VETA Mwanza

Jeanne and I are starting to build a bit of a routine. Shower, breakfast in the hotel restaurant, check emails in the lobby, and wait for the school driver to come and pick us up. On the way to the campus there is always much to see. The people of Mwanza live up in the hills of scattered rock and each morning there is a steady stream of well-dressed men and women and school children coming down the dirt paths and roads heading to one of the main highways. Some pay a bit more and take a motorcycle ride (piki piki) and others catch the bus (dala dala), but there are a lot of people who just walk. Perhaps that’s why they all look so fit. I like looking at the colorful outfits, the ladies who carry heavy loads upon their heads, the schoolchildren in their neatly pressed uniforms and the teenagers and the twenty-somethings who wear the latest in North American jeans and tees. And they like to look at the two pale North Americans sitting in the back seat of the VETA car.

Dala Dalas

Piki Pikis

Furniture store before opening...

VETA Mwanza is quite a nice and large campus. It is rustic but well kept; the shrubs and trees are carefully groomed, the walks are regularly swept, and the grass is cut. There are a number of buildings scattered around including a convention center (which has a hall, several conference rooms and 18 guest rooms). This center is used as a practicum place for the hospitality students. There is also a restaurant which caters to convention center guests and to patrons who drive in. Both the center and the restaurant generate a little revenue for the college. In addition there is a boys dorm (there are currently 120 young men staying there) and a girls dorm (which currently houses 60 young ladies).

The teaching spaces are in high demand. There are a number of shops for masonry, plumbing, carpentry, tailoring, and a number of other trades. The mess hall doubles as a classroom for the large classes… and they have been quite large due to the lack of classroom space.  Sometimes the English class has 120 students at one time. This makes it challenging for the instructor to give enough conversational practice and support to the students.

Walking between the shops.

The mess hall/classroom

 Today we went to observe a few classrooms to learn a little bit more about the context for the course we are developing. It was important to see what kinds of resources the teachers have, the level of competence and confidence that the students have in their subject matter and in their level of English, the culture and dynamics of the classroom and the realities and limitations of teaching large classes without technologies that Canadian teachers take for granted.

After the observations, it was time for lunch.  No fish today. Roasted goat and fried bananas. With piri piri and mango juice.

Then it was time to hammer out more to the curricular concepts. Which study skills are paramount? Then the three subject specialists joined us and they explained what they felt were the most essential components to be included in the curriculum. It was another long and satisfying day. We didn’t get out of the working room till after 6.

 

The last hour and an half that we worked it poured outside. We are supposed to be in the middle of the rainy season but, so far that’s the only rain we have experienced. It was refreshing and all too brief.  But I couldn't wait to get back to the hotel, write this blog, have a beer and try to catch a bit of sleep.  If I get enough sleep in before 2 or 3 in the morning I might sneak down to the lobby to listen to the Bruins game in the lobby.