last week Thursday
Another entry pulled from the email bag: (actually excerpted I guess, but it's a touch late and I'm not going to split hairs)
“The landscape looks like tropical forest converted into farmland - and not converted too gracefully or happily at times. [...] We are currently experiencing a internet blackout here in Fara Fenni, but obviously that will be over by the time you get this - unless I make it to the capital before it gets resolved. I am writing on my laptop, plugged into power at the hospital, and using a portable email client on my usb drive. I am such a dork.
“My friend is pursuing a PHD in Economics, and I asked if they were going to have to do groundbreaking research in order to get out with letters after her name. I suggested doing it on how economies don't function in the third world - I know a teeny little west african place where they have an apparently disfunctional economy to study. What are the requirements for something to be called an economy anyway? Maybe we don't even qualify for that...
“I still get wound up thinking about trekking through places, dealing with all the unknowns and oddities. Life is sort of like that here, just pulled out slow and twisted like taffy a little. Today a friend of mine was in a car accident about 85km away, got dropped off at the hospital here in town, where I met here and took her (on a horse cart) to my house, so we could hang for a few hours while I worked on improving the stability of my bed (carpentry) and she waited for a Peace Corps vehicle to come pick her up and take her to Kombo for x-rays and whatnot. It was odd, but many days tend towards that, and life just seems a little on its ear. “
Life has started up again after the long holiday break – one of the members of my training group actually had four consecutive weeks off, between travel, the Christmas and New Years break, then the immediately following Tobaski (though technically there was more than a week of school in between, very few teachers or students went, and no classroom work happened), and then more travel time. I wish it were an exceptional case, for a ten day between-term break to turn into a four week vacation, but it is probably closer to the rule. Life in the Gambia.
And then this week, the high school had a chance to get back to work, but guests from a Rotary club in the U.K. visited. The club has been supporting the computer lab on a two year project – paying some operating costs and other bits, and this is at least the second time the chairman and his wife have come to see the school. The principal really pulls out the stops, and no classes have been held all week (not to say that the two are completely correlated, but they are not unrelated either.) In my compound, people are saying “maybe next week learning will start”. I try not to be discouraged.
In other news, my domain was up for renewal, and I decided to change hosting providers, knowing full well it would be a headache to accomplish from here. I think, after all was said and done, I handled all the details except figuring out how to tell the domain registrar (company that actually relates the name to ip address / host) a credit card number to bill me. Their web site was amazingly unusable, and I don't think that was overly due to the fact that I am on the far end of the internet. So, perhaps I've lost the domain for a bit, very very slight possibility forever. And I will have lost any email sent while it's gone. Fantastically, we are experiencing that aforementioned internet blackout – two providers are having separate issues and so I can't do anything to fix this freaking problem. It doesn't keep me awake at night, but it does irk me during the daytime. Only when I actually need to do something online and urgent does this happen. Well, in reality I am just more sanguine about it the rest of the time.
Another reason I came to West Africa – develop patience. That and the serenity to accept those things I cannot change. Not happening yet...
“The landscape looks like tropical forest converted into farmland - and not converted too gracefully or happily at times. [...] We are currently experiencing a internet blackout here in Fara Fenni, but obviously that will be over by the time you get this - unless I make it to the capital before it gets resolved. I am writing on my laptop, plugged into power at the hospital, and using a portable email client on my usb drive. I am such a dork.
“My friend is pursuing a PHD in Economics, and I asked if they were going to have to do groundbreaking research in order to get out with letters after her name. I suggested doing it on how economies don't function in the third world - I know a teeny little west african place where they have an apparently disfunctional economy to study. What are the requirements for something to be called an economy anyway? Maybe we don't even qualify for that...
“I still get wound up thinking about trekking through places, dealing with all the unknowns and oddities. Life is sort of like that here, just pulled out slow and twisted like taffy a little. Today a friend of mine was in a car accident about 85km away, got dropped off at the hospital here in town, where I met here and took her (on a horse cart) to my house, so we could hang for a few hours while I worked on improving the stability of my bed (carpentry) and she waited for a Peace Corps vehicle to come pick her up and take her to Kombo for x-rays and whatnot. It was odd, but many days tend towards that, and life just seems a little on its ear. “
Life has started up again after the long holiday break – one of the members of my training group actually had four consecutive weeks off, between travel, the Christmas and New Years break, then the immediately following Tobaski (though technically there was more than a week of school in between, very few teachers or students went, and no classroom work happened), and then more travel time. I wish it were an exceptional case, for a ten day between-term break to turn into a four week vacation, but it is probably closer to the rule. Life in the Gambia.
And then this week, the high school had a chance to get back to work, but guests from a Rotary club in the U.K. visited. The club has been supporting the computer lab on a two year project – paying some operating costs and other bits, and this is at least the second time the chairman and his wife have come to see the school. The principal really pulls out the stops, and no classes have been held all week (not to say that the two are completely correlated, but they are not unrelated either.) In my compound, people are saying “maybe next week learning will start”. I try not to be discouraged.
In other news, my domain was up for renewal, and I decided to change hosting providers, knowing full well it would be a headache to accomplish from here. I think, after all was said and done, I handled all the details except figuring out how to tell the domain registrar (company that actually relates the name to ip address / host) a credit card number to bill me. Their web site was amazingly unusable, and I don't think that was overly due to the fact that I am on the far end of the internet. So, perhaps I've lost the domain for a bit, very very slight possibility forever. And I will have lost any email sent while it's gone. Fantastically, we are experiencing that aforementioned internet blackout – two providers are having separate issues and so I can't do anything to fix this freaking problem. It doesn't keep me awake at night, but it does irk me during the daytime. Only when I actually need to do something online and urgent does this happen. Well, in reality I am just more sanguine about it the rest of the time.
Another reason I came to West Africa – develop patience. That and the serenity to accept those things I cannot change. Not happening yet...
posted by Zac at
3:44 PM
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