Subject: Bukoba #25: No News
Sunday, December 1, 2002
The computer networking workshop at Ihungo Secondary School yesterday was reasonably successful. We invited about 30 organisations, and about 30 people attended, including representatives of government, education and development. The event was facilitated by Tony, Laurence, Hasnain and me. It was delayed an entire month because the MV Victoria is being renovated and the equipment was stuck in Mwanza. It took a lot of work, many days to prepare the materials and lab, and still we found ourselves woefully unprepared, improvising as we went. At times it was chaotic and numerous technical glitches kept participants waiting, and some parts were too rushed and technical, but overall people seemed to enjoy the workshop. Tony was tireless in organising the lab, food, workshop materials, etc. despite having removed the cast from his damaged foot with a scissors just a couple days before, and despite late nights at the Lake Hotel and Bukoba Club.
I have taught two weeks of computer basics to seven members of the Kagera Co-operative Union, including the general manager, in UoB's small, dirty computer lab, every day from 3-6 pm. I also have been tutoring the Dutch regional co-ordinator's secretary at his office nearby for an hour a day. I completed networking the seven PCs in the lab, though it was more of a personal learning experience than a practical necessity.
I have done little with the KAEMP database project. The specifications have changed to include several added forms and several changes to existing ones, so as long as they are not afraid to pay UoB a lot of money I could have a lot of work. The most difficult part will be to train someone to modify the structure.
The University of Bukoba Project has done little, other than make a list of possible training courses in subjects other than computing.
Still no job leads in Kampala. I received a two-month old letter from Makerere Institute of Computer Science indicating the basic qualification is a Ph.D. I haven't followed up with any of the other universities. I might try job-hunting in Kampala again in early January but suspect the holidays are a bad time for it.
For the holidays we won't have as much time as I had originally hoped. I will be going to the VSO Leavers' Forum in Bagamoyo north of Dar es Salaam; my flights are booked to/from Dar on the 9th and 14th. Joanitha studies until the 19th and has to be back on the 3rd. Kampala International University is keeping her very busy with homework and tests.
The end of October and almost the entire month of November were unusually rainy, like April, but finally the last few days have been sunny and hot again. I am keeping relatively healthy, though I need exercise. Despite work by three different plumbers, my toilet intake pipe still leaks, so I have shut off the faucet and fill the tank manually with a bucket.
The day after Divali was the Indian (Gujarati?) new year; a group of us went to Mistry's house, had Indian snacks, and learned a little about Hinduism and London. I missed both the French and American ambassadors when they came to town.
I have been reading a few interesting books. Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character is an autobiographical collection of amusing anecdotes by a brilliant, eccentric, playful Nobel-winning American physicist that might have led me to complete my Ph.D. in physics if I had read it when it was published in the '80s. Yashar Kemal's The Birds Have Also Gone is about boys in Istanbul who catch birds and ask people for money to release them. It decries the loss of religion and feeling in the modernised city. M. G. Vassanji's The Book of Secrets is about the interconnected lives of several people in Tanzania and Kenya from World War I to 1988, including a British colonial administrator who may have fathered a prince-like businessman, an Indian shopkeeper who pines for his deceased wife, and a Christian Goanese schoolteacher who falls for one of his Indian students.