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Nganga Muchiri ’09 (Nairobi, Kenya) is pursuing a B.S. in chemical engineering and an A.B in English. He spent last spring semester studying abroad at the School of English at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. The following is a first-person account of Muchiri’s experience.
Formal orientation to the University of New South Wales required more than merely adjusting to classes and culture. I was just coming off of two months in Kenya where I visited family and friends and interned in the chemical department of a large brewery and I had not been exposed to American accents all that time. Suddenly, in Australia no less, I was hanging out with more American students than I usually do at Lafayette. It was an interesting conversion.
I took four classes at the university. The first was an introductory course to early Australian history called “The Fatal Shore.” The other three were English classes. One was entitled “Twentieth Century Women Writers,” which selected some of the best women writing in the last century. Another, called “Australian Masculinities,” was a class that investigated the psyche of the Australian male. Lastly, “Post Colonial Literature,” which I found to be most inspiring, examined literature that emerged from former colonies of the British and other empires, not just from Africa, but the world over.
The most challenging part of these classes, in my opinion, was the research work. The writing style of the classes was quite different from American writing style in that Australians place much more emphasis on background information in addition to the magnitude of research required to build a good thesis. Despite these challenges, my continuous three-day weekends and living only 15 minutes away from the beach helped make for an easy transition into the culture.
Sydney proved to be more cultural than I had expected it to be. There was always a museum – two or three even – to go to every weekend, along with dance places to check out and not forgetting Asian cuisine varying from Japanese and Vietnamese to Korean and Singaporean. It was such good food, a little pricy, but well worth the dollars for its sensual pleasures.
Besides the classes and emersion in a culture that proved to be more different from mine than I expected, I took a backpacking trip from Sydney to Melbourne by bus, then to Adelaide again over road. This trip offered many pleasant surprises for me as a tourist and in regards to direction for my future career.
In each city I stayed two or so days and savored as much food as I could. During a tour of historical Melbourne, I had a look at the city’s monumental Central Building that used to be a brick factory. I also toured the artsy parts of Melbourne, had coffee and read books in stylish cafes, and visited the city’s China Town.
Later on in Adelaide, I spent a lot of time at the beach and also visited Emerson Process Management office. Emerson is a global technology company that provides a large diversity of products and services for industries, markets and consumers. Its Process Management brand specializes in improving industrial systems, facilities and devices in order to increase plant efficiency and productivity.
I was privileged to be able to tour the company and speak with representatives without an appointment. My eyes were opened to the branch of engineering constituency, which involves both knowledge of plant design and building relationships with customers and other companies. Knowledge of plant design carries with it the potential for industrial revolutions that are quite necessary for Africa’s growth in the upcoming decades. I hope to be one of those to bring such potential back to Africa with me. Emerson is definitely a company I would consider working for in the future and I have already applied to their offices in the United States for an internship next summer.
Finally, on my adventurous excursion through Australia, I rented a car and had an awesome time driving – and getting lost – in the outback. I discovered the quaintest small towns along the highways with populations of less than 50,000, visited distinct tourist attractions ranging from swamps to dead, eerie, abandoned farm houses infested with wild rabbits, and sat in the widest open fields imaginable. The serenity and calm of these places was very, very worth the long drives necessary to get to them.
Far be it to say that I did not learn anything. My future life and career has been permanently marked by the Post-Colonial class I took in the school of English. I am now, more than ever, inclined to pursue English at a post-grad level and hope to go on to teach and write prolifically. Exposure to some of the big names in post-colonial theory such as Homi Bhabha, Jamaica Kincaid, and the lesser known Dionne Brand has left me thirsty for greater critical works in African literature. I hope to be among the group that spearheads something akin to an African re-renaissance, sooner rather than later, both artistically and industrially.
I have always been interested in the issues discussed in literature, such as empowerment of the less privileged and the history of different civilizations all over the world. Thus, since taking this Post Colonial class, my focus for post-graduate studies has changed from engineering to post-colonial literature that I may teach and write about cultures that have experienced colonization, and the amazing way they have re-claimed their power and began to mould their own destinies. For now at least. I would love to write poetry and produce anthologies of short stories.
With this, I intend to still work professionally as an engineer. The integration of the technical skills I acquire with my engineering major with the communication skills from my English major should put me in good standing for managerial engineering positions in the future. This would also enable me to teach writing skills to fellow engineers, which is another desire of mine.
As I email my former professors promising to meet with them and compose a final theory paper in English literature, a task I’m quite enthusiastic about, I am ever so glad I embarked upon this experience. My newly awakened desires were met with opportunities and direction, something I wasn’t expecting. I would definitely urge anyone with even half a chance to take advantage of experiences like this.