A Teachers’ and Leaders’ Workshop in Lagos, Nigeria
The one-day Lagos State (Nigeria) Teachers’ and Leaders’ Workshop has come and gone, with lasting good memories. All the local RC Communities were well represented.
We began by listening to each other answer the following questions: What is your thinking about the Chibok girls?1 Do you think the government is doing enough? What is racism? How does racism affect global warming? What are pseudo-survival illusions?
There was general agreement that ill treatment of the environment in so-called Third World countries (polluting; cutting trees without replacing them; littering with cellophanes, which cannot decay to form manure; dumping toxic waste) has effects all over the world and hurts both the oppressor and the oppressed in the form of global warming.
We discussed some of the causes of pseudo-survival illusions: faulty guesses, ignorance, and misinformation. To counter these, we need to discharge and re-evaluate, organize, and get good information.
We also had Co-Counseling sessions, and Onii2 reviewed the fundamentals of Co-Counseling.
Nobody was in a hurry to leave, and everyone wanted to have more frequent workshops.
Chioma Okonkwo
Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria
1 In April 2014, 276 female students were kidnapped from the Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok in Borno State, Nigeria. Boko Haram, a terrorist organization based in northeast Nigeria, claimed responsibility. As of June 29, more than two hundred students are still missing. The Nigerian government has been heavily criticized for failing to protect the population and put an end to Boko Haram’s terrorist acts.
2 Onii Nwangu-Stevenson, the Area Reference Person for North Central Lagos, Nigeria