been a crazy, exciting, exhausting weekend. I’m loving it!  So let’s start from the beginning, flight to Madrid at Thursday afternoon, 9.5 hours in the air. It was a good flight, but I think for the first time I got the worse place possible in the plane, right at the bathroom door, where people come and go all the time and the noisy flushing never stops, so I got only a little sleep and arrived at 6:30 am local time and had to wait until 4:00 pm to take my other flight to Lagos, so what to do with all that time? Let’s explore Madrid! I’ve left my luggage in the airport lockers and took a bus to downtown, got in Atocha (one of the places of the terrorist attacks in March 2004) station about 8:00 am. Man, that’s big! Zero degrees Celsius. After asking around I start my walk heading to city center. What a beautiful city! Got a ham sandwich at the Museo del Jamon along with some coffee and then I went to the Almudena Cathedral and the Royal Palace. Both huge buildings and very pretty.  It’s hard to think someone actually lived in there at the past. How rich can some people be? And how can this people be so rich while almost everyone else is totally poor (worse than how it is today), just because they are the “chosen ones”…. Anyway, I’m not here to discuss Monarchy, and not also to talk about how nice it is to finally been in Europe, something that I wanted to do for so long, so let’s continue and just say it was amazing and totally worth it! After eating some paella I got back to the airport and got my plane to Lagos at 4 pm. Tired.

Ek’abo!!! (Welcome)
10 pm, Lagos Nigeria…Toyin, from Nigeria Government was waiting for me and took me to the hotel where I met all my IBM colleagues that arrived earlier and where finishing dinner. They were along with Daniel and Ann from CDS and as nice as they are (found that later) they all offered me part of their meals, as the kitchen was closed. Ate a bit, went to the room and got back to the lobby bar, where Christina, Daniel, Bouke, Peter, Rodney and I had a few beers. Was really nice to know the guys a little better.
Morning in Lagos and after breakfast we had a little security briefing with an IBM official in Nigeria and we met Remi, from Nigeria IBM as well. Traded some US Dollars to Nairas and left to Ado Ekiti in a small bus. This was something very different, because the traffic is chaotic and we have a private security car going with us with 2 guys with AK47’s who were opening our path and on any sign of stopping because of the traffic they left the car with the guns and open the way. Really felt like a state chief getting somewhere …. lol The drive was long, but we could see parts of Nigeria and got information from the CDS representative who will stay with us the whole trip, Ayo. There are people everywhere! Nigeria is the 7^th largest country in population and as it is not so big in land there is no place empty here.
Got to Ado at night and after getting to our rooms, setting our bed nets (Malaria is a real danger here and a bed net is very important to avoid it, as the mosquitoes attack mainly at night) we went down to have dinner and chat a bit more. By know we know each other a bit better and I can tell that everyone is very interesting and nice. Here is our team:
Ann Oden, CDS representative in Nigeria
Bhuvana Natarajan, IBM India
Bianka Bognar, IBM Hungary
Bouke van der Voet, IBM Netherlands
Christina Hu, IBM USA
Cinthia Vega, IBM Costa Rica
Daniel Elliot, CDS program manager for our IBM Nigeria team 6 (son of Brazilian mom, speaks Portuguese fluently)
Kelsen, you know this one
Laura Sharp, IBM Canada
Leslie Turner, IBM USA
Mariana Salvarredi, IBM Argentina
Minh-Hai Nguyen, IBM Finland
Mithilesh Pandey, IBM India
Peter Thompson, IBM USA
Robert Ellis, IBM USA
Rodney Cornelius, IBM Sweden
Sundar Rao, IBM India

Suddenly Toyin comes in with a surprise: the Governor of Ekiti, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, invited us to his birthday party and we had to leave soon. The governor, received us and after formal introductions he order some drinks and we got to talk a little bit informally with him and other government members that were there. The governor impressed me, as he told us the state of Ekiti is know to be one of the most well educated in Nigeria and that he wanted to keep and improve that, providing besides education, also skills to his people. One could tell he is all for development, just from this small conversation we had, what I really think is a good start to fulfill Ekiti’s needs. We had dinner again, lol, and had back to the hotel. (I’ll post more about Nigerian food later, as I get to know it).
-Sunday
After a late breakfast we had some more briefing with a local doctor and security officer and also some group dynamics to know each other better. It was very nice and also funny. It’s weird as in just a couple of days we are all very close and comfortable with each other. I believe this kind of experiences can cause this unique response in people. I gave out some Senhor do Bonfim wrist band and explained to them the meaning and everybody seems to like it.
After this meeting we headed out on the bus to know a bit of the city of Ado and had a stop and a local private university where received by the dean who showed us around and then we got back to the hotel for the real big event of the day: African Cup final match between Nigeria and Burkina Faso. Nigerians, like Brazilians, are crazy about football (the real one, played with the foot lol ) so, I can really relate to them and they are very surprised to know someone from another country who knows their players and is excited as they are about this game.

GO SUPER EAGLES!!!!

We won and the people here are very happy! It was pretty cool to watch with them and see them really happy and now they are expecting for the Confederations and World Cup in Brazil. I hope they do well, as long as they do not meet Brazil during the competitions, lol.
Dinner, some more drinks and conversation by the pool and now I’m here, going to sleep under my net and expecting a long day tomorrow, which will be our first business day, where we’ll participate in a press conference with the local media, the governor, our clients and other local officials.
This first weekend was great and I promise my posts will be shorter from now one, so you guys don’t get tired….

Nigeria, here we go!!!

Well, better late than never....so, here is my first post to this blog, where I intend to share my experiences and findings during my participation on the CSC program by IBM at Ado Ekiti, Nigeria where I'll be between Feb 8th and March 8th of 2013. Right now it’s almost 8 pm in Campinas, Brazil and I'm working in the last details for the trip, which will be tomorrow at 5 pm. But in order to this to make sense, I have first to go back a little bit and explain how the whole process worked and how did I find myself in this position.

Since I first heard of the Corporate Service Corps program, by IBM, I really found it very interesting and exciting and wanted to take part on it. Here is some information from the program web page:

Corporate Service Corps Overview

"The Corporate Service Corps was launched in 2008 to help provide IBMers with high quality leadership development while delivering high quality problem solving for communities and organizations in emerging markets. The program empowers IBM employees as global citizens by sending groups of 10 - 15 individuals from different countries with a range of skills to an emerging market for four week community-based assignments. During the assignment, participants perform community-driven economic development projects working at the intersection of business, technology, and society.
This program increases IBM's understanding and appreciation of growth markets while creating global leaders who are culturally aware and possess advanced teaching skills. The Corporate Service Corps offers a triple benefit: leadership development for the IBMers, leadership training and development for the communities, and greater knowledge and enhanced reputation in the growth markets for IBM.
Since its launch in 2008, the Corporate Service Corps program has sent over 1600 participants on over 150 teams to more than 25 countries around the world. The participants come from over 53 countries and have served communities in Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Turkey, UAE and Vietnam. The program continues to expand to new locations each year."

Ok, so let’s continue, the first time I heard about this was in 2008 and I thought about applying...I even filled part of the application, but at end I thought it was not the time for me to take part in such effort and I really think I would not be chosen to take part of it. After that I did not paid too much attention at the program.

Now in 2012, around April, I've attended a presentation by a fellow IBMer who works in the same account as me, Felipe Piccirilo, who have participated and was now spreading out the word about how good it was and how to apply to it. This has reignited my desire to participate and I felt ready to such challenge. So I applied to it.

YEEEEAAAHHH!!! Congratulations on your acceptance to the Corporate Service Corps!!! 

This was the email I've received in at the end of June and immediately got very excited. I was finally going to fulfill a very old dream I had, which was going to Africa and help people as a volunteer. I had always talked to my wife about it, but it seemed to be something very hard to accomplish, since its a place very far, where is not so easy to make such arrangements when you are not involved with any organization that does this kind of thing, especially for my career type. (I believe that for healthy professionals might be easier to do something like that, for example, as there is a lot of organizations developing this kind of volunteering).

After the first excitement rush and a long wait for knowing our final destination (about 2 months), I was finally informed that my destination in Africa was Nigeria. I really liked, as I'm a big soccer fan I knew something about Nigeria. I knew we have at least something in common, as they are known for loving soccer, but that was all. Let's start the research! 

After some research I got to know more about the country and got more excited than ever, and along with my personal research, we start the training provided by the CSC, which was very extent, but very good. All of this happened in the last 2 months, and by January we finally found out about our projects. There will be 5 different projects done by our team of 15 IBMers from all over the world (I'll make other post to introduce everyone): 

Local Client	Project Title	SOW Description
Ministry of Education (MOE), State Government of Ekiti	TBD	TBD
Information and Community Technology (ICT) Department, State Government of Ekiti	Citizens Information Management System (CIMS)	Design an online Citizens register for the Social Welfare program for Senior Citizens (65 years and above) and provide sockets through which it will be integrated with the State’s CIMS.
Information and Community Technology (ICT) Department, State Government of Ekiti	E-government and Improving Work Flow	Provide appropriate solutions, best practices and framework for work flow automation in Ekiti State and provide template with enabling implementation methodologies to achieve smart governance generally in Ekiti State.
Ekiti State University	Database creation for University records and Training in Database Management and statistical packages	Help in the design of reliable databases in the University and to engage the university community in the efficient use of ICT
New Initiative for Social Development (NISD)	Capacity building for program staff for electronic monitoring and evaluation for diverse projects.	To design a methodology that will assist the entire program staff on  how to use the monitoring and evaluation system for  current projects in the organization and to assist in the management process for planning, policy advocacy  and decision making.

My project is the CIMS and now (Jan) we started to study our project in depth, so we could have good ideas and plans to have a good start once we get in Ado.

So, coming back to Today, here I'm, finishing this first post and a bit tired, but tomorrow will be the day the real adventure starts!

Odaaro! Orun n re lao sun (good night and have a nice sleep in Yoruba, main ethnic group from Ekiti state)

Kelsen