.jpg)
Mzuni on Sep 5, 2006
The campus is now full of students and activities again. Pat starts teaching her class of 70 at 7:45 a.m. tomorrow morning. This morning she is meeting with one of her fellow faculty members who is a young female that is both the Dean of Women and on faculty. Pat has been asked to take over the responsibility of working with her (Ambumuliere) to get a paper, which she has been working on, published.
I spent part of yesterday buying electrical materials to build a very long extension wire for Pat’s overhead projector. She was disturbed by the fact that we had worked hard to get the overhead projector repaired, purchased transparencies and burned them on the photocopier, only to learn that the major lecture hall that she is to teach in has no (zero) electrical outlets. So I purchased the materials to tie into the classroom next door and run a wire out the window of one and into the window of the lecture hall. Pat asked a fellow instructor (Joseph, who is a real go-getter) if he knew where I could get a drill to attach the outlet to the wall. Well he dragged Pat over to the maintenance shop and they tracked down a junior electrician, who came to see what I was doing. I suggested to him that going through the wall could be done as a permanent fix, but showed him what I was doing as a temporary. He and Joseph seemed embarrassed that this “mazungu” (“white person”, or in some contexts like when we enter some market areas and the word is being spread around “ahh, rich white person”) had to be doing this work, so he promised to have the permanent job done by today using the materials that I had purchased. Amazing, for 5 years instructors have complained about no power in the lecture hall and overnight we get it corrected. Score one for bwana.
Pat has gotten to know numerous faculty members through the workshop they were in together last week. It is nicer in that a few she has grown friendly and can joke around with. Pat has also volunteered to be a key participant in building a distance-learning module for school teachers, so she will be leaving her mark.
The campus is now full of students and activities again. Pat starts teaching her class of 70 at 7:45 a.m. tomorrow morning. This morning she is meeting with one of her fellow faculty members who is a young female that is both the Dean of Women and on faculty. Pat has been asked to take over the responsibility of working with her (Ambumuliere) to get a paper, which she has been working on, published.
I spent part of yesterday buying electrical materials to build a very long extension wire for Pat’s overhead projector. She was disturbed by the fact that we had worked hard to get the overhead projector repaired, purchased transparencies and burned them on the photocopier, only to learn that the major lecture hall that she is to teach in has no (zero) electrical outlets. So I purchased the materials to tie into the classroom next door and run a wire out the window of one and into the window of the lecture hall. Pat asked a fellow instructor (Joseph, who is a real go-getter) if he knew where I could get a drill to attach the outlet to the wall. Well he dragged Pat over to the maintenance shop and they tracked down a junior electrician, who came to see what I was doing. I suggested to him that going through the wall could be done as a permanent fix, but showed him what I was doing as a temporary. He and Joseph seemed embarrassed that this “mazungu” (“white person”, or in some contexts like when we enter some market areas and the word is being spread around “ahh, rich white person”) had to be doing this work, so he promised to have the permanent job done by today using the materials that I had purchased. Amazing, for 5 years instructors have complained about no power in the lecture hall and overnight we get it corrected. Score one for bwana.
Pat has gotten to know numerous faculty members through the workshop they were in together last week. It is nicer in that a few she has grown friendly and can joke around with. Pat has also volunteered to be a key participant in building a distance-learning module for school teachers, so she will be leaving her mark.
No comments:
Post a Comment