Strike

I finally have an office, but there is now power in it, so I still can’t really work in there. They are hoping that power will be on by the end of this week, before classes start on Monday. But now there is another obstacle. The university just voted yesterday to go on a general STRIKE, starting on Friday. The faculty and staff were promised raises a number of years ago through a negotiated contract, but they haven’t actually received the raises spelled out in that contract for the past several years. With inflation so high here, this is a big problem. So, even if I did get my office on Friday, I can’t actually go in now until the strike is over. People are predicting it will only last a few days, but you never know. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever get settled here!

The university campus is located at what used to be the campus of one of the old South African Teacher Training Colleges, when Namibia was still ruled by South Africa and called South West Africa. South Africa instituted its apartheid based educational system in South West Africa, from primary school through college. So this very large campus, where UNAM now is, was only used by 200 white students training to be teachers up through 1990. UNAM was founded in 1992, and the campus is now home to 10,000 students that come from all over southern Africa! My office is going to be in one of the old piano rehearsal rooms, not too far from the offices of the rest of my department.