Loomnie

At about 9 p.m. on Sunday, someone called me and asked if I would be available for an interview on Friday. I was a little surprised. For one, organisations are not known for working on Sundays, especially at night. When I started asking the guy questions about where he was calling from the call went bad and I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The only thing I could make out was that I should check my mail. I tried calling him back but I couldn’t get through to his number. Ok, that meant that I had an assignment to check my mailbox on Monday for a message about coming for an interview.

Monday morning, I get to a cyber café and I find that I have a mail from ActionAid Nigeria, asking me to come for an interview for an internship position. When I check the To field of the mail I count about 23 email addresses that the same mail went to. Well, sometime in January, an advert came out in the dailies asking for people who were interested in development work to apply for a flagship internship programme with ActionAid. It would last a year, and it is supposed to launch young people on a career in development. The number of people that would eventually be accepted was 4. Alright, I was one of the 23 invited for an interview to fill four positions. Very not bad. I would have to go to Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria, for the interview. Transport fares will be refunded, and accommodation has been provided in a hotel. Now, I told you that the last time I went for an interview I felt so grossly inadequate; this time around, the positions are different and I will be interviewed for an internship position. I still do not know much about what is expected of applicants to the positions. I have the requisite academic qualification, I am young and interested in development work; one would think that these would be enough. But I guess the truth is that there is no job in Nigeria, and for any advertised position advertisers get a lot of applications; cutting the number down is a feat. The interview process would therefore try to cut as many people as possible down. The invitation letter even says that successful applicants may stay for longer than a day. I know that there would probably be a computer test so I am trying to work on my MS Office applications skills. Every other thing would have to wait till I get to the interview venue.

Now, the main problem is that I am having money problems. I don’t even have the air fare, or even the bus fare, to the interview city. I would have to look for someone to lend me the money, and since the organisation said they would refund the fare I wouldn’t have problem paying back. Hard life, isn’t it?

I have to get back to trying to know how to design a budget in excel, although I can’t figure out how they would expect a fresh graduate from the university to know how to do that. By the way, that was the deal breaker in the Catholic Relief Services interview.

Sorry that I have not been consistent. Well, consistent wouldn’t be the word now, would it? I posted only once, with my worries and ruminations, and then I stopped posting. Now, I am posting again. I think I should say, with a measure of sureness, that I will do more of this as from now on.

Well, let me take it up from where I left it. I am now in Nigeria, no job yet, but I am managing to survive. I just finished designing a programme in Development Studies by distance learning for the Distance Learning Centre of the University of Ibadan, where I did my B.A. That got me some money, although I haven’t got paid yet… the Nigerian bureaucratic problem. Ok, I am also doing transcriptions of some videos for a professor in the university. There was a series of TV programmes on Getting the University System in Nigeria Back on Track. It is a mighty boring job, trying to get exactly what people said on paper is not the easiest thing to do. It isn’t like I haven’t had any job offers at all; I have. If you remember, I did an M.A. in Development Studies at Uppsala, Sweden, and I am not interested in doing anything apart from a development-related job, and that limits my options to government and NGOs. Well, one NGO offered me a job, offering a pay of 30,000 naira per month (just a little over 200 dollars). Even in Nigeria, that is pretty low. It was an offer I couldn’t accept. I told the Director of the NGO that I couldn’t accept that kind of salary but she says that since I don’t have much of working experience they would have to put me on probation, with that much, and after a year they would review my position with them. Sounds considerate, doesn’t it? But it beats me to think that I might have to live on that kind of salary, which is pretty low, and would probable take care of only my feeding and accommodation. That same thing about working experience would also come up when I went for an interview with Catholic Relief Services on January 24. The post I was interviewed for was Programme Assistant, under their Peace Building, Emergency Response and Governance Programme. What struck me was the emphasis on working experience. How much working experience do you expect from a 25 year-old masters degree holder? I have done a bit during my university days, but I went, almost directly, from my BA to the MA programme, and that means that I couldn’t have had much of experience. What I thought, at the end of the interview, was that if they wanted someone who is fresh from the university, bright, honest, trainable and ready to learn, I would get the job; but if they want someone who has already had some form of training, like every other person who was invited for the interview – a little older – it seemed that the person who was next to me in age was about 30 –I simply did not stand a chance. I have since done a mail to ask how I fared at the interview and I still haven’t heard from them. I just saw an advert in the papers by the Society for Family Health, an NGO that works on reproductive health issues, for Communications Officer. I am simply over-qualified for the job, since they want someone with a BA in Communications – which I do – and with practically no experience. There was no mention of an MA. Also, reproductive health and HIV are simply not my kind of thing. But I think I will apply for the position. I am getting worried about not having a job.

OK, to something more positive. I went with my friend, Adebayo – we call him Sunshine, he is one of my closest friends; you’ll hear of him often – and his Masters in Geographical Information Systems classmates to the National Space Research Development Agency. Oh yea, Nigeria has a space programme, and we even have a disaster monitoring satellite in space, one of four of such. Pretty cool, isn’t it? We were at the ground station of the NigeriaSat-1, and I was really wowed at how efficient the people who run the place looked and spoke. I had never really thought much of satellites but I started thinking more about it when I heard that Nigeria is sending a new satellite, NIGCOMSAT-1, a communication satellite, into space later this year. This means that broadcasting, telephony, internet and other communication stuffs would become more accessible. I don’t think I should say much about satellites and their use so I’ll leave it at this.

OK, people, I will let you know when something new happens in my life.