The dysentery is finished. Good old ciprofloxicin killed it off quickly. General Purpose anti biotics are lifesavers here.
Funny Forum Posts
I am effectively a system administrator here at NYS. My teaching job is secondary really to keeping the machines running and in tip-top shape. Therefore, I am frequently googling around the internet trying to find answers to this or that question. Recently, I just received 15 brand new machines from Nairobi HQ and need to get them imaged and up to spec with all the same software as my other lab machines. However, they’ve been giving me a problem so I was googling around and stumbled across this forum post. I am posting this because I think it’s hilarious, in a non-tech way:
“Ugh…Sorry, my brains fried…my wife is in labor at the moment, so I’ll keep this quick…She has a hours to go, so don’t think I’m a bad husband. I tried gparted, and I can’t resize through that. Checked the disk for bad sectors, the drive is fine. I DEFINITELY don’t know enough about linux to do a text based installer. So is there another way to resize the ntfs partition, thourgh windows or dos maybe? I’m a dos whiz, so thats preffered. Thanks folks…Will check in a few days from now after the kid is born…
Thanks again.” (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-871687.html)
Apparently this guy really thought resizing his partition was that darn important. But don’t worry, his wife still had an hour to go so it’s ok, he can muck around with his ubuntu install. I am glad that at least he is giving his wife a few days attention to help with the newborn child though before returning to his computer. Hahaha.
More updates
After a mere two weeks without electricity, yesterday Kenya Power and Lighting arrived and restored mine and my neighbors’ electricity. I am now a lawful electricity-user with cold drinks again! Wooo! And hot dogs! and cheese! The future is looking brighter, literally. Still don’t know how to celebrate the 4th though. Believe it or not, I have not seen a single person selling fireworks. Road trip to South of the Border anyone? I wonder if Tanzania sells fireworks. That would be funny.
Jon 1, rat 0
I caught my rat over the weekend. I had been out all day and he must have been adventurous and hungry, a great formula for catching him in my peanut butter trap. Needless to say without him scampering about i sleep much better. Now onto my new battle of jon vs. Dysentry. Ill spare the details and just tell you when i have won. How does that sound?
Quick Updates again
Still living without electricity and still not really caring. Though it’s funny to see people get nervous when they find out, as if it’s an unspeakable shame that the mzungu is living without electricity. “Umesikia? Nyumba ya mzungu ni bila stima!” (Have you heard, the mzungu’s house is without electricity!).
For those who may not recall, my personal laptop died a few weeks ago, but I have been using the school computers quite nicely since that sad loss. Of couse, just 10 minutes ago “my,” computer in the lab just fried. As it stands, since coming here, I have lost 2 computers to RAM failures (most likely caused by humidity), 1 computer to a fried power supply due to irregular voltage or humidity, another computer to a fried power supply due to I don’t know, and a final computer due to a lizard crawling into the power supply, and, well, that’s that. 5 computers down for the count in almost 6 months of being on the job. Kenya is not friendly to computers, especially when the labs are quite open to the elements. Now I know why we air condition everything, and I can very easily see the connection between computer bugs and real bugs.
Of Mice and Men… and Butterflies… and Bicycles… and Electricity
Hellooooooooo Alll
I am back! Did you all miss me? Where did I go? Well, it wasn’t really me who went away, it was my computer. I have been doing some upgrades here and there and wanted to get everything up and running and whatnot, and of course the Internet gave me problems, but it seems to be working now, knock on wood. So some life updates!
Rats
These have to be the biggest rats ever. I am talking monkey sized rats living in my eaves. I have only seen one, but I hear more. And it sounds like a construction site. I don’t know whats going on. I have two peanut butter laden traps ready to kill the buggers. No one’s taken the bait as of yet. These are vicious traps to. These aren’t your Audobaun Society Friend Hav-A-Hearts! These are the cartoon bear traps of the rat trap world, metal teeth included.
Butterflies
Have I ever told you all that Mombasa is blessed with heaps of butterflies! That is correct! Everywhere I look, all the time, butterflies. Dark ones, bright ones, spotted ones, striped ones (read that line aloud, it’s almost poetic…). They love the mangoes like the monkeys and flutter around everywhere. It’s nice to have so many around all the time.
Bicycle
It’s fixed. I picked up a nice, stainless steal Allan key wrench and was able to realign the spring on my brake. I do need to tighten the brakes a bit, but otherwise it is working fine, finally. No more jumping. I promise.
Electricity
Do to some administrative snafus, I am currently without electricity. Meh. Not a big loss. Just means no music over the speakers. I like using my oil lamp. And I have my flash lights as well, though I prefer the light cast by the lamp. My stove is gas powered, so I can still cook… my ramen… fine. Admin says the power should be on “soon.” I tell them no worries.
That’s about it. Teaching goes on, slowly by slowly. The network and keeping it running and maximizing what the students can get out of the resources we have continues as well. We shall see how it all goes!
A New Battle Every Day
My life is not difficult. Don’t think it is. And I am actually quite happy here. But I like to be dramatic so go with it! 
As if fighting malaria and lack of self motivation weren’t enough. As if fending off malice-intent monkeys who want to steal didn’t occupy enough of my time. As if heroically defending my infant neighbour from vicious snakes and spiders weren’t epic enough of a story, I have a new battle to fight. More as it develops on the tale of Jon vs. The Rat. Hopefully it will end this weekend with his greedy paws covered in peanut butter and neck snapped by the force of a thousand painful days as manifested by a spring-loaded metal bar. It’s almost like watching Titanic, except this time the ship might not sink!
Or I could just pull an Adrian and kill it with a spear fashioned from my Leatherman and broom handle…
Self Motivation
I have a project that I would like to complete, but I am fighting to get over one last hurdle. But the hurdle isn’t one of the normal hurdles you hear about in development work. The government isn’t blocking my visa or application. I don’t need to bribe anyone. Everyone around me supports the idea. The only thing stopping me is… me.
Never before have I encountered such a complete lack of self motivation. But I am finding more and more that its not a general lack (which is relieving), it’s just a lack of motivation to complete a specific project. The project is to create a series of packets that allow for at least a minimal level of self guided instruction on learning the basics of a computer. They would include pictures and diagrams and would potentially even be translated into kiswahili. I have in fact actually ranked them with my highest personal priority for completion. Yet I cannot bring myself to write them.
At first (a few weeks ago) I was worried that it was a complete lack of self motivation, but since then I have been able to complete a few projects. Admittedly some other projects, mostly my NYS Daily News Grabber, have fallen by the wayside, but that is more from other lackings, such as internet and an internal server (which should be fixed soon). Again, this is a bit of a relief because at least I can get some work done. But why not these packets.
Am I afraid that such work is below me? That would be terrible to me. I don’t think that I am above helping at the basics. I admit, I don’t like it much, but there is a real necessity for these packets and I would like to think that it would overcome any sense of superiority. Is it that the task seems daunting? That might be part of it. If you take at a a look at the ICDL packets, it’s a lot of information packed in there.
I think part of it is that I don’t know what to make. If I make an intro course only, then those people wanting deep knowledge get left out. Also, I don’t really know a lot of the information. My knowledge of Excel and Access is extremely limited. I just never had to use them. But here, there are four students who want to know everything about everything, even if they never use the information. It’s all because they have seen the certificate courses and they think they can get certificates if I teach them and then they go and pass the test. Except, I actaully don’t have a syllabus for teaching the certificate level coures nor doe I have the vast resources and examples that Polytechnics have, hence the need to make the packets in the first place.
I am just frustrated, because, gah, I don’t know why. It seems like such an easy request to fulfill: “Teach me Word.” Ok, I can do that. But apparently I cannot teach enough Word, and nobody actually has any need to learn word yet so they don’t come with a desire to create their own content. I am just stumped. And then I fail at teaching something that seems natural to me, but is completely befuddling to my student, like Highlighting or text cursor placement. As I think about it more and more, I am overwhelmed. I think I lack the motivation out of fear of missing something, of forgetting to insert a step. It’s all so complicated, and my students need it all written out explicitly that I am just overwhelmed. Not a happy feeling.
I think I answered my own question. I lack the self motivation to complete these lessons because I myself am overwhelmed at the complexity of the tasks involved. Not a happy notiong at all 
My Other Blog Home
I have been having a long, internal debate, about the particulars of setting up a blog for the more technical side of my volunteering. Ya know, the geeky stuff nobody really cares about except for, well, geeks. And hopefully development workers. Hopefully they care as well. I debated setting up a second blog here, under my wordpress account, but realized that it would not really get an audience, and as much as I like talking to walls, sometimes I’d like to think the wall was actually listening. I know I have an audience for my “zany adventures,” blog, but I have a feeling the geeky side wouldn’t attract much attention. Instead of operating here on my own, I have jumped my own ship for the ship of a friend. My tech blogging will occur at http://voicesofafrica.info. There you will get to read the rantings and ravings of myself as well as other geeky development types. How great is that! I know you are all just gonna head over there right now! Just thought I would keep you all posted. Don’t worry, I will still be blogging here, no worries
Cultural Camouflage
This entry is not about some magical way that I have managed to camouflage myself in Kenya. That’s just impossible. Even if I were to say I was a white Kenya, which there are, most people I meet don’t seem to believe it. Instead, this article is about my camouflage bag. That’s right. But don’t go drawing up any mental images of brown and green splotched army bags or anything. Instead, this particular camouflage is simply a miniature, black, plastic bag, a bit larger than a sandwich baggie, but smaller than one of those gallon zip-locs.
Let me preface this with why I need a cultural camouflage bag. First, if I carry anything out in the open, especially anything computer-related, it gets stares. People automatically assume that it is better than what they have, and I should give it to them. Even a banana! Because I am carrying the banana, it must be better than the banana they are eating at the same moment, which I just saw them pluck from the same bunch. Thankfully this does not happen often, because I immediately picked up on lesson one of transporting goods in Kenya: cover them.
You cannot just cover them in anything though. For example, I tried walking from Nakumatt to the ferry holding Nakumatt bags. That didn’t go over well. Even if the bags just contained the same sugar or flour people could buy themselves, at the same cost, it was automatically assumed that I had just gone to Nakumatt and bought a TV, or Lawnmower, or that somehow my flour was special and would make me grow 500 feet tall. Nakumatt bags attract attention, sometimes more than just carrying things outright. Not good cover.
For the longest time since realizing this, I have just always carried around my faithful orange backpack (the one that I first got to go running around the bush in Australia.) It has served me well these past few years, and continues to do so. I still get eyes, but not the eyes of “I know you have something good in there.” Instead, these are the eyes of “I know you’re a tourist.” That isn’t always a bad thing, sometimes it gets your preferential treatment. And more and more Kenyans themselves are using backpacks, especially in the city, so I still feel comfortable with it. The Nakumatt bag-check attendant and I are buddies, and its always a running joke to see if I can fit my weeks grocerys into my bag. I usually can, thankfully. The one downside to the bag: it’s just a bit too big for taking on small trips, say, around camp. Also, because its my bag, people want it. It must be better than their backpack.
I have since found the perfect bag to use for carrying little things: the little black, plastic, duka baggie. It’s the same baggie you use for buying bananas or anything else. There are heaps of them in the country and they produce so much waste that many development organizations are trying to figure out what to do with them. In ubiquity I have found protection. I can carry anything in these little bags. I frequently carry a portable hard drive, my iPod, my USB modem, and people are none the wiser! For all they care, I have a bag of peppers or bananas. It’s great! I bet I could leave this little baggie out in the open and nobody would bother it. Sorry if I don’t try to prove my anecdotal statement however.
In other news, I will be traveling back to Loitokitok this week to visit the new Trainees that came in, a group of about 30 Public Health Volunteers. They are getting a Personal ICT training session hosted by yours truly. We shall see how it goes. I am hoping for feedback and whatnot, but it will be good to see new blood and to get back to visit my host family in Loitokitok. Mama does make the best chapati in town. I wonder if they are hosting again this group? That’s about it for not. Any requests on topics for future updates?
Subscribe!
