In the mean time, the rabbits thrive and have sex like mad. They produce many more rabbits.
The fish also reproduce and spawn many more fish.
The farmer eats some of the rabbits and sells many. Also eats some of the fish and sells many more.
Everybody is happy, sort of.
On the first day of the installation in the field, progress is, unsurprising, slow. Students are not familiar with the houses, and are often unsure how to even get started. We group them in larger groups of 6 or seven to work on one house together. After doing one or tow houses this way, they have mastered the skills and are more confident. We then split them in smaller teams so that everyone is fully occupied and progress is much faster.
Most youths and their family would like for them to attend university, because they believe therein lies a brighter future. But the country also needs skilled workers for construction, electricity, plumbing, health, …, which may not require an university education but rather practical skills. There are plenty of opportunities to make a decent living there, and beyond. Hence the importance of vocational schools. We hope that the practical technical and organisational skills the local youths pick up from this project is serving them well.
Loosen red earth. Pour in water. Mix thoroughly to form soft mud.
The mould has only four sides, without bottom or top.
Fill the mould with the lump of soft mud. The bottom is as flat as the ground is flat. Level off the top with hand.
P
ull off mould.
Let brick sit under sun to dry.
A new mud brick is born.
A mud brick is fairly hard when dry. Hard enough to build a single story house with. Unlike a regular brick, it has not been fired. Hence it is liable to fracture and/or turn into powder when hit. Thus it does not hold a nail well. Rain will gradually dissolve a naked mud brick. Hence a house built with mud brick is not very durable. Constant repair is required to keep the house in shape.
Last week, the advance team mapped out the 400 houses to be wired up and provided with electricity through the installation of solar panels. This week the installation will start. Guided by the digital map created, with each village identified by different colours. Houses closesly clustered will share a mini-grid. Dispersed houses - the majority - will get an independent system.
Data loggers will monitor usage and health of the network. Data will be transmitted to Hong Kong through a SIM card.
Various components of the intranet, including hardware and software, are being finalised, debugged, and tested at the hotel. To be deployed in the village alongside the solar panel systems for the households.
The Computing team is essentially doing tow projects. The household solar panel system and the intranet. It is amazingly ambitious. It is possible due to the tremendous drive and wealth of skills of KL and YZ. We feel so blessed to have them in our teaching team.
On the one hand, we do not know the local environment and do not speak the local language Kinyarwanda. We need these local youths to help us communicate with the villagers.
On the other hand, we are here not just to install solar panels, so that the villages can have electricity. We are training the local youths in the technology so that they can help maintain the systems after we have departed. Hopefully, they are also empowered by the knowledge and the skills, for their own education career.
In the mean time, we also have some students from partner universities in the University Social Responsibility Network Universities and staff from our partner in Tanzania, who are also participating in the training.
It is roughly estimated that there are ~100 people involved in the training today. And this is still not the whole team.
Indeed, upon closer inspection, I can find clusters of the fruit on the tree.
Just hours earlier, while mapping out houses for the installation of solar panels, I chanced upon a family de-husking macadamia nuts. I was a bit surprised to see that the whole fruit is not that much bigger than the nut.
A student told me she has never seen even a macadamia nut, with the shell on. All she has ever seen are the white, spherical “meat” of the nut.
I learn something new every time I come to Rwanda.
I took a walk through the town yesterday.
On the main road running between Kigali and Rwamagana, there are many hardware stores. And a milk bar - a cold half-litre of fresh milk is really refreshing. Milk is a staple of the Rwandan diet.
Owning a cow is a way to have a better diet for children, and in fact for everyone. Imagine a truck full of cows!
Stores are fairly well-stocked. Soft drinks, beers, snacks, …
Many Rwandan houses have a distinctive roof.
At the town’s market, business is brisk.
Note how clean the place is. Just like everywhere else in Rwanda. Much much wealthier places cannot manage it. How do they do it here?
One can also enjoy a cup of coffee, accompanied by the local equivalent of a donut, while watching the street traffic go by. Many trucks come this way. For this is the main artery between Rwanda and seaports in Tanzania/Kenya. Our shipment of materials arrive by boat in Mombassa in Kenya, and then travel by truck to Kigali, on this road.
It came to me that I might be able to use the maps in my smart phone to help. But when I turn on the phone, I couldn’t get to the phone app. It seemed to be stuck in some app and could not get out. It did not even seem to be my own phone. The user interface looked unfamiliar. Even the hardware - the phone itself - looked unfamiliar. Did I pick up someone else’s phone by mistake? Was my own phone stolen? How was I going to get to the map app? It was so frustrating, and scary.
Suddenly, I realised that it was a dream. I was actually in my bed. Everything is fine.
Wait! Was THAT - lost in a strange city - the reality but THIS - lying in bed - was the dream?
Eventually I figured out that THAT was really a dream. Did I have that dream because I have to travel soon? That the dream was triggered by the anxiety I am feeling due to the impending travel and the ever more complicated technology?
I have had dreams like this a few times in the past year - a recurring dream. I have never had a dream like this - lost in a city with a phone I couldn’t use - before. Until the appearance of the smart phone, obviously, dreams like that could not have happened.
What does that tell me about dreams? What does that tell me about me?
Yet the teacher does not work alone. Often the teacher work with assistants, even professionals, who work out the technical details of the solution, to figure out the logistics, and supervise and support the students. This is particularly important when the number of students is large, the solution involves practical, professional skills, or travelling.
Academic service-learning is generally embedded in a credit-bearing course/subject, as part of an academic program of study, for a major/degree in an academic discipline. For that to happen, the program and/or departmental management must be somewhat knowledgeable and supportive of service-learning. The expertise and passion of the subject teacher is paramount. But without the support of management, what teachers and the students can do would be severely constrained. Obviously, support is needed beyond the department, from the faculty, and even university-wide if service-learning is to make a wider impact.
There is still much that may not be immediately obvious. Service-Learning often require varying amount of funding, for equipment, material, transportation, meals, accommodation, etc. The need is the greater the further away from home it is carried out. Ideally, students who are financially less well off should also be given the opportunity to participate. A university that considers service-learning an important pedagogy to nurture social responsibility should be willing to fund at least part of the expenses for sending students on SL projects away from campus, away from their city, or even country.
Donations from alumni and other funding sources is another possibility. For that to happen, the alumni office and other relevant units of the university has to be made aware of the nature of SL, its contributions to the students’ education and the reputation of the university.
Using the funds in the project in accordance to the policies and procedures of the financial office can also be challenging. The challenge is particularly complicated when the project is carried out in locations and countries where the practice is different from the home country. In some countries, the banking and financial systems and practices may not be the most modern and efficient. Something as simple as getting a receipt with all the requisite information required by your financial office may not be as straightforward as many imagine. Hence getting your finance office familiar with the practices and needs of SL may make the life of a professor much easier. In turn, it may smooth the adoption of SL by more professors.
SL often operate in a schedule different from a normal academic course/subject. Particularly if the team has to travel away from campus, for any length of time. It may complicate the management of the courses, the students’ attendance at other courses and commitments, reporting of grades, student progression, eligibility for other courses, graduation, etc. If the academic registry can be made familiar with the needs and practices of SL, and become active in facilitating, it can be of significant help in embedding SL into the regular academic programs.
Then there is the matter of the health of the students while on project or travelling. What are some of the risk factors, and measures that should be taken to mitigate against the risks? What about insurance coverage for the students and staff involved? What are the policies and measures for emergency handling?
Service-Learning involves much more than the students and the professors. A significant portion of the campus has to be educated on the vision, conceptual underpinning, the practice and the scholarship of service-learning, for it to flourish. When that happens, SL truly become a part of the campus culture, and the whole campus benefit from it. Then it is not only the students who learn to be socially responsible. The whole campus does.
The context in which this happened was our Teacher Development Course which we ran in Cambodia earlier in June this year. Why did we run it in Cambodia? It was because Cambodia is one of our offshore bases for service-learning, where we have multiple projects conducted by different teams from different departments, mostly in summer. Hence we can schedule the Teacher Development Course to coincide with some of the projects over there. This way, we can arrange for the teachers attending the course to visit the projects, observe the students delivering their service, speak with the teaches as well as our local NGO partners, and gain first hand experience.
Sister D is one of the teacher attendees from India. We also have teachers coming from Philippines, Vietnam. The rest of the teachers came from two universities in Hong Kong (including our own). Many more teachers wanted to join, but encountered difficulties with timing, finances, … We are now trying to secure some funding so that more teachers, particularly those from developing countries, can join us.
Most of the attendees are teachers, with a few administrators. The were very attentive, and the classes were interactive. There were numerous questions, on the conceptual framework, practicalities of the projects, how to find partners, how to design projects for specific disciplines, how to assess student performance, etc. All the discussions culminate in their major assignment - to develop a proposal for a subject (course) or project. We study, discuss, eat, travel, and live together for a week. There was a genuine sense of camaraderie and I made a lot of new friends personally. The whole thing made an enjoyable and rewarding experience and none of this would have happened without service-learning.
