Friday, October 4
AFDA, 13:40
Today was the busiest day so far, since today was the day that the students were due to make their initial pecha kucha presentations. Lars suggested that we all walk to AFDA at 7:45 so we all met for breakfast at about 7:00. Which is to say that when I walked in at 7:05 Lars and Jutta were seated at a table and Jani was nowhere to be seen.
He stayed behind to wait for Rudolph, who was arriving from Accra, and we walked.
Gina was busy and Damon had not arrived so we delyaed the start of the presentations until 9:30. Unsurprisingly everyone struggled with the pecha kucha format. All of the four groups put too much content in, and most of them used standard bullet-point slides. However, given the simple fact that we had deliberately created groups in which no two members knew each other before the course they all did astoundingly well.
Every group had a coherent attempt to answer the brief. Perhaps none of them did completely, but everyone made a genuine effort. At 12:00 the panel (which was Damon, Gina, Jani and Lars) retired to consider and we went off to lunch.
Jutta and I took Rudolph, who had arrived in time to see the presentations, for lunch at Salvationcafe, in 44 Stanley, where we had eaten yesterday. This time I had a chicken Caesar salad, with a drink of pureed apple, pear, pineapple and ginger.
Now we are on our way back into AFDA:
At 14:00 the panel will have reviewed the presentations and they will return to provide a brief for the major project. Jutta, Rudolph and I will retire for fifteen minutes to consider our strategy and then return to explain to the students how we will proceed. We derived four conceptual tasks from the revised brief and now we will create groups to think them through. We will give them a deadline of 12:00 on Sunday, when we will meet them to assemble a detailed road map for next week.
At 17:30 Gina will give us a lift home and Rudolph will disappear for a nap. At 21:00 we will meet up again at Picobella, a local restaurant. Steve will arrive with Gina, who has just collected him from the airport.
We will spend two hours eating and drinking and talking. I will eat beef fillet and drink a local red wine.
By 23:45 I will be sound asleep in my strange bed in room 26.