The Internet is Back!

It hasn’t been too long since I’ve written on this thing, and I like to space things out so that I can really lean in to my long-winded style of writing that helps to weed out the readers with short attention spans. Today, however, there is not much else to do considering that the internet/phone networks in Chad are currently blocked due to political conflict, which needs to be done in secret without unhelpful social media posts from those who don’t agree with the current regime. Naturally, easiest thing is just to make sure that no one can talk to anyone who is not right next to them to avoid anyone discussing topics that the Marshal of Chad would prefer to remain undiscussed.  This seems like a great idea in theory, but it ignores the fact that phone technology is still relatively new, word of mouth has been working well for for thousands of years, and people already know exactly what is going on (I’ve been told by several different unrelated people), and cutting off our access to communication is  not stopping the discussion, but merely making it impossible for normal work to continue. This is the world that we live in where internet and phone communication actually IS a necessity for life. I know I’ve mentioned before that more people have cell phones that toilets, and this is a great shocking statistic that is 100% true, but if I had to choose between a working phone connected to the internet and a toilet, I’d probably go for the phone too. There are plenty of bushes around here anyway. Still, I would like to reiterate that both are important and I’m working really hard with local partners in Chad and other parts of Africa where we have projects to make sure that people have access to clean water and toilets at the household level, both of which are necessary to combat water borne diseases.

A classic photo where everyone except the government official we were visiting was smiling.

How cute are Moussa's grandkids? I can't handle it.

Anyway, back to MY LIFE, the arrogant subject of this self-aggrandizing blog, since Emelie’s dot (note: it is NOT in fact spelt ‘dôte’ though that looks way cooler and even makes a vague amount of phonetic sense), I’ve had visitors (auditors and IAS head office people) and made a few trips to Dourbali to see Moussa.

Fixed my turn signal with a pocket knife!
Also Danem helped because he HATES seeing me work on the car.
He told me my brake fluid was empty so he refilled it for me.
Now my AC isn't working so I wonder--did he refill the wrong thing with the wrong thing?
I will never know because I don't know about brake fluid, just changing the turn signal fuse.

My beautiful birthday cake grâce à the Morrison family:
David baked it, Lucy decorated it, and Sophie let them.

Another one of Moussa's adorable grandkids.
So snuggly.

Some of my lovely sisters.

The mayor in the Dourbali office.

Pro tip: if you have a day that is usually hard because it brings up some painful memories,
go somewhere you can see great things that the Lord is doing--
here the chief of the village is hugging Moussa with all his might because we are drilling there.

Chief Adam Tom thanks God for water coming to his village.
And you guys pray because we keep having machine breakdowns and it's a tricky place to drill.

Prepping the house for the auditors was fun. We’d already de-ratted the place as mentioned in a previous post. And now we needed to deck everything out to prepare for visitors, buying new sheets and stocking up the fridge with breakfast foods. I left the purchasing of items to my colleagues, who have already noted that when I shop things are automatically more expensive and it really annoys them. When they got back with the bed sheets, I scurried around with them, sheeting up the beds that I moved into the house while they were out at the market. The first sets of sheets were pretty generic—hearts and stripes and such. But there was one stand-out set that I really appreciated. A green and white set with GUCCI written in all caps across the top and giant flies (yes, the insect, you read that correctly) decorating the bottom of the sheets and the top of the pillowcase. I’ve thought a lot about the designer of these sheets—probably more than I have thought about other more life-changing things, but I am really curious as to how this set of GUCCI Fly sheets ended up on the market. Maybe there was a computer program that randomly pairs fashionable name brands with an animal to create a decorative pattern, in which case we could have just as easily ended up with PRADA Chickens or CHANEL Manatees. Maybe someone was trying to make a play on words using turn of the century slang like “Gucci is so fly so let’s make Gucci fly sheets!” Or maybe I’m just so out of the fashion loop here in Chad that I haven’t realized that flies and Gucci are the hippest thing out there, while I’m still over here remembering those butterfly hair clips every girl but me used to know how to clip in successfully. I don’t think it’s an environmental thing like how we are supposed to be saving the honeybees. I’m all for that, but there are plenty of flies here in Chad, spreading those water borne diseases we were just talking about so I’m not yet ready to elevate their status to campaign for their salvation. Anyway, here are the photos so feel free to join in the speculation or advocate for your own haute couture-animal combo of choice. Send it to China and maybe it will be made and then exported to Chad, and my colleagues will buy it for our guesthouse.

So fashion! 

The stuff of actual nightmares: a giant fly crawling out of your pillowcase!!!!

The other really excellent purchase that my friends made for breakfast was definitely in an effort to please me. I’m currently very worked up about the fact that I saw online somewhere that the unemployment rate in Chad is 90%. That means only 10% of people have a job. I’ll allow for 10% of people have a job that gives them a contract, meaning people with small businesses and doing odd jobs like gardening or house keeping would not be in that employed 10% even though they have income. I’ll spare you my rant about the French educational system that has been badly implemented here and the lack of investment due to corruption and bad infrastructure, but I have somehow made it known within my circle of friends and acquaintances here that I like to support local entrepreneurs and buy locally made Chadian products, including a loose leaf spiced tea, dried mangoes, chili oil, shea butter soap, etc. The guy who brought me the breakfast stuff purchased on my behalf proudly pulled out a jar of jam—“It was made locally here in Chad, so we knew you would definitely want this!” So what do you think—tomato jam anyone? It’s made of tomatoes, sugar, and honey, according to the ingredients list.

Bon appétit!

Besides providing my guests with all the comforts of home, name brand sheets with flies on them and tomato preserves, I also visited Nadji’s garden last weekend. Nadji said, “It’s not far, just a bit past Douguia,” which is already about 80km away. Turns out it was another 50+km from Douguia, making one leg of the journey 130ish km. And I was driving. But why not—short weekend road trip! So I said yes and Nadji and his son Teodore showed up on my doorstep at 7am, as planned. I, naturally, was not yet ready, having not been able to convince myself to get out of bed before 6:30 on a Saturday. But just after 7, I was outside and I heard some puppy cries. I mentioned it to Nadji who said, “Yeah, there’s a puppy in the box in the back of your truck. We are taking it with us to the garden to stay with the guard and his wife there.” Obviously, I was not ok with a puppy in a box and I needed to see the puppy. I pulled her out (female) and she was covered in dirt and ticks, so Abiner (who had been there to play with Joe and Pika) helped me wash her while I ran around putting drinking water in the truck and getting some food and water for the puppy. After the puppy was cleaned, de-ticked by me (I’m a professional now) and wrapped in a towel inside of the cabin of our truck, we set out, still early enough to beat the political protests that were supposed to start on the other side of town.

Puppy!

The trip started out normally enough with me passing all the slow cars and muttering swear words at them all under my breath while also dodging potholes deep enough to swim in. We made it to the turn off for Douguia, and on that more remote road, we were frequently flagged down by people in search of a ride. I decided since this was personal business and not official, I could pick up any hitchhikers I wanted to pick up, and I do like being the strange nasara that pulls up and says, “Howdy traveler, going my way? Hop in!” It does make a sensation. I saw a group of ladies dressed up in the same cloth pattern, and we knew they were “Les Femmes de Charité” a women’s group from one of the large evangelical denominations here. They were on their way to a meeting in Dandi, and we were heading the same direction. I pulled over to let them in, and took advantage of the break from driving to cuddle the little puppy. A couple of the older ladies got in the cabin with us. Covid rules note that not more than 4 people are allowed in the cabin of a truck at one time because presumably one more person in the 5-seater cabins would mean automatic infection, but if you have one seat free, you’re fine. But we were far enough away from anyone who knew those rules, so we crammed in.

This is Baraka, whose parents work with Moussa.
Somehow he has acquired a plastic dinosaur, which his family thinks is a weird foreign toad.
I tried to explain dinosaurs, but I'm not sure it translated.

One of the hitchhiking ladies saw me with the puppy and said, “Oooh! A puppy!” in exactly the right voice you say those words with. She held out her hands to take her from me, like most ladies in church do with babies. Note: Chadian people, women and men, do not tend to be affectionate towards animals and it’s a rare person who does not throw something at a dog, let alone take a moment to pet one. This lady cuddled the puppy all the way to Dandi, petting her and singing “bishi, bishi, bishi” (Ngambaye for dog) over and over to her. I loved her.

Gazing in adoration at the little puppy.

Me and the hitchhikers (note: many more in the back of the truck)

Before you start thinking that these femmes de charité were actually a group of serial killers preying on nasaras and their puppies, Nadji knew several of these ladies and of course a bunch of them knew Moussa too. “Is he still in Dourbali?” Yes, he is. But I admit that once you pick up one group of hitchhikers, you get in the habit of it, and I picked up many more on the way back too. And then trying to prove that I wasn’t biased towards southerners (after picking up two groups of southerners), I accepted a couple of Arab men and an Arab woman with her baby. The men rode in the back of the pickup (probably not illegal here). And all of them wanted to go all the way to N’djamena, so I had to drive more carefully on the way back because I didn’t want to flip the truck with a bunch of passengers in it. It was a good exercise in caution for me and also a reminder about why we do not pick up hitchhikers—it’s easier to drive crazy if everyone is INSIDE the car. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.

Chili peppers not from Nadji's garden

But I had to try one

Yeah. No regrets, but there was a little bit of pain...

Ngassi who is growing the chili peppers

The visit to Nadji’s garden was short and sweet. We were pretty close to the Lake, so nearing Boko Haram territory, but Nadji said we were fine. He has a nice little plot of land, and it was a lovely sunny day with a breeze and so quiet out there. The puppy, who Nadji has named “Patience” for unknown reasons, immediately began to run around and sniff her new home. The neighbor’s dog came over, and he is one of the sweetest Chadian dogs I’ve ever met—friendly to all, loved his new puppy friend—it’s going to be a good life for those guys. 

Puppy and her friend!

And I’m back in the capital, just in time for some political excitement, which has taken both my electricity and my internet. Will it come back on? We are unsure when. Until then, this will not be posted. And maybe when/if we get it back, it will all be boring old news, but I don’t have anything else to do for now, so I wrote it down anyway.

Here are some more photos from other trips: 

A photo that was taken by Abiner for unknown reasons.
There's a learning curve for figuring out how to use my phone.
I've got lots of photos of my hand shifting, some photos of the AC vents,
and a few of the mirrors. Thought I'd share for your gratification.

I love piles of shoes in front of a doorway.
Always feels like home for me.

Kids getting ready to go to school with little bro photobombing in the background.
The girls were mad at him yelling, "You can't be in the photo without your uniform!"

Favor and little Fatima. Favor has a beautiful singing voice.

Yes, me and Portrait Mode did take this amazing photo.

Brace yourself for some photos of my dogs on my very uncomfortable couch that I never sit on:

And finally: here is how Joe and Pika look at me when I'm eating Oreos. I do share. They liked them. Before you accuse me of being a bad dog-owner, Joe's original owner (Army guy who gave him to me) used to train him using Oreos and the obsession has lingered and been passed on to Pika. It is not my fault, and so far they have stayed in excellent health, except for the poison incident, which I don't talk about, and it had nothing to do with Oreos anyway.

Friends Plant Peanuts Together

Siti and me after planting peanuts

When I came to South Sudan, I noticed that, while I got more enthusiastic comments about my foreign-ness than I did in Asia, I got less invitations to be people’s best friends and come to their homes and go to their weddings and spend every free moment hanging out with them. It’s a trade off, I guess. I mean, it can be funny that the same kids get the same amount of excited-out-of-their-minds every morning when I go running by their homes, even though they see me almost every day. Still, I was hoping for a few friends that I could hang out with and share life with and socialize with on days when I realize that I am dangerously close to becoming a hermit, which is my subconscious life goal that my conscious knows should not be achieved for my own good.  It’s taken some time, but I’ve fought my way into the lives of several ladies here. I accost them at their work and show up unannounced at their homes whenever I want to hold their babies or practice speaking Moru. In return, I buy candy for their kids and entertain them with my ignorance of their everyday chores and my inability to carry things on my head (I’m working on it, but I have a really lumpy skull).

Siti's son Simon, though he prefers
"SimonPeter The Rock,"
watching the burning grass we cleared off

One day when I’d just gotten back to Mundri from Khartoum (where I’d been invited to several weddings and several homes by generous Arab-Africans in true Middle East/North Africa style), I went for a run. It was Saturday so I was going later in the day since I sleep in until 7(!) on Saturdays in Mundri, and I had decided to eat a mango before I went (it’s not a great pre-workout food, if you were wondering). Naturally, the combination of hotter weather plus mango made running more difficult than usual.  Half-way through my route, I realized—this is not fun. So I decided just to walk back home and enjoy the sunny day without wanting (but not being able to) barf. While walking home I met a nice lady working in her garden. She said, “Why are you running for exercise? Just come help me in my garden and you’ll get lots of exercise that way.” I said, “Sure. I’ll come next week.” And I genuinely planned to do that, but she never gave me a time, and so I worked in my garden that morning and thought I would go help her in the afternoon. But when I was about to go, Lexon said, “You should probably call her first.” He lives near her and she is one of his wife’s relatives. I did, but I found out that the Bishop of the Catholic Church (she’s a Catholic) was going to be there the next day, and she was helping clean the church. So I didn’t go. She said she would call me later. She never did. I forgot about it and went on hanging out with my other new friends that I have been forcing to love me.

Then, on Pentecost Sunday, my church had a big deal Fun Day. It makes sense—we are the Pentecostals, so naturally we should do something awesome for Pentecost. We also invited everybody, and Siti came as a representative of the Catholic church or maybe she just came for the food, I don’t know, but she was there. I said, “You never called me!” She said, “I did, but I had the wrong number. Come next Saturday and help me plant peanuts.” I said, “What time?” She said, “9am.”

The sign says "don't pass on the shoulder" but that
does not stop my dad.

So at 9:02am, I left my house to walk the 1.5 miles to her house. The 1.5 mile distance is an estimate made by me based on my running time, but it’s probably an over-estimation because I like to think that I’m going faster than I actually am, and I’m not as accurate as my dad at gauging running distances. Seriously, he’s impressive. I’ve measured runs we’ve gone on together on the Internet (source of all accurate information), and he’s been right to the decimal point. “Well, this run took us XX:XX and so that must mean that we went about X.Y miles.” I checked the Internet and lo and behold—X.Y00 miles. It’s his super-power…one of them--the other one might be the ability to memorize completely useless names of various players of various sports or the ability to cook multi-colored food (“Hmm…this stir fry  needs more color—add the yellow peppers and green beans! Do we have any red peppers? Let’s add some beige—bean sprouts!”) or his deep devotion to following Indonesian traffic rules and regulations. So many possibilities… But I made it to Siti’s house before 9:30, which makes my punctuality in Africa—culturally impressive, let’s go with ‘culturally impressive.’

And this is what my feet look like after
working hard all day.

We jumped right in hacking away at the ground with a hoe and a pitchfork. We dug out rocks and chopped up tree roots. Her husband popped over for a quick visit to bring us water and suggest that I become his second wife. I was kind of resentful of that conversation because I really don’t think that’s the best way to cement a new friendship with someone—having her husband hit on you in front of her. Fortunately, I’m excellent at stamping out those kinds of conversations with my natural charm and belligerence.  It didn’t seem to bother her too much (maybe since her husband actually helped for about ten minutes while regaling me with the benefits of polygamy) because nearly 4 hours later when we finished, she still invited me to lunch. After lunch, I ran home for a bit to charge my computer on my new inverter, which the nice khawaja guy who used to live here helped me set up. I clip these things that look like jumper cables on to the bolts on our solar battery, which is mostly not working (there are sparks, it’s cool), and then I can charge my computer on sunny days, during daylight, while it’s off. It has revolutionized my life. I love it so much. I also realize that there are benefits of hanging out with foreigners that include the fact that they do things like kayak down the Mori River—something that people here would never think to do. It was super fun. I have no photos because—I was in a kayak.

After charging the computer for an hour while working a bit in my own garden, I walked back to Siti’s to plant the peanuts, which we didn’t want to do until the sun wasn’t so hot (it’s a gardening thing, you wouldn’t understand). The last time I planted peanuts was in Aceh, post-tsunami, with a group of Indonesian volunteers who were training people who had newly inherited land and needed to learn how to cultivate it. At the time, I remember getting competitive (yeah, that’s what I do) with one of the guys who was this shy macho farmer from Medan.  He would finish his row and then do the end of mine before starting on his next row.  So once I booked it down my row and then finished his for him—it was a hilarious joke, I thought. Well, it made him laugh, and then we became friends so he told me about his girlfriend back home that he was knitting a purse for—he was adorable.  Anyway, apparently planting peanuts is like riding a bike because I am pretty good at it still. It’s a two-man job here—one person hacks the row for dumping in peanuts, the other person drops the peanuts in the ditch. As the next row is hacked, it covers the peanuts in the last row, burying them under a small layer of dirt.  Obviously, the hard part of this is being the one chopping a ditch with the hoe. Siti said, “I’m so tired. I think we should finish this later.” But I was in an American ‘git ‘er done’ mode. And I said, “No. Give me the hoe and we will finish this today before we get soaked in the coming rainstorm.”  And I hacked furiously and we finished planting the entire pot of peanuts. Yes, we did. And then Siti nicely said, “I would never have been able to get all this work finished without you.” Being useful—I kind of like it. And I think it’s a good way to cement a friendship.

Then I walked home as fast as I could because there was a for-real storm brewing. I made it back before it started in earnest. But I did get soaked on my way back to my house from the shower—it was kind of ok, though, because rain keeps you clean. And that’s why I use a sarong as a towel—it dries fast.

To recapitulate: my Dad is a super-hero. Happy Late Father’s Day. This would have been on time if I lived in civilization, but then it would have had to be a completely different story of me planting, say, turnips in Taiwan or something. If we can’t be American-punctual, lets be culturally impressive. Although, I think that you are both actually.

More on my dad--this is the newspaper I used to wrap up
a coffee mug I brought him from India. He spread out
the newspaper so that he could read the stories
from India. Then we had several interesting discussions about
the articles in it. Yup-that's my dad--likes the paper more than the mug.

This face. It's a good one.

Computer Class in Session

While I am not known for my extraordinary computer skills, relative to the skills of those around me, I am a genius. Naturally, I have taken it upon myself to be computer instructor for Lexon and Repent. SSCA (our local partner) got a computer sometime in the past year—at least, it has been here since before I got here, but no one knew how to use it. In fact, the first lesson I had with Repent and Lexon was ‘How to Turn on Your Computer.’ This went smoothly until we realized that no one remembered the password, which had helpfully been put on the computer as a security precaution.  Fortunately, using the password hint, I was able to figure it out and we moved on. I won’t write here what the password is in case any of you plan to try to hack into our computer and steal our secrets.

After learning how to turn on and off the computer, we moved on to  “How to Use the Mouse.” We’re still on that lesson. It turns out that for men who didn’t spend their childhood playing video games, using a piece of plastic to control something moving on a screen does not come naturally. It’s lucky that, though I’m not known for my extraordinary computer skills, I am known for my extraordinary patience. I only once or twice (maybe more) grabbed a hand and moved it into the right position. Sometimes I also suggest solo practice, where I leave my pupil undisturbed by me and exit the room to go do something else (write this blog post for example) and allow the men to move the mouse as slowly or quickly as they want. Naturally, due to my excellent teaching skills, my students are making rapid progress, and I fully expect them to remember the difference between right and left-clicking by the end of the week. By the time I head back to the US of A at the end of November, they’ll probably be ghost-writing this blog. That will be so nice for me—I’ve tried for years to get one of the sisters to ghost-write the blog for me (hey—they were both Creative Writing majors!), but they are so selfish with their time and skills. As you can see from the before and after photo of Repent’s first self-created document, he is grateful to me, at least.

Learning computers and English--the "After" photo was the easiest 'fix' I could
make for the "Before." Don't act like you could do any better.

Finally, I should mention that I love Repent and Lexon, and that teaching them is an exciting new pastime for me that reminds me every day of why God did not think it wise to put me in a full-time teaching position.

Also, I know that it’s also probably not OK to take photos of things that my students write that I find amusing, but that has always been my favorite part of whenever I have been a teacher. If I am ever not too lazy to upload my journal from my teaching in China days (it was before I knew about blogging but I kept it for the same reason that I’m writing this blog-to minimize emailing while preserving important moments from my life for posterity), you could see some of the better compositions from my genius stupents there (not a typo, just an example). But I can already tell you that I will never not be too lazy to do that. Still, there’s hope for you if Repent and Lexon ever start ghost-writing the blog for me because they are loving the computer these days. Repent especially loves changing the font and underlining everything.

Please enjoy the following photos from the 

Neverthirst/SSCA Computer Class in Mundri!!

Lexon and his composition (before I taught him about the space bar)

I made this large so you can read it--this is our letter-writing session. I have been promoted to "reverend" by Lexson

Repent is working hard

I did the lazy-teacher thing when you made the students teach each other.
But Repent forgot how to save a document, so I had to step in and help anyway.

Extra-large size photo again so you can see that we now have 5 files saved on our computer!
One of them is brilliantly entitled "I love Amanda"

Computer Genius

Once, several years ago, I was talked into going with a group of friends to dinner at the mall. This is pretty much exactly my definition of the ideal worst way to spend my time, but I was convinced by the big brown puppy-dog eyes of my extroverted friend who was inevitably going to have the best time ever, surrounded by people she loved.  As we crowded together into a large car and pushed several tables together at the restaurant, I began to estimate the amount of time I had left to suffer through this torture. The perky waitress took our orders, meticulously separating them into individual checks (which always takes forever) and conversations swished around me, making me feel like I was caught in a tornado, not knowing which one I was supposed to listen to or which one I was more interested in trying to hear, knowing that there would probably be useful information in at least one of those conversations that could potentially help me in another future awkward social situation when I would be expected to participate, unlike this situation where I could nod and smile and pretend like I was a part of one of the conversations so people would not realize that I was drinking as much water as possible, so as to have a legitimate reason to escape to the bathroom as soon as possible.  When dinner was finally over, and I had a headache from my brain trying to push itself out of my eyeball sockets, everyone (naturally) wanted to wander around the mall. Our large group mostly stayed together since some of us rode together and some of some of us were dating some of some of the others who drove together, and I had to stay with the group because I am the kind of person who gets left behind at the mall and has to hitchhike back home because no one realized she wasn’t in the car.  At some point, someone said, “Let’s go to the Apple Store.” This sounded boring to me, but I was committed to getting home in a car driven by someone I knew, so I thought to myself, “How bad can it be? Yes, if you wanted apples, you could just go to the store and choose—red, green, yellow, whatever, but maybe this is a fancy store with specialty apples…candied and caramel and international apple varieties…probably those decorative wooden apples that my best friend’s mom always kept in a bowl on the table, looking deceptively fresh and appetizing until you saw the one with the bite out of it, with the perfect teeth marks carved into the wood (something I always thought was kind of creepy) while the white-painted apple flesh never turned brown…Maybe after this Apple Store we can finally go home.” But we continued wandering the mall. We went into some computer place where everything was fancy, and strange people wandered around being very excited about the fancy computers. We finally ended up going home, and no one bought any apples. I don’t know how many years later I finally realized that the computer store was the Apple Store, but this story is an example of my familiarity with the Mac computer brand.

Today I am typing this from my MacBook Pro, given to me by Neverthirst for the purpose of Work. I do use it for work and for other things, but I definitely remember trying to talk my boss into getting me a PC, not because I don’t like Macs, but because some PCs have Mahjong on them…also, the only people I knew with Macs (except for my wannabe hipster sister), were really good with computers. This is important because I am not, and I know that there would be systems I would have to set up on my laptop and issues with different programs that I would have to figure out, and I am not great at that. So I would need someone to help me, and as the world is increasingly filled with more and more computer nerds, I knew I would be able to find someone in India to help. But I also knew that they would more likely be familiar with PC programming than Mac programing. But the Boss would never deign to give me such an inferior machine as a PC, so I took the Mac and tried to figure out as much as I could. Meaning: I set up an iTunes account so that I could play my music on the computer. This is directly related to the time that I almost broke the computer, but I learned my lesson—do not dance around while holding the computer, if you are trying to move from one room to another with your music while wearing socks on tiled floors. If the song is one you must dance to, set the computer down, dance, then when the song is over, carefully carry the computer to the other room.

When I arrived in India, I quickly found out how right I was that Indian computer nerds would not be as familiar with the Mac systems as they are with PCs, as the following phone conversation (a mash-up of several conversations I have had over the last few months) will show:

Me: I need to install this Airtel internet connection, but I can’t get it to work.

Computer Nerd Phone Answerer (CNPA): Ok Madam, go to your ‘Start Menu.’ Double click on ‘My Computer.’ Then you will see…

Me: OK, I have to tell you--I have a Mac computer.

CNPA: Yes, Madam, you can right click on…

Me: No, it’s a MAC computer—you know the one with the Apple on it…

CNPA: Oh! Apple computer! Please wait….

Then I am put on hold for an hour, listening to Airtel advertisements until I give up and restart my computer and somehow that works.

But this past week I have been called upon to help my friends with their computer needs at two different times. They were both so excited and grateful and kept saying how happy they were to be learning so much about computers from me.

My first session went super-well. My friend Shamlina wanted me to teach her how to use Skype. I helped her install it and then told her that she needed to buy a microphone if she wanted to use it because she has a little netbook that, for some reason, does not have one built in. Then I helped fix her keyboard, which was set on something so that unless you held down the ‘Fn’ key, you couldn’t type half of the letters. That had not been a huge problem for her in the past because when you only type with one finger, it’s not a big deal to hold down one key with one hand and plunk out what you want to say with your other hand. I, however, could not stand it, as I am a master speed-typer, thanks to Mavis Beacon and my mom. Shamlina was very grateful, though, because she realized that it was way better to be able to use the whole keyboard, and she thought it was impressive that I knew what the Control Panel was.

Then a few days later, my field coordinator Rakesh asked me to help him set up Skype. Buoyed by my recent computer-genius success, I agreed and started with the download. I patiently explained why you should uncheck boxes that want to ‘automatically set Bing as your search engine’ because Bing is stupid and trying too hard, and nobody cares about it. Soon we had Skype downloaded and set up and we decided to try to call my computer. Everything was working great except the sound. I tried everything to get his microphone to work: yes, I used the Control Panel. I probably right-clicked on something. I definitely fiddled with the “Advanced Settings.” I did a Skype test call, which told us in a refined British accent that the microphone was working. I knew, I just KNEW, that it was impossible for the issue to be with my computer since it is a Mac, and therefore a superior machine, and Rakesh’s computer is a PC. Finally, I saw my dad on my Skype, and I thought maybe I should have him call Rakesh and see if that works. So I called my dad, and that was the moment that I noticed that I had muted the sound on my computer.

The moral of this story is “You can give a fancy computer to the girl, but that will not make her a Computer Genius.” But I did find out how to download Mahjong…

I will leave you with this photo of Shamlina and me, which is her new Skype photo, but don’t try to add her as a friend because I already warned her about adding people she doesn’t know, since they are probably just stalkers who are trying to steal her identity.