An update from Nairobi*

From Father Michael Kirwen, director of the Maryknoll Institute for African Studies in Nairobi, Kenya:
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“MIASMU has scheduled its one credit course, AFST 512-Introduction to African Cultures and Religions, to run from April 2-4. The course is designed for both old and new personnel, African and foreign. Its purpose is to introduce students in a face-to-face manner to some of the foundational themes underpinning African cultural life, and to expose them to MIASMU’s educational methodology. Hopefully it will wet their appetites to sign up for a semester or immersion course afterwards.

“The course is structured as follows: lectures are given each morning, the first day on African culture, the second day on African religion and the third day on Kenyan political and economic realities. In the afternoons, students do field research, the tasks being directed by the lecturer of the day and facilitated by Kenyan university graduates trained by MIASMU as field assistants. In the late afternoon, there is a debriefing session on the fieldwork. In the evenings, students fill out a report on their field research, write a two-page paper interrelating the field experiences with the day’s lecture, and read the assigned bibliographical materials. The students are graded on the papers, field research reports and class participation."