Weekend in Wilderness, Chanco in Crisis

Well, it appears for now that we have internet service restored at Domasi College... Yahoo! So, that means all my 3-5 or so faithful readers may soon be able to enjoy my ramblings of my endless adventures here on a daily basis again... Lucky you! I'm not making the 'free Malawi gin' promise again though, since the new connection has been rather spotty, and is confined to a small faculty computer center which can get quite busy, rather than our individual offices, as was the case back in '07. I'll use this week as a tester and get back to my loyal readers once I have a verdict on returning to my fabulously-famous daily ramblings--er, posts, I mean...(complete with free gin offer!)

So, as suggested by the title above, I had my first weekend away since arriving back in Malawi in January, and it was quite a nice little trip. Deliwe gladly came along, and we drove back up to Liwonde National Park (where we went back in October) just for a one-night stay at a minimally-developed a campsite in the park. We didn't see as much wildlife this time, but did run into more wildlife of the human kind than we had anticipated, due to the arrival on the same weekend of a 30-plus group of teenagers from the UK. This form of human wildlife added a dimension to our getaway which was a bit unexpected, but created a few interesting stories nonetheless. Let's just say I came away from the experience with a few new friends, none of whom were in that teenage group. I'll leave it at that for now.

However, rather than telling those and other stories of our weekend adventures, I'd like to focus this post on the experience I had at Chanco today, and save the weekend story for tomorrow when I'll have a few pix to post along with my stories. In the meantime, I'll post a few more of the pictures I promised last week in order to get caught up. So, for those faithful who check this site daily, you'll have something to look forward to tomorrow, eh?

So, as for today, I wanted to post the latest news from Chancellor College (a.k.a. Chanco) regarding the ever-present lecturer's strike. Remember last December? I think I'd updated my readers on the situation then, but just as a refresher, there had been a strike regarding demands for a 200 percent pay increase which was apparently approved by government back in 2005. If I understand the issue correctly, the 200 percent was a portion of an original 500 percent increase to be paid to lecturers over a period of time, though this period was not clearly agreed upon by the University Council (Government) and the Lecturer's Union. The teaching strike which took place starting in October of last year was finally ended when the lecturers reluctantly agreed to a 20% increase in late October (following a student protest of the strike after about 5 weeks without instruction), pending further negotiation after the end of the semester. However, this negotiation apparently never took place. Because of this, the lecturers who are part of the union (not all of them are, and I'm not sure what the percentage of members is, but I think it's about 50%) decided to withhold their end-of-semester grades until the University Council agreed to meet their demand of a 200% pay increase.

Of course, the withholding of the grades has a serious consequence here in that it forces the delay of commencement of the next term, as several meetings must take place regarding the finalization of the grades, recording them, submitting them to heads, deans, and students, followed by an agreement by the administration as to when the new term will start. From my own experience, this is quite different from how it's done at other academic institutions, at least in the U.S, where departments do not meet to confirm grades and then submit them to deans, who then meet again to review and approve them prior to deciding on the start of the semester. Where I come from, we follow an academic calendar and keep to deadlines. If an instructor misses the deadlines, then he/she might request an extension, or some other type of arrangement, but this does not affect the academic calendar. Hence, this type of system was quite confusing to me (still is, quite frankly). However, what I do understand is that this system is very conducive to the type of action that is taking place. In order to pressure the government powers to meet their salary demands, withholding grades is a viable option for lecturers here, as it enables them to disrupt the academic calendar, thus the start of the new term.

In this case, only the union lecturers agreed to withold the grades, but those who do not belong to the union (many in disagreement with this type of action) decided to submit their grades on time. Despite this, the University Council took a very serious step this past Friday-- just after lecturers' salaries were deposited into people's accounts, the council somehow (with cooperation from the banks) managed to freeze the accounts so that no one could withdraw their money. Many were saying they couldn't even access money they had apart from their salaries. This action was not taken only against lecturers in the union, but against all academic staff at the college, regardless of whether they'd submitted the grades or not. In addition, all were given an ultimatum to submit their grades by tomorrow (Tues. Feb. 26) or the salary/acct. freeze would not be lifted. Wow. A shocker for me. Of course, I'm not personally affected, as my pay comes from the lovely U.S. Taxpayers-- (Thanks, you guys! I loveya!! Rest assured, I taught all of my classes last term, and submitted my grades on time... your money's been very well-spent on me, and by me ;-)

So, today the Humanities Dept. called an emergency meeting to decide what will happen next. After much discusssion (a little over 2 hours--very short by Malawian standards, btw), a decision was made to let the council know that the faculty takes serious offense to the fact that their bank accts. were affected, especially considering the fact that the dispute was between the union lecturers and the council, not the entire faculty. Add to this the fact that one of the Education Ministers in the Government was quoted on the front page of the paper saying something like, "If they're unhappy with their salaries, they should quit." Many union lecturers in the meeting reassured their colleagues that the union lawyers did manage to get a court injunction against the salary/acct. freeze and it should've been lifted sometime today, though I haven't gotten any confirmation on that yet.

All in all, the long and short of it is that this labor dispute seems to have escalated into a battle, if not a war, between the academic staff and the government university council. As many asserted in the meeting, the council seems to have decided to take such an action in order to 'pit' the non-union members against the union-members, by punishing everyone for the actions of a few. Luckily, they don't seem to be taking the bait (at least not in the Humanities Dept.), and the Union lawyers seem to have taken care of this legally-questionable action by the University Council as well.

The sad part is, we're already a good month behind schedule on an academic calendar that was already a year behind schedule due to this dispute when I arrived here. Unfortunately, those who suffer most in this whole process are the students, still waiting at home for the new academic term to begin. Not only that, but the first-year students who are already on campus for orientation may actually be sent home next week if this thing doesn't get resolved soon. For their sake, I hope it does. That said, Tiwonana Mawa, hopefully with better news--stay tuned.