We were to be spending a few weeks working on an educational project in Boman G'ombe, a village between Arusha and Moshi in the shadows of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Our Swahili was non existent at this point but within the school community this wasn't a great problem, we could get by with English and a Swahili phrasebook. We passed our days helping out at the school, doing art and photography lessons. The school had a computer center but there were problems with some of the computers so I offered to try fix them.
Running a computer class in a village that has very unreliable electricity is very difficult. Most of the time there is no electricity and when there is, the power level is so inconsistent that the computers will regularly restart due to lack of power. The mouse didn't work on one of the computers, I concluded was a problem with the motherboard. If my diagnosis was right then a USB mouse would fix it, the problem was we were a 2 hour bus trip to the nearest town where I might be able to buy a USB mouse. If I was wrong I'd have wasted time and money on a useless mouse. It doesn't sound like a big deal now that I write it but at the time in the situation it was.
I found out that their was an Internet cafe at the other end of the village so figured I'd go there and see if I could borrow a mouse. We didn't really think more about it, that was our plan. On our way we came across a small restaurant so we decided to stop for some breakfast. We managed to order vegetarian food despite not speaking any Swahili. Just after we ordered the principal of the school entered, immediately she came over to see how we were doing. She was amused as to how we'd managed to go to the restaurant and order vegetarian food despite not speaking the language, she was even more amused or possibly worried when we explained our plan to borrow a mouse from the Internet cafe.
After breakfast we made our way to the Internet Cafe, it was a very small room with 2 computers. They also suffer from the same electricity problems as the school which makes it difficult to run an Internet cafe without a reliable source of electricity. In a combination of sign language, English and a few badly pronounced Swahili words from the phrasebook we explained that we wanted to borrow a mouse. We explained it was for the school, that we needed it to test something. We even mentioned the principals name but that didn't work as she didn't know her. The girl didn't quite get it no matter how many ways we tried to explain.
Eventually I said I would like to use the Internet for a half hour and paid for this time. Then I slowed disconnected the mouse explaining that I'd return it in a half hour. I'm not quite sure the girl understood what we were doing but she agreed it was OK for us to leave with the mouse. She wasn't losing money as we'd paid for the computer so she seemed content with that. We returned to the school, tested and confirmed them mouse worked then returned it to the Internet cafe. The girl at the cafe was quite pleased to see us return with the mouse. Strange how it seemed like a perfectly logical solution at the time but I wouldn't dream of walking into an Internet cafe in Dublin and asking them if I could borrow a mouse.
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| View of Mount Kilimanjaro |
Our Swahili was non existent at this point but within the school community this wasn't a great problem, we could get by with English and a Swahili phrasebook. We passed our days helping out at the school, doing art and photography lessons. The school had a computer center but there were problems with some of the computers so I offered to try fix them.
Running a computer class in a village that has very unreliable electricity is very difficult. Most of the time there is no electricity and when there is, the power level is so inconsistent that the computers will regularly restart due to lack of power. The mouse didn't work on one of the computers, I concluded was a problem with the motherboard. If my diagnosis was right then a USB mouse would fix it, the problem was we were a 2 hour bus trip to the nearest town where I might be able to buy a USB mouse. If I was wrong I'd have wasted time and money on a useless mouse. It doesn't sound like a big deal now that I write it but at the time in the situation it was.
 |
| Computer class at Bomang'ombe |
I found out that their was an Internet cafe at the other end of the village so figured I'd go there and see if I could borrow a mouse. We didn't really think more about it, that was our plan. On our way we came across a small restaurant so we decided to stop for some breakfast. We managed to order vegetarian food despite not speaking any Swahili. Just after we ordered the principal of the school entered, immediately she came over to see how we were doing. She was amused as to how we'd managed to go to the restaurant and order vegetarian food despite not speaking the language, she was even more amused or possibly worried when we explained our plan to borrow a mouse from the Internet cafe.
After breakfast we made our way to the Internet Cafe, it was a very small room with 2 computers. They also suffer from the same electricity problems as the school which makes it difficult to run an Internet cafe without a reliable source of electricity. In a combination of sign language, English and a few badly pronounced Swahili words from the phrasebook we explained that we wanted to borrow a mouse. We explained it was for the school, that we needed it to test something. We even mentioned the principals name but that didn't work as she didn't know her. The girl didn't quite get it no matter how many ways we tried to explain.
Eventually I said I would like to use the Internet for a half hour and paid for this time. Then I slowed disconnected the mouse explaining that I'd return it in a half hour. I'm not quite sure the girl understood what we were doing but she agreed it was OK for us to leave with the mouse. She wasn't losing money as we'd paid for the computer so she seemed content with that. We returned to the school, tested and confirmed them mouse worked then returned it to the Internet cafe. The girl at the cafe was quite pleased to see us return with the mouse. Strange how it seemed like a perfectly logical solution at the time but I wouldn't dream of walking into an Internet cafe in Dublin and asking them if I could borrow a mouse.
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