June 19, 2009 at 7:00 pm · Filed under Stuff
As promised, something to take the sting out of that last post: because who doesn’t love brownies?!
I should remind you that cocoa is this country’s largest export; I can get the most awesome cocoa powder I’ve ever tasted in my life (with the equally-awesome name of “Brown Gold”) at most major stores here. Yes, it is possible to make brownies (of a sort; pay no attention to that alien landscape you see before you) in Ghana. Without a refrigerator. On a coalpot. Here’s the secret to cooking at my place: if you can make it while camping, you can make it here. (Now, before getting excited about that idea, imagine camping every day.)
Not that I make brownies every day, mind you. Actually, the coalpot makes me incredibly lazy when it comes to cooking: it is such an undertaking to prepare anything - even boiling water for tea takes a good 20 minutes prep time. Because of that, I try to avoid wasting time and energy (and coal) by cooking only once a day. Since I have to eat before taking a nightly malaria prophylaxis pill, this means I usually cook in the evenings, subsisting on whatever is at hand (bananas & groundnuts, usually) until then. Then some days - like today - I am out of rice, or forget to soak the beans, or discover the yam has spoiled… and find I have no “real” food at hand.
Some days, I make brownies for supper.
June 19, 2009 at 6:57 pm · Filed under Stuff
(As I’ve mentioned before, I generally keep a notebook with me while traveling, the better to record immediate quotes/observations/etc. This occurred a few months ago, but I’ve just typed it out tonight. Readers beware: A long story follows. Don’t worry, however… there will be a delicious counterbalance posted shortly hereafter.)
Undated; 1st Quarter 2009
It is mid-morning. I am on a tro-tro, headed to Accra. I anticipate a 4 hour trip, from station to station, but at the moment I am still waiting for this particular tro to depart. I was the second person to get on, and there are 11 seats remaining to be filled. Catching the Accra tro at this particular station is always an exercise in endurance: one I’ve come to dread. Apart from the long waits for vehicles to “fill”, the mates here are especially pushy. It is a part of the “experience” at most stations, but an experience I become acutely aware of at this one.
It has been nearly two hours. Sitting here in the morning sun, I have entertained myself watching the bustling morning microcosm of the station outside my window passing by. I am strangely comforted to see the mates who, a few hours ago, had hassled me so - give the same treatment to other travelers. Shouting, spitting, grabbing elbows, pulling bags, physically fighting over potential passengers: at least in this particular case, I do not feel quite so singled out. Not to worry, however: the trip was far from complete.
Finally. We have filled. We are leaving. The movement brings a welcome breeze into the sticky airless tro through its open windows.
(Note; there is a section of this story not included here, for now. I have yet to type it completely. Suffice to say, it is worthy of a separate posting all it’s own.)
“White Man!” sssst. “Come! Hey, come!”
We have been traveling for a little over an hour, and have just arrived at a checkpoint in the road. This particular point denotes the division between two regions, and is marked by little more than a gate, a wall-less shelter, and a few sleepy customs officials. At this checkpoint, passengers disembark and walk through, while the driver consults with an official, offers customary Special Handshake (more on that later), then drives his empty vehicle through the gate.
sssssssst!
I had been hoping, futilely, to avoid this. I was tired, a certain passenger was getting on my nerves, and I was thirsty. I had hoped to take the few moments of border-crossing time to stretch my legs and buy water. I did not want to waste those precious minutes sating a wannabe Big Man’s thirst for action. I glance at the nearest passenger (was I looking for sympathy? I don’t know), but she continues walking, ignoring me. I grit my teeth and walk, slowly, towards the open guard shack.
The hissing guard regards me. Moments tick past. I wield a Peace Corps Identification Card (my official photo ID) in front of me, shield-like. I am questioned, scrutinized, patronized. I have passed through this checkpoint dozens of times, and it is always the same. “Where are you going? Where are you from? Where is your passport?”. When I explain myself, saying that I don’t have a tourist visa, but instead a residency permit, and likewise don’t generally carry my passport — I am faced with narrowed-eyes and contempt. “Oh, are you sure?”. The colloquial way of calling one a liar. “But you are not Ghanaian.” No, I’m not: but your government considers me a permanent resident, same as you. Take it up with them. The questions continue.
Eventually, I lose my temper. “Why do you stop me only? Why not them?” I ask, gesturing towards the dozen other passengers from my tro. “How do you know they aren’t Togolese or Beninoise? You always stop me, and never a black man or woman.” My question is valid: Togo is but a few dozen kilometers east of our location, and Benin a few hours’ drive further.
The guard grabs my arm, still holding my ID card hostage. “Why don’t you stay here for a few hours, then you will see who I stop!” He smirks, confident in his ability to intimidate and extort the white woman standing in front of him. It is well within his power to prevent my re-boarding the vehicle in which I arrived, and then where would I be?
I glare back at him. The tro has completed its paper check, reloaded, and is now honking impatiently. I am surprised the driver is actually waiting for me; it is well within his rights to roll on. “My ID?” I snap at the guard. He makes a show of studying the laminated card, glancing from the photo to my face, once, twice, three times. A crowd has gathered to witness the drama: the young girls and older women who haunt stops like this, selling water-oranges-grasscutter-yams from baskets perched atop their heads; the local “head market.”
The tro continues to honk. I do not want to be stranded for the rest of the morning at this godforsaken checkpoint. The guard is obviously stalling, expectantly. A “special handshake,” the too-common interaction between layperson and lawman, in which a few bills slip from palm to palm, would resolve things instantly. I know this. I grind my teeth in silence, staring my opponent down. Ghana is going to owe me a lot after I leave, for the dental repair work alone.
Finally, after what seems an eternity, my opponent either gets bored or decides perhaps this “White Man” is not aware of the local Handshake custom, after all. I get my ID back, and storm across the “border” (a metal cattle gate, opened and closed by another sleepy guard) to the impatiently-waiting tro.
As I walk through the gathered crowd of curious observers, I am steaming mad. Fists clenched, jaw set, I fling an insult over my shoulder. “Obuaa!” I say. Animal. Angry though I am, I wait until confident I am safely out of his earshot. Despite my prudence, the invective sets off a torrent of giggles and repeated “Obuaa! Ɔse ‘obuaa!’ Ɔte Twi paa-o! Obuaa!” from the gathered head market crowd. I am suddenly worried that the voices of these water-selling girls will carry, resulting in my detention, after all. I hurriedly climb back onto the tro. We go on, leaving the checkpoint behind.
June 15, 2009 at 8:17 pm · Filed under Stuff
Hello, world! Has it really been over 6 months since my last post? Yes, I suppose it has.
A large component of my lack of writing has been a perceived lack of “new, exciting” subject matter. It becomes all too easy to take the everyday humdrum for granted, and telling you - my family, my friends - about yet another trip to market, yet another afternoon marking papers, or (more commonly) yet another weekday spent sweating onto a well-thumbed paperback with nothing to do… well, I just couldn’t bring myself to write about it.
Then, too, there are things I would like to write about, but hesitate before doing so: the less-photogenic aspects of my life here as a volunteer, the unpolished realities various guidebooks and publications would prefer to ignore. Those, too, I have been unable to write about… for various reasons. Perhaps I may do so at a later date.
However, due mostly to prodding from my immediate family, I’ve realized it’s (past) time for an update. Therefore, for your (bored, at work?) reading pleasure, an account of my past few months:
January Notables
- Elections
Due to a runoff, Ghana’s Presidential Election was extended into the first week of January. Until the election results were made official, Peace Corps restricted volunteers from leaving their sites (for security reasons). Thankfully, the restriction was lifted when, after the runoff, President Atta-Mills was declared winner of the majority vote. I was at market when the result was announced; the region in which I live is almost completely for the winning party. The reaction on the street after the radio announcement was much like that on the streets of my college town following a football win. Spontaneous parades, singing, dancing: it was a fantastic sight.
- Cholera?
Adding itself to the ever-growing list of Oregon Trail-esque bugs I’ve encountered: Cholera. One day in mid-January, I woke up suddenly, vomiting, just before dawn. I won’t bother with further details, but suffice to say I was soon rather symptomatic. In between trips to the latrine, I managed to call the Peace Corps Medical Officer: who, unknown to myself at the time, had just that day emailed an alert regarding a Cholera outbreak in Southern Ghana. Likewise, I was ordered to Accra that day (a hellish ordeal of 4+ hours, crossing fingers all the while that I would not embarass myself on public transportation). I arrived relatively safely, and was in Accra for a week. During the week I lost about 8lbs - nearly half of that was within the first 36 hours. Perhaps because I actually started treatment before being tested for Cholera, the results came back inconclusive, so I will never know for sure, but the (rehydration and massive doses of broad spectrum antibiotic) treatment was successful. I like to bend the truth now and drop the phrase “when I was treated for Cholera in Africa…” into casual conversation as often as possible.
February-March
During the months of February and March, nothing happened. Sorry. Well… Classes occured on an unpredictable schedule and I went to class when there were students in the classroom. I went to the market every week, I lit my coalpot and cooked a few meals every day, I read a lot of books, sweat a lot, walked more. After my pseudo-choleric-drama in January, my body waved the white flag of surrender and I was actually relatively healthy for the rest of the school term. That is all. Moving on…
April
- Vacation!
Vacation photos have been added; click here to view.
In mid-April, the second term of the school year closed, and I had a few weeks free, during which I used most of my accumulated vacation days to travel a bit. During a 2-week vacation, I visited many parts of Ghana that I had yet to see, and for a few days I hopped across the border into Lomé, Togo. The trip was a great “break” from the everyday, and visiting Lomé especially was a lot of fun. Point of interest: Ghana was colonized by the British, Togo by the French. This is why I can rely on at least basic English to get around Ghana, while in Togo even “Good Afternoon!” is met with blank stares. It was very disorienting to literally walk across a land border, where on one side the crowd noise was heavily English, and on the other the only English I heard was “Hellooo!”. was I went over the border with little to no French, I came back with… well, only slightly more, but the ability to buy food and drink, bargain with taxi drivers, and greet children on the road granted a small vocabulary borne of necessity. Complete with French West African accent, which incedently is much more user-friendly than its European counterpart. Final note: the French make fantastic bread. Luckily for me they passed this talent to the Togolese sometime before Independence. Fresh baguette on the street, for less than .20 cents. It almost makes me wish the French had gotten to Ghana first…
- STARS planning
What is STARS, you ask? Good question: it is an annual student leadership conference organized by Peace Corps Volunteers. For this year’s conference, I have been working with another volunteer on financial planning of the event: this translates mainly into a lot of letter writing, phone calling, and face-to-face meeting, requesting sponsorship from various people and corporations in Ghana. The bulk of our face-to-face work was done during the second half of April, as we were still on inter-term break. The 2009 conference will be held next week (June 21-28), and so I will post more about that soon. To read some student responses to last year’s program, visit the STARS blog at http://starsconference.blogspot.com. Bookmark that URL, it will be updated during the conference next week.
And that is all! A few thousand words, and six months’ time has whirled by. A few days ago I marked my “one year in Ghana anniversary”. It is hard to believe a year has gone by already, but in small ways I see evidence of the year around me. Perhaps most telling, my notebook scribbles have begun to include a more complete view of the world in which I am living. What do I mean by “complete”? During my first months here, I avoided putting to paper any experiences I considered “negative”: somehow, some part of me considered that nearly blasphemous; most definitely it was “not correct” at the very least. However, over time I have been able to accept that the sum of my experiences here (good, bad, ugly, mediocre, boring, what-have-you) all must be recorded, all must be shared - otherwise the image I would present to myself (and, by extension, to you) is but a fractured and false composite. Please don’t interpret this as a gross disenchantment with my current position, nor as bitterly pessimistic attitude adjustment: rather, I am simply learning to plumb (”gradually-gradually”, as they say here) the vast depths of this world around me. Now, I ramble on about all this only to give fair warning to you, Dear Reader: it is quite probable that some of these “more realisic” notebook scribbles will find their way here in time.
I will close now. I am alive, I am healthy, I have not been eaten by a grue. I talked to my parents yesterday and was surprised to hear their report of the date: the passage of time has taken on an absolutely surreal quality. I am hard pressed to feel it is actually 2009, much less June. Part of this is due to the monotonous quality of my work here, but I think part is also due to geography: Due to our equatorial proximity sunrise and sunset occurs at exactly the same time it occurred last month, the month before, the year before. The temperature this week likely averaged the same as last week, the same as the month before, the same as last Christmas. Though Ghana has a “rainy” and “dry” (or Harmattan) season, because I am located so close to the coast, I don’t even have that variable — instead, we have essentially the same weather this month as we did last month, as we did three months ago, etc. It is very strange, and though I have acclimated (it was actually cold last night, no doubt dipping into the low 70s F!) it has completely removed my sense of time. And so, finally, I want to say, albeit belatedly:
Happy 29th Anniversary to my mom and dad! Congratulations and much love to you both.
January 7, 2009 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Stuff
In two years, my goal is to run with my laptop, backpack, and uberduffel — and not look back. Sure, I’ll likely leave remnants of the this in storage — but I’d like to see myself traveling lightly, and all the more satisfied for it. We shall see.
I wrote that in December 2005. I was a bit off in my projection, but rediscovering that just now has completely changed my evening.
Backstory: A few minutes ago, I was trying to figure out how long I’d had this domain, and couldn’t get Dreamhost’s panel to load well enough to check. Then I remembered my old online journal, which doesn’t need linking as it’s easy enough to find (for better or worse), and went there to check the date I last posted there. The above quote is taken from one of the last posts I made in that location, in which I was bemoaning all the “stuff” I had accumulated during my independent life to that point.
I like very much that, 2.5 years after that moment of quasi-frustrated writing, I did run: with laptop, backpack and (two) “uberduffels”. And yes, I do still have a few remnants of “the this” back in the States, but for all intents and purposes my life has been neatly repackaged, requantified, reformed into something that was essentially dictated by the dimensions of my luggage. Which, I think, was the amorphous idea I was driving at in that original blog post. The connection between distinct stages of my life and the “stuff” that provides a visible marker thereof.
I don’t know where I’m going next, but it was good to read that tonight; to remember that this is where I want to be. Of course it is. I told myself so 3 years ago.
December 31, 2008 at 7:37 pm · Filed under Stuff
I’m looking forward to 2008. I am excited about 2008. I have no idea what the year is about to throw at me, yet I am actually optimistic about 2008.
This is gonna be good.
Does it feel like 12 months since I wrote that? In some ways, yes. 12 long, endless months. And in many ways, no. I’m still stalled, stagnant, in limbo - stuck in June.
My 2008 was very solidly divided in two: the first half, the whirlwind months of preparation for leaving everything, everyone, I knew and loved behind. The second half, the counter-whirl’d wind of another flavour, feels so utterly removed from its predecessor that it’s difficult to reconcile the year as a whole to my mind. 12 months? That many? That few?
2008 came in on such a triumph of emotional high, it seems only fitting to watch it go out on the pendulum’s downswing. If nothing else, the year has helped me learn to look for contentment where I once found only discontent. And yes, I’m truly content to be where I am now. At this moment, at my home, in a rare bubble of solitude. Sitting on my bed with my sleeping cat, trying to make myself believe it is really New Year’s Eve in Ghana. My bed. My cat. My home.
On the first day of this year, I had not quite reached this point. Today, on the last day of the year, I’ve just passed this point. What an amazing journey it’s been.
And so I surprise myself, and find my year-old prediction accurate: It was good. It was good paaa. 2009: I’m waiting. Bring it on.
December 30, 2008 at 3:07 pm · Filed under Stuff
I’m still here. Brief summary of notable events that have transpired since my last post; to be expounded upon (or not?) at a later time.
- Thanksgiving
- Thanksgiving 2: Turkey Boogaloo
- Final Exams
- All-Vol Conference (GHANACON08)
- Beach Corps: or why other African PCVs hate us.
- Barcamp Ghana
- Elections, Standfast
- Christmas
- Housing Disting
This is a quick-and-dirty, semi (’somehow’)-temporary placeholder of a blog-post, designed to let you all know that I’m still here, still alive (I’m doing science, too), and the zombies haven’t gotten to me.
…yet.
Will do my best to get an entry of actual substance up here soon.
November 17, 2008 at 5:09 pm · Filed under Stuff
As I said in one of my last entries, I actually had a really terrific weekend. Most of the photos I’ve just uploaded I’m in the process of uploading were from that Saturday (8/11/08). It’s a convoluted tale, but the short(ish) version is that due to a miscommunication, a bus left the school Saturday morning with 51 students on board, headed for a student “Rally” a few hours away… without any teaching staff. Meanwhile, I was on a second bus full of teaching staff, bound for a funeral a few hours away as well. A lot of confusion ensued, but the main idea is that I “heroically” volunteered to chaperone the student trip, and so got off the Funeral Bus in Cape Coast and joined the Rally Bus instead. The students were relieved (their plans weren’t changed!), the faculty were relieved (their plans weren’t changed!), I was relieved (my plans were changed!).
It was awesome.
The “rally” turned out to be a semi-annual (?) conference of the National Union of Presbyterian Students in Ghana (NUPS-G), which was held at a meeting hall somewhere on Sekondi University campus. It was an interesting experience, but a lot of fun too. There was music, dancing, “drama teams”, and preaching (it felt very familiar in a lot of ways!), followed by a 2-hour “prayer/healing” session(less familiar, but still interesting - let’s just say I didn’t have a translator, but neither did anyone else in the room). The campus was gorgeous, and the weather was nice, so I went for a walk towards the end of that final session. My parents have been asking for pictures of me for weeks now, so I took a few shamelessly goofy photos. Blame them, not me!
After the afternoon of “Rally”/church, we had a few hours to kill before the bus returned to take us home. A handful of students passed a hat among themselves, and convinced a security guard at the (walking-distance-away) massively beautiful Sekondi Sports Stadium to give us a private tour. That was also awesome: apparently this is one of the stadiums the Black Stars play at regularly. In any case, it was way nicer than the last stadium I’ve poked around in. On the way back from the tour, we passed a pond that had become the local swimming hole: I’ll warn you that there’s no such thing as “swimming suits” for most kids around here, but I tried to only upload the more “discreet” photos. It’s too bad, because some of the ones that didn’t make the cut are absolutely hilarious. The swimmers were having a great time showing off their diving skills for the group of students and the Obruni with a camera.
We got back to school at 9pm, tired but happy. It was a good day.
The next day I went to the beach for my birthday, but that’s another story.
November 17, 2008 at 8:38 am · Filed under Stuff
People often ask me “Sara, why do you use Linux? Are you just a pretentious wanna-be geek trying to play with the big kids — or do you have a good reason?”
(Really, it’s a common question.)
I try to give them good answers, personalized depending on the questioner. I try, but usually fail.
So instead of explaining why with a lot of boring words, I’m just going to start showing pictures.
Back story: I was installing software (meta: and this is exactly why I was installing it in the first place!) on all the computer lab machines, so I was using my USB drive to move the installation file from computer to computer. Simple enough, yes? There were 10 computers total. When I started, I had one file on a recently-cleaned USB drive. When I finished, this is what I had instead. I feel dirty just touching the thing. Ew.
(And yes I took a screenshot just to show a text list. Ha.)
November 16, 2008 at 12:07 pm · Filed under Stuff
[Note; I actually had a really great weekend between my last entry and this one. Fear not for my tenuous emotional state, loved ones! I’ll return to carebear-and-rainbow mode shortly.]
I often get asked, by strangers and acquaintances alike, for things. It comes with the territory of being white and foreign; from the “rich Obruni” stereotype. The history of missionaries in this country does not help koraaa (”at alllll”). Being asked “what mission are you from?” and “what will you give us?” in the same breath is not altogether uncommon.
Two days ago at market a random woman told me to bring her a drink. I say “told” instead of asked, because the phrasing translated to “you [will] bring me a Pure Water”, and as a Twi statement there was no danger of having heard misspoken English “would you bring me a Pure Water?” “Pure Water” refers to the 500ml plastic sachets that cost .05ghc, or “5 t’ousand” - about $0.05, so hardly an imposition. It was the principle of the matter that offended my precious senses (that, and the fact that I was tired and hot, and would’ve like a Pure Water myself, had I the spare change left in my pocket).
It’s a terrible reality on many levels: my emotions alternate between frustration and helplessness. There are times when I wish I could give whatever is being asked, but there are many many more times when I’m simply astounded by the shameless audacity of the begging. There’s an ingrained sense of entitlement that seems a part of learned culture, from early childhood on, and which serves to hold back so. much. development and progress. This is not only me venting my culturally-biased, inherently negative worldview - it’s a statement I hear made often by Ghanaian friends (my housemate being foremost among them).
Aside from being frustrating, this phenomenon is also detrimental to my ability to do my job here. Many, if not most, of my faculty coworkers have yet to take me seriously as a teacher. A lot of it is based on stereotypical descriptors (foreign/white/single/female, amusing oddity), but there is also the misconception regarding why I’m here: I’m seen not so much as a teacher (to say nothing of “3 goal-oriented PCV”), but as potential windfall facilitator. I’ve been on staff at this school since August, and already the novelty of my appearance is fading: I’ve been faced with confusion, even subversive hostility, based in large part on the “why haven’t you bought us new computers yet?!” question.
Last week, during the same afternoon that led to my previous blog entry, I had an interesting encounter with a teaching colleague. We were discussing the computer situation, and I was relating my excitement at finding so many “extra” computers. The resulting exchange upset me so much I copied it down a few minutes later (”Ghana English” and all), ostensibly ‘taking notes’ during the staff meeting.
Him: But why don’t you just buy new computers?
Me: (trying to joke it off) Oh, I’m too poor! I’m a Volunteer, remember?
Him: Ei! No no no, you are rich.
Me: Oh, why? You know I make half your money!
Him: Ok, so just call your American friends and tell them we need new computers, they’ll send them.
Me:No, I can’t do that, I am just a teacher. Peace Corps doesn’t want us to work like that.
Him: (Conspiratorially) Oh, don’t mind them. Just have your mother pick two or three computers when she comes to visit.
This conversation affected me on so many levels: my visceral reaction was a lump in my throat and clenched fists (which happens a lot at staff meetings…) — if it was so gorram easy for my mom to buy “two or three computers” then she would be able to visit sooner than later (hi mom, don’t feel guilty, I’m just making a point :) ). Close on that thought’s heels was “you have no. bloody. idea., do you?” [cue self-pitying internal monologue] you’ve never even left the country, much less the continent, and the idea of uprooting yourself from everything you’ve ever known and loved for an extended period of time, willingly transplanting into an incredibly unwelcoming and alien environment, in which you’re seen by colleagues not as an equal but as some conglomerate of gift-bearing amusement/unintelligent-lesser-being — that’s completely outside your realm of comprehension, isn’t it? [/end moment]
Closing out my mental reaction to the passing conversation was resounding emotional deflation: I’d just spent 20 minutes in conversation with this particular colleague, and was beginning to feel warm-fuzzies with the idea oh wow, maybe I’ve FINALLY been able to make a connection here!. Bubble, meet pin.
November 7, 2008 at 8:26 pm · Filed under Stuff
I know I haven’t written in a while, and I know I owe at least 3 people emails. As they say around here: Sorry, sorry-o. I’ll catch up eventually — but not tomorrow. I learned today that tomorrow I’m “expected” to attend a funeral with the teaching staff (or rather, the percentage of teaching staff who deign to show up, unfortunately I live on campus so can’t escape): which, for the uninitiated, means leaving campus at 7am and returning sometime after dark. The hours in between will be spent sitting under outdoor awnings with hundreds of strangers, watching everyone around me become gradually more intoxicated, and slowly losing my hearing due to the constant (and max-volume’d) music. Funerals are social events with direct bearing on community status; very little mourning is actually done. They commonly take place weeks, even months after the deceased’s passing; the celebration itself is supposed to last 40 days.
If that came across as somehow more bitter than the average Sara, sorry-o. There’s been a lot of minutae piling on this week, and I’m somewhat upset about losing my “Saturday Beach Ritual” to a funeral. Oh well. Day-after-tomorrow’s another week, right?!
The only other thing I want to vent share is probably the most disheartening of this week’s “pile”. A few days ago, as I closed class for the day I ran into the other ICT teacher. I’d spent the week teaching classes the meaning of “Data Representation,” complete with the tiniest introduction to Base2 math and Binary numbers. The majority of the students were able to grasp the concept, but relating a pile of boring theory to the “Real World” of the computer lab was another story. So when I saw the other ICT teacher, I asked him if there were any spare computer parts on campus which I could take into classes for visual demonstrations (“This is a hard drive.” [unscrew cover, play with magnets. Prep the great “reveal” moment of magnetism=binary force.] “ooooo.”). At best I expected to get a bricked hard drive or two out of a random storage closet. In fact we did head for a random storage closet that I’d never seen.
Inside were 25 dusty, cobwebby, flashback-to-the-90s, computers.
Twenty. Five.
Let me remind you that I am teaching ICT at a school whose student body totals 1600+. With a lab of 10 working machines.
When I picked my jaw up off the floor and regained coherency, I asked my coworker why on earth we weren’t making use of these machines, and got two answers: 1, the machines belonged to a private party, though said party hadn’t visited campus since 2006. 2, as Pentium Is the machines were “too slow to run even Windows 98.” I asked for the name and phone number of the private party, trying to joke that “maybe my Obruni power can do us some good!” I never was able to resolve that angle; the best I got was that I’d need to speak with the headmaster first. So I tried the “these are perfectly good machines! There’s so much that can be done to make old computers useful!” (case in point.) I was greeted with a disbeliefing laugh as he ushered me out of the storage room and locked the door.
So today my goal was to speak with the Headmaster and let him know we could use these machines. He was out, so I spoke with the Assistant Head, who seemed not to realize the machines were there - but gave his go-ahead, with the caveat that I would “need to speak with the Headmaster first”. Sigh.
Oh, and as I walked out of his office, he alerted me to the fact that there would be a mandatory staff meeting at 9:30. In half an hour. Sigh two.
During the two hours before the the staff meeting actually began at 11:45, I chatted with a few of the other teachers. My subversive goal was to gather more information about this mysterious “private party” who apparently stored his computers in our closets. Ultimately, I got back to the same original ICT teacher who introduced me to the storage room. This time, apparently seeing that I was serious in my intent, I got the full(ish) story from him:
Unnamed “Private Party” originally brought the computers to campus in 2005, with the intent of leasing them to the school for the then-nonexistant computer lab. Sometime between that point and 2006, the school decided the lease contract was too expensive and so cancelled it. Private Party has yet to collect their machines. After much blinking and jaw-dropping on my part, this is what I was told. We have 25 antiquated computers that don’t belong to us gathering dust. The private party who originally leased them has not contacted the school, nor has the school contacted them, since 2006. The machines will continue to gather dust until either we use them or the owner retrieves them. However, in order to officially USE the computers, we would have to reactivate the lease contract. So… we have 25 antiquated computers that don’t belong to us gathering dust…
The end. If I told you I didn’t have to leave the staff room at that point and take a walk to clear the tears of frustration… I would be lying.
Next entries »
