A Tour of the University

Today I went to the University to teach lab.  It is hard to believe that I'm done teaching on November 15th, with the exam scheduled for November 23rd.  The exam system is British here, so only one exam for an entire semesters worth of teaching.  I had to write the exam this weekend, and it is only supposed to be five questions, from which the students may select four.  I made my exam questions 'many parts' in an attempt to appropriately test over an entire years worth of material (I had to teach an entire year of Soil Science in the one semester that I am here).

I realized that, like pictures of our house, I have not yet posted many pictures of the University campus.  So, below are some shots of the campus and the Mauritius Institute for Sugarcane Research (MISRI), which is a private research centre funded by a sugarcane check-off program.

This is one of the original buldings that date from around 1905.  It is right across the street from my building, and the area is beautifully maintained.  They have the nicest and cleanest grounds I've seen, and every morning there is a creew sweeping and raking around the area.  The buildings now house the Extension components for Mauritius Ministry of Agriculture.  While the folks who work for Extension know the University Faculty of Agriculture people, and many of the Extension staff are Faculty of Agriculture graduates, I don't think they work togther a great deal.  I've gotten to know some of the Extension pathologists, and they are great folks.  They have an extension facility (the labs and equipment) which makes ours at Auburn look pretty bleak!  It appears to be a well funded and excellent pathology diagnostic facility.

These two photos are of the national sugarcane research facility (MISRI), which is located right next to my building.   The staff was kind enough to let my students come over for a tour of their commercial soil test lab.  Laboratory analyses are free for sugar cane growers, as a check-off pays for the facilities.  Again, these facilities made me jealous - they can do N15 work, and the have the best and newest lab equipment I've seen in a while.  It was all there, and the level of environmental fate work they are doing in sugarcane production was impressive.   

This is the original Faculty of Agriculture building at the University of Mauritus.  It dates from 1910.

It is getting hot, so everyone uses their umrellas for shade.  I took this picture a the University bus stop.  Note the standard 'student apparel' of jeans - a worldwide look.  Here, though, the women will often wear the top to a charudi (a sort of more casual sair, where the bottom sari part is pants or leggings) over their skinny jeans. 

More of the bus stop.  People congregate in the shade as they wait.  The building at the back is a little snack place that has drinks, snacks, copying and laminating.  Everyone keeps saying how 'hot' it has gotten but it hasn't!  In the center of the island there are breezes which keep it cool.  By Alabama standards it is not hot at all.  The coast, however, is hot.

This is a trash can.  I took a picture of it because it is NOT on fire.  They sometimes are, because people throw lit cigarettes in them, and the trash catches on fire.  No one much seems to care, and folks just walk on by and the fire eventually dies out when the litter is consumed.   This picture was taken at the bus stop at the Univesity - looking towards campus.