Taken from the Welcome to Rwanda packet I received from the Embassy upon arrival:
"In Rwanda, people tend to concern themselves with the present rather than the future. Nothing gets done in a timely manner. Planning for the future is virtually unheard of. Those of us who are task-oriented, who are accustomed to being successful at making and executing plans may find it frustrating to be in situations where schedules and time tables are not important"
Um, yeah, I think I'd have to agree... My module will be finished after this weekend and that means the next module begins the following Tuesday (Feb 1). It is a team-taught module that I am contributing one of the four weekend sessions, yet, no one seems bothered by the fact that we don't have a syllabus developed yet. So I spent the better part of yesterday creating a syllabus. I sent it out over email yesterday but still haven't heard back from any of the other instructors. Even though I had a lot of other things I needed to get done yesterday, it was worth dedicating the time to developing it just because it makes ME nervous not to have it all planned out ahead of time (I know, call me crazy for wanting to plan a class an ENTIRE week ahead of time!).
I think it might be worth investing some time to observing some of the other Rwandan professors while they teach a class. Maybe it will give me some perspective of what is expected! I only have my Columbia experience to draw upon and clearly that structure differs from the one being implemented here.
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