Kenya

Animals, Kenya, Miscellaneous

We have lots of big animals in Africa, like lions, giraffes, hippos, etc. Well I have discovered a new tourist attraction in my very home: a man-eating spider was waiting above my front door when I came home tonight. As you may recall, this isn’t the first time I’ve had such an encounter… As I type the spider is staring at me, licking its lips, and I’m staring at the broom I’m going to use to whack the hell out of it.

I don’t usually kill them, but I just can’t take any chances with this one. I’m already freaked out when I enter a room and turn the light on, open a closet, put on a sweatshirt, slip into bed, or mess with the curtains. If it’s not a spider it’s a lizard, and if it’s not a lizard it’s a wasp; one time I even had a bat flying around inside the house when I got home at night. Oh, and don’t forget the dogs that run after me when I’m riding home after dark!

I can’t remember where they said the “Final Frontier” was, but Africa’s pretty frontiery… if you know what I mean. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shake all my clothes, move everything away from the walls, and change my bed sheets. Africa is not for the faint of heart!

Kenya, Pictures, Travel

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I visited Sureel in Kitui a few weeks ago but never got around to posting the pictures… I took a co-worker, Elizabeth, with me because she comes from there and promised to show me around.  We spent the weekend hanging out, cooking Indian food, and visiting this big rock called Nzambani rock.  The tribe in Kitui is the same tribe in Tala, the Kamba people, so it’s part of the Kamba “country,” or “Ukambani.”  Kitui’s a pretty modern town, though, with several banks, hoppin’ clubs, and lots of super markets.  It’s much, much bigger than Tala, but also much “deeper” into the country (about three hours from Tala).
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Kenya, Teaching

I have been teaching two classes to students this semester: Introduction to Programming and Algorithms and Network Essentials. So I’ve spent the past eight or nine weeks lecturing, giving assignments, and issuing CATs. I just gave the third CAT to my programming students and I thought it was pretty fair, but I was surprised at the results. Every student got this question completely wrong:

int main()
{
int salary = 15000;

if( salary > 15000 )
{
cout << "You have a nice job!" << endl; } else { cout << "You need a new job!" << endl; } }

Asked what this small program would print when executed, they all answered “3.” I wrote this question to test understanding of two concepts: the conditional if/else structure and the “>” operator. I figured that even if the students didn’t understand the programming syntax, logic alone would guide them. After all, “greater-than” is a concept in plenty of other disciplines besides computer science.

It’s not like I haven’t been teaching them! We have definitely talked about both of these concepts in class, and I even had them try similar examples in the computer lab over the course of the semester.

Maybe it’s not supposed to make sense, like the people who built a machine to calculate the purpose of life, the universe, and everything in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy; the machine spent millions of years calculating, only to spit out “42.” Maybe “3” is the right answer and I’m just not asking the right question, haha.