WInding Down My First Semester at the University of Botswana

Currently, my first semester at the University of Botswana is coming to a close. What a strange experience it has been, starting with wandering around the biology building and wondering where, what, when and when I would be teaching, and many other details about the classes. There is incredible bureaucracy surrounding everything from making a photocopy to other minor aspects of the job, and I quickly learned that I would  not be using Powerpoint as a teaching tool (which would have been useful for illustrating graphs in biostatistics), and on and on.  I eventually learned the ropes and things became smoother.  And I am finally finished designing Biostatistics lectures in the evenings.

My Office

Each day started with crossing perilous streets and then a walk through massive construction sites – after a rain, the puddles were quite impressive. Several huge new buildings, including a medical school, are being built by Chinese construction companies – there are many worries about this because the campus infrastructure (internet access, photocopying, water, etc.) are already stretched beyond the breaking point and there are major concerns about construction quality. As we’ve mentioned before, the University Campus is a chaotic jumble of buildings scattered about with deep cement trenches (used to carry the overland flow of water during storms) zig-zagging here and there in unsuspecting places. The pedestrian must always be aware!  There is always a very long line to get into the library because students are ONLY allowed to have a laptop in the library – no laptop carriers, daypacks or other parcels, so the line to check these items can be a half an hour long. 

UB has been officially proclaimed a "world class" University by the government.  The nation and the University are very young and so the rush to become “world-class” may be unwise when the institutions are not in place to support such an endeavor.  Perhaps when a University is proclaimed to be world-class, then the many problems that exist are suddenly unacknowledged and cannot be addressed.  Apparently the HIV rate on campus is ~50%.  Partying is ever-prevalent and wild, which is unwittingly encouraged during the semester because the final exam is worth 60% of a class grade, so many students are not concerned about their grades until finals.  This is a society that on the surface is conservative but underneath is promiscuous -- this may promote the spread of HIV.  In many ways, society's messages are conflicting.  For example, Priscilla and I do not hold hands or show affection in public because it is considered rude, but sex is an important element in advertising of all kinds, and condom advertisements are prominently displayed and dispensers are ubiquitous (although usually empty).

Communication on campus is an interesting process.  Offices do have phones but there are no answering machines and these phones can NOT call cell phones.  Most people have cell phones, but because air time is quite pricey people do not want to make the call.  There are three cell phone service providers in Botswana, and making a call from one network to another is more expensive, so only people that you share a cell phone provider with will want to call you at all.  Avoiding making the call is a national art form! Though they tell you they will call at a certain time, they don't -- they are always waiting for YOU to call to them -- this makes campus communication difficult.  (OK -- there are exceptions -- a few people do call when they say they will.)

Food booth just off campus.

There is a faculty lounge on campus that serves huge portions of samp, pap, fried chicken and beef stew.  Just off campus there are roadside tables where people sell take-away Styrofoam containers of samp, pap, fried chicken and beef stew, and during the lunch hour (1PM-2PM) loads of people stand around in the sun eating.  How do they do it in dapper clothes with no water and wimpy plastic forks?  This is a culture where the idea of a restaurant was unknown until ~40 years ago and there are none near campus.  I have also never known of anyone to bring lunch to campus, and there are no cooking facilities in the Biology Dept (not even a microwave, coffee maker, or teapot) so food remains an enigma.  This is also a culture where people dress to the nines.  The faculty in the Biology Dept. are dapper, indeed, complete with cufflinks and polished shoes – the works. 

The biology building is designed for ease of lockdown – for the pre-meds perhaps?  There are many technicians for each lab in white coats (I will have one next semester for Plant Tax) – a cheerful bunch.  The students are also often in white lab coats.  However, the building usually appears to be quite empty except for fleets of women custodians in green who are washing everything and are very jolly during their breaks.  I am the only person in the building who keeps their door open  – I frequently get visited by students that are endlessly looking for various people.  I do occasionally spot a colleague, and  when I do see one, everything is quite jovial.  When I first arrived I was eager for collaboration – because my time is short, assisting another project would have been ideal.  I soon found out that this was not to be and we have started our own research.   Even after a semester I really have no idea what anybody in the Department does and have not met a bunch of them.

My Biostatistics class.

In the Biostatistics Class that I taught, there were 50 students; we met on Mondays and Wednesdays at 8am for class and Tuesdays at 3pm for lab.  For the lab, I had the help of a great demonstrator (like a TA) named Bonolo who, most importantly, took over the photocopying task (if I got the materials to her a week ahead of time).  She also instructed me on how to manage the lab-Bonolo does not mess around-and she often told me that I should be tougher with the students!  In class I tried to engage the students – to get them to talk at all about anything.  The only student who would willingly talk in class was a foreign exchange student.

Biostatistics lab.

Teamwork

In lab, the students would do the problems and a talk a lot to each other and sometimes I could engage them as I wandered around the lab.  After I made some jokes about white lab coats in a stats lab, the white lab coats gradually disappeared from lab attire.  This was a Biostats class without the use of a computer package so the calculations we had to perform seemed endless, but it was a nice group of students and we all made it through.  They all did quite well considering that biology students take a LOT of biology classes at UB.  it is common for a student to have 5 or 6 lab classes each semester.  It is clear that this is way too many classes as it doesn't not allow the students time to engage in other activities such as research.

Bonolo

This week, the month-long finals period commenced.  As mentioned, finals are mandated to be a minimum of 60% of the grade, which unfortunately fosters a climate of absenteeism during the semester.  Two weeks before the end of the semester, I submitted my final to a review board (Do not email – hardcopy ONLY, do not keep the final on your computer or flashdrive because of hackers!  So where to keep an electronic copy?).  There were many emails about finals' security.  The review board approved my final, but made me change a few things which slightly increased the amount of memorization involved.

After the revisions, I carried the final over to a coordinator who managed the photocopying and had the finals delivered to the exam room at the assigned time.  After grading, I submitted the finals to an examiner whom will assess my grading and then the Department will meet to discuss grades for all the students.  I will also be an examiner for the graded finals from Aquatic Biology.  In addition, a second final is to be ready to go for barely failing students to take, if necessary.

Just before finals month, I received an email with the invigilation schedule (http://mw2.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invigilate) and was assigned to  invigilate both my final exam and another one.  Before, I have always received the invigilation notices less than 24 hours before the test, and due to conflicts, was not able to participate in invigilation.  For the first final I invigilated, I went to a large lecture hall with perhaps 400 students.  There was a host of invigilators.  Because many chairs were broken, there were not enough seats and the hall was hot and parts were very poorly lit.  The exams for two classes were alternated along the rows of desks. During the exam, I was asked to go to each student in the hall that was taking the biology final (there were 250 of them) and take the exam and separate out "Part B" and staple that into the back of their answer booklet.  I was the only invigilator that could do this because the aisles between the tables were extremely narrow and only I could squeeze through.  This took a long time with only staple frgaments and broken staplers.  The other class was a Stats class -- this final had two graphs.  Drawing perfect graphs is stressed in this educational system.  No graph paper was handed out with the Stats final.  So when each student came to the first graphing problem they raised their hand for graph paper.  The professor for this class stood facing away from the class so the other invigilators ran around delivering graph paper.  The instructor said "only one sheet at a time" which meant that when the students came to the second question they had to raise their hand again.  The front of the lecture hall was littered with broken table bases and busted podiums so like always -- be aware!  Things were much smoother for my final which took place with three other finals.  

The other class that I teach is called a “Tutorial”.  The Intro Biology class has 700 students, so there are smaller units called "tutorials" of 30 students each, which are all taught by a separate instructors.  These students are mostly pre-meds, and those that make it through their first year (which is designed to weed out less-motivated students) will continue to be pre-med majors, but there will be far less of them at that time.  I was notified that I was assigned to be teaching this class by a former Fulbright scholar who returned to the US before I came. He sent me an email about it after I’d been at UB for a few weeks.  It took me a while to figure out what the class was about, where it would meet, etc. and I never received a syllabus or any guidance for what the class should cover.  No classroom had been reserved for the class, so we met in the courtyard for a few weeks until we located an unoccupied lecture hall.  But figuring out what to do for Basic Bio is easy and this was an outgoing, bright and cheerful group of mostly motivated students.  These students have incredible tolerance for a curriculum fraught with problems. 

Intro Bio Tutorial.

One of the really pleasant places in the Biology Building is the Herbarium which is directed by the hard working and dedicated Mr. Muzila.  He has helped me identify many a specimen.  Unfortunately for me but fortunately for him he will be going to Sweden for his PhD next semester.  

Mr. Muzila in the herbarium.

I also have an undergraduate research student who is doing a greenhouse project on invasive species.  It is a requirement that all biology majors must conduct an independent research project during their senior year; however, it is difficult for students to find a faculty mentor and the equipment, infrastructure and funding for these projects can be a problem.  Also, because of the many biology classes that a major takes time is difficult to come by.  The undergrad research program is highly structured and the students have many time-consuming proposals and other assignments to write.  Speaking of equipment: so many things are busted -- Bonolo is a graduate student in Molecular Biology and she frequently complained that she could not make progress because everything was broken.  Likewise, the Biology storeroom for field equipment is a stunning collection of busted stuff. 

There are a good number of foreign exchange students on campus.  According to my foreign student, many of them are unhappy for a number of reasons that I won’t go into here, but one of them is that the food, which is part of their tuition, is unwaveringly samp, pap, fried chicken or beef stew!  But I haven’t met enough of them to know for sure what’s up.

We’ll that’s a short description of some of the life at UB.