Subject: Bukoba #16: a year in Tanzania
Date: Saturday, March 9, 2002
I have been unable to check my Yahoo e-mail at ELCT for over a month, and even the ELCT e-mail service was a problem because of the TTCL phone lines, but at least now I can send e-mail. I suspect the Internet service was costing them too much and that they weren't being straight with me. The Cyber Centre is still working on putting up its satellite receiver tower; Hasnain said they had put it up Sunday but the wind blew it down. I may go to Kampala next week and check it then. Until then, if you write please try sending to this address but also cc: my Yahoo address.
I largely wasted the month of February because I have few materials for preparing university courses and I have been unable to contact the outside world to obtain donated equipment. We are still scheduled to open on April 2 but I don't see how I'll be able to teach classes considering we only have seven fully or partly functional computers for 15 staff and 35 students. I may have to buy some used computers in Kampala or Mwanza. If we fail to get computers by April 2, I may well have to look for work elsewhere. I sense that my esteem has plummeted in the eyes of the administration. My list of reasons for leaving is currently much larger than my list for staying, but as long as I have something to do here I feel I should stick to my two-year commitment if at all possible.
Antoon of the Dutch District Rural Development Programme (DRDP) hired me to teach computer basics courses to the district council senior staff. It will earn about Tsh 1,000,000 ($1000) for the University. This week I taught Windows, typing and Microsoft Word to two groups of seven complete beginners. I spent a lot of time installing typing tutorials but couldn't use the best ones because they couldn't be installed on the older computers. The four newer computers have Pentium 3 and 4 1 GHz processors, 128 MB RAM, and 18 GB hard disks, but the three older ones are Pentium 100s with 16 MB RAM and 1 GB hard disks and I am still struggling to get them cleaned up. I was thoroughly exhausted by six hours of teaching and three hours of computer maintenance each day, but mostly because I was dehydrated from the heat and didn't get enough for lunch which I had to eat at 2:00 because it was late. It is really hard to be patient with complete beginners who cannot understand my English; it's like teaching the alphabet and how to hold a pencil. It is unfortunate we did not start a month earlier when I had the time; now I may only manage to teach a total of three weeks but they need to know much more, including spreadsheets and databases. Also I am using a variety of materials that are not ideal; I should really be designing all my own materials and making them available to others in the region.
Our VSO director visited a couple weekends ago and we discussed a variety of issues at a meeting at Tony's house at Ihungo school. Our programme officer for this region (Kagera) is leaving in April so our support is a question mark, but hopefully we will have a new person who will be able to spend more time in Kagera.
My health is still up and down; it's a bit better this week because more teaching means less computing. I'm out of shape but still enjoy a beautiful daily walk to the lake. The rains have been heavier and more frequent, but still not every day.
I spent far too much time on my Swahili/English computer programs before finally deciding they were a selfish waste. The grammar program has about 3000 lines of Java code and does a fair job of translating basic phrases and presenting a variety of quiz questions, but there is much more that could be done, and even Swahili is hugely complicated and full of exceptions. I will put them on my web site when I can, but I will resist working on them further. I also took 50 nice digital photos of the hand-painted murals in town and will put them on my web site when I can. A number of the buildings in town are getting new paint jobs; perhaps a sign of economic recovery, at least amongst the relatively wealthy Indians.
Mr. Mwabuki has not moved in; they may have found another place for him, or they may be waiting until April to see what happens. Mariana brought me five eggs from one of the two hens I had given her. She is still working for the Austrians at Kibeta during the week; she has to walk for about an hour each day to get there and is delegated the less pleasant cleaning tasks, but she is happy to be working full time. She taught me a few words of Kihaya which I wrote down, but I haven't used them other than hearing some of the greetings.