A month in Bukoba
April 29, 2001
After a two-week holiday, I finally had to teach this week, though only four classes. I now have 18 students: 6 in programming and 12 in IT2. I taught recursion, searching and sorting in Pascal in my programming class. Four new students joined my IT2 class without having had IT1, so they are struggling with the basics. I have taught PowerPoint 97, Web browsing using IE3 and an online textbook I brought on CD, and Web page creation using HTML and Notepad. I am rather disappointed in their ccomputing knowledge and understanding of English, but they are respectful and eager to learn.
The computer lab has been a frustrating place to work. I have been unable to install Norton Antivirus on two computers infected with the dodgy/ravage b virus, so they can only boot in safe mode, rendering them useless to beginning students if an advanced student is not around. Any hardware maintenance means my clothes get covered in dust, since the windows need to be open to cool the place and lots of dust blows in. Floppy disks keep getting physically damaged and infected with viruses, causing the computers to hang. I have tried to install some software and files for teaching but there is little disk space. I made an inventory of almost all the computer equipment the university has. Every computer is different and has its own set of major and minor hardware and software problems and quirks. Student files are saved in many different places on the hard disks. My one big success was to swap the dead power supply in an important office computer with a working one in a dead spare computer in the computer lab. I had never performed such a complicated hardware maintenance operation before; it is roughly the equivalent of a heart transplant, as the power supply is connected to so many other components. But I was forced to do it, as we had spent three days having it looked at in the Bukoba Cyber Centre and trying to pick it up, and it stopped working again the day after we got it back.
Michael Hodd, a co-vice-chancellor of Bukoba University and an economics professor from Westminster University in the UK, visited with two of his graduate students. He brought SPSS 10 on CD-ROM and a few surge protectors and said the university would get more computers (but didn't say when). He attended some of last week's administrative meetings with the University Council (planners) and Board of Trustees (owners). (As a lecturer I was not invited.) Supposedly the university has named a chancellor. No news about the chances of closing down or whether the move is on schedule. I wrote a letter to Professor Katoke stating that according to VSO my salary was due when I arrived because I was supposed to be paid in advance each month, and I fear he may have taken it as a complaint.
My diet has not improved much. I have been seriously deprived of protein and surviving mostly on uji, bread, pasta, beans, rice, sardines, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, oranges, bananas, pineapples and papayas. I have started drinking powdered whole pseudo-milk that tastes better than the long-life milk and is cheaper because it is lighter weight and manufactured in Tanzania, but four or more glasses of whole milk a day has got to be fattening. Food quickly gets moldy and smelly without a fridge, and a lot of the market food is of poor quality. Cooking is quite time-consuming and labour-intensive (cleaning fish, sorting and washing rice, soaking dry beans, stirring lumps out of uji or ugali, peeling all vegetables and fruits with a knife, boiling water to drink, etc.) The few Western packaged foods and goods that I do buy are relatively expensive (a dollar for a small tin of sardines or a packet of spaghetti, 75 cents for a loaf of bread or a two litre bottle of water, and little else) considering my salary is about $5 a day. I always seem to run out of food when the market and shops are closed. I have eaten cheap but decent meals a few times at the Rose Cafe and other restaurants. I have not been sick, though I am often hungry, tired and not clear-headed.
My back and related muscles have started to bother me again, as I have done more computing in ergonomically appalling conditions and I have not had much exercise aside from walking to the university and back. I had passion fruit juice at the Lake Hotel with Ann and then walked along a pretty lake path to Ann and Nicola's house, where we had dinner with Michael Hodd and the graduate students. I played basketball briefly on a shabby court at the Red Cross next to the university. Last Monday night I watched real snooker and darts and played ping-pong with some volunteers at Bukoba Club, which started as a British club over 50 years ago, but I have yet to play tennis there. I also went to the Red Cross disco, but it was too smoky and loud and the music wasn't good. Saturday afternoon I took a taxi up the hill to Ihungo Secondary School to visit some volunteer teachers. I was led through the school's pastoral setting to a panoramic view of the lake and town, and then took a look at the large and well-equipped but old and dusty science lab. I also drove by the proposed site for the University of Bukoba, which looked spacious but decaying, and the out of town location would be somewhat inconvenient. I brought home a water filter, though unfiltered boiled water has been fine for drinking.
The weather has not been much of a problem to me, as the temperature is usually comfortably spring-like and it generally only rains overnight or early in the morning. The rains are very heavy at times and delay my departure for the university a bit, but the roads dry quickly and it is not the severely wet and muddy rainy season I had feared. The water has never gone out, but the electricity was out most of the weekend.
The lake flies were quite bad for a few days, coming in dense clouds like a snowstorm and keeping me from going out at night on the weekend. Quite a few were getting in the house, and I resorted to the technique of turning out all the lights and lighting a candle to burn them. I have also been somewhat bothered by mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches and crickets. I walked all the way to the university with a large live cricket in the toe of my boot; it had been moving around but I hadn't been sure that it wasn't just a stone. Ann said that the annoying squawking black birds with green wings are a type of Ibis. I awoke one night at about 2 am to see a bat hanging above me inside my mosquito net, and I got out without disturbing it, but it had disappeared by the time I had found a container to catch it in. Maybe it was just a dream, or only a shadow of a bat that was outside, but I don't think so. I also saw a mouse a couple times.
A worker finally dug a garbage pit in our back yard, so I just toss my garbage in it instead of having to dig a hole somewhere. It really makes me appreciate how much garbage I generate, and how much better environmentally my Tanzanian neighbours are, since their garbage is not packaged and therefore all biodegradable. My kitchen sink drain smells like a sewer because it has no garbage disposal.
I tried to open a bank account at the National Bank of Commerce (NBC) but after 30 minutes I was told that I needed three passport photos instead of two. I returned the next day and it took another 40 minutes before I deposited the money and received a bank book. It was a bit disconcerting that everything was done on paper, by hand; there were no computers in sight.
I haven't practiced or studied much Kiswahili, as the students and teachers prefer to talk in English, and all I need to do at the market is point and ask the price. When I do try Kiswahili, the response is inevitably too fast for me to understand and they have to say it in English anyway.
I bought a roll of masking tape in the town's best bookstore (Lutheran) and was surprised to find that it was manufactured in South Bend, my home town. It's a small world after all.
Overall it's been a frustrating month, though I think I am handling the stress of the new environment relatively well, especially considering how different it is from Namibia and my limited social skills. The other volunteers tell me rebukingly how nice and easy I have it compared with them, and I'm sure it's true, but it doesn't make it much easier for me. In Namibia I always had a housemate to help me out, and things were Westernized enough that I could do a lot without relying on anyone else, but here I'm often at a loss. I don't see any chance of getting better computer equipment or facilities soon, and there are many frustrations, wasted hours, economic limitations and physical hardships and not much recompense yet. I will probably be unable to do many of the things I spent the last three years preparing to do. I'm half hoping the university will close down or I'll get sick enough to be sent home, as they would be the only respectable ways of leaving early. Otherwise I'll stay at least two more months until the end of the term so the students have a computer teacher and the university doesn't have to pay the overworked guys at the Bukoba Cyber Centre for computer maintenance.
My 640x480 pictures of Morogoro took too long to upload, so instead I uploaded smaller 120x96 pictures (http://gvogl.tripod.com/morogoro/). I will also try to upload pictures of the university and my house (http://gvogl.tripod.com/bukoba/).