In Which I Have my Time Wasted by a Consultant

Seriously, the only thing I know about this man is that he is a Consultant.  This is how he described himself in his powerpoint.  He also mentioned that he is from Canada and he represents some actually good-sounding organization called the Commonwealth of Knowledge.  I do know that his job description does not include cultural research since he did not greet his audience of Tanzanian computer engineering lecturers.  Greeting is so culturally important, and foreigners have a distinct advantage in that even if we get it completely wrong, it's cute that we're trying.  I recently got some complete strangers on a bus to buy me water and snacks because they were so excited that I could greet them in their tribal language.  That I know exactly those three words and nothing more of Kiluguru is not important.  The point is, a stammered habari would have been great.  A nice "hello, how are you" in English would have been better than nothing and forgivable on grounds of foreignness.  But no, he was off and running in fast, not-clearly enunciated, and idiomatic English.  This is not nice or effective.  When English is not a first language for the audience and the audience learned English with a British accent, native speakers from North America need to be extra careful in order to ensure comprehension.  Seriously, I know two Tanzanians who could have followed that and both of them studied in the states and can speak spitfire English like that.  Aside from the language, the guy used golf instruction as a metaphor.  There are, to my knowledge, three golf courses in Tanzania, though I am sure there are some I don't know about in the big cities like Dar, Arusha, and Mwanza, and I know of no one but ex-pats and the occasional volunteer who actually uses them, and this is not a sport you see on tv or in newspapers here. Just to make sure more of the presentation would be culturally inaccessible The Consultant told his audience that they shouldn't be confused about commonwealth like Americans who would think commonwealth of Virginia instead of the old British Empire.  First off, the 'old' British Empire is within living memory for some of his audience, and talking about the difference between members of the British commonwealth and Americans would be the equivalent of me making Kenyan vs Tanzanian jokes to an American.

As far as content goes, The Consultant didn't clearly define his terms, much less explain his acronyms.  Seriously, I think I failed to get about 25% of what he said and I speak English with almost the same accent he does.  I think he wants the university to offer online courses and night classes.   I don't actually disagree with this, but The Consultant is not the person to talk about this due to specific ignorance of technical issues.  He advocates making teaching videos and making them available.   Great, I agree.  Really, I do.  It's not going to be as easy as he thinks it is: I don't disbelieve him that he can throw a video together in five minutes on his computer, but he has a Mac and as the person currently teaching people how to make videos at this university, I think he might overestimate familiarity with such technology.  Not that it can't be done, and I think it should, but don't downplay the technical expertise required or make assumptions about the software available.  Nonetheless, assuming we can wave our imaginary Macs and have videos with little effort, how do we distribute them?  The Consultant advocates letting students bring their flash drives to a central computer.  NO!  Sweet Turing no, not unless the central computer is running Linux, which is not at the moment the case..  All student flashes have viruses.  All of them.  Maybe we have to wave our imaginary virus-immune (mostly) Macs again.  Then there is the issue of  uploading them to the internet.  The Consultant likes free streaming services (well, so do I) and has a rant about how much better Vimeo is than Youtube.  It's not that I actually disagree, but you know what's great about Youtube?  You can stream in extremely low (240p and sometimes 144p) definition.  Vimeo offers the option between HD and not HD, the latter of which looks to me to be at least 480p, and at this university, which has some of the best bandwidth in Tanzania, you cannot have a good streaming experience at anything above 240p.  I spend a lot of time trying to stream videos here; I know.  The Consultant dismisses such concerns because the government will be laying fiber to the university soon.   I have been hearing since I arrived in country that the government's project to lay fiber to all the major universities will happen very soon.  I'll believe it when I see it.  What I think needs to be done is upload the videos to a central server and offer download options in varying definitions.  Yes, this will probably cost money, and yes, people can already download videos from Youtube. The whole point of education, however, is not to restrict access to materials to those who already have technical abilities, yes?  It's not obvious how to download from Youtube and offering streaming capabilities only is unrealistic for the current internet situation.  The Consultant also responded to my wonderful and wonderfully smart counterpart's good question "what about videos in mobile format?  It's a lot cheaper for people to buy smartphones then computers." with "anything created for a computer is automatically created as a mobile app at the same time."

Oh.  My problems as an admin for pctanzania.org trying to get a mobile version of the site operational are all in my head.  None of the volunteers trying to do all their internetting off ebook readers and internet-enabled phones have the problems they think they do.  My grad student friends who research mobile platforms and apps are all wasting their time.  Who knew?

Somehow, The Consultant gets paid to come to Tanzania and tell people what they ought to be doing.   I'm still not clear on his qualifications for this.

I will admit, I'm biased.  I personally dislike this man because at the end of the presentation he asked me what I was doing here, and was I visiting?  I was sitting with the teachers, I was wearing a cute traditional outfit, why would I come to this if it wasn't mandatory??!  It's not like it was enjoyable or helpful. I spend a great deal of my time trying to convince people who live here that I do belong, and you know what?  I do a decent job of succeeding.  The custodial staff all know me and complain if they don't see me every day.  Complete strangers ask me how my silks exercises are going.  Other lecturers that I don't know tell me they have heard about me from the students.  My dressmaker calls me when she hasn't seen me in a week.  The mama I buy my onions from will yell at people who call me "mzungu."  I am not a Tanzanian, I will never be a Tanzanian, and I accept with a certain sense of zen-like futility that Tanzanians will all automatically assume that I don't belong, but dammit, I've worked hard to be culturally appropriate and have a semi-accepted place in the community.  The Consultant who doesn't greet doesn't get to act like I'm the outsider in this situation.

It is a pity that the person advocating more online teaching materials is this Consultant.  It is, I think, a very good thing to do.  Doing it, however, is going to involve some technical challenges that need to be discussed by someone who has a clue.

I'm glad I have a kitty to come home to for the next few weeks.  Kitties make it better.

I may also have promised the kitty mommy that
I would post lots of photos of her baby.