School is rolling along here, and I rather like it.
The professors are energetic and they know their subject matter.
The students hail from all over West Africa and are employed in various sectors that should make for lively discussion. There are 31 students in my Master’s program (the limit was 30, but guess who they made room for at the last minute?) and only one of them has English as her first language.
As the only person named after a car, I’m a bit of an odd duck in class. As such, our class also serves as a microcosm of the world of Global MDP universities. Check out this map:
See all these green Monopoly houses? There’s an MDP school underneath each one (or close by).
So what makes me- I mean UCAD- special amongst these institutions of higher learning?
It’s not because last night the mouton were right by the front steps of FASEG, chawing on their cardboard dîner. And it’s not because we take our break at 1900 to allow for ten minutes of prayer time (Megan drinks cafe touba and chats with her non-praying classmates at this time). Rather, it’s because we are the only francophone university as a part of the MDP network.
This is a great thing, except when Tuesdays afternoon rolls around. At this time every week, we gather early to participate in what is called “Global Classroom”. This meeting puts us online with every other university doing this program for an hour of lecture, delivered from Columbia University. It looks like this from my vantage point:
I counted thirteen universities online this past week, from China to Madagascar. That’s right Madagascar. I love the random scope of this education club.
As I said, Columbia heads up the Global Classroom and facilitates questions from all us who are dialed in. Columbia University is in New York; a good school, but a bad location because the lectures are given in American.
I don’t say that the lectures are given in English because we in the United States don’t speak English all that well. And we don’t know how to enunciate. I include myself in this category- and so does my Dad. I’ve lost count of the times he has said to me, “Megan you talk so god damn fast I don’t understand a word you’re saying”. My Dad grew up speaking Bostonian, so if my English is hard for him, you can imagine how lost my francophone classmates are when they sit down for what is ultimately an hour of garble.
I have talked with my classmates, and they are in the middle of intensive English courses and usually want to engage me in English. Personally, I’d rather speak to them in French (Hell, even Wolof) because I find it so hard to slow down when I am speaking in my mother tongue. Really hard. And that’s me just trying to describe how many brothers and sisters I have. Now try asking a professor lecturing on Energy, Technology and Engineering to slow his canter down.
This is Jeopardy!
But I plan on going to the next Global Classroom and taking notes for my classmates, in the dim hope that I might provide some utility as the only person absorbing any of the material. Additionally, I just might send a note to the professors at Columbia and tell them- “Hey, you talk so god damn fast we can’t understand a word you’re saying”.
I just might do this. After all, how can we ever hope to achieve sustainable development if we can’t even understand one another?