a normal day

There are so many things I want to write about, I feel like they are blocking each other out and making me go blank. It reminds me of the Simpson's, where Mr. Burns goes to a clinic and they tell him he has so many diseases trying to kill him, he is being saved by The Three Stooges Effect, I believe it was called. All jammed in the door so none can pass. I defeat the Three Stooges Effect by writing about what's closest at hand: today.

It's pretty much a normal day, a Monday, I was here for the weekend and have a full day of work planned. I got up around seven, having dozed fitfully for most of the night, and slept restfully little. It was cool enough so that when we got together over morning foodbowl - mono in Mandinka, something they want to call pap in English (little balls of rice powder, like very large cous-cous, in a sweet sauce/porridge) - one of the boys was wearing a no kidding winter jacket, in camo print, with the hood and it's fake fur fringe up. Hilarious. I was comfortable in my scrub pants* and a short sleeve shirt. People wrap themselves in towels, extra skirts, anything to keep out the "cold".

The water tap wasn't behaving very well in its daily performance. Mostly just drooling out an unconvincing trickle, not filling the twenty liter bidong (in a former life it was a twenty liter jug of cooking oil, as are almost all the big water jugs {TWENTY LITERS of cooking oil - that should tell you something about how we stay nourished here}) at anything resembling reasonable speed. I was half minding the tap, as I have appointed myself occasional second assistant to the water commander, and hoping to get some water myself. I suppose I could get as much from the tap as I wanted, I have some secret priority that even I don't really know about, but it seems greedy to fill up more than one bidong in the morning, and most days I don't even use the twenty liters. When I want to wash anything that doesn't go to the laundry service (aka the powerhouse washer woman in the compound), I will usually use more, but I keep a spare bidong full of water for those days. Anyway, the tap worked itself out and the various basins, buckets, and bidongs all got filled, or close enough for Gambians.

I went to Anglican Upper Basic School around ten, my first stop of the day, to check on the state of their various computers. This was the big day they were going to turn the generator on for me to actually use the computers, and find out what was actually there in working order. It turned out better than I had hoped in many cases, they have at least seven fully workable computers, some that you might not raise an eyebrow at if you saw them in America. Well, one or two like that. The issue we ran into, as I knew must happen, is that the generator isn't strong enough to power them all at once. They have a dedicated generator for the lab, but it's only 2.2 kva, and when I turned on a fifth computer, the biggest power hog of the ones already running restarted. It was only a few weeks ago that I learned that is the expected behavior when a computer isn't getting enough juice, but it makes sense. I learn all sorts of new things about computers here, just not many I expect to be able to apply back in the States, unless a Bush is elected in 2008.

Regardless, that was a problem I fully expected going into the day, and it's better to have it out in the open so we can discuss what to do next. Anglican visit counts as a big success.

Next, I went to Fara Fenni Senior Secondary School, the big dog in town, with its massive generator and stable computer lab with ongoing classes. They are not as regular as I would like, having been cancelled more weeks recently than they've been held, but it's something. We have been working to get their internet connection working again, for the past two months. It's been out since the end of May, but things don't happen quickly here. Unless my boss comes to town. She was here last week on Tuesday, and basically dropped action bombs everywhere she went. I actually heard her say to the principal of the high school, "Sometimes, Mr. Morong, you just have to sit on their heads." And I couldn't have agreed more. She spoke to the deputy managing director of the national phone monopoly - Gamtel - and got him to agree to put pressure on the Fara Fenni branch to do its job and fix the phone line. I had been going to the local office for about six weeks with the lab manager / computer instructor, and we had nothing. But, Friday the technicians were calling back and forth, sending faxes and acting like they could do work, and today they came by - before I got there - and declared it to be working. I don't necessarily believe that means anything, but maybe it does.

The good news was that the school's whopping 125 kva generator was suddenly incapable of producing the current to run the lab. It would run, just produce the steady voltage the ups's (uninteruptable power supply) would need to protect the computers. This from a generator that's about big enough to power half this town. The generator that provides light for the houses in my compound is 0.62 kva. It's rinky dink and dependable for nothing, but they get lights, and television. Sometimes or television. Regardless, the school principal, or someone with him, had "touched something" that suddenly made the generator unreliable. So, just when Gamtel says we have a telephone line again, something else blows in. Nawec, the national electricity monopoly, whose rural electrification project is about ten years late but might be finished for the presidential election next year, is supposed to send someone over tomorrow morning to make the generator right. We'll see.

The other hilarity at the high school is exam time. The end of first term is nearly upon us, and all the high school students are taking tests. And FF Senior Secondary is a big time school, so they can afford to give each student a copy of the test, instead of them copying it down from the blackboard. The only problem with that is that approximately 0% of the teachers can type, so they haven't printed a single exam by this time last week. Most of them are hand written, but have to be typed, printed and then copied. I spent a few hours last Friday typing in exams for them, but they still had a big number to get through. And their copying machine is out of toner. So, even if the generator was working, they couldn't copy them. The copying machine at the hospital is also out of toner. They are using the machine at MRC (a British medical research organization) but it's a private facility and they can't do all the copying they need to there. So, yesterday they sent someone to Kerewan, about a three hour drive away, to the regional education office, to make the copies. And they sent someone else today. They are also trying to get a new toner cartridge, but that is only available in Kombo, a minimum 14 hour round trip. I think they sent someone though. 14 hours. For toner. Almost certainly to get one cartridge. He'll probably stay a couple days, do some other business, come back and say they were issues, perhaps with or perhaps without toner. Working with "technology" is wonderful here.