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