Subject: Bukoba #21: Still Holding Our Breaths
Monday, July 22, 2002
The University situation has changed little in a month. The deputy vice-chancellor has been ill in Karagwe since the beginning of the month. The registrar has returned from Dar es Salaam and held an uneventful staff meeting last Monday. We are still hoping to achieve the next stage of accreditation and reopen in October. If not, my peaceful and comfortable life in Bukoba may be suddenly disrupted.
Computers for Africa decided to focus their visits on the Bukoba area, since they were short of time and money. I received requests from 26 organisations for a total of over 250 computers, but they only brought 30 computers and gave to 11 organisations. They also focused on secondary schools, since the government had reneged on its promise to supply secondary schools with computers. Ihungo received eight computers, Hekima four, Rugambwa four, and Bukoba and Nyakato one each.
Computers for Africa gave the University six computers, one of which is a 500 MHz server running Linux. The other five are 100 MHz Pentiums and 486s with small hard disks which are sufficient for teaching basic computer applications but not for other computer courses I had hoped to teach in October. I am investigating other sources of computers, including a company in Indianapolis with about 300 relatively new computers to give away if we can pay for shipping. Computers for Africa also left me with many computer components and tools, which has made it easier for me to maintain and troubleshoot the computers we have. I have inventoried and organised our existing equipment so that things are easier to access. We have a network hub, cards, cables and tools for networking all the computers when we move to the new facilities.
I have not heard further about working for the teachers' college, though given that they only received two computers, I will be unable to teach computing there. I taught only one week-long computer basics class to only four students. I added a bit of content to my 14 course syllabi. Perhaps my main occupation lately is the unofficial University of Bukoba website (http://uobtz.tripod.com/).
I still have not moved to Nyamukazi. The student and her family who are living in the house there now will move out at the end of the week, and then hopefully the place will be painted and renovated before I move in. A family has moved into the other half of my current house, and I am a bit worried by the noise and security issues.
My health has generally been good, though I have had little exercise lately. The rains have been rare and short, and the weather hot, dry and dusty though quite tolerable.
Last weekend I visited a few VSO volunteers outside of Bukoba. Saturday I went to Muleba to visit Huw and Clare. I didn't make it to their school but chatted about their computer room at their house, which has a nice view of the hills. The next day I went to Rubya to visit Mat and Bas at Humura Secondary School. They have done a lot to renovate buildings and facilities and teach computer basics and have an equally nice view. I also saw Ninfa and Machda who live and work at the hospital. The half-hour trip from Rubya back to Muleba was in the back of a Biharamulo government ambulance together with half a dozen other people and four 50-kg bunches of matoke (large green cooking bananas). The trip from Muleba to Bukoba was rough, over three hours bouncing around in the back of a minivan in the dark at high speed on partly improved roads, madly stuffed with people. (At one point I counted 23 of us inside and four on the roof!)
The book I have been reading lately is Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond, about the preconditions which caused the people in some continents (particularly Eurasia) to develop a headstart in military and industrial technologies faster than those in others between 11,000 BC and 3,000 BC. The author wishes to dispel racist notions that some peoples are inherently superior in intelligence, attributing differences instead to factors such as continent size, continent axis orientation, neighbouring continents, and natural barriers to travel within and between continents; availability of water, minerals, cultivatable plants and domesticable animals; and the resulting potential to support a large, centralised population. It is a fascinating scientific perspective of early human history. My only problem with the book is that by being apolitical it is conservative. By merely stating how the world came to be the way it is, it does not advocate that it should be any different, that the unequal distribution of world power and resources is unjust and should be changed.