Sumait University
"For Work and Fun"
In 2022, Yussaf Hamad (SOAS) took part in a teaching placement at Sumait University as a lecturer in linguistics.
Located at Chukwani on the Islands of Zanzibar in the United Republic of Tanzania, one of Zanzibar's safest neighbourhoods in the West Urban region, Sumait University boasts of its small but urban, lush green campus compound that offers a range of sports, recreation and medical facilities. Some of the facilities available include an on-campus clinic, football pitch, spacious car park, gardens and a restaurant used mainly by the students. The campus is safely secured with a fence and 24 hours man-operated security to ensure maximum safety of the students, staff and properties. The University sits close to the island's best beach hotels, restaurants, and social clubs, offering a perfect blend of balanced "work and fun" exotic milieu.
Yussaf says: “My duties and responsibilities included teaching, assessing and supervising students' seminar presentations. The students were friendly, passionate, polite, inquisitive, supportive and keen to learn. The classroom atmosphere was conducive, and it was fun working with the students inside and outside the classroom.
Sumait is one of the few universities with a more multicultural staff-student community than any other academic institution in Zanzibar. Here, I was privileged to have met some staff and students from Zanzibar and abroad. On my sojourn at Sumait, students and colleagues shared their experiences and enriched me with ample knowledge and skills apposite for my research and future career plans. Sumait University, as Lutz Marten, my supervisor, said, is a "new and developing institution with strengths in humanities, linguistics and Arabic. It constitutes a highly relevant professional and academic environment for training and development" – the qualities I found most relevant for my placement and future career plans. Hence, the decision to take my placement at Sumait helped inform my research and refine the direction of my thesis constructively. The placement also enhanced my professional contacts and network, boosted my confidence and employability prospects in teaching and, most importantly, enabled me to put my theoretical studies, knowledge and skills to practice.
Outside my work hours and especially at the weekends, I had something fun to do with the students and some staff members: evening walks on the sandy beaches near Sumait University, afternoon masala and spice tea, lunch and dinner meet-ups, study tours, sports, and canoeing, to name just a few. Work and fun, combined with the hospitality of the people I met, made my placement astonishing and, indeed, the most rewarding experience of my life as a student.”