Subject: Bukoba #20: Journey of Dreams
Sunday, June 23, 2002
The University of Bukoba hopes to open its third academic year around October in a new campus on Kashozi Road about 2 km from the centre of Bukoba. The future of the University is still very uncertain, since its survival depends both on the financial support of the district and regional governments and on the judgments of the Higher Education Accreditation Council, who could in theory close down the University any day now, and visited Friday although we had promised to have certain things ready for their inspection by mid-July. The University is still deeply in debt and has trouble paying salaries on time, but the district councils and the regional office have committed themselves to supporting the University. As long as the University survives, I will probably remain working here to finish my VSO contract. If the University classes open as expected, I will probably even apply for an extension of my contract. I feel it would be necessary to securely establish an information technology department and I would like to gain more experience of being a university information technology lecturer, which is one of the main reasons I accepted this placement.
If the University closes, I would very much like to remain in Bukoba if possible, even if I had to apply for a new placement and/or return to the US for a month or two. I would be qualified and willing to teach computing, physics and/or mathematics. However, it seems there are few secondary or higher educational institutions in the area able to afford to pay even a volunteer salary and provide adequate housing. I have been exploring the possibility of a position with the newly founded Bukoba Lutheran Teachers' College, which is located near Nyakato Secondary School about 15 km from town. The initial response from the principal, formerly my colleague as the University of Bukoba Registrar, is favourable, and classes may begin as early as the end of July. The College is one of many educational institutions in the region financially supported by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania so hopefully its future will be stable, though I suspect it will have many of the same problems as the University in getting started. I would have to ask the principal if the College could provide full salary and accommodation in town or not. Also, I would have to commute from Bukoba daily like the other teachers because there is no accommodation on site.
I have been unable to find a group of people both interested in computer basics classes and able to fit the training in their work schedules, and our computer lab only had a few old computers anyway. So lately my main work has been creating information technology syllabi for the University, and I have completed at least rough outlines of 12 of the 14 courses I proposed. I have concentrated my efforts on the details of the more basic classes, partly because advanced computing is less relevant here in Bukoba, and partly because my knowledge of computer science has become rusty and outdated since I studied it eight years ago, but with some newer computers and books and another teacher or two we could theoretically offer a diploma in computing.
Two teachers named Iain and Sarah and nine students from Balerno High School in Edinburgh, Scotland arrived in Bukoba Tuesday, and 30 donated computers arrived from Computers for Africa Thursday. We have started visiting past and potential recipients of the computers, and we expect to start distribution next week. The University will receive about eight upgraded computers to replace or supplement the older or non-functioning computers we have. Places we have visited so far include Hekima, Nyakato, Rugambwa, Ihungo and Bukoba secondary schools, Jamia primary school, the public library, the teachers' union, the Red Cross, and the "Open" University (which was closed). Sarah taught for a year in eastern Congo, can speak Swahili and had been in Kampala and Bukoba in 2000, so there was no need for me to go to Kampala when they arrived this time. Iain taught physics four years in Botswana, and reminds me a lot of Mark, the Scottish VSO I worked with in Namibia. The students seem mature and precocious, particularly a 20-year-old university student and computer whiz named George who is managing all the computer-related details without needing my help, but easy-going and fun-loving.
The University is currently paying a high rent (about 100,000/= per month) for me to stay in my house in the centre of Bukoba town. Monday we visited a house donated to the University, formerly used by two other lecturers, Ann and Nicola, and temporarily inhabited by a student named Joyce and her family. I will probably move there in a few weeks as it will save the University a considerable amount of money. It is in Nyamukazi village near the shore of Lake Victoria, a sandy 2 km walk from town or the University, and I would probably buy a bicycle for easier transport of myself, books, food, etc. The house is also not as nice as my current house, e.g. it has more frequent water outages than in town, is less secure for my expensive personal computer equipment, is not as clean, and needs to be repainted and other renovations. Also I am not sure how well I will be able to cope with the added challenges to my troubled health, but I will do my best.
Early in June I had what appears to have been a mild case of malaria or similar fever (up to 39.5 oC or 103 oF). There were only two days when I felt incapable of work, and I was back in the office the third day. The Chinese medicine arsumax appeared to have helped, and had no noticeable side effects. I'm not sure why I contracted malaria now, for the first time, after four years in Africa, consistently taking Larium weekly, but suspect my immunity was down at the end of the week and I was fatigued. Otherwise my health has been good, and I have been walking, running, and occasionally playing a little tennis. The weather has been hot, dry and dusty; it hasn't rained in ages. VSO has given me my holiday money but I don't have a travelling companion at the moment so will maybe wait until December.
I have had some new cultural experiences. I have visited a few more places around Bukoba, including the Bunena rock beach and mission church, Karobela beach down the hill from the Busimbe mission, some prehistoric cave paintings at Bwanjai (unfortunately very graffitied now), my domestic assistant's house in Kashai, and a co-worker's house in Buyekera. I have taken many more digital photographs but I am unable to put them or anything else on my web site since for no good reason my free website host Tripod has decreased my quota. I have learned to prepare a number of different foods from start to finish, including matoke (a green plantain steamed with beef, green tomatoes and brown beans) and gonja (another variety of plantain peeled and baked), mihogo (cassava), mahindi (maize roasted on the cob), chipsi (french fries), pilau (spicy rice fried in oil with beef), kuku (chicken), samaki (fish), senene (grasshoppers), passion fruit juice, and keki (chocolate cake, from a VSO cookbook recipe). In retrospect I feel silly to have eaten tuna and pasta for supper almost every day for about six months merely because it was not labour-intensive (i.e. I was lazy). I have come a long way from being a virtual vegetarian, though seeing a docile chicken lose its life for the sake of my dinner was somewhat disturbing.
Two books I have been reading have revived in me a hunger for literature and history and seem very relevant to interpreting my own experiences here. The first, J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, partly about a white university professor in Cape Town who is sacked for having an affair with a much younger student, partly about his fears of his daughter being controlled by a black man in a rural backwater, was initially unsettling but ultimately therapeutic. An important theme for me was that we should not feel guilty for our natural instincts and feelings, such as having physical desires or caring about someone that society deems culturally incompatible.
The second book, Livingston's Tribe, by Stephen Taylor, 1999, about a white South African who returns to travel in eastern and southern Africa in 1997 to look for whites who have stayed after independence. It is interesting to see the variety of ways that they have adapted, and the degree to which they have integrated with black Africans. I find that I have adapted somewhat, but in many ways I am still very much an American and a long way from becoming an African. Perhaps I will always have one foot in each continent (and maybe a hand in Europe?). The book is more entertainment than scholarly history but does have some helpful information, including a chapter about Bukoba with which I can relate. It mentions an 80-year-old man named George whom I have met at the Lake Hotel a couple times, including this Friday. George was born in Bukoba and is one of the last survivors of Bukoba's colonial history. Also at my table Friday was a young Belgian with a PhD in history working with vanilla and mushroom cultivation, a Swedish technician whose beautiful photography of Tanzanian wildlife I saw in the national museum in December, and a retired engineer who was one of the first Peace Corps volunteers, working in Bukoba with George in the early 60s even before Tanzanian independence and being certified in Swahili by Professor Katoke in the mid-sixties.