A visit to IBM office in Abuja

Hello Friends...

Its long that I scribbled on my blog. This week being the third week of our CSC assignment, we are all experiencing the heat of coming up with presentation and last moment tasks. As part of our project work, we were planned to have a discussion with IBM Canada architect regarding a solution which would help our customers. So we went to IBM Abuja office to take our call. 

IBM Office in Abuja @ Oakland Center

IBM Abuja office is in Oakland Center. It is 3rd floor and Suit 319 in Chase center. It is a small conference room with 4-5 LAN ports and a small office space. Georgia, Isah and other sales team work from here. I am sure that we will have a big IBM building in Abuja after 2-3 years and I would want to visit IBM office again then. I have uploaded few pictures of Abuja IBM.

Suite 319 in Chase Center

Georgia, Asha and Brad in IBM Abuja Georgia and Brad in IBM Abuja office

29jun was Brajesh's B'day. In the evening we went to a Lebanese restaurant to celebrate and has a goo dinner.

Brajesh celebrating his B'day

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Fabulous weekend in Abuja - 25th and 26th Jun2011 - Part II

Team @ Esu Karu Palace

This post is in continuation to my previous weekend post. As planned earlier, we headed towards Karu in Nasarawa State. NPHCDA had planned Oral Polio Drops Immunization campaign in Karu. First we went to the PHC center and from there we were taken to Esu Karu Palace, where the paramount ruler of Karu stays. As the ruler had to travel, we were received by his representatives. 

Team ready for service :)

From there on, we were split into 4 groups with 3 each and headed towards the immunization centers along with volunteers. They had selected churches as immunization centers as most people visit Church on Sunday. Me, Kim and Iti were in our Group. Me and Kim managed to immunize few children. We learned to open the mouth of babies and were successful in  dropping two drops of polio vaccine. We enjoyed this community service. 

Asha immunizing a child

Kim immunizing a child

Marking the child after vaccination

Later, we came back to the Arts & Craft village, as few of us anted to shop again :) you know, shopping - Control Nahi Hota!!!

Thus we ended our weekend in a very efficient way and celebrated IBM's Centennial in a meaningful way!!! thanks to the entire team for coming together and making this happen.
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Fabulous weekend in Abuja - 25th and 26th Jun2011 - Part I

Dear Friends, I am so happy that all of us - IBM CSC Nigeria 5 team spent our weekend in a productive and meaningful way. IBM celebrated its centennial on 16Jun2011 and all IBM locations around the world had celebrations that day. But all 13 of us were missing our countries on that special day. So, we had planned to celebrate one of the weekend in Abuja in a memorable way and wanted to make it very special for all of us and for IBM. Glyn, one of our team members gave us the memorabilia badges. We all wore with pride that day.

As part of our plan, we were planning to participate in Oral Polio immunization program in Abuja. But due to the lack of time, we could not undergo the training and we just had to observe the polio immunization. So, Glyn and Pradip worked with UBEC (universal Basic Education Commission) and arranged for a visit to the school of Special Education for visually and Hearing challenged children in Minna, Niger state. We started at 6:00 AM as Abuja has the street cleaning activity from 7:00 AM and no vehicles were allowed to run on the road from 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM on that day. Left Onyx early in the morning after breakfast. On the way, we got a chance to look at the ZUMA ROCK, which is a large monolith which is 725 meters tall and around 3.1 km in circumference, looks like a small mountain.  This is the symbol of Nigeria and is depicted on 100 Naira bill. Look at our team who are busy taking pictures of Zuma Rock :)

Zuma Rock !!!

Team busy picturing Zuma Rock !!!

Asha with Zuma Rock

The moments at the school was emotional. I felt very sad looking at those kids. We crib for small materialistic things every day. But 700+ kids were so happy, with out any pain shown on their face while they greeted us. I was into tears when all the children started forming line and started greeting us in their own way. We all started introducing ourselves and there were hoots when some of said were from India. I really felt that the children knew more about India and they liked India. I was happy to capture those moments in my camera share with you all.

All the children wanted to take pictures with us. We took a lot of photos. Kim started playing Soccer with the children. Soccer is Kim's passion. All of us felt that we should do something to these children and not just visit and go. So, we all collected some money and presented it to the principal and requested him to utilize the money for school and the children. Though it was just a drop i ocean, as Anick mentioned in her blog, every drop matters!!!!! While we were ready to leave, the children quickly came with a play depicting ABILITY in DISABILITY and with some dance shows. It was very interesting to watch them. We finally said Good Bye to them with heavy hearts.

Panaromic view of Gurara Falls !!!

Ok, lets get back to the fun part. on the way back to Abuja, we visited a falls in Niger state - GURARA Falls. Gurara is the name of the river and it means something like 'water pouring from somewhere'. I read this from another blog. The falls is 25 mts high and 700 mts wide. We enjoyed the scenic beauty and all of us went to the foot of the falls. i would say that was an adventure as there are no smooth road or path to take us to the foot of the falls. We had to climb up and down the small rocks to reach the foot. The local guides and our driver Chris helped us to reach our goal. We spent some time in taking some pictures at the falls and returned to hotel with mild body pains and heart full of joy :). I have posted a few pics. Enjoy!!!!! and you are all welcome for the feedback/ comments.

Asha @ Gurara Falls

Beautiful view of GURARA Falls !!!

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Nearing 3rd weekend in Abuja

Today is Friday and it is a special day for Nigerians. Most of the offices close by 2:00 PM in Abuja, as the Islamic community would like to go to prayers.

Had a nice breakfast in the morning and got ready to go to office. One more special thing about today is that - Brad is in Nigerian attire today!!! Yes... True.... See below :)

Brad in local Nigerian attire!

Brad with our Driver Johnny

Asha with our driver Johnny

Yesterday was even more interesting. Our Chinese team mate Xe Xing (prounced as Ke Shing) gave all of us our Chinese names. All of us were honored and delighted to have a Chinese name.... Every day is a new experience and I am enjoying every moment of my days in Abuja.

Anick Fortin-Cousens : 安妮珂(an ni ke)
Asha Lakshman : 阿莎 (a sha)
Brajesh Charan : 布拉吉斯 (bu la ji si)
Kim M. McCarthy : 金 凯希( jin kai xi)
Pradip Roychowdhury : 普拉迪普(pu la di pu)
Malabika Debnath : 马兰(ma lan)
Niki J. Glassmire : 妮可(ni ke)
Sumit K. Sinha : 苏米特( su mi te)
Bradley T. Murphy : 布拉德( bu la de)
Gerald Tomkins : 格林 (ge lin)
Katherine G. Bossange : 凯瑟琳 (kai se lin)
Iti Rawat : 伊蒂 (yi di)

Also, in one of the local news paper - The Guardian, there was an article about the health improvements in Nigeria. It mentioned about the Data Bank concept paper that happened in NPHCDA and my name has been mentioned in the news paper. Also, our hotel manager Tony told us that me and Brad were in a telecast in the news channel. I am happy about these :)

I have been learning words in Hausa, the local language in Nigeria.

Ina kwana - good morning
Mu kwana lafiya - Good night
Sai an jima- goodbye
na gode - thank u

Happy Learning to all of you and have a great weekend.

--- Asha Lakshman, Abuja 

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A day at the Cold Storage and a Facility of NPHCDA

Today is the start of second week of our work in Abuja. Me and Brad visited the strategic Cold storage near the Airport. We had a look at the huge building which has 8 cold storage units for all different vaccines. The staff showed us the storage areas and vaccines stored in storage.

Asha & Brad with Cold Storage team

4 Cold storage to refrigerate vaccines

On Tuesday, we visited two facilities. The first one was Dutse and the second was Ushafa in Bwari District.

The Dutse facility is one of the very good facility equipped with computer and internet. The midwives are very comfortable using MADEX application and have a good knowledge of computer usage.

This facility was visited by Secretary General of United Nations few moths back. Another facility we visited was at Ushafa and this is a remote facility. This was visited by Mr. Bill Clinton during his presidential reigm.

On the way, we found women walking along with their babies. The amazing fact was the way they were carrying their babies. They carry babies on their backs and they carry it so sweet. I have posted a few photos. Enjoy :)
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Weekend in Abuja

Huts @ Crafts Village

The weekend was amazing in Abuja. On Saturday we were planning to visit the Cold Storage of NPHCDA and it was canceled. So all of us got ready by 12:00 and went for the lunch @ SPICE FOODs. This in an Indian restaurant which is in walking distance from the hotel. The food was good and all of us enjoyed the meal. More than the Indian team, the non-Indian team liked the food. The SAMOSAs are favorite of all :)

Paining from Handicrafts Village

After lunch the Great CSC Team went on to the Venture. We visited the  FCT Crafts and Handicrafts Village. We could take the pictures of a lot of African paintings, Ghana Masks, ornaments and others.

I bought few necklaces, a Ghana mask and an African Conceptual Family. 

We then came back to the hotel to rest.

Sunday, went to Sahad stores to pick up necessary items and we visited the popular National Church. This is a huge structure and a very big church. It has the capacity to fit in nearly 1000 people. The Church has a huge Pipe organ with 144 pipes. The amazing part is the Center stage has a revolving podium.

Panoramic view of the Mosque and the Church

Amazing!!!! The view of the Mosque from inside the Church Angles.

Inside view of the Church

The National Church

Then, we went into Chopsticks to have lunch. There Kim and Ke Xing taught us to eat noodles with Chopsticks. It was amazing and you can see how stupid we all looked doing that!!!!

 

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Day4 @ Work in Abuja - Data Bank conference at NPHCDA, Abuja

Today is Day#4 @ work and it started with a conference at NPHCDA on Data Bank concept. Mr. Analyst Dare gave a presentation on Data Bank concept and there was a huge audience. Few to name was – Directors and Heads of the department of NPHCDA, WHO representatives, UNICEF representatives, PATHS2 representatives, NBS team, National Archive Team, NPHI Team and of course IBM CSC team of Asha and Brad J

The presentation was followed by expressing the views by different participants and a detailed technical session on Data Bank by Analyst Dare.

Few photos from the conference are below:
Asha and Brad @ NPHCDA Conference

 Directors and Heads of NPHCDA and other partners

 Analyst Dare of NPHCDA

 Other Partners

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Day2 @ Work in Abuja

Our day2 @ work at NPHCDA was good and productive. It was rather loaded with heaps of information. The day started with a meeting with the Executive Director of NPHCDA, followed by discussion with few Directors and Deputy Directors. We were at the HQ and that is the busiest place with a lot of things happening around. As we started discussing with different people we started realizing how big the organization is and what would be the size of the project. We still need to get a lot of information and yet to visit a local center.

For lunch, we visited an Indian Restaurant and food was really good, unlike the others we visited in last couple of days. It is called Wakkis and it is Wuse II area of Abuja (http://wakkis.com/). I could get vegetarian food and was delicious.

Evening went into Hilton in Abuja and had fun with the team mates.


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Settling in Abuja, Nigeria

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Reached Abuja safely without any hassles. Checked into ONYX Hotel and getting settled.....