Swamped

The last few weeks have been a bit overwhelming. At the moment I'm in the capital doing some banking (money ran out) and running numerous errands. I haven't posted in a while because I've just been too busy the last few weeks. Here's a quick run down on what' has been going on:

• My dean is trying to jam in most of the classes I teach this semester in order to finish them before the second semester. As a result I have been teaching two English classes and two computer classes simultaneously. On the schedule, this has meant I've had twenty-eight hours of classes for the last three weeks straight. 10 AM to 10 PM with an hour for lunch and two hours for dinner, four days a week. (I actually let the students in my night class go a bit early, so it's more like twenty-four hours., but still...) As you can imagine, I'm pretty exhausted and constantly busy. Quite the contrast to last year. The depressing thing is that even with all these hours I may not be able to finish on time. My poor students...
• Had a quiet Thanksgiving with friends. Turkeys exist in Cameroon happily, so I was even able to arrange a nice (if pricey) Turkey dinner.
• Just planned out my holiday vacation schedule. Going to spend Christmas with my host family from training in the town of Mblamayo, then going to visit Bill in Buea for New Year's, and then I'm meeting up with Volunteer Kirk in Yaoundé for a seventeen day trek to the north of Cameroon, which promises to be very different from my post. We are going to visit Waza National Park in hopes of seeing some giraffes or lions or other cool animals. Haven't seen too many yet outside the national zoo here in the capital. (And they were even sadder looking than most animals who live in zoos.)
• In preparation for the trip I've started studying Fulfuldé, the dominant language in the north. More widely spoken than French apparently. So far I've learned that "jam na" is how you greet people, "jam" is the proper response to this and just about every other greeting and most questions, and that "Nassara" means "honkey." (I hear that one in my village all the time. My friends from the north are very excited I'm trying to learn their language (well, was before I got overwhelmed with classes) and have started trying to speak to me in Fulfuldé a lot. I just smile and say "jam" a lot.
• I'm working with a former student from the university to put together a series of health education activities for Nanga's schools and hospital around February or March, so we sat down today and started working out a budget, plans, etc.
• While going to the bank today the motorcade of the President of Cameroon (Paul Biya) passed by while I was standing on the curb. A long black limo and an escort of police cars and motorcycles whipped past at high speed. Surprisingly, since their were police and security everywhere, the windows were open and I got a fleeting glimpse of the Big Man, and his wife Chantal, and her very very very Big Hair.

So that's where things stand at the moment. I'm taking the train back to post tomorrow night. I still have a lot of errands to run but if I have time I will try to write one or two more posts before leaving Yaoundé and diving back into the grind.

The XO

So I see that Nicholas Negroponte's XO project (the "One laptop per child" or $100 laptop as it was billed) has finally come to fruition.

In a comment to one of my previous posts, one of my friends asked what I thought. Having never touched one it's difficult to say. As a toy for affluent western geeks like me it's obviously cool. As a means of spreading information technology know-how around the world I'd say: it depends.

If the laptops are as rugged as they've been billed, and if they can survive the heat, dust, humidity, and unstable power that most poor countries present for a few years, they could be a valuable educational tool for some of the kids who get them. Technically it seem like a neat project.

Heck, given my power problems I wouldn't mind having one.

However, I see some potential problems:

• Many people won't have a clue how to even turn them on at first. You'd have to have people charged with distributing them and providing some minimal level of instruction for how to use them or they'll just sit and gather dust.
  
• Lack of technical people to maintain them if things go wrong. They'll be nice until they break down, or start having virus or driver problems (although not running Windows may save them from some of the virus problems.
  
• Who is in charge of distributing them? How are recipients selected? If a corrupt government (the kind they find in, oh, I don't know, some place like Cameroon) is in charge of handing them out, many or most will go to the children of government officials or their friends (or for that matter the officials themselves).
• What will they be used for? I can see people using them primarily for entertainment - movies, music, games - but that won't really change much in terms of international development. A poor village with no electricity, no running water, dirt roads, and a generally uneducated population may have trouble finding other uses for them.

For all of these reasons I have a suspicion that things may not work out quite the way they've been planned.

Another approach might be to donate or sell them cheap to adults or institutions in poorer countries. Just looking at my own village, there are hundreds of students just at my university who could use a low-power laptop like this to do work during the weeks when we don't have power. Students could bring their own to the lab and I could teach computer classes and not have to worry about power.

Aside from students, teachers and staff here could also use them to keep the school running when we lose power.

And everyone can use them for diversion at night - a rural African village at night with no power can get real boring.

So, for students, professionals, and other educated types who may have some level of technical knowledge, or at least interest, and who are in rural environments where cyber cafes and the like are not available something like this could actually be a great resource. This might bring a quicker return on the investment than only giving it to school children.

Maybe I'll write Negroponte a letter suggesting that he explore this possibility. If I had an XO I could even write it in the dark.

Well, that was amusing

As I mentioned in my last post, I went to Yaounde just to work on the computers there, print stuff, etc. I got about half my work done on Saturday and intended to finish on Sunday before taking the train back to Nanga in the evening.

Of course, I woke up Sunday morning and found that the power was out at the Peace Corps office and in the whole quartier. They have a generator but for some reason it was on the fritz. Tried finding a cyber cafe but all the ones I knew were also powerless. The only cyber I found that had power wanted 300 Francs a page for printing (normal rate is around 50) which I wasn't willing to pay, so my work went undone. Oh well. Oh the irony...

Bill happened to be in Yaoundé over the weekend as well by chance, and we got to meet some of the new agroforestry trainees on their way back to training from visiting their posts, so that was fun. Sunday it was just he and I sitting around the case de passage with no lights, no phones, no motor cars, not a single luxury. So, after a fruitless search for a cheap and open cyber cafe we grabbed pizza and beers at a nice little restaurant before I took the train back to post.

Fortunately, SONEL somehow got its ass in gear and fixed our power, so it came on the day before yesterday, then went out again all morning, and then came on again in the afternoon just in time for me to teach in the lab today. How's that for better luck?

Lights Out

Nanga Eboko at Night

OK, I disappeared for a while there. Power has been out in Nanga Eboko for the last two weeks. Lack of power has a tendency to reduce blog activity, hence the lack of posts recently. At the moment I am in Yaoundé taking advantage of the power and Internet access offered by Peace Corps to try to do some work.

I've managed to keep teaching my computer classes by giving theoretical lessons on the blackboard that require no electricity. I learned my lesson last year and this time around split my course material up so that I would have a bunch of lessons ready for days without power and so I could spend all my time doing practical lessons when I do have power. So the last two weeks I've been explaining terminology in more detail, talking about binary, explaining how disks store data, opening up computers and showing students the various parts, etc.

One of my English classes is scheduled in the evenings, so that has unfortunately been a wash since without light in the classroom I have to let the students go.

The private lessons I wanted to give to local teachers are obviously on hold as well.

Since the pumps are electric, the power cut also means I've had no water. Fortunately, I had a number of water cans and buckets filled up when the power went, so I've found that by being careful and cooking less I was able to make it last and even stay relatively clean for two weeks. just before I left they hooked up a portable generator to the school's water pump and got it going so people on campus would at least have water in their houses. I promptly refilled all my containers so now I'm set for another two weeks when I get back.

Sadly, the University's generator, out of commission since March, has still not been repaired, so I've been burning a lot of oil and candle wax the last two weeks. They are trying to fix it at the moment and have assured me it'll be working by the time I get back, but I've heard that before. They tried fixing it several times since it died in March without success, but this time they have some newly acquired spare parts so maybe it'll actually work.

The school has also ordered three portable generators they plan to use to run the offices and some classrooms. They are powerful enough that if one is hooked up to the computer lab I'll be able to run most of the machines and get back to teaching the course properly. They were supposed to have arrived yesterday (while I was en route to Yaoundé) so we'll see what happens when I get back. Even if I don't have power at home, at least I'd be able to teach, which will keep me busy and make it bearable. Forget about getting a cold beer in town though.

Whether they fix the big generator or put the smaller ones in place, they'd better pull off one or the other, or both, because SONEL (the Cameroonian power company) is telling us it will be two months before they can get the lights back on.

TWO MONTHS.

Assuming they actually do turn it back on around New Year's, that would be right around the time the regular dry season outages begin. So I can expect to be without power in my village all or most of the time until about March or April (if I'm lucky).

(WARNING: Offensive language to follow. Children and the easily offended should stop reading now. I never said this was a family friendly blog...)

Fuck. I mean, FUCK. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking fuckity fuck fuck. This blows.