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August 18, 2006- Mzuzu University, Malawi
· Wanted to share some information about Mzuzu University, etc.
Isaac, our housekeeper, was just sharing with us the demonstration-strike that took place at the university earlier this year.
A group of students were upset about the severe lack of computers on campus. The administration had been giving them lip service for quite some time, but the students had run out of patience. They proceeded to block the front gate to prevent other students and faculty from entering the campus until something was done about the computer situation. After some toleration of this the administration invited the local police to come and to open a way for the students and faculty to come and go. However, the striking students made the mistake of throwing stones at the police and others. This angered the police, who eventually used tear gas on the students two days in a row. Eventually the striking students gave up after not having plans for cooking, etc. and things settled down. The university has purchased more computers and one of the large banks contributed numerous of their outdated computers, which are fine for internet and e-mail.
We had heard about this and it was shared with us that the students actually are given more liberties than some faculty believe is appropriate, but no one wants to get into a position again where police are brought back onto the campus.
It has been shared with us that the government has only provided a fraction of the funds it budgets for the university. Many of the students don’t realize that the faculty is actually going without part of their salaries to keep classes going. This has all been complicated by the fact that the vice-chancellor for finance and some of his staff were arrested earlier this year for stealing funds. One of the key actors experienced a Tom DeLay type of death, so the facts will probably never all come out.
The university faculty has a combination of situations. Apparently most people who achieve an education level satisfactory for university teaching go outside the country for employment, where they can make much more than what is available to them in this country. Thus with this brain-drain much of the faculty has a masters degree level of education. Another problem is that the culture has long accepted multiple partner sexual activities by men, and because educated men are more affluent, they make up a very high portion of the HIV infected population. They often frequent bars/ lounges after work and avail themselves of the prostitutes. Thus, HIV-AIDS is another significant drain on the teaching population. Pat has just completed grading 120+ final exams for a professor is currently very ill with AIDS and in the hospital in South Africa. As a result, many of the faculty are retirees who have returned to Malawi to teach at the university.
· Some information about the facilities at Mzuzu University
The campus is roughly 1 mile x 2 miles in size, with a brick wall and iron bars surrounding the whole campus. Parts of the walls have barbed wire on them and some don’t. The main entrance is made up of 2 large iron-barred gates that are manned 24-hours a day by a couple of guards. They keep the gates closed, and open them for our vehicle as we come and go. There are unarmed security guards spread out throughout the campus, often sitting in chairs in some of the yards of our residential area. The university currently has an enrollment of 1,000+ students and growing rapidly. They are holding entrance exams tomorrow for 2 new majors- biomedical sciences and fisheries. There are several permanent brick buildings that make up administration, faculty offices, the library, dining hall, and classrooms. They have discovered however that prefabricated buildings can go up faster and provide for their growth much more cheaply. So we now have two prefab buildings, and a new one is going up as we speak.
Buildings and homes have no heat or air conditioning. We are fortunate in that our house was previously occupied by an American couple who lived here for three years, so they installed screens in the windows. None of the doors, etc. are airtight so we still swat mosquitoes every evening sitting at the dinner table and in our living room, and retreat to our mosquito-netted bed for some reading before lights out.
The terrain is similar to what one would experience in Mexico. Mzuzu is on a plateau at a couple of thousand feet elevation. We can see beautiful mountains in the distance to the northwest from here. The ground is very sparsely vegetated with scrub type of vegetation. Fortunately there are many trees among the housing area so we do have some shade. We have a patch of rough green grass behind our house and some vegetable and flower gardens around the house, maintained by our gardener who works 4 hours per day, 6 days per week for $42/ month. The rest of the ground is red clay that is hard and makes up the roadway and driveway in our residential area. As the dry season progresses we are told that it turns into a very dusty area.
We are well off in terms of creature comforts. We are very fortunate in that we are very wealthy by Malawi standards. Our house is all brick exterior all concrete interior. The walls and floors are all smooth concrete, reminiscent of my freshman college dorm, which had tiled floors where these are bare concrete. The doors are solid plywood doors, painted solid gray. We have three bedrooms, dining area, living room, and kitchen. The walls are painted beige and white, so pleasant while Spartan. We have a toilet room and a bathroom.
The bathroom has a tub with a worn out hand-held shower wand and a sink. Showering is often an adventure. I am still able to take my morning shower, although some days this may be a challenge and be more of a dribbly rinse than a shower. Very early we learned that if one tries to take a shower and there is no water pressure, i.e. the water drips out of the shower wand- check to be sure no one is using the garden hose to water the plants, wash clothes, etc. Once we overcame that we learned to be sparing with the hot water use since the tank is small. Now even on the best of days, the water pressure is such that I can hold the wand above my head and get a shower type flow. If I turn the wand to face upward the water only dribbles out- so this is a challenge. Since there is no shower curtain, this is probably just as well.
Post-script Aug. 24
In the good old American tradition of ‘if you’re not happy with your environment, change it’, we made some home improvements today.
· A new bed mattress was purchased and installed to replace the worn out one that majorly sagged to the middle (so we both woke up with sore backs each morning);
· Further refinements made to a mosquito net frame I built out of PVC pipe so that the net hangs straight around the sides of the bed instead of draping down in a cone shape that was very constricting (especially since you were afraid to sleep touching the net since a mosquito can bite through it even though it can’t fly through it);
· A new shower wand and wall holder was purchased and installed (after much shopping- first store wanted MK9,500 (US$75.00) and I found it in the hardware market for MW1,500 (US$12.00), the latter is plastic vs. chrome);
· A shower curtain rod was purchased and cut to size along with brackets (now need to find a drill to use to install it on the concrete wall);
· And some straw mats were purchased at the market and placed on the bedroom floor so we don’t have to get out of bed onto the cold concrete floor.
So we are settling in and getting much more comfortable.
We have also started adding some wall hangings, added a reading light in the living room, and hung a mirror that we purchased.
· Wanted to share some information about Mzuzu University, etc.
Isaac, our housekeeper, was just sharing with us the demonstration-strike that took place at the university earlier this year.
A group of students were upset about the severe lack of computers on campus. The administration had been giving them lip service for quite some time, but the students had run out of patience. They proceeded to block the front gate to prevent other students and faculty from entering the campus until something was done about the computer situation. After some toleration of this the administration invited the local police to come and to open a way for the students and faculty to come and go. However, the striking students made the mistake of throwing stones at the police and others. This angered the police, who eventually used tear gas on the students two days in a row. Eventually the striking students gave up after not having plans for cooking, etc. and things settled down. The university has purchased more computers and one of the large banks contributed numerous of their outdated computers, which are fine for internet and e-mail.
We had heard about this and it was shared with us that the students actually are given more liberties than some faculty believe is appropriate, but no one wants to get into a position again where police are brought back onto the campus.
It has been shared with us that the government has only provided a fraction of the funds it budgets for the university. Many of the students don’t realize that the faculty is actually going without part of their salaries to keep classes going. This has all been complicated by the fact that the vice-chancellor for finance and some of his staff were arrested earlier this year for stealing funds. One of the key actors experienced a Tom DeLay type of death, so the facts will probably never all come out.
The university faculty has a combination of situations. Apparently most people who achieve an education level satisfactory for university teaching go outside the country for employment, where they can make much more than what is available to them in this country. Thus with this brain-drain much of the faculty has a masters degree level of education. Another problem is that the culture has long accepted multiple partner sexual activities by men, and because educated men are more affluent, they make up a very high portion of the HIV infected population. They often frequent bars/ lounges after work and avail themselves of the prostitutes. Thus, HIV-AIDS is another significant drain on the teaching population. Pat has just completed grading 120+ final exams for a professor is currently very ill with AIDS and in the hospital in South Africa. As a result, many of the faculty are retirees who have returned to Malawi to teach at the university.
· Some information about the facilities at Mzuzu University
The campus is roughly 1 mile x 2 miles in size, with a brick wall and iron bars surrounding the whole campus. Parts of the walls have barbed wire on them and some don’t. The main entrance is made up of 2 large iron-barred gates that are manned 24-hours a day by a couple of guards. They keep the gates closed, and open them for our vehicle as we come and go. There are unarmed security guards spread out throughout the campus, often sitting in chairs in some of the yards of our residential area. The university currently has an enrollment of 1,000+ students and growing rapidly. They are holding entrance exams tomorrow for 2 new majors- biomedical sciences and fisheries. There are several permanent brick buildings that make up administration, faculty offices, the library, dining hall, and classrooms. They have discovered however that prefabricated buildings can go up faster and provide for their growth much more cheaply. So we now have two prefab buildings, and a new one is going up as we speak.
Buildings and homes have no heat or air conditioning. We are fortunate in that our house was previously occupied by an American couple who lived here for three years, so they installed screens in the windows. None of the doors, etc. are airtight so we still swat mosquitoes every evening sitting at the dinner table and in our living room, and retreat to our mosquito-netted bed for some reading before lights out.
The terrain is similar to what one would experience in Mexico. Mzuzu is on a plateau at a couple of thousand feet elevation. We can see beautiful mountains in the distance to the northwest from here. The ground is very sparsely vegetated with scrub type of vegetation. Fortunately there are many trees among the housing area so we do have some shade. We have a patch of rough green grass behind our house and some vegetable and flower gardens around the house, maintained by our gardener who works 4 hours per day, 6 days per week for $42/ month. The rest of the ground is red clay that is hard and makes up the roadway and driveway in our residential area. As the dry season progresses we are told that it turns into a very dusty area.
We are well off in terms of creature comforts. We are very fortunate in that we are very wealthy by Malawi standards. Our house is all brick exterior all concrete interior. The walls and floors are all smooth concrete, reminiscent of my freshman college dorm, which had tiled floors where these are bare concrete. The doors are solid plywood doors, painted solid gray. We have three bedrooms, dining area, living room, and kitchen. The walls are painted beige and white, so pleasant while Spartan. We have a toilet room and a bathroom.
The bathroom has a tub with a worn out hand-held shower wand and a sink. Showering is often an adventure. I am still able to take my morning shower, although some days this may be a challenge and be more of a dribbly rinse than a shower. Very early we learned that if one tries to take a shower and there is no water pressure, i.e. the water drips out of the shower wand- check to be sure no one is using the garden hose to water the plants, wash clothes, etc. Once we overcame that we learned to be sparing with the hot water use since the tank is small. Now even on the best of days, the water pressure is such that I can hold the wand above my head and get a shower type flow. If I turn the wand to face upward the water only dribbles out- so this is a challenge. Since there is no shower curtain, this is probably just as well.
Post-script Aug. 24
In the good old American tradition of ‘if you’re not happy with your environment, change it’, we made some home improvements today.
· A new bed mattress was purchased and installed to replace the worn out one that majorly sagged to the middle (so we both woke up with sore backs each morning);
· Further refinements made to a mosquito net frame I built out of PVC pipe so that the net hangs straight around the sides of the bed instead of draping down in a cone shape that was very constricting (especially since you were afraid to sleep touching the net since a mosquito can bite through it even though it can’t fly through it);
· A new shower wand and wall holder was purchased and installed (after much shopping- first store wanted MK9,500 (US$75.00) and I found it in the hardware market for MW1,500 (US$12.00), the latter is plastic vs. chrome);
· A shower curtain rod was purchased and cut to size along with brackets (now need to find a drill to use to install it on the concrete wall);
· And some straw mats were purchased at the market and placed on the bedroom floor so we don’t have to get out of bed onto the cold concrete floor.
So we are settling in and getting much more comfortable.
We have also started adding some wall hangings, added a reading light in the living room, and hung a mirror that we purchased.
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