First Day at Universite Omar Bongo
Monday was our first day working with students and faculty from Universite Omar Bongo. But before the charrette started, Mark would make an introductory presentation to the students and faculty. We woke up early sometime around 6 am and had breakfast at the hotel before taking taxis to campus amphitheater. To our surprise, when we got there around 7:30 (for the 8 o’clock presentation), there was already a crowd of several hundred people milling around, waiting to get inside. Everyone in the studio was impressed; there had been people the previous days who wouldn’t commit to come because of the presentation being “too early”. And here were hundreds waiting, looking like they’d been there for at least 30 minutes already!
UOB students waiting outside the auditorium in the morning
When the guy with the keys finally showed up, very late at 9 am, everyone was quite ready to begin. After everyone was finally seated and our group had begun to set up, a few of us began to count just how many people from UOB had shown up. 985! (By the end of the presentation it was more like 1100). What an amazing turnout! Both Mark and Barry said it was the largest group they’d ever seen!
After several long hours, presentations in the almost unbearably hot and stuffy ampitheater by both Mark and the university’s president were almost done. Underneath the damp, warm air, one could feel a buzz of excitement coming from the students because we were going to be asking them what they wanted from their campus! It was at this point we handed out slips of paper and began the SWOT analysis, where the attendees anonymously submitted slips with the strengths, weaknessess, opportunities, and threats regarding their campus.
UOB students taking notes and writing down SWOTs
Then, once we had left the auditorium and finished up lunch from the school restaurant, it was time to form teams and head out to survey the campus for things such as building condition, street condition, etc. My group headed to our sector, Hillside, which included all of the buildings atop the hill on the northwest side of campus as well as those along the west side of the main campus road. Buildings were to be graded green, yellow, or red in regards to their condition, with green needing only minor renovation to keep and red buildings slated for priority demolition.
We romped all up and down the hill, even wandered into the huge, neglected ampitheatre that is the largest single room on campus other than perhaps the pre-fab auditorium that Mark had given his opening presentation in. By the end of the day, out of our sector of around 15 buildings, we had one green building and two yellow. There were similar results from other sectors groups with their building condition analyses.
Students out on site survey in the center of campus on Monday afternoon
For dinner we headed back to Quartier Louis to eat at L’Odika, which was a nicer restaurant serving West African cuisine. Many of us had chicken with odika sauce, odika being a Fang word for the fruit of certain kinds of acacia trees, which can be processed to make a block similar to chocolate. Dishes made with odika seem very similar to Mexican dishes made with mole. Others tried chicken with peanut sauce, and a couple others even tried nyembwe with our meat, made from palm nuts. All-in-all a nice change from the more familiar fare we had for dinner the rest of the week. And delicious!