Nick's first exposure to Africa was through a misunderstanding - he thought he was going to Guiana, but it was actually Ghana!
At 18 Nick joined Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), an organisation that works globally with vulnerable communities, and his first posting was to teach English language and literature and Geography to children in Tamale in northern Ghana.
At the end of his stint in Ghana and with no access to bus or air travel, he and a group of fellow VSOs hitch-hiked and sweet-talked their way across the desert through Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta), Niger and Algeria back to England, a journey that convinced him that he could survive in Africa and relish the experience - and it is this that has kept bringing him back.
Nick was instrumental in setting up the academic literacy orientation programme offered by HVT to the first batch of Local Economic Development students studying through the University of Johannesburg and when the emphasis was later shifted to assisting student teachers studying through STADIO, he headed up a team of volunteer tutors who, over a five-week orientation period, introduced first-year students to the skills they would need for their academic studies.
Throughout the STADIO academic year, he continues in his role as a tutor and provides guidance and support to the B Ed students and to the PGCE students.
He is more than well qualified to do this as his career in education has spanned forty years, with sojourns to a variety of countries in Africa. As a newly-qualified drama teacher, he again applied to the VSO and was sent to Nigeria to teach English and Drama. Having enjoyed that experience, when he returned to England he added a qualification in teaching English as a second language and began a lifelong career in assisting first and second-generation immigrants to Britain to learn English.
However, the call of Africa was strong and five years later he applied to the government of Zimbabwe for a teaching post, specifically in an outlying area. He was appointed to a school in a truly rural area with no electricity, piped water or tarred roads, but with students filled with enthusiasm to learn, and says that his five years there was where he actually learned to teach.
He returned once again to London, but five years later he was back on the African continent - this time in Katima Mulilo in Namibia, where he says he had "great fun" working with teacher educators and developing course material for in-services courses for teachers.
Having ‘survived’ the Caprivi Uprising in 1998, he returned to England where he did a Masters in Teacher Education and developed many of the techniques that he has used in teaching the children of refugees and of course, our students.
After working as an Ethnic Minorities Achievement advisor, he became a private consultant on the language needs of all minorities coming from the Commonwealth and worked mainly with second generation students preparing for A levels.
In 2013 he retired, in a manner of speaking, and established a South African base for himself in Hermanus where a meeting with Theo Krynauw led to his involvement first with HVT and now with OLH.
Although he has recently relocated to Cape Town, he has maintained his links with OLH, travelling back over the mountain for the orientation sessions and will continue to be available to use Zoom to assist techno-wise students studying through OLH.
Nick’s enthusiasm, empathy and his ready sense of humour, coupled with his extensive experience of the challenges faced by second-language students, has made him a vital member of the OLH tutor system, for which both tutors and students are grateful!
Regular meetups and collaboration with fellow students in the same programs, scheduled at times convenient for working individuals.
