Now is a pretty confusing and trying time for us here at the University of Dar es Salaam. I’m about to go to the mall to use internet again and post these because we still don’t have campus internet (last time we did was two weeks ago yesterday) and it doesn’t look like we will have any in the foreseeable future either. I only have been online for half an hour total in the last two weeks and I kept holding out because they made it sound like they would have it back sometime soon. Yesterday we checked though and they finally admitted that they had no clue when it would be back and can no longer deny this fact so they were a little embarrassed about this.

Some of the other people here still don’t have roommates either and I’ve been told it is because the government still hasn’t given a lot of people their loans yet. School even started two months later this year so that the government and university would have time to get their act together on the whole loan issue. However, that hasn’t been accomplished and we also are getting running water less frequently while the internet hasn’t worked at all on campus for over two weeks now. This puts a lot of stress on students who many people are predicting will go on strike again sometime in the next couple weeks. I’ll have to talk to my roommate more about this soon before I make any more assumptions but a strike has the potential to completely change our circumstances here. In the event of a strike and protest, international visiting students previously have had small tutoring sessions set up for them so that they are still able to complete their studies here. That doesn’t sound that bad but I’ve heard that they were a complete joke last year so they could be a big waste of time. I also fear that a strike will push the starting dates for the next term of study here back even further which could potentially eliminate any chance of having a summer back home for even a month. This is obviously something I want to avoid so while I’m posting these today, I’ll also be sending emails trying to set up an internship or something that I can start after my first term here.

Classes are somewhat in limbo here too. I didn’t have any real courses start last week asides from the one run by our CIEE Director here. I started my Kiswahili one yesterday too but that probably was only because of pressure from our director. I’ve tried to go to classes and they’ve been full of students, but no professors have shown up yet. It’s been really confusing and tough in that respect and I think we’ve lost sight of what we’re supposed to be doing here but this might just be part of the process. I have to go now because I want to hurry up and get these posted. I started writing something up about my birthday here but I don’t know if I’ll ever get that finished unfortunately. We’ll see though but in the mean time, wish me luck.