Computer Tech Woes -- Hope Is On The Way

13 March 2011.  Back in January 2010 I described my computer tech woes—the frustrations of trying to clean viruses from the ancient computers that the AICT Kisula secretarial school has to work with.   These days the most streamlined free antivirus software requires about 192 MB of RAM under Windows XP.  Most of the Kisula school machines have either 64 MB or 128 MB.   Not only will the antivirus software not run, but every other task on the computer takes forever (in computer time, anyway.)   These machines were meant to run Windows 95—just running Windows XP itself far exceeds the capacity of the machines.  But still they will function, even with programs like Microsoft Office 2003.  So they get along—at least until the viruses take control.

This week one of the computers bogged down and ceased to function.  I tried to clean off the viruses, but the antivirus software would not load into the insufficient RAM.  In short, it simply did not work.  I tried to explain to the school matron why it would not run.  It’s like trying to fly an airplane with a motorcycle engine, I said.  She gave me the strangest look, and then she laughed.  I’m not sure she understood the point, but at least she saw some humor in the description.  Or maybe she just couldn’t believe what she heard and was simply laughing at me.  Either way, I appreciated the laughter.

But since I first described this problem a year ago, things have been happening.  A friend of mine from Alaska and my former Alaska law firm, Perkins Coie LLP, donated a total of 9 used computers and keyboards—many thanks to you all!  Although used, these computers will be much faster and more powerful than those clunkers the school now uses.  In late February I received word that the computers have arrived in Tanzania, at the port of entry in Dar es Salaam.   This is very good news!  But, what would be easy in America is often a far greater challenge in the developing world.  Transporting these computers the last 1200 kilometers to Mwanza is proving to be a significant logistical issue.  It’s not that there aren’t trucks and airplanes traveling the route every day, but rather the problem seems to be finding a transporter who is not only trusted and available, but also affordable on a limited budget.  So for now I am waiting for the improved hardware to arrive.  My American colleagues got them into the country, now my Tanzanian colleagues must also do their part to get them across country.  Maybe this week, I hope.  Hope is a real blessing.  Sometime you might ask someone the reasons why they have hope.  

How's Class? Good, but ...

12 March 2011.  The Excel classes have been going well.  Not fast, just well.  Our pace is controlled by our electricity shortage.  We are still having electricity only about half the time—a nation-wide situation.  Tanzania is in great need of rain, not only to refill important hydro-electric reservoirs, but also for farming and food security.  Please pray for that, it’s more important than the Excel classes.

The English classes were going pretty well, too.   The panic I felt at first has faded away, now replaced by a sense of enjoyment of the time spent with my students.  And they now seem to enjoy the time with me, after they got over their feelings of intimidation.  The first week of class was a good success.  But then I took off a week to a attend conference in Kenya with Peggy.  The week’s absence had a serious affect on class attendance.  This past week, only one student showed up on one day.  I guess other things came up.  That can happen when you live life on the edge.  

Mwalimu -- Teacher

15 February 2011.  Tuesday. The panic that beset me last week has subsided.  On Wednesday last I learned I was supposed to start teaching Microsoft Excel and English on Monday, i.e., yesterday.  So for several days I scrambled, whenever our highly irregular electricity was on, to find on the internet lesson plans and ideas for teaching these subjects.  In no time I discovered that the internet holds several good and usable tutorials for Excel.  One of them, in 27 lessons, complete with assignments, has become the mainstay of my Excel lesson planning.

English is another story.  While there are lots of English as a Foreign Language lesson plans and ideas on the internet, I have no idea where to begin or what to teach.  And just because I am able to speak reasonably good English, that in no way translates to teachable knowledge of reflexives, objectives, connectives, and intransitives.  (Are those actually grammar terms?)  After much flailing about in a rising sea of panic, I finally just started writing down some scripts for in-class conversations.  Who are you? (Always the first lesson, it seems.)  Formal and informal introductions of self and others.  At the office.  And so on.  But I still don’t know what ability level the students will have. 

Adding to my panic is the fact that the teacher in charge, Mwalimu (Swahili for teacher), has been absent from the school ever since our first meeting on Wednesday.  So I can’t ask her if she has any students signed up.  I don’t know what day class begins.  Or what time.  Or how long it is.  Or what days of the week.  I am in the dark. 

By Saturday I had concluded that the English class would not start on Monday.  I have a couple of lessons prepared, but there are many more to prepare once I learn something about the students and their abilities.  Since the head teacher still hasn’t returned as of today, Tuesday, the classes have still not begun.  I am so glad I didn’t have to start 2 brand new courses on the first day of my teaching career.  I’m not a teacher!

Excel, however, did start on Monday.  Not as scheduled at 9 AM, because the power was off.  Without electricity, there is no teaching on a desktop computer.  And I won’t even try teaching Excel on a blackboard.  Besides, there is no blackboard. 

The first Excel class went well, I thought.  My three students were interested.  They seemed to understand, for the most part.  One young man spoke English well enough to be able to translate my words into Swahili when it was necessary—which didn’t seem to be too often.  The students were able to demonstrate on the computer (we have only one to share) the things I taught and asked them to do.  In the middle of our lesson the electricity went off again.  I looked helplessly at them as we sat in silence for a minute.  Then they started asking questions, and so did I.  We took the chance to learn a little bit about each other.  The young man wanted to know about American clothes and food.  I learned they are all hoping to learn computer skills to help them get jobs.

By the time we all had a chance to talk a bit, the power came back on.  So I resumed the lesson and we made it all the way to the end.  I gave them a short assignment (open a new workbook, give it a name, and save it), and then watched them do it.  Success!

I was actually looking forward to today’s second class (see how much the panic has gone!)  But just minutes before the 9 o’clock class time the electricity went off again.  It is still off 9 hours later.  This is the 9th day out of the last 10 in which we have had no electricity for at least several hours once, sometimes twice, a day.  It is supposed to be a 2 week class.  Because of the electricity problem, they actually plan for at least 3 weeks to complete the course, maybe even 4.

So now I am Mwalimu Tans.  I’m ready to go with Excel.  But English ….

A Day Like Many Others

11 January 2011 or 11/1/11.  I have to laugh a little at myself today.  I awoke right on time, when usually the day is already fully light.  But today the skies were uncharacteristically dark.  It was gray and overcast, the sign of the rain soon to come.  Being a compulsive about this, I turned the computer on right away and downloaded the morning’s first emails.  Then I went in to shave.  I had just gotten a good lather when the electricity went off.  You don’t just waste a good lather, so I got my headlamp and put it on.  Now you can’t just shine a headlamp into a mirror and look at your face—the bright light shines right into your eyes!  So I angled the lamp off to the side, but then every time I turned my head to see my cheek or neck in the mirror, the light also turned away and put me in the dark shadows again.   The problem wasn’t insurmountable, but I did amuse myself trying to get the light just right so I could finish my shave.  You might try shaving in the dark with a headlamp sometime, just to experience what my shave was like today.  Oh, and to get the full experience, use only cold water.

Because the power was off, there was no electric water heater for the shower today.  So a pot of water heated on the stove (some of the best advice we got was to buy a propane cook top) poured into to a few gallons in a big bucket became my shower.  Pour on a little water, suds up, and pour on a little more water to rinse off.  It’s not a bad shower at all.  Way better than the cold showers I took 2 years ago.

The rain really cools things off here.  When I came back home from the office around 11:30 this morning, the indoor temperature was hovering around 23 C (or 75 F), way down from our typical 28 or 29.  I was so cold that my socks and long sleeved shirt (both worn only on the coldest days) were not enough.  Only with a blanket wrapped around me did I finally feel comfortably warm.  And then I thought of the 32 years we spent in Alaska—especially the day when the managing partner let all the staff leave work early because the temperature hit 75 degrees and the day was just too warm and beautiful to stay at work any longer.  My how we change.

The electricity is still off now as I type on battery power. It’s already been off 8 hours today.  Yesterday it was off about 10 hours.  It seems to go off about every other day, or sometimes every day.  And sometimes it’s on during the day but off all night.  Tanzania has been undergoing some serious electricity rationing for months now.  I’m not sure of all the causes, but what I hear includes generator breakdowns, shortage of water for hydro, bad maintenance and lack of parts and, especially, burgeoning demand.  Even the locals, who often seem blasé about poor infrastructure and service (they know how to get along on little), are beginning to complain that the constant interruptions are killing their businesses.  It’s true.  If you try a day at work without electricity, let me know how it turns out.  

Happy To Be Back In Mwanza

26 November 2010. After 5 months in America, we are finally back in Tanzania. For many reasons, it feels very good to be back.

For one, our Tanzanian friends make us feel so welcome. Take Charlie, one of our neighborhood friends. He's about 8 years old. The first day back when Charlie first saw us, he ran home and announced to his mother, “Margaret is back. Now we can eat cake again!” And it’s true. Charlie and his family have already had a banana cake baked by Margaret, and so have all the other kids and their families. We brought back from America some new picture puzzles and the kids have already put the farm yard puzzle together a couple times. We share with each other the English and Swahili words for the farm animals. But the kids don’t know a Swahili word for llama.

For two, it means a rest from medical appointments and procedures for a long while. We were blessed to have the time to get these things done and by excellent results all around. Enough said about that.

For three, it will suspend our well-developed American spending habits, if only for the simple reason there aren’t too many things here to buy. From the perspective of Africa, I better see in my own typical American life-style an enormous temptation to spend my time, energy and money on things of little importance—as opposed to dwelling on those true, noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable things the Bible (Philippians 4:8) encourages us to think about. For the next few months we’ll keep the plastic card quietly tucked away, out of service. Our lives will be slowing down, giving us more time to think about what is really important. That will be good for me, but will I remember it when I get back to the states?

For four, we can see changes for the better in Mwanza. The internet for example. This year it took only 2 weeks to get our internet reconnected and operating properly. I called the company every business day for the entire two weeks. Not to complain or express anger, but just to remind the man and keep him posted on the situation. I can tell from my visits to his office that he is very busy, and has a constant stream of distractions. The patience I’ve learned in the past kept me calm even when the promise of service “tomorrow” proved overly optimistic for nearly a week. He really tried hard to get my connection working, he followed up when he said he would, and I think he was more frustrated than me that it took so long to get working. But really, I am very pleased. We live in one of the poorest countries in the world, yet the internet service we have this year is very good, very fast and reliable (when the power is on, more about that in a minute). Things are noticeably improving and the price is coming down, too. What a difference from just 2 years ago!

And for five, we find joy in the oddities of life here. Like electricity. In the last two weeks, we have lost our power more than half of the days. Usually it dies for a few hours, and usually at night. When that happens after dark, we often just go to bed. But sometimes the power is off all day, like yesterday. It was Thanksgiving Day and Margaret had a pecan pie in the oven when the power went off about 8:30 AM. Fortunately the baking was far enough along that she just left it in the warm oven until it was perfectly done. That pie was delicious! We shared the pie and the holiday with a number of other American missionaries at one of their homes. They live only a couple blocks away. They had power all day, while ours was still off when we returned home after dark. It came back on sometime late in the night while we were asleep. So, we have learned to keep the candles, matches and flashlights always in the same handy places. When the light goes off, we can always find them, even if we have to grope in the dark. Last week we had friends from Nairobi staying with us. The first time the power went off while they were here, they laughed at how we didn’t even pause in our conversation when the house went dark. We just calmly stood up, reached for the flashlight and candle, and acted as though it were a normal everyday occurrence. And indeed it was. Even now, as I write this blog, the electricity is off and my computer is on battery power. So we adjust and get along with the electrical power, on or off. But the power outages do wreak havoc with the food in our freezer. We finally had to throw out some meat because it had thawed and refrozen so often. But there is good news even here—our freezer is only 10 inches wide and 4 inches high, so there wasn’t much to throw away.

We really are happy to be back in Tanzania.

On to Exotic Places

3 June 2010. My favorite Swahili-English dictionary is dog-eared and dirty, but the first draft of my translation of the current AICT constitution is now finished. All 51 pages of it. Swahili is still very much a foreign language to me. My conversations with my 7 to 9 year-old friends are my best. So the translation work is not easy. I feel both relief and a sense of accomplishment to be finished with that job.

The number of our days here is growing very short. Tomorrow is the last day of volunteering for both Peggy and me. After that it’s “summer vacation!” We’ll spend another week in Mwanza wrapping things up and packing. Then we’re off to exotic places – Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Grand Rapids.

While our work is coming to a close for the season, we are not yet done here. There is still work for us to do, things to learn and see, people to get to know and love. God willing, we plan to return again in 3 months to remain for another 10 months. In the meantime, we look forward not only to visiting exotic places, but reconnecting with our families, friends, supporters, churches and CRWRC. They have all be very faithful to us while we were away. To them and to God, we are very thankful. It is good to be loved. Very good.

Mystery of the Water From a Closed Faucet

5 May 2010. Wednesday. Yesterday I had one of those AHA!! moments, solving the Mystery of the Water Flowing From the Closed Faucet. Let me tell you about it.

We have very basic indoor plumbing in our house here in Tanzania. In the bathroom there is a sink, toilet (western style, thank you very much), and a shower. Right next to the bathroom is the kitchen where there is a sink and one faucet with cold and hot water taps. That’s it. There once was a homemade solar hot water system, but that was broken long ago. Consequently, the house has no hot water (except only an instant hot water heater installed right on the shower head). There are hot water taps at each of the faucets, but when you turn them on you get nothing, not even cold water. The only taps that work are on the cold water side. That’s our situation.

A few weeks ago we noticed a very odd thing happening. When the shower was on in the bathroom, water flowed from the kitchen faucet even though the tap was closed tightly. Not just a drip, either, but a steady flow. It only happened when the shower was on, and no amount of tightening the kitchen tap would make it stop. I pondered that for days. I concluded it couldn’t be excessive pressure, because if anything, the water pressure on the kitchen faucet would decrease when the shower faucet released water. I even looked for an answer on the internet. I found lots about leaky faucets, but as far as I could tell, no one else ever had this problem of water flowing from a closed kitchen faucet only when the shower was turned on in the bathroom. I could think of no earthly explanation for water flowing from a closed tap, but I wasn’t ready to call it a miracle, either.

The extra water really wasn’t that big a deal. The only time it was an actual annoyance was when trying to do dishes while someone else was taking a shower. The extra water flowing into the dishpan did disrupt the chore a bit. That aside, the plumbing works fairly well, most of the time, and we are certainly grateful to have indoor plumbing. I chalked it all up as an unsolvable mystery and decided to live with it. But it still troubled me.

Then, just yesterday when the shower was running I decided to wash my hands, taking full advantage of the extra water flowing from the kitchen faucet. It was fun, not even having to turn the faucet on and off. As I stood there rubbing my hands and looking at the mystery water, a very intriguing question came to mind. Was the water coming from the side of the HOT water tap instead of the cold water side? I twisted off the hot water tap, and lo! The flow stopped. Once I discovered that, the solution instantly came to me.

This is a puzzler worthy of Car Talk, don’t you think? Send in your answers (to me, not Tom and Ray) on the back of a $20 bill! Be sure to enter often.

This is what was happening – the hot water taps in both the shower and the kitchen sink had been left in the open position. Normally that didn’t matter, because there was never any water pressure on the hot water side. But, with both taps in the open position and the shower turned on, the rising water column in the shower stem (which rose to the highest point of plumbing in the entire house) created enough pressure to push cold water backwards through the shower’s open hot water tap and further backward through the hot water pipes until it flowed out through the kitchen’s open hot water tap. When the shower was turned off, the water column drained out of the shower stem, lowering the water level to below that of the kitchen faucet, thus stopping the backward flow of water through the hot water pipes. Turning off either or both of the hot water taps prevents any backflow of water from the shower through the kitchen faucet.

Mystery solved. Problem fixed. Mind at peace.