Our final trip to the university this morning. Most of us headed for the main lecture hall where we listened to a lecture about War, Conflict and Peace in Africa. The lecture was part of a course that is required of all students at AU. The course is called African Studies which is a survey course that looks at the pan-African experience. This lecture was about how war and conflict have been dealt with on the continent and the lessons that can be learned. The lecturer used a PowerPoint presentation and included time for questions and answers and discussion.
La Donna had an appointment at the library so she missed the lecture (but found it interesting to listen to who heard what and who missed what ... and wondered if they attended the same lecture!!). Anyway, she and the bibliographic services librarian, Nevermore Sithole, discussed collaborating on a paper for publication, and then discussed the Multi-Media collection. They are wanting to expand and develop the collection. The video cataloguing that she did will be used as a template to provide better catalogue records for the audio-visual materials. They also discussed some projects that she can do from home by logging in to their cataloguing software from the US ... provided that they can figure out how to do that!!
The Jerrys went straight to the farm for more egg washing and equipment repair. Jerry Jo met the farm manager while she was washing eggs. Jerry Jerry (as Bonnie calls him!) did more in the mysterious realm of electricity – must be a union secret because he didn’t elaborate!!
After the lecture, Dona Lou and James returned to the Intensive English classes to work with the students and the rest of the crew headed for Old Mutare Mission. Patricia needed to give the last of the photographs to her class of students. They were so excited to have a picture of themselves – for some of them this was the first photo of themselves they had ever had!!
After that the group headed up to the Fairfield Children’s Home to deliver some things and to shop at the little gift shop that they have in the office. (We seem to be doing a lot of shopping!). Jeanie bought a book called "Dare to Live Completely : A Memoir from Zimbabwe" by Janine Roberts – and the author was there and signed her copy! She is a young woman from the US who came to Zimbabwe to work at Old Mutare and has come back time and time again for longer periods of time to work for the children at Fairfield. You can read her blog at http://www.hopeofzim.blogspot.com/ amazing stuff!
They left Fairfield and went to Joyce and Webster Katsidzria’s home to pick up some batiks that various of us had ordered. Joyce and her daughters do absolutely beautiful work! Of course the visit included a tour of their garden and home and a zillion "photo ops" (we’re getting good at that too!)
One more chance to have a pile of sudza (remember sudza? white cornmeal mush-like stuff ... and still no syrup!!) in the dining hall and then we all gathered (after a detour to the bookstore ... shopping again!!) at the Information Office to say good-bye and thank you to Sharai and Susan. They did such a wonderful job of organizing us – even when we reorganized their organizing over and over!! Neither of them was particularly gray haired nor did they display any disturbing twitches or anything after two weeks of shepherding the now infamous Indiana VIM team!!
On the way back to LaRochelle we stopped at the front gate to take group pictures at the big gate heading into the university (poor Douglas not only has to drive us around put he has to learn to operate all the many and varied cameras that we shove at him during our photo ops!).
Then we headed to Mutare to "take tea" with Patrick Matsikenyiri. who was the first choir director at AU and was responsible for forming the choirs that toured the US in the first decade of the university. He is now working on an African hymnal. On Saturday he is having a workshop where choir people from all over will present hymns native to their culture. The songs will be videorecorded and then Patrick will transcribe the music. Remember that each of the Wednesday chapel services we started with songs from different cultures ... first from Congo and then this week from Mozambique. This is part of the project too. Patrick retired in 2002 but he still lectures and helps with the chapel music. What an amazing wealth of stories shared while we had tea, scones and popcorn!
Dona Lou is spending the night with Margaret Tagwira – they say they are having a sleepover!!
On the way home Douglas parked the van outside of a supermarket so that some of us could spend some time seeing what was on offer. The store is open in the front – no windows just straight open out to the pavement (i.e., sidewalk). The row of registers stretches all the way across the opening so you really can’t get out without paying. They found a good variety of items and the shelves were well stocked. Prices? Liter of milk for $1.25, eggs were $4.95 for 2 ½ dozen (remember yesterday Jerry Jo reported the wholesale price was $4.50), large jar of Nutella was $12.35, a single-serve container of apple juice for $.95, and package of biscuits (i.e., cookies) were $2.39. Very few things came in jumbo size packs – biggest package of diapers held 20.
Then back to LaRochelle for a final dinner. Bad news is that we have limited water – the well needed repair and the glue used won’t be dry until 3 a.m. (if electricity is a mysterious realm then plumbing is a complete unknown). We have buckets of water in each of the bathrooms to use to flush the toilets, and there is plenty of bottled water to drink but we won’t be having a bath until morning! Good thing we don’t have to leave for Harare until 10:30 or so!
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