After a few days in Africa

Update from Andy. August 6, 2008
The class is going ok I guess. It’s being held in a hotel in one of their meeting rooms. There’s a long dining table that’s covered with computer terminals and a projector sitting on a cardboard box and projecting onto an old fashioned screen that looks like it’s been there since the Portuguese left. The view from the window of the hotel is to a marina of sorts where random guys dressed in camouflage seem to be working on something, but I’m not sure what. The hotel is on a sort of barrier island connected to the city, so we drive every day through the city and out along the Atlantic side of the island. I suppose you could call it a beach, although there are people living on it in lean-to’s and wild dogs running around everywhere that all look like they were descended from the same brown dog. The drive is pretty depressing – shanty towns everywhere and even the larger buildings look terrible and are coated with dust and grime. There are a few Portuguese colonial buildings that are fading and falling apart, but they look pretty great compared to the concrete towers and cinder block buildings built since they left.

We’ve driven along the waterfront on the harbour in front of the city – the Promenade I think they call it – and it was probably once quite grand. But now it’s lined with the trunks of dead or dying palm trees with no fronds and garbage strewn everywhere. People are walking through the street anywhere you drive selling just about anything you can imagine – so far I’ve seen people selling lobsters, toolsets, chairs, air-fresheners, tents and one guy who I think was trying to sell a car door. And women everywhere carrying huge loads on their heads. I saw a woman carrying a giant plastic tub on her head that appeared to be completely full of carefully stacked pineapples; it must have weighed a ton but she didn’t seem bothered at all.

The people in the class are quite nice, but it’s really tough going due to the language barrier. They really don’t speak or read English very well at all, so nobody ever asks questions about the lectures, but everybody needs help with the exercises. The aren’t really ready to start until 9 am and they usually take two breaks before we break for lunch at 12:30. After they eat lunch most of the guys take naps on the couches just outside the meeting room. I’m not kidding. Then they stumble in to start again around 2, but it was like pulling teeth to get them to stay until 3:30 because they all wanted to leave at 3 to miss the worst of the traffic. It turns out Philomina taught the same group in the same room last week; she taught them StratWorks. That’s why she told me I had to push them and that they were lazy, she actually knew from experience! I wouldn’t say they’re lazy, they just aren’t interested in doing anything extra, and they really chatter a lot with each (in Portuguese) other while they are working on the exercises or even while I’m trying to lecture. It’s strange and I don’t mean it in a bad way at all, but it’s sort of surreal to be surrounded by black people who are all speaking Portuguese. Oh, and they all call me “teacher” even though I told them just to call me Andy. “Teacher, please help me.”