Last night my mum and I had dinner at Le Baobab, a west African restaurant in Stockholm. Whenever I go to a restaurant and I see groundnut sauce on the menu I just have to choose that. I had chicken with ground nut sauce, which was delicious and my mum had a tusker and lamb. The thing that sucked however was that we had to wait over 40 inutes for our food. Otherwise it was a cosy place.
After seeing this I hope I’m not being too optimistic about my thesis… I’ve sent in the last draft to my supervisor. I’ve got one more week to work on it, but it’s basically done. I’m planning on taking a day off tomorrow to take a long walk, buy some ice cream, do some shopping and just relax.
I was just going through some old files on my computer when I came across a bunch of video clips from Uganda that I want to upload to YouTubee. I’ve also been going through some old pictures from 2008 when I volunteered in Uganda for the first time with the Swedish organization Youth for Global Education (YGE) with Gunilla and Becca. We worked as teaching assistants at Kisugu Primary School where we’re still working today with the poultry farm project.
Becca and I outside the class room block that currently doesn’t have a roof
Posho and Beans for lunch. I only managed to eat posho and beans with the teachers for a couple of weeks. When we discovered Ciao Ciao Italian Restaurant which was a 3 minute walk from the school there was almost no turning back to posho and beans. At Ciao Ciao I would eat chicken, meat or vegetable pie or a samosa and some vanilla yoghurt. Nothing fancy.
We worked with phonics and taught the basics in literacy and English and we had 20 students each.
We also did some teaching in the”big” classroom, but the teacher was able to manage large numbers a lot better, the teachers did however need help with marking.
It was believed that if we could not limit population growth, the world would go under. We used to look at fertility rates and tried to look for solutions on how to limit the number of child births. It was however not understood that high fertility rates were strongly linked to socioeconomic development.
In this video, Professor Hans Rosling links Religions and Babies…
You can make a lot of speeches, but the real thing is when you dig a hole, plant a tree, give it water, and make it survive. That’s what makes the difference – Wangari Maathai
I have translated this post from Swedish to English in case anyone is interested about reading about the programme “Development and International Cooperation.” I thought I’d do a couple of these posts for all of the three years and then one post about my opinions. So here it goes…
I have soon studied three years of the bachelor program Development and International Cooperation (UIS) at Södertörn University. Södertörn University is located 18 minutes from Stockholm Central. You take the train and get off at Flemingsberg Station. There are also lots of buses that can take, for example, I used to take bus 172 when I lived in Rågsved.
In 2010, there were 7468 students enrolled at the university, which is significantly less than Stockholm University which had 64 000 students in 2012!
Swedish students apply to Södertörn University at antagning.se and international students apply at universityadmissions.se. The eligibility requirements for the program UIS is to have a secondary education (or equivalent) and passing grades in English B and Social Sciences A. According to admission statistics from the National Agency for Higher Education (VHS) 626 applied to the fall term of 2012 of which there are 104 who have chosen it as the first choice.
When I started the fall term 2009, we were a little more than 100 students. During the first semester, we read the course Global Development A on 30 ECTS. Nothing unusual about that because it is a full-time programme. In any full-time programme, 60 credits are taken in one year. To get a Bacherlors Degree you have to have read 180 ECTS which is equivalent to three full academic years.
The first semester was divided into 4 different courses of 7.5 credits that each lasted 5 weeks. We read one subject at a time. The first course was called Development Theories and the History of Development and during that course we had four books as literature. Among others, we read Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith and Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom. The second course was called Political Globalization and Development, where we read Jean Grugel, Democratization. A Critical Introduction and Håkan Thörn, Globaliseringens dimensioner. Nationalstat, världssamhälle, demokrati och sociala rörelser. The third module was called Global Governance and then we had David L. Downie, and Janet Walsh Brown, Global Environmental Politics, and Robert Chambers, Whose Reality Counts? as course literature. The fourth and final module of the Global Development A was called Economic Globalization, Natural Resources and Development and it had the books Michael P. Todaro, and Stephen C. Smith, Economic Development and Joseph E. Stiglitz, Making Globalization work as literature.
Times have however changed and some courses have been replaced. The books we read during the first year were certainly very interesting and gave a general understanding of global development. I recommend anyone interested in Global Development to read them. Especially the Rist and Stiglitz book.
Sources:
http://webappl.web.sh.se/p3/ext/content.nsf/aget?openagent&key=sh_course_page_1026US
http://statistik.vhs.se/Home/Search
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sodertorns_hogskola_Entre.jpg
I’m really starting to feel that the school term is coming to an end.
I’m actually looking forward to a few months of no studying. I’ll be working 20 hours a week at Lidl from June-July and this might actually mean that I have some days to go to Gotland where my family has a summer cottage. In August I’m going to Kampala 
When I graduated from Östra Reals Gymnasium in 2007
I thought I’d promote my cousin Roy Lule Hafez a bit here on my blog. Just Skyped with him today and he told me about this video clip he has uploaded on YouTube. I know absolutely nothing about football but I know that he loves it, so here it goes!
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Sometimes I get “likes” on my posts, or sometimes people choose to follow me. I always try to follow my followers, it’s the only right thing to do. I wish I could “like” my likers, but for now, all I … Continue reading
