Journal of Marion's trip to Kenya and Tanzania

October 8, 2002

 

I think that this will be a great experience.

 

Caroline Langat of Kenyatta University and AWSE met me at the airport this morning and brought me to the Boulevard Hotel, where everyone was charming as usual.  We met up with Professor Mabel Imbuga,Chair of AWSE at the hotel and went out to ICRAF, to the office of African Women in Science and Engineering (AWSE), where I was able to present my talks to them. They seem pleased with the presentations that IÕll give at Sokoine University tomorrow and everywhere else this month.  They would like me to be include examples to appeal to different kinds of professors, so IÕll have to work hard to be concrete whenever possible. 

 

We visited the Masai market, and then had lunch at the Boulevard and discussed funding ideas.  WeÕll meet again later this month to review ideas.  I suggested that we needed to be bold and think of large projects that use university professors to link to the community for HIV action.. 

 

October 10, 2002

The plane ride to Tanzania yesterday was not bad, and a driver from Sokoine met me at the airport. We toured Dar es Salaam, the downtown area, the beach and the bombed American embassy.  Dar is clean and very pretty.  The university where our students go is pretty far out of town, so I understand how they need to take the dola dolaÕs (the buses) to town. 

 

As we started to Sokoine in Morogoro, the road was fine, and I wondered why the driver, Pius, had hesitated when I asked him how the drive was.  After about 2 hours on excellent roads, past agricultural villages and small farms, we started the area where the road was under construction.  We drove for about 1 hour more through really rough roads that paralleled the new construction. In contrast to Kenya, where the roadwork we saw was being done by hand, here there were trucks and mechanical shovels.  It seemed more modern.

 

When we got to town, Morogoro was definitely the major metropolitan area after Dar.  It is the 5th or 6th largest area in Tanzania, with 100,00 or 150,000 people.  It is a nice city, with beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. There are banana trees everywhere and the soil is bright red.

 

After lunch, I met Aleuther Mwageni and Kalunde Sibuga.  Shortly thereafter, the Dean of Sciences, Lusato Kurijilwa, arrived and our team was complete.  I was to be a participant in a formal training program for new faculty and also for faculty who were going to work on designing a new HIV/AIDS curriculum.

 

After the meeting I returned to the town with the dean, who took me first to his favorite Internet cafˇ.  He spends a half hour each evening at the cafˇ because it is more efficient than his email at the university.  I then went to my room at the HILUX (Highly luxurious?) Hotel.

Today, Thursday, I was one of the 2 leaders in the workshop.  I spent about 3 hours this morning and another one this afternoon discussing new strategies for teaching and learning and for engagement. There were lots of questions.  Everyone was also quite interested in the material on HIV/AIDS that the activities were based on, because they had little familiarity.  There is much interest in why rates in the US are so much lower than in Africa.  I talked about the ability to talk about sex and condoms, as well as the availability of condoms and medical resources.  The problems are of course tremendously complex.  This came out a little in the discussion of the life expectancy graph.  I donÕt think that Africans are aware of how much worse the AIDS epidemic is here than other places.

 

I had an interesting discussion with one lecturer who said that he could talk about body parts and functions in English because that is the language of science, but that it is much harder for him to discuss this in Swahili, the personal language.  It is Swahili that he uses with his children, and thus he canÕt talk about HIV/AIDS comfortably with his children. Also, English is only used by the educated sector of society.  It is the language of high schools and universities.

 

Much of what I talked about was just ways of making science timely, and discussing cases and data as the basis of engaging students.

 

At the end of the day I made the appropriate ceremonial visit to the VC.  He was very nice and supportive of the program.

 

Tonight I visited the internet cafˇ again. This one was off a hallway and you entered tiny booths through wooden beads.  I felt like I entered a dirty movie hall.

 

Friday October 12 at Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, TZ

 

The group met to plan new courses and the mainstreaming of HIV/AIDS into existing courses.  They made great progress and have much work left to do.  The best thing is that everyone seems to work well together.  There is clear support by the Dean of Sciences and by the administration.

 

Perhaps a problem is that some people were recruited and donÕt yet understand how they fit.  The SUA team is enthusiastic, but all of the people are totally committed.  They also are bound by their perspectives of their disciplines.  While interdisciplinary education is challenging in the US, it is incredibly hard in Tanzania and Kenya.  Lecturers are firmly grounded by their disciplinary perspectives and by the rigidity of the courses that they have to offer.

 

Perhaps the most exciting news was when we met the secretary of the faculty, an engineer, who is also advisor to the AIDS Club and on the Technical Aids Committee.  He said that Pathfinder is coming on Tuesday for a site visit to perhaps fund the activities at SUA.  It seems more and more clear that big projects are more fundable that small ones- that despite the bureaucratic problems that there is more oversight.  Anyway, it is evident that SUA is well connected- Mwageni goes to Italy and to Ghana for demography research, Sibuga is off to Uganda, and Lusato Kurijilwa, the Dean, has just spent 2 weeks in Italy at the FAO.  The SUA campus was built in the late 60s with money from USAID, as part of the cold war and the green revolution.  The buildings are nice, but I didnÕt get to do the library check.  The people who I met were intelligent and caring, and were very interested in the AIDS material I used as illustrations to discuss teaching methods.  The librarian approached me to tell me how hard AIDS had hit everyone, and how the library was trying to help with the project.

 

Friday night we went to the UKIMWI party- the AIDS Club program for students and faculty. Ukimwi is HIV/AIDS in kiSwahili.  Before the party we went to the faculty club for drinks and dinner. Then we went to the show, where we found that we were sitting at the front table. There was a local AIDS group who educated by drama- and they were talented and on target.  It was interesting that there were open discussions of safe sex, monogamy and condoms- so it is clear that things are progressing.

 

Anyway, I leave Morogoro with feelings of tremendous warmth.  I really enjoyed my visit and felt that it was worthwhile for them as well.  I think that my presence did speed up the process of course development, and was perhaps even helpful.  They are at the stage that THINK-PAIR-SHARE is innovative, and it does make sense to them. They are all operating in large lectures, so they are limited in what they can do.

 

Saturday I drove back to Dar with Pius.  He was very charming and a skilled driver.  He would also like to send his daughter to university in the US. 

 

The team at SUA was really responding to the commitments of the SENCER project, and have enjoyed their work with that as well.

 

Monday, October 14, 2002

 

This morning at 8:30 the driver picked me up to go to Egerton University.  It was nice that he came early: IÕm somewhat concerned about political rallies in Nairobi at the University with the announcement of the candidate from the Kanu party.  Elections are fast approaching in Kenya, and there is always chance of demonstrations.

 

We drove up through the southern part of the Great Rift Valley.  Some of the views were quite striking.  We also passed by Lake Nakuru where there are distinct pink areas visible from miles away.  The pink areas are the thousands of flamingos gathered there.

 

At Egerton, Esther Keino greeted me warmly. Tomorrow and Wednesday we do full days of training with as many as 30 lecturers and others, and then have the ŅCoffee HourÓ with students on HIV/AIDS.  The Coffee Hour is an informal time for students to meet at the WomenÕs Center to discuss issues of concern.  It should be nice to meet with students.  Thursday is Gender Awareness Day.  I staged my visit to be there for that.

 

IÕm staying at the Agriculture Research Center, a new conference center built on the campus.  I have a Spartan room and a private bathroom.  There is a restaurant in the building, and it seems to be used by department chairs and deputy VCs.  It is a really nice building with a beautiful view of the valley from the 2nd floor.  Soon it will have an operational internet cafe, but not yet.

 

IÕm sitting in a lounge with a running TV.  The first program was about letting children make their own career choices and breaking the continuity with parentÕs interests and desires.  It was produced by Kenya TV. Next came a US low fat cooking program that was pretty wrong, and now there was a cartoon program with Japanese animations and English dialog.  How bizarre.

 

Today was a big day in politics. There are lots of people glued to the TV upstairs in the ARC.

 

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

 

Yesterday, Tuesday, was amazing.  We began the training for the SENCER project at Egerton.  The attendees were drawn from a range of departments, but most of the scientists were biologists who were aware of the impact of HIV/AIDS.  We started with the "write down the impact" activity, and everyone had been impacted by HIV/AIDS in significant ways.  Perhaps most striking was that one department chair of had just died of HIV/AIDS, and his wife was starting to look sickly to others.  People had had varying amounts of contact with people with HIV, from just knowing about to having nursed family members.  Several people had lost siblings and were paying school fees of their children.

 

The Deputy VC for Academic Affairs came and opened the workshop formally.  He is a former zoologist, too.  His statement was strong and compelling.  He talked about how some lecturers had wanted to make it a requirement that all Egerton graduates know how to milk a cow, but how he had believed that this would not prepare them for society.  He did feel that there were some competencies that were important- communication skills, computer literacy, environmental awareness and knowing about HIV/AIDS.  He talked bluntly and broke the silence barrier early on.  It is very important to have strong administrative support.

 

After the workshop, we went to the Coffee Hour at the Gender Awareness Center.  It was brilliant.  About 50 students, males and females, gathered at 5 for tea and sandwiches and cookies.  They then counted off in to 4 groups to discuss

What students and lecturers can do to fight HIV/AIDS?

Notes from Coffee hour and from SENCER workshop   

1.What do you know about HIV/AIDS and how did you learn it

2. What have you individually done about HIV/AIDS

3. Why are university students so vulnerable to HIV/AIDS?

4. What can the university do to combat HIV/AIDS?

5. What can lecturers do to combat HIV/AIDS? 

  These questions were chosen by students.  The discussions were frank and open.  Students were able to talk pretty openly about important topics.  Terms I learned were "roaching" which means going from partner to partner.  After generating ideas in small groups, they shared their lists with the group.  At the end, 2 literature/drama students did skits about HIV/AIDS vulnerability.  One sksit was in Swahili but the acting seemed brilliant and the delivery flawless.  The student used a tie-dyed shawl to change roles- I think this message was that poverty makes people vulnerable.  The second student did a rap style poem in English that dwelt on the theme "we all are positive until we have tested negative."  He talked about hypocrisy and righteousness and was really great. 

 

Both during the workshop and also at the coffee hour, students and professors talked about STDs- sexually transmitted degrees.  The problem of lecturers having girlfriends is very real, and these girls then get good grades.  The other side of it is that the male friends of the young women get poor grades because of their association.  This problem is getting better, but it had been a real scandal on the Laikipia campus before Dr. Chiuri became dean.  That's why they have a female dean. 

 

Now it is the end of 2 days of training. We worked up a schedule that combined lecture/ activities/ and group work well.  One of the biologists commented that he really appreciated that opportunity to develop activities, because it showed him how to do these things. I presented that need to "think outside the box" and then we began to practice strategies.  The discussion about the changing life expectancies worked particularly well.  I've also now added another think/pair / share activity and a predict/ observe/explain.  The first is to analyze the reasons for data from Kisumu that show that girls become infected at much younger ages and at much higher rates than boys.  (They really appreciated data from Kisumu, which is only a couple of hours away.)  This works as a think pair share.  For the Predict activity, we discussed the impact of the new Kenyan law that makes it illegal to perform female circumcision.  Predict how the law will work.  Observe how it is really working.  Explain the discrepancies you've observed.

 

The first day the lecturers spent time developing activities to use in their courses.  They were relying too much on interviewing real patients or People with AIDS.  I tried to have them develop role-plays to simulate real patients.

 

On the second day I reviewed some of the activities from before and we spent some time discussing sensitive topics and sharing expertise.  After lunch I introduced interdisciplinary course development and they brainstormed topics for the course.  They concluded with a plan for introducing the course to the appropriate committees.

 

There were 4 students who participated in the planning session. They were really delightful and thoughtful young people.  The three girls were Zippy, an engineering student, Jacky and Joyce, Biochemistry students, and Simiyu, a literaure and drama student.  They were very enthusiastic about the model and the educational approach, and the lecturers responded well to their acceptance of these ideas. 

 

The weather in Nakuru/ Ngoro/ Egerton is quite interesting.  Nakuru sits on the Great Rift Valley.  The weather at night is very cool, and people wear sweaters or fleece or coats.  The first night I happily used 2 blankets.  Yesterday there was an incredible rain storm that seemed to appear out of nowhere.  Today it rained, too, but it cleared very quickly.  There is very little humidity and temperatures are probably in the 70s.

 

There is a striking lack of awareness here, like in Morogoro, that AIDS is much worse in Africa than in other countries. But given the newspapers here, not surprising.

This page was prepared by Marion Fass at Beloit College, Beloit, WI USA and last updated on December 13, 2002. Contact fassm@beloit.edu.

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