Internet (and Chanco) woes continued…

***NOTE*** I know I've promised pix of the latest trip to Liwonde Nat. park, but due to continued lack of internet, I'm unable to upload them at this time. Hopefully by Sunday, they should be there for all to view, along with a few taken since that trip 2 weeks ago ;-)***

AAAARRRGGGHHH! I know it’s been over a week since my last posting! I’m actually writing this one from home on a Microsoft Word document on Wed. evening, hoping that I’ll have a better chance of getting a posting up by week’s end if I just write it ahead of time, since when I do get internet (either at Domasi or at Chanco), it seems to be limited—on again, off again, so to speak. My friend Jeff who is an ex-colleague from my days teaching at Samsung Human Resources Center in South Korea a couple of years ago recently joked during an online chat that the internet here might consist of hollowed out coconuts attached to strings. I know, this is not a very politically-correct joke, but I’m thinking of trying that method soon. Jeff, I’m not sure whether you’re still reading this blog, but take this as a warning that you’ll be the first one I call when I get that system up ‘n runnin’—Take heed, my friend…I’ve got a neighbor from Japan who’s a Computer Engineer… I wonder what he knows about coconuts? Maybe he’s got some ideas. I’ll keep ya posted…

So, since my last posting, I do have a couple of updates, and then I’ll give a few details of our trip to Liwonde National Park a couple of weekends ago (as promised over a week ago). For that one, you’ll find that the pictures say much more than my rambling notes on this page, but I’ll try to do it all justice, as always…

I’m sure many of the loyal, faithful, ever-devoted Malawi ‘n Me blog readers are dying to hear the latest news of the rumored lecturer’s strike at Chanco. Well, unfortunately, it is no longer a rumor. It is real. They went on strike officially last week when the University Council (i.e. ‘the government’ which funds and essentially ‘runs’ the college to an extent) would not negotiate the 200 % pay hike. Nevertheless, the council was forced to unfreeze (‘thaw-out??’) the frozen bank accts. due to a court injunction filed by the union lawyers. According to the local papers, that release of accounts took place on Monday afternoon of last week. So, upon phoning my dept. head at Chanco late last week, I was told officially that the strike is on. I’ve been on campus twice this week (the 1st time was Monday, a public holiday), and the 2nd time was yesterday, trying to get online—but that time I was interrupted by a storm-induced power outage. Both times, the place was like a ghost-town, though on Monday it sounded like the first-years were having some sort of a party, complete with a DJ blaring out hip-hop and Malawian pop music. Thus, it appears they’re not too shaken up by the never-ending extended holiday.

So, what happens now? It depends on who you talk to. I saw two lecturers from Chanco yesterday, both off-campus, and from different depts. (not my own). The first one I saw outside the bank in the afternoon. She told me, “I think it will be resolved soon. But, even if it is, it’s likely to be at least 3 weeks before classes will begin, since several bodies have to meet to discuss the grade results.” This is another aspect of the Malawi educational system I’m still trying to wrap my little American brain around. There are several meetings that happen after grades are assessed. The first one is at the department level. The next one is at the ‘faculty’ level, meaning Humanities faculty, Science faculty, etc. After that, there is some sort of inter-disciplinary meeting (not sure who goes to that one), and then there’s some sort of administrative meeting, and then a Faculty Senate meeting.

Now, all those Malawians out there, please take what I’m about to say with a ‘grain of salt’ because I come from a very different system. However, I must say I do not understand the point of all these meetings. Even the departmental one we had in Jan. seemed to me unnecessary, as it implies a need to ‘double-check’ grades to make sure they are ‘consistent and fair.’ However, I come from a place where grading/assessment is up to the discretion of the professor/lecturer who should be scholarly and professional enough to assess his/her own grades based on his/her course criteria and expectations. For me, it was a bit of a shock, and somewhat demeaning to have others look at my grades and make comments. We also did that with the exams, with everyone checking each other’s exams to make sure they were o.k., despite the fact that we did not teach the same courses (a process I start again tomorrow at Domasi.) Again, I’m not sure exactly why, except that there seems to be a perceived need to have some checks and balances on how lecturers assess their students. However, for me, the question still begs: If my colleagues have some issue with a grade or two on my roster, should I then change it simply because they say so? Is this ethical? What happens if the student finds out such a change was made, after he/she was assessed for the course, based on my criteria of what constitutes the score? It all seems very odd to me, and I just wanted to point that out. Again, take it with a grain. I’m an outsider, and still learning. Plus, I just bloody hate meetings, of any kind. So, any excuse to NOT have a meeting is heaven in my book, and any excuse to HAVE a meeting, and then another one, and another one, and another one… that’s just bloody hell. Big grain, big grain… For me, deep breaths, happy place, puppies ‘n kitties…

So, I guess they need to have this series of meetings about the grades, and then give some time for the upper-classmen (2nd, 3rd, and 4th years) to return to campus. Altogether, it takes a good 3 weeks to a month. We’re now at the end of the 1st week of March. This means at earliest, the campus will open again, teaching and all, during the final week of March, or, more likely, the first week of April. I’m not sure whether they celebrate April Fool’s day here, but I’ll keep my guard up if the announced start date is April 1. BTW, I’m set to leave the country on June 1, so I likely won’t be able to finish out the term regardless of what happens. BTW, the 2nd lecturer I ran into yesterday evening said she thought the term will never start. This week went by and no official word yet. I’ll keep you posted.

In other news, Deliwe and I took a nice hike up Zomba Mtn. on Saturday, and I finally got to see the famous “Queen’s View” and “Emperor’s View” of the Zomba Plateau. I’ll save my descriptions of that trip for the next posting, as well as the pix. Let’s just say it was a really nice day, and we had a great time, lots of exercise, topped off by fabulous food and too much coffee (on my part). I forgot they often serve a WHOLE pot of coffee here, and since I hardly drink the stuff anymore (only after-dinner treat at fancy restaurants), I literally could not sleep Saturday night. I was wide awake at 4 a.m., and really hungry for some reason, so Penga and I had some quality time in the kitchen at her usual wake-up time. Of course, I heard a few passers-by at some point as well… ya, I was truly on Malawi-time that morning. The freaky ‘caffeine high’ after-effects actually lasted most of the day, as my friend David can attest.

On Sunday, I went to visit my friend David and his family (wife Zion and little daughter) in Blantyre. They of course fed me nicely, and we watched their wedding video and also looked at the wedding pictures. Since I haven’t yet had the opportunity to attend a wedding here, it was good to see how it all works. I did find out that if I do attend a wedding here, I need to bring a lot of small bills, as there is a custom of dancing while throwing money onto a platter for the couple. I think they played about 20 songs, and people kept coming up and throwing more money onto the platter! It was like Heaven! --Well, my materialistic idea of Heaven if you needed money there… I like this custom. I think I’d better get married soon and try it for myself. I wonder if people back home would go for that. Gotta get some richer friends, and then get married. Could take awhile-- I’ll keep you posted…

So, other than that, not too much to tell. I am having a major issue with my electric bill (which I’ve only paid part of), but I’ll save that story for another time. It’s a long one. Basically boils down to the fact that I inherited someone else’s bill (the woman who moved out of here a year ago—April 2007) since she never had a final meter reading taken and failed to close out her bill. Then, another woman lived there for 3 months, and never received a bill, though it appears they read her meter. In any case, after much investigation, visiting 2 offices in Zomba several times and one in Blantyre, speaking with a total of 5 different people at different times on the matter, as well as waiting for over a month for an itemized statement, I was finally told this was the reason that my bill was so high. Yesterday, I finally paid for the part I think I really owe. Not sure if they’ll cut me off anyway. May need to develop the coconut string thing very soon. I’ll keep you posted…

And finally, the news you’ve been waiting for! Our trip to Liwonde National Park 2 weekends ago! Well, as you know, we’ve been there before. I chronicled our journey to the park back in October ’07 in great detail, so this one will be a bit less lengthy (well, just a bit—you know me). The major difference with this trip is that we stayed inside the park, in a campsite called Chinguni Hills. I was really looking forward to this, as I haven’t ‘camped out’ in quite a while, and it’s one of my favorite things to do. We only did a one-night overnight (Sat.-Sun.) since Deliwe is in school on Friday afternoons. In the end, that was just fine, as one night was more than enough, at least for the weekend we had chosen, probably the busiest weekend the place has ever seen. More on that in a moment.

I felt a little jinxed, actually, because I’d chosen that particular weekend for our trip on purpose, as I knew the following weekend was a holiday weekend, so might be a bit busy for traveling. With this in mind, and my need to really ‘get away,’ I thought I’d laid out a great plan. Well, you know what they say about ‘the best laid plans of mice and men…” Ya. The place was packed. Not only packed, but packed with kids. No, not little rugrat kinda kids… the worst kind. Teenagers. But not just teenagers. Rich, spoiled brat British teenagers who thought they owned the bloody world, much less bloody Malawi, and the little Bloody Liwonde National Park… (Incidentally, have you noticed my fondness for the term ‘bloody’? the best curseword ever made, and ya, it’s British… I don’t hate all British things… love most of them, except for those bloody British blue-blood boring little brats)

Oh, but I could go on and on… and I have! Those kids took over the entire campsite… all the good ‘hangin out’ chairs with the great views of the river, the porch area outside the lodge, everything. We couldn’t escape them. It got even worse after dark, when they stayed up drinking ALL NIGHT, continued their loud ridiculous conversations until bloody 2 a.m. (if my calculations are correct), capped off by a bloody hysterical girl freaking out over a big spider or something (yes, I can relate, but luckily I was at home at the time...) Incidentally, I did find out later from one of the less annoying boys in the group (the boys in general were less annoying, actually) that all of them are ‘volunteers’ who just finished their secondary school (hence yes, about 17 years old) and are teaching in primary schools around Malawi for 3 months and then traveling around southern Africa for a month. I’m not sure how this could possibly work, as these kids admitted having no background or teacher-training. Teaching standards continue to be an issue in the Malawi public education system, which is something we are working on in our own education programs at Domasi College, which I’m proud to say are lauded as the best in the country. This type of ‘volunteer group’ is one symptom of the larger disease here; though I can’t be certain whether these kids are adding to the problem, my instinct tells me quite frankly, YES, bloody likely.

So, enough about them. That was the bad news. But, there was some good news, too. On Saturday evening, Deliwe and I decided to do our own ‘sunset drive’ around the park to see some wildlife. We had checked into doing a ‘sunset safari’ in one of the park jeeps, but that was quite expensive, and we figured the car would be just fine. However, we did run into a few rough patches on the road (filled with water, since we’re still in the rainy season), but the trusty Toyota made it through some nasty stuff as usual, despite my newly-acquired tendency to increasingly try my luck on insanely pot-holed, boulder-ridden Malawi dirt roads. In the end, we only spotted a few waterbuck, bushbuck, and impala, but found out later we’d passed up a group of elephants since we couldn’t see over the tall grass. Oh, so THAT’S why people pay 20 bucks a head to ride in the jeep. Hmmm….

After we returned from our little Toyota safari, car and bodies intact against all odds (though, ironically, I did bump into a stone wall while parking and knocked the back right hubcap off—no real damage done), we discovered that almost all of our teenage friends had gone on that sunset safari (we passed them on the road, actually, and I turned to Deliwe and said… we gotta hurry back before the bar closes and grab those chairs with the view!). Sure enough, the chairs were there, empty, with a bunch of the stuff people left behind (empty bottles, blankets, binoculars—gifts, perhaps?). Perhaps they were staking their claim, but we invaded anyway. The only bad news was that the bar seemed to be closed. AARGH! We’d seen the barman walking along the road. Hopefully, he was coming back. After waiting a few mins., we saw him at the campsite, working up an open fire for the braii dinner to come later. AH! Our luck seemed to be changing after all. Soon we had cold beers in our hands, and were enjoying the sunset in peace and quiet.

After a few minutes enjoying our beers and the sunset, a young, friendly Scottish couple came by, whom I remembered seeing during lunch (which was traumatic, filled with the snotty kids pushing their way around… long story, I’ll leave it at that). In any case, I remembered that these two were also very quiet, and seemingly as disturbed by the loud horde of whiney teenage girls trying to impress their male counterparts, or each other, or something… In any case, they were extremely friendly, interesting, and just the kind of people I was hoping to run into during this stay. Their names were Kirsty and Graem. She’s a doctor, and he works for the British foreign service as a consultant, currently working on policy in Iraq. Very interesting stuff, but of course he couldn’t share too much with a loud, opinionated American like me. Still, we had a great conversation which continued to dinner, and on into a little canoe safari the next day. In addition, while in line for the braii dinner later that evening, I managed to chat with another couple from the Netherlands, also not with the British horde (and equally unamused by their presence), who also turned out to be very interesting and friendly, and whom we talked with more the next day at breakfast and during the canoe safari as well. As it turned out, the Dutch group included 2 medical students working at a private hospital called St. Luke’s in Malosa, just 10 minutes’ drive north of Domasi. Unfortunately, that’s the place where Deliwe’s aunt passed away last November, so I know it well. I’ve been there a couple of times since, but luckily under better circumstances. In any case, that was quite the coincidence. One of the guys was leaving soon, and his girlfriend was traveling around Malawi with him before he leaves the country, but the other one will be here for another 6 weeks, so hopefully we can get together again soon. I actually gave them a ride back to Malosa after the canoe safari the following day.

So, the next morning, we got up early (despite loud teenagers all night), had breakfast, and headed out to our canoe safari. The pix at left really say it all. It was about 2 hours long, but we only saw a few hippos in the first few minutes after emerging from the tall grass. We had to remain calm, but Graem admitted to me later that he was very nervous about the hippos. I was, too, as they seemed rather close to the canoe, and I now know that they are the most dangerous animal in the park, and possibly in Africa. Of course, we’d just finished listening to the guide telling us about how people had been attacked by hippos in the park, in a canoe. When I asked whether the people were on one of these canoe safaris, the guide was silent. ‘Nuff said. I remember Graem saying something like, “But aren’t they herbivores?” to which the guide said, “Yes, but they can still kill.” (if I remember his words correctly). Yikes. I was actually happy that we didn’t see anymore after that.

Of course, the other main attraction during the canoe safaris is crocodiles. Luckily, we didn’t see any of them. Why are people going out in canoes to see animals that have been known to attack people in canoes? It’s a good question. Ya, when I was out there in the middle of the water, I felt like a complete idiot. When I realized nothing dangerous seemed to be in the water, I relaxed and enjoyed the scenery. Take note: I think that’ll be my last time riding in a canoe in Africa…. I’ll keep you posted.

So, in the end, we survived the journey, saw a few animals (but no Elephants this time!! WHHAAAAA!!), and made a few new friends. I even ran into Kirsty and Graem the following Monday while running errands in Zomba, and made arrangements to meet them up on Zomba mountain the following evening for a meal and some drinks at my favorite restaurant, Ku Chawe Inn. We had a really nice chat. Too bad they were only visiting, so left this past weekend. Perhaps we’ll meet up someday in the Highlands of Scotland. I’ve got roots (or maybe branches) there, or so I’m told… I’ll keep you posted.

That’s it for now. Tiwonana… someday soon, I hope, internet-willing!! I’ll work on that coconut-string-network thing and get back to ya!