. I like it so much that I decided to post it here. The full text:
Good or bad, the African university is all we have
Keguro Macharia’s article “African universities crippling their students’ (The EastAfrican — December 29, 2008-January 4, 2009) pricked me. I found myself agreeing with it as much as I disagreed.
I wish to write about my own experience with universities in Kenya.
Allow me also to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership draw upon my experience with the Council for Development and Social Science Research in Africa (Codesria), based in Dakar, Senegal, which has Buy Hydrocodone No Membership been active since the early 1970s.
My everyday experience with African universities rotates around Kenyatta University where Buy Hydrocodone No Membership I was admitted as an undergraduate student in 1990, earned a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership BA in 1994 and was soon after admitted for an MA in 1995 on a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership staff development programme as a graduate assistant.
I earned my MA in 1997, the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership same year I attended the Codesria Governance Institute in Dakar. This gave me the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership first opportunity to network at a pan-African level.
In 1998, I applied for Buy Hydrocodone No Membership the Codesria African Humanities Institute tenured at the University of Ghana at Legon and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership at the Programme of African Studies at Northwestern University in the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership US.
I was selected for Buy Hydrocodone No Membership this programme which saw me spend the first half of 1999 in Accra, Ghana, and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership the second in Evanston, Illinois.
It is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership Codesria that made possible my initial ventures into the international academic network.
The institution has Buy Hydrocodone No Membership also influenced my thinking about African scholarship and universities in a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership way that my sojourn in the West, both in the US and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership UK, was unable to alter or revise.
Through my undergraduate training at Kenyatta University and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership through Codesria, I appreciated the existence of a vibrant community of scholars and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership scholarship in Africa and became convinced that the centre of knowledge production about Africa will always be Buy Hydrocodone No Membership in Africa.
The primary producers of this Buy Hydrocodone No Membership knowledge must, therefore, be Africans. They can decide to enlist the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership support of others, but they cannot apologise for putting the continent at the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership centre.
Even though Africa is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership the base around which my understanding of the world rotates, from Buy Hydrocodone No Membership 2000 to 2006, I was at Northwestern University for my graduate studies.
My stay and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership travels in the US confirmed the importance of Africans as primary and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership priority producers of their knowledge and trainers of future generations of intellectuals.
Not being assigned to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership read African authors in my graduate classes was a revealing omission.
If this Buy Hydrocodone No Membership was meant to undermine my belief in African scholarship or Buy Hydrocodone No Membership to convince me that there were no epistemic communities on the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership continent, it sharpened my enthusiasm for Africa and cemented my expectation that Buy Hydrocodone No Membership African universities will one day do something to rectify the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership situation.
Given the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership numerous challenges confronting our society, our universities are unlikely to match the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership expectations of those tenured in a US university.
I refuse to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership give up and insist on being part of the solution. The task of righting the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership wrongs in our university system needs a self-selecting group; a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership group that will commit, in whatever small way, to that Buy Hydrocodone No Membership tortuous long-term task.
Seeking refuge in Western institutions of learning is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership for me the easier option. This is not to say I will never take that Buy Hydrocodone No Membership option; it means that I will acknowledge this fact when I take that Buy Hydrocodone No Membership option.
“Every generation,” wrote Frantz Fanon, “must out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or Buy Hydrocodone No Membership betray it.”
Our institutions supply enough excuses for Buy Hydrocodone No Membership us not to believe in our ability to discover and fulfil our mission.
The path to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership discovering and fulfilling our mission will forever remain stillborn if we accept all the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership excuses that our society provides in order to stay away from Buy Hydrocodone No Membership our own institutions.
I decided to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership overlook most of these reasons when in October 2006, I relocated with my family from Buy Hydrocodone No Membership Evanston to Nairobi and resumed my teaching at Kenyatta University. I know of some other colleagues who Buy Hydrocodone No Membership took the same decision.
In my travels in the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership US and the UK, I have met a number of Africans who Buy Hydrocodone No Membership decided to stay abroad and realise their potential. Those who belong to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership the universities constitute those I interact with most.
I respect their choices and, whenever possible, encourage them to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership use their skills for personal and collective growth.
A colleague from Nigeria at King’s College, London, has Buy Hydrocodone No Membership been instrumental in running a leadership programme that is extremely beneficial to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership mid-career African women.
She plans to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership relocate the programme to Kenyatta University this year. I consider her an Buy Hydrocodone No Membership ally in a broader struggle that will ultimately contribute to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership making a better world.
For some colleagues out there, however, Africa is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership incidental to their being and vision. It is useful only in so far as it Buy Hydrocodone No Membership provides the excuses for them to distance themselves from the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership continent.
They take the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership first opportunity to disparage local scholarship. They express surprise that I am Buy Hydrocodone No Membership still in Kenya. “How do you manage?” “Why are you still there?” “You know there are better opportunities out here?” they say. Others assume that Buy Hydrocodone No Membership good scholarship can only be undertaken outside Africa.
Africa is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership supposed to be corrupt. Its intellectuals are bankrupt of ideas and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership inept. If you want good scholarship, look for familiar African names in Western universities. Our local intellectual contribution is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership judged by where we reside.
Some will immediately proceed to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership list their accomplishments and conclude that they would not be Buy Hydrocodone No Membership where they are if they were working from a base on the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership continent.
The continent, their motherland, is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership conceived as a problem. One even counselled me recently to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership try publishing with Cambridge University Press instead of Zed Books because the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership former had a better profile and credibility.
In one stroke and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership never having read any of my publications, this colleague had Buy Hydrocodone No Membership dismissed me. He assumed that credibility and profile are value-free.
When I left Northwestern University in October 2006, I made a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership conscious decision to relocate back to Kenya. I had to turn my back on several beckoning job opportunities and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership offers for which I was qualified and was specially invited to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership apply.
My own department at Northwestern asked me to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership stay on for a while to teach the African history course since most of its Africanist faculty were proceeding on leave. Even the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership church members ganged up to convince my sons that it Buy Hydrocodone No Membership was a bad idea to return home! It did not work.
The same week I arrived home, the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership university lecturers went on strike. Except for a few colleagues who Buy Hydrocodone No Membership welcomed me back, most were surprised and others alarmed that Buy Hydrocodone No Membership I made such a stupid decision.
Subsequent experiences have alerted me to elements of this “stupidity” enshrined in the difficulties of teaching at a public university.
The most trying moment came in October 2008 when Buy Hydrocodone No Membership I won a one-month study residency at the Centre for African Studies at Oxford University to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership write my manuscript on Kenya —Democracy on Trial — under contract from Zed Books.
I was awarded a grant that took care of my travel and accommodation.
I asked Kenyatta University for Buy Hydrocodone No Membership permission to be away, which I was granted. But there was a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership rider. The finance officer was instructed to withhold my salary for Buy Hydrocodone No Membership the month and the Head of the Health Unit to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership suspend medical benefits to my family for a month. What a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership way of encouraging scholarship!
Still, it’s not yet time to give up on Kenyatta University.
True, the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership Internet system there, like many other universities, is slow. When the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership system was being put in place last year, those in charge skipped a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership number of offices — mine was one of them. I cannot therefore claim that Buy Hydrocodone No Membership I have access to a good ICT system.
The library is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership not conducive to advanced academic engagement. I normally use all my per diem whenever I travel abroad to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership buy books and access journals. I regularly pay penalty charge for Buy Hydrocodone No Membership excess luggage.
In fact, my MA students relied exclusively on my personal library for Buy Hydrocodone No Membership a course I taught on “Methods of Historical Research and Political Processes in Africa.” I hope this did not cripple them.
In teaching, I push my students beyond what Buy Hydrocodone No Membership is mundane. I expect something more than the unimaginative. I worry every day about being repetitive in my research topics and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership writing.
But I also guard against confusing postmodernist language games with intellectual sophistication. I expect students to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership know how to read a text, critique it and how to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership write well. I always warn them that learning how to write well is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership always a work in progress.
In class, we try to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership compensate for what they missed learning as undergraduates while learning what Buy Hydrocodone No Membership they need to know at MA level. I am sure that Buy Hydrocodone No Membership colleagues like Karuti Kanyinga, Frederick Wanyama, Wanjiku Khamasi, Felicia Yieke and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership Simala Inyani all demand the same from their students. If so, their anecdotes constitute a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership pattern, a pattern that gives me confidence about the possibilities at home.
Non-governmental organisations provide a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership useful avenue to complement my university work, not to replace it.
I was at a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership meeting at a Nairobi hotel that discussed sexuality. Sylvia Tamale was also there. She is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership by far one of the most respectable scholars and feminist activists in Africa.
Her studies on sexuality are Buy Hydrocodone No Membership innovative, imaginative, pioneering and rooted in Africa.
As an Buy Hydrocodone No Membership article of faith, I pay attention to how rooted and relevant my work ought to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership be in Africa and appreciate such rootedness from any scholar, African or Buy Hydrocodone No Membership non-African.
Tamale used her base in Makerere University to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership achieve this. She is a positive inspiration to many of us.
The distinction between the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership university and civil society is, therefore, conceptually useful but difficult to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership sustain in everyday life. Again Sylvia Tamale is a perfect example: Her understanding of feminism requires of us scholars to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership produce work of fine scholarship and use it to change gender relations in society.
Joyce Nyairo, another fine scholar, did her most illuminating work at Moi University. She is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership now with the Ford Foundation, supporting civil society organisations.
As for Buy Hydrocodone No Membership the idea that sites of knowledge production have shifted from universities and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership that the most vibrant production is in matatu graffiti, on street corners, in community-based theatre productions, I have Buy Hydrocodone No Membership two comments. First, I am yet to see an illuminating piece of serious scholarship on matatu graffiti that Buy Hydrocodone No Membership is not written by a thorough intellectual.
Second, I pray this Buy Hydrocodone No Membership claim, if indeed it is true, does not inspire more people to Buy Hydrocodone No Membership give up on the universities as sites of knowledge production.
The sustainability of these “alternative” sites depends very much on the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership willingness of donors to support them and this, as we know, is Buy Hydrocodone No Membership always short-term. I cannot handle the tyranny of measurable outcomes dictated by such donors. I love the Buy Hydrocodone No Membership “luxury” of sustained critical reflection.
In a Buy Hydrocodone No Membership nutshell, we must get a few more people with a little more faith in and Buy Hydrocodone No Membership patience with the African universities; the alternatives to the African university are Buy Hydrocodone No Membership so bad we shouldn’t exaggerate their prominence.
Credit: Godwin R. Murunga
Source: The East African
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