Subject: Bukoba 17 1/2: A Busy Year in Bukoba

April 1, 2002

It has been a busy and productive year for all of us at the University of Bukoba. The University has almost finished its third academic year, and we will soon issue the first B.Sc. degrees in Information Technology and eight other subjects. From its humble beginnings, the University has grown quickly and now has about 25 faculty, 40 staff and 250 students.

As senior lecturer and acting head of the Department of Information Technology, which now has five lecturers and eight staff, I am proud to have overseen the construction of the new Information Technology wing and the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment including a high-speed fibre-optic link of all campus computers and a fast wireless V-Sat Internet connection system that with the Cyber Centre forms part of the East African Telecommunications Network (EATNet).

Secondary school students are linking with peers around the world via the Internet in the Global Teenagers Project, now that Computers for Africa, Computers for Schools, the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) and the University have provided all 20 secondary schools in the Kagera region with computers, Internet access and teacher training.

In a ceremony last week, Chancellor Katoke welcomed his long-time friend, the visiting Ugandan head of state President Yoweri Museveni, who inaugurated the Kagera Museum of History and Culture which is housed in the former immigration building in Bukoba, and who has agreed to fund the construction of a new University satellite campus in Karagwe.

Dr. Parillon, Dean of the Faculty of Science and director of the Kagera Fisheries and Wildlife Institute, also teaches courses part-time on her yacht. She has finalised the contract for the heliport to facilitate transport to and from the Musira Island campus, which houses the Bukoba Botanical Gardens. As a result of her successful Bilharzia eradication campaign, students, staff and tourists now enjoy numerous water sports, including sailing, water skiing, sport fishing, swimming and diving.

Professor Cooper, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, directs the Bukoba Opera and the School of Multicultural Dance and moonlights as manager and star DJ of Radio UoB.

This year the University of Bukoba Fundraising Ball was held at the Lake Resort Hotel and Casino. It attracted such notable celebrities as Ray Charles, Michael Jackson and Tina Turner and raised nearly Tsh 1bn. The chief financial officer, Mr. Majaliwa, estimates the University's gross revenues in excess of Tsh 100bn. Credit also goes to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, George Soros, Oprah Winfrey and Ed McMahon for the initial funding that spurred such a massive corporate investment to make it all possible.

In other Bukoba news, the Mwanza-Bukoba-Kampala superhighway was completed in December, and Bukoba to Kampala via the University's limousine service is now a comfortable two-hour drive. "Wider than Victoria Lake" no longer seems so wide: Thanks to Donald Corruthers Road Contractors Ltd., motorists can now make the complete circuit in one day.

Some of you who knew me from my younger days as an agnostic, Marxist and Buddhist may be surprised to learn that I have converted to Islam. I must admit I was drawn to wearing a fancy white robe and smart cap. They're as cool and comfortable as pyjamas yet I can wear them in public. And of course I have always been a teetotaller. Can't say I enjoy the fasting part, though.

Actually, the main reason for my conversion was to be polygamous. Why do I need four wives? I guess I'm just indecisive; I love them all, each in a very different way. Men need women more than women need men. You can't have too much of a good thing. The more the merrier. But unfortunately the authorities tell me I have reached my quota.

You will see that I have a thing for names that sound like Mary and Ann; I guess it goes back to my boyhood crush on Mary Ann of the TV series Gilligan's Island.

My first wife, Anna Marie, the University's manager of international marketing and public relations, is currently on a world tour to solicit funding and promote the University's role in third world development. She is also the founder of the Bukoba piano school and a local animal shelter.

My second wife, Marialena, provides AIDS outreach, marriage and family counselling, expressive arts therapy, and fortune telling services to many clients in the Bukoba area. (And I am one of her best customers.)

My third wife, Joanitha, is the Information Technology Department's executive secretary, principal programmer and relentless taskmaster.

My fourth wife, Mariana, is running her own bakery, catering business and chef school, but I am trying to convince her to get a Ph.D. in African linguistics.

You might think that managing four wives and eighty hours a week of teaching and office work is making me tense, but regular visits to Machteld and Marlayne's Maison de Massage keep me loose and limber.

Also I keep fit as head coach and star point guard of the fledgling Bukoba Bananas, and I am optimistic about our future chances at the East African Universities hoops title. Like Michael Jordan, I also dabble in golf, but I did not do as well in the Bukoba Open as he did.

In my spare time I have programmed my computer to teach me Kiswahili, Ruhaya and Arabic and am head systems engineer of the Automated African Language Translation Initiative. I am also planning to learn Hindi so as to better communicate with the large influx of IT students and businesspeople from India.

Am I just an April fool? You can't blame me for dreaming. Think big, be big. To shoot far, aim high. Be all that you can be. Ask and you shall receive. Who says you can't have it all? Hold on tight to your dreams. Anything is possible.

It's also liberating to have an escape, a coping mechanism, and fun to cosmetically enhance the often humble reality. Laughter is the best medicine. But sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and sometimes more wonderful if we can only see it...

By letting my imagination roam freely, I hope to get a better understanding of why I am here and what I should and shouldn't be doing. Anyone can be visionary; the challenge is to have the right vision: Not high tech but appropriate tech, not affluence but poverty reduction, not elitism but participation, not assistance but education, not charity but justice. But an even bigger challenge is figuring out how to implement the necessary changes to realise the end vision. I do not want to be just another parasite in the lucrative African industry of producing alluring but useless and expensive development rhetoric.

In summary, working as a VSO volunteer at UoB for the past year has been a challenging assignment, but I am slowly learning to adjust, things are gradually improving, and the second year should be even more interesting and productive. Now is the ideal time for me to take in the view from the middle of my assignment, the top of the watershed as it were, to reflect on the successes and failures of the past, both professional and personal, and make plans for the future.