NMMU

Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, NMMU, is home to 20,000 students, 10% of which are international.  NMMU is the most culturally diverse university in all of Africa.  It was established in 2005 as a merging of the PE Technikon, the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE) and the Port Elizabeth campus of Vista University (Vista PE).  There are four campuses – North, South, Missionvale and George.  We will only be at South which is the main campus.

Here is a link to the school Web site if you are interested in checking it out: http://www.nmmu.ac.za/

The architecture is pretty neat.  Everything is concrete which is cool because it reminds me of the St. John’s campus.  There are palm trees everywhere and all of the “hallways” are outdoors.  I’m still don’t really know where I’m going most of the time, but recognize most of the buildings that we use.

Because there are 29 CSB/SJU students in our program, we do not direct enroll into the school.  This is also so we can get home in time for our summer internships and jobs.  The actual NMMU semester does not end until the middle of June.  Instead, we have classes set up for us to work around our service work as well.  Here is my class schedule:

Monday: Missionvale 8-11:45, South African Jazz Music 2:45-5:45

Tuesday: Missionvale 8-11:45, Intercultural Seminar 2-5

Wednesday: South African Literature 2-5

Thursday: South African Politics 2-5

Half of us take the politics class and the other half take Marine Biology on Thursday morning from 9-11:30.

Missionvale Care Centre is the place I will be doing service work at for the remainder of the semester.  I will talk about that in my next blog.  We will be getting credit for it by journaling and writing reflection papers.

Our jazz music class is super fun.  On the first day we got a history lecture, sang some songs, did a little clapping and watched videos of traditional tribal music.  The music is very unique and strange to us.  There is no rhythm or counts, which is definitely a challenge for me.  Most of you know how much I love counts in music.  Over the course we will be taking some field trips and writing just three papers.  It should be rather enjoyable, and I like that it is our Monday class.

Intercultural Seminar is taught by our Study Abroad advisers Bruce and Norma.  Bruce used to be an education professor at St. Ben’s/St. John’s, while Norma worked in the library there.  In this class we will take a look at South African culture and its history, along with our own culture and how we react to things.  We start the course by reading “Long Walk to Freedom,” the autobiography of Nelson Mandela.  Fortunately, I read this book in January to get ahead, because it’s so long.  I absolutely loved the book and would recommend it to anyone.  It is really inspiring.

South African Literature is taught by this very funny South African woman named Mary West.  She is about 50 years old, just under 5 feet tall, wears skinny jeans and has long gray hair down to her waist.  Mary has a huge passion for South African literature and poems.  Before class even started we had to read ten different short stories.  They were really long and confusing, but interesting nonetheless. 

My South African Politics class will definitely be the most challenging of them all.  Looking at the syllabus, I was a little overwhelmed.  Politics isn’t exactly my thing and I haven’t taken a politics class since high school.  This one is a 300 level class too!  However, after one class session I feel like I have already learned so much.  The two presidents after Mandela have been through a lot of political scandals and there seems to be much corruption in the government right now.  Job creation is huge and many people say the government hasn’t really delivered.  Unemployment rates are anywhere between 25%-40%.  I’m looking forward to learning a great deal in this class.

My favorite part about NMMU so far has been the varsity rugby games.  Rugby is the huge sport down here, like American football is in the US.  We have been to two of the games so far which are on Monday nights.  The stadium is very large and the benches are made of concrete.  The games remind me so much of Johnnie football.  The only difference is they have beer gardens actually in the stadium.   

Our team is called the NMMU Madibaz, our mascot is a dolphin and the school colors are navy and red.  Madiba is the clan/tribe name of Nelson Mandela.  At the game there is one announcer who walks around on the field and six cheerleaders as well.  Unfortunately, the cheerleaders are not as skilled as we would have expected coming from a school of this size.  I guess it’s okay though, seeing as our rugby team hasn’t won a game in two years.  Nevertheless, the school spirit is alive and well, and it’s so much fun cheering at the games with other students.  We all bought pride shirts for R50 (50 Rand) – that’s just over $7!  What a steal.

It’s nice that classes began, because now we have some sort of a consistent schedule.  Tomorrow we are going to Addo Elephant Park for the entire day.  I can’t wait to show you our safari pictures.  Thanks for reading!