We have been crossing a lot of boundaries between worlds lately. The academic world of East Africa, first of all, is different in so many ways from that of the US, a point brought home to me this week when my department head, Pastor Patrick Musembi, asked me to assist in “moderating” the exam for the course I am teaching, Philosophy 111, Introduction to Philosophy. The practice here, and in most African (and many European) universities, is to set a single exam for all sections of a course—something that we tend to do in the US for multi-section biology and calculus courses, but never in history or philosophy or religion. Exams must be approved by all faculty concerned and submitted to the registrar early in the semester.
Patrick showed me a draft exam prepared by another instructor, a part-time lecturer offering the course for the first time. I was taken aback by the breadth of the questions, such as these two:
“Discuss the contributions of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in the history of Philosophy.”
“What would be your response to the Major Problems of Philosophy?”
Patrick was just as concerned as I was by these suggestions and agreed that we need to give the students more direction. But he was shocked to learn that, at Calvin and everywhere else in the US, each professor writes and grades his or her own exam. How do you ensure consistency, he wondered? What if someone leaves out large areas of her subject that don’t interest him? How do you ensure that one lecturer’s B is the same as another lecturer’s B?
In Kenyan higher education, final examinations normally count for 70% of the course grade, and all course grades are reviewed—at another “moderation” session—by all departmental faculty. Each is free to challenge someone else’s grades if they seem too high or too low, and everyone must approve the grades before they are recorded and released to students. The American and the African system begin from implicit assumptions that strike a very different balance between instructor autonomy and student mastery, between learning as a process and knowledge as outcome, and among the institution, its faculty, and its students.
The culture of the academy is dramatically different, too, outside the realm of grading and examinations. Students are far more deferential toward “lecturers” and more reluctant to speak up in class, especially if they might appear to be challenging something the instructor has said. (I have a few students who aren’t inhibited in this way, but only two or three out of 60 in the class.) They dress conservatively for class, albeit less so than when I was here in 2001. Women students wear slacks now, even blue jeans, but skirts and blouses are more common. Among the guys, there are a few polo shirts and T shirts among the dress shirts. But no one, male or female, would even think of attending class in shorts! (I should add that a detailed dress code in Daystar’s student handbook prohibits short skirts (too revealing), long skirts (too informal), and low-cut tops for women, ripped or torn clothing for anyone; and men are forbidden to wear their hair in braids or dreadlocks. A few students seem to set out to violate as many of these rules as possible, but most comply.)
And yet there is a spirit of mutual care and concern between faculty and students, I find, even when most classes are large and most faculty are greatly overstretched. Faculty try to accommodate students who can’t register because of overdue fees, for example, making sure they stay current in readings and assignments. (In my class of 60, five weeks into the semester, only 46 are formally registered so far.) The twice-weekly chapel services, mandatory for students and well attended by faculty and staff, help hold the community together. Last week (on a day when we were traveling) the campus suspended all classes for a day of prayer, faculty and staff and students gathering on each campus at a central meeting place. Once in a while we encounter a student who is rude or insensitive, to us or to others, but this is very rare. (A woman student in the very cramped “Executive Canteen” this noon kept trying to give my seat away to her friends while I was collecting our plates of food, speaking right past Susan as if she didn’t understand English.) Much more often students go out of their way to be helpful and accommodating, to each other and to lecturers. (Last week on the way to class my large stack of student papers slipped from my hand and scattered on the ground, and in an instant a student was helping me gather them up, saying, “Excuse me, sir, may I assist you?”)
The faculty colleagues whom I have met, moreover, invariably greet me warmly, offer their help and advice, and are eager to talk about how to engage students more actively in learning. This is true at Calvin, too, of course, and in many other academic communities. But there’s a stronger sense here of engagement in a common project, undergirded by a deep commitment to higher education as preparation for service to church and society. The needs here at Daystar are great—classrooms are crowded, library resources meager, salaries low, faculty overstretched—and yet there’s a wonderful spirit of gratitude for the opportunity to participate in such an exciting and rewarding venture.
Susan has just written about another border crossing—from the dusty overgrazed scrubland of Maasailand to the game-filled savannah of the reserves. Living for a few days at Keekorok felt like jumping into a time machine, back to the days when African servants anticipated every need and desire of European masters. I recall feeling this much more strong in 2001 at the Mara Serena lodge, however. At Keekorok not just the waiters and drivers but all the managers and supervisors are African, and their relationship with the guests was friendly and informal, not subservient. And the “Happy Valley” picture of carefree British aristocracy on the ranch hardly applies when the guests are Iranian and Japanese and Korean and Kenyan, with a smattering of Brits and Americans among them. We can’t afford to spend more than a few days in that world, but it was delightful as a brief escape.
Another boundary was traversed yesterday when we drove across town to Gigiri in the northern suburbs, a drive of just 30 minutes if we wait til after 9 am, to the US Embassy. It was our third attempt to get the ID cards that were supposed to be issued to us on arrival, with which we can be admitted immediately to the compound. Until we have them, we must wait outside in the hot sun while the guards try to contact someone in the Cultural Affairs office to meet and escort us. Yesterday they were all attending a farewell tea and no one was answering the phones, and we waited for 30 minutes until someone finally returned the guard’s phone call and gave permission for us to enter. Whereupon we learned that the ID card machine had broken down once again, and we would have to return next week and try again!
Most of the Embassy staff are Kenyan nationals, but when walking through the halls we felt surrounded by now-unfamiliar American accents. We tried to buy a stamp for a postcard to Susan’s aunt in the US but could not, because we had no US currency with us. The Embassy is a world of its own, physically but not psychologically or culturally located in Kenya. And it seems to be trying to outdo Kenyan bureaucracies in inefficiency and inaccessibility, and succeeding.
But I need to balance that by giving due credit to the extraordinary hospitality that has been extended to us by the Cultural and Political Affairs staff, especially Fulbright liaison Justus Mbae and his colleague (and successor, for now) Ken Wakia. Justus is leaving the embassy staff after 17 years to become Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the Catholic University of East Africa, where he once taught philosophy. We were honored to be invited to his farewell reception Wednesday evening at a hotel in the center of town, where he was given appropriate credit in what I think may be the most heartfelt and moving set of retirement tributes I’ve ever heard at such an occasion. Justus received it all with gracious modesty—and he didn’t even breathe a word of complaint that the Embassy had scheduled a farewell party for a devout Catholic on Ash Wednesday, a day of penitence and fasting.
The trip to the hotel was as memorable and moving as the event itself, moreover, because of one of those delightful conversations with strangers that occur so frequently here. Since taxis are expensive, and I don’t drive the Daystar car after dark, we booked a taxi for our return after the reception (and then for Bev's trip to the airport) and decided to use the city bus system for the first time to travel downtown at 6 pm. At the bus stop near Daystar we asked a young woman about the route, and she confirmed that we were in the right spot. Then she introduced herself as a marketing manager for a nearby hotel and urged us to come and visit her hotel soon. She'd also be happy to arrange a good rate for a weekend getaway at their tented camp near Mt Kenya at our convenience, she added. We exchanged cards, and she spoke highly of Daystar, though she has never been able to attend university herself.
She sat beside Susan on the bus, and when the conductor came round she paid all three fares. When Susan described how many improvements we see in Kenya since 2001 she was delighted to hear it, and she added that she recently joined a prayer group that concentrates on praying for Kenya. And a couple of days later she followed up with an email, wishing us all the best in our work here, inviting us to come over and see her at the hotel, and hoping she might be able to welcome us to her home before we depart so that we can meet her children too.
Tomorrow morning we will cross another border between utterly disparate worlds. We will join the “American spouses” group and the Kenyan Fulbright alumni (i.e., Kenyans who have studied in the US) for a service project at a school on one of Nairobi’s 180 slums, painting and cleaning and fixing up classrooms. It will be an interesting chance to see the living conditions in which far too many Kenyans dwell and also to get better acquainted with a fine group of people, some of whom we met at the recital and the farewell reception. And it can't be as hot as the two days we spent mixing and slinging concrete in Ulungu!
