My First Django Girls: And I Trained IDPs

Before now, I was always scared of codes. Seeing them alone gave me the goosebumps and left me confused. I would always be like,” Err, what’s happening here?”

I felt it was too difficult to learn and it was a guy’s thing. But the turning point came for me when I had to use Matlab Programming Tool for my project in school. I was struggling to follow a YouTube video but I got stuck at a point. So I met a guy who was a junior to help me out. I didn’t show him what I had done so far because I was not confident that I was on the right track.

He billed me N10,000 saying he had a similar set of codes that he would just adjust them to solve my problem. I didn’t have the money at the time but I had to struggle to pay because the submission date was close. To my amazement, the codes he gave me were my exact same codes but just two lines were different. Apparently, I had a bug but I was not patient enough to fix it. I had a mixed feeling of regret and joy. Regret that I paid for it and joy that I was very close to my result. That was when I told myself, “I must learn this thing!”

I started learning Python, took online courses,  got myself in the right Python Community, and I got help from experienced programmers and mentors. While I was learning, I was always willing to share the little I knew with my friends, a couple of them that were already programmers, I realised it made me better. But one thing I told myself was that I was going to share this knowledge because I knew there were many people out there that still think coding is hard especially ladies. I volunteered to teach Python at any chance I got, to the extent that a friend called me one day and said, “Elohor, no de do free things” (She meant: “Stop teaching for free”). They were of the opinion that I could make a lot of money from it. But I thought to myself but I didn’t pay to learn, let this be my little “give back” to society. I believe that the best use of knowledge and influence is in the service of others community.

I saw the call for coaches for Django girls Lagos and I was like, ”Cool, another opportunity”. Even though I had never used Django before, I had gone past the stage of being scared of programming frameworks and terms and besides I had done a little project with Flask before so I felt it wouldn’t be so hard. I went through the tutorial and luckily enough, there was going to be a coaches’ meetup before the Installation Party so I thought I would get the chance to discuss my challenges.

On getting to the hotel’s office on Birrel Avenue in Yaba which was hosting the meetup, I realised that I was like the only new face there. Apparently, a couple of them had been involved in Django girls. When the introduction started and I started hearing things like, “This is my fourth Django Girls”, “This is my eight Django girls” etc.  I began to fret. I said to myself then that it was better to be in the midst of the experienced.

Somehow, the fact that this particular Django Girls workshop was particularly for IDPs didn’t sink in on me, until Simi mentioned that there was a particular coach, Jennifer that speaks Hausa fluently and that she came all the way from Nasarawa State in case we encounter issues when communicating with the girls. I was like, “Ahh, is this how it’s going to be?  So the girls don’t understand English! How do I begin to communicate? What if Jennifer is too busy with other Coaches? Will I be able to go far with the tutorial? What if my mentees are not interested because I can’t communicate or because it’s looking too hard for them?” I had so many questions. I braced up, after all, I was not going to be alone, these friendly coaches would not leave me hanging.

Django Girls Day 1 came (Installation party), I was introduced to my mentees, Esther and Rhoda. “Wow, they spoke and understood English quite well”, first proposed challenge eliminated. I introduced myself and got them relaxed by asking personal questions. Apparently, they relocated from Bornu State about two years ago because of the fights there. Their village, Chibok was left completely empty. They had not resumed their schooling in Lagos however, I encouraged them to go back to school, briefed them on the importance of Computer Science, why they were learning Python, parts of a computer and a lot I felt they should know. Then we took off with the installation of the needed tools.

I made sure they did it themselves and I must say I was really impressed. It looked like they gave me the smartest girls in the hall. Rhoda was quite faster than Esther, she was the younger one though, so she was full of energy and zeal. As for me, the only issue I had was OS related, installing Virtual Environment on their system and slight internet issue when installing Django. I got help from fellow coaches to sort out the challenges. At the end, we completed our challenge for the day! The girls were so excited that they were operating the computers that they did not want to go home, little did they know that they were going home with the laptops the next day.

For the Day 2 which was the full workshop proper, I was assigned to two other. Esther and Rhoda were doing fine with their new coach. I introduced myself to Sophia and Moyin (See them here. Sophia was a kid from Bridge Academy while Moyin was a Secondary School student who stumbled on the application for the workshop on Google and decided to give it a try. Moyin was already learning web development on her own. She was familiar with HTML and CSS, she just needed guidance. Sophia, on the other hand, was just an excited kid that was eager to learn, she had been taught parts of a computer in school and she couldn’t wait to code.

I had to go over the installation again with them because they were absent during the Installation Party. For me, I was quite fast guiding them to install, there were no new unfamiliar issues for me. After that, it was more of work, eat, work, eat till the end of the day. I explained each section, gave them exercises to code and continued until the day was over. Even though we did not complete the tutorial, I was happy that I had instilled the interest to learn in them and they were willing to continue, it is just left for us to follow up with them and mentor them. Sophia was excited about her new laptop and Moyin was willing to get herself ready for personal study.

I must say I enjoyed every bit of the training and I had lots of fun. A big thumbs up to the Django Girls Lagos Team, Python Nigeria and all the Coaches, they did a wonderful job. I hope that for future workshops, the publicity would be more because there are a whole lot of people that would want to benefit from this initiative.

Django Girls Lagos Organisers’ Note:

We could not have had a successful and impactful workshop without the support of the following: AboCoders, Andela, CCHub Nigeria, GitHub, Google Nigeria, MTN Nigeria and Python Software Foundation and other individuals. Thanks to their support, we were able to give every IDP and student from Bridge Academy a laptop and get everything we needed for the workshop.

To our coaches, we would like to say a big thank you. Even if we had all the money but had no coaches, we would have made no impact. Thank you for the time you spent sharing knowledge with the participants! You made it happen!

Django Girls is a non-profit that teach programming to women all around the world. Want to help us? Support us!