Woke up early to make it to campus at 7:30am was not fun. When I heard my alarm go off at 6a.m. I was not pleased. I have not gotten used to waking up so early; the time difference doesn’t help either. When I wake up at 6 here, it’s only 1am back home. I took a moto taxi to the taxi station. The taxi man crammed 6 passengers in his car; definitely not fun. Especially when the person sitting next to you reeked. I do not understand how you can smell so early in the morning. The fare to campus was 300 cfa, which is less than a dollar.

I got here at 7:25am and to my surprise, no one was here. I forgot that punctuality here does not exist. My main contact arrived at 7:40am. He told me that the class is scheduled for 7:45am but if we got there on time the class would be empty. Students complain about the distance they travel to come to school and so forth and so on. Mind you, there is a school bus that goes to town to pick up students and arrives here at 7:35am the latest. Also, the area surrounding the university is filled with student apartments so there is no excuse for lateness except pure laziness.

We made to the 2nd year engineering class which was held in an amphitheater. I thought the class was big but not as big as I expected. The students were a bit rowdy but had a lot of questions. I introduced myself and had them guess where I was from, artist that lived in New York and other introductory questions. A lot of them were shy so I had them write their questions and if they weren’t shy they can read it out loud. A lot of the questions were about life in America, how to get there, studying in the U.S. etc. Of course some of the questions were inappropriate like how old are you, are you looking for a husband, can you take me to America. . I only spoke for an hour. As I walked out of class the guys whistled and hollered. A mess, I know. I waited forever for Dr. Wirba to finish up the class. I waited in the geography department. There, I was given a magazine on African literature. I wrote down a few titles that enticed me. Hopefully, downloading books from Barnes and Noble will not cause a problem.

I waited around campus until 1pm when the faculty bus arrived to take professors back to the city. This service is very convenient but I doubt I will use it a lot once I move closer to the university. When I got to the Norwegian camp, the kids patiently awaited my arrival so we can play memory and jump rope. I have started to grow fond of my neighbors. Too bad I have so many roaches and crickets or else I would have stayed.