Subject: Bukoba #22: Endings and Beginnings
Monday, August 26, 2002
The Acting Vice-Chancellor and Registrar are both working hard to see what we can do about the University now that the Higher Education Accreditation Council has refused to renew our letter of interim authority. A leaked letter from the Chairman of the University Council to the Vice-Chairman of the Board of Trustees blamed the University's failure on the lack of professional planning and fundraising and recommended that a professional project manager, fundraiser, secretary and administrative assistant be found, and the current staff (evidently including myself) be laid off until significant funding becomes available. A decision will be made at their next meeting in early September. The University will continue to try and reopen but will probably be further delayed, possibly under a different name and owned by the regional government. It is difficult for me to assess what is going on behind the scenes, but a long-standing rift between the management in Bukoba and Dar appears to have been worsened by HEAC's decision.
So I have been thinking again of finding a different job, though I have not done much yet. The principal of the Bukoba Lutheran Teachers' College said they will not open for another year; there's still way too much planning to do. The Bukoba branch of the Open University of Tanzania only has part-time, temporary correspondence-course paperwork that pays very minimally per task. VSO proposed an IT job with a V-Sat system at a research station in Ifakara, which is a small, isolated town at the edge of the Selous Game reserve near Morogoro, but I don't think it is a good match for my skills and I would prefer to be in a larger town. So despite the meeting with VSO and UoB in early August where I was flooded with compliments and where I expressed my willingness to apply for extending my VSO contract, it looks possible that I will not even get a chance to finish my current contract. I will do my utmost to remain with VSO at least until September 13, as I need to complete at least 75% of my placement to obtain cash in lieu of my return flight to the US. VSO expects a month's notice of leaving to VSO and the employer, but I'm not sure when or what to tell them.
My employment goals have not significantly changed. I would still like to work for an East African university, ideally in teaching and instructional and IT support. I am also trying to find undergraduate studies for my significant other. Most East African universities start their terms in October, so I'll have to hurry. Kampala is our current target, as it is not as big and crime-ridden as Nairobi, is not as hot and dry as Dar es Salaam, has more universities than non-capitals like Mwanza and Arusha, and is less than a day's bus ride from her family and our friends in Bukoba. Even if I do find a suitable employer that pays a reasonable salary, a work permit could take a long time, if it is granted at all, but it's worth a try. I expect to spend this weekend (Thursday through Tuesday) in Kampala job- and school-hunting.
The UoB computer lab hasn't been used since the first week in July, but it may soon get a little use. I am creating a fairly complex database for the Kagera Agricultural and Environmental Management Project and will need to train about 5 people in data entry and 8 in database design and maintenance. I have also created business cards to better advertise the services I can offer, including computer training. No word on the computers in Indianapolis. I tried to install Linux Mandrake 8.2 on my portable; it got further than the installation of 7.1 but failed because it could not recognise the display to run X-windows. Today I reluctantly cancelled my home Internet connection and will just use the Cyber Centre once or twice a week, as it will save me about a third of my monthly salary. I have already blown two-thirds of my vacation money in just a few months on small luxuries.
Tony was in Dar es Salaam locating PC equipment suppliers and obtaining quotations for the Ihungo Secondary School computer lab which received eight million shillings from the British Department for International Development. He was thinking of buying eight more used computers for the students, plus a multimedia computer for the staff, a server computer for the lab, network and sound equipment, an overhead computer projector, and power protection. When it is all installed it will be the best computer training facility in the entire region.
Fortunately I still have not been exiled to Nyamukazi. The student who is living in the house there now has another house, but her husband ran away a year ago, his family is still occupying the house, and she cannot get them out without lengthy and costly legal proceedings. My new neighbour is a giant rotund white-haired robed muslim African albino, living with a large family in a two-bedroom apartment with about the same space as I have all to myself.
The rains have been slightly more frequent, though it still rains less often here than in Indiana. My back pains have returned a bit, due to the dry weather, lack of exercise and too much computing. I've been eating steak, fish, plantains, potatoes, rice, cabbage, papayas and pineapple, and this week I bought a nice watermelon. I enjoyed the annual business and agricultural exhibits at Kaitaba Stadium in late July; it was as if the entire town had been miniaturised and collected into one place.
The University library has a small collection of African literature of which I have read a few books, and the Bukoba Public Library also has some as well as numerous classics from the US and Europe. Chinua Achebe's No Longer At Ease is about a Nigerian man in the 1950s who successfully finishes a degree in England, but he wants to marry another Ibo whose family was forever cursed, and he tragically gives in to the pressures of money and corruption in Lagos. Alex la Guma's A Walk in the Night is about a young "coloured" man in Cape Town in the 1950s who drunkenly kills a dying friendly retired white actor with a wine bottle and joins a gang due to the frustrations of being fired by a white boss and hassled by a white policeman. (In the US I had seen the film Nachstappie which is based on the book.) Amadi Elechi's The Concubine is about a virtuous Nigerian woman whose secret admirer, a sea god, kills any mortal man who tries to marry her. Given my tight financial situation, I think I can most closely relate to the first book.