Getting down to work
Port Harcourt University Library 20/2/2006 10:30 AM
It was good to have Saturday and Sunday to adjust to the time and the climate. It was rather boring, all of that time in the hotel, though. We could not go out for reasons of safety. There have been some recent kidnappings of oil workers in this part of the country.
This is the first day on the job. It started with meeting the vice-chancellor and many and many administrators. Communication here is very formal particularly the higher up one is socially. It would seem stilted and false at home but is the clearly the expectation here. Tea also seems a social necessity in meetings.
The librarians are very enthusiastic and ready for changes which is not what we expected based on the last visit.
We toured the library facilities and some of campus. We are driven everywhere. I think that they do this as a courtesy and to show honor to us. Outside of the campus it is a safety issue, but on campus we are even driven between buildings. This happened all over Nigeria, on every campus that we visited.
The campus has a new computing center which was funded by Shell Oil. It is very much the social place on campus.
The library is building a new building. This has been in process for 12 years. There was a lack of money and so construction stopped for something like a decade. The construction resumed, an second story was built and repairs done on the first story (unfinished buildings in the tropics are particularly vulnerable to decay). Then the bank holding the money for the project went under. The university will probably get the money back, but it is not known when.
It was good to have Saturday and Sunday to adjust to the time and the climate. It was rather boring, all of that time in the hotel, though. We could not go out for reasons of safety. There have been some recent kidnappings of oil workers in this part of the country.
This is the first day on the job. It started with meeting the vice-chancellor and many and many administrators. Communication here is very formal particularly the higher up one is socially. It would seem stilted and false at home but is the clearly the expectation here. Tea also seems a social necessity in meetings.
The librarians are very enthusiastic and ready for changes which is not what we expected based on the last visit.
We toured the library facilities and some of campus. We are driven everywhere. I think that they do this as a courtesy and to show honor to us. Outside of the campus it is a safety issue, but on campus we are even driven between buildings. This happened all over Nigeria, on every campus that we visited.
The campus has a new computing center which was funded by Shell Oil. It is very much the social place on campus.
The library is building a new building. This has been in process for 12 years. There was a lack of money and so construction stopped for something like a decade. The construction resumed, an second story was built and repairs done on the first story (unfinished buildings in the tropics are particularly vulnerable to decay). Then the bank holding the money for the project went under. The university will probably get the money back, but it is not known when.
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