KalahariLog

It's mid-semester break here. There are very few students around and many of the professors are out of town too. The good news is that the internet connections in the University have become almost functional as a result! It's not as good as on weekends, when nobody is around to listen to radio over the internet, but it mostly works. Whereas reading the New York Times is usually out of the question due to the huge amount of graphics, this week it does load after a while. By the way, the BBC still has a "text only" option which comes very handy and offers a fond reminder about the early days of the internet.

Unlike the rest of the campus, which is mostly free of people, the staff lounge is fuller than ever. There are, in fact, two staff cafeterias. One has a reputation of a noisy and busy joint with a couple of TVs tuned on the sports stations. The other is a more sedate, table-cloths-on-the-table kind of affair. I used to call them the "cheap" lounge and the "fancy" lounge, until the cost of lunch at the cheap lounge became higher than that at the fancy one. Not that food is expensive at either of those: A breakfast of 3 eggs and an English muffin sets one back 6.50Pula or just about over $1 at the fancy lounge. Contrast this with the 36Pula breakfast consisting of 2 eggs, baked beans and tomato at the popular Newscafe nearby.

Lunch at the University lounges is a buffet-style affair where one points to one of the grains (rice, maize, sorghum), one of the meats (chicken, beef, fish), and of the sides (salad, beets, spinach) and somebody behinds the counter heaps spoonfuls of the stuff onto your plate. What might be lacking in quality or in variety of food offered is almost made up in quantity. Both the cheap or fancy lounges charge about 15-18Pula for it, which is still under $3. For some reason, lunch at the Newscafe costs about the same as their breakfast which is double that of lunch on campus. Surely, the cost of food at the University must be subsidized. It makes me wonder why more staff members are not taking advantage of it (except during mid-semester break week).