Conscientious students impress visiting prof

(Gondar –also spelled Gonder—Ethiopia)—I already like my University of Gondar students—specifically, my Broadcast and Multimedia Writing class.

The view from my classroom at Gondar Univ. Yes, wow!

Through my own ignorance, I didn’t realize that today, Friday, March 2, is an Ethiopian national holiday, Adwa Victory Day. (“A time of great national pride and of remembrance of the great victory of Emperor Menelik over an invading Italian army on 2 March, 1896,” according to https://publicholidays.africa/ethiopia.) Thus, my M-W-F class doesn’t meet today. This put me in a bind, since I had wanted to give them an assignment today that they could complete on Monday, when I’ll be away from class in Bahir Dar.

Another view from the journalism dept. at UoG.

On Thursday, I mentioned this to my dedicated department chair, Mustofa Worku. He said he could call a couple of students, and that perhaps I could meet them in the afternoon. The brief meeting was set for 3:00pm Thursday. Since this was late afternoon on the day before a three day weekend, I hoped that maybe 2 or 3 students might show up. Imagine my surprise, and delight, when 20 of the 24 students met me and cheerfully received their assignments.  

If this is indicative of these students' commitment to the class, it’s going to be an outstanding semester indeed.

Assorted Updates
A. Journalism course at Gondar Community School—I continue to meet weekly with about 10 seventh graders. (See post from February). We’re learning the basics of journalism, and they’re eventually going to produce GCS’s first school newspaper. This week, the students took a fact sheet and produced a news story. The results were excellent—very encouraging indeed. Next week, we’ll discuss writing headlines and captions, and in the following weeks, production work will begin on the newspaper. Exciting!

B. Bahir Dar—Next Monday-Wednesday, I’ll be in Bahir Dar, about a two hour car trip from Gondar. I’ll be attending and speaking at a communications conference Monday and Tuesday, and addressing professional journalists and Bahir Dar University students on Wednesday. Stay tuned for updates.