Day 32

Well, I'm having computer problems. If I'm lucky, it will just go away. I'll finish this entry, save it to disk, and post it on the web. If I'm not lucky, then at some random point while typing, the computer will just shut off. I have a sneaky suspicion that it's the processor fan, which is finally running now, but wasn't before. When the computer can't start the processor fan when it needs to (like when the processor heats up) it shuts down automatically to protect the computer. Unfortunately, unless you already know that this happens, there's no way for you to know what the hell is going on. This is the longest it's stayed on since last night, so I think I may be in the clear.
Today I went to Okambi, a small town about 100 kilos from Omaruru to look at their computer lab. They had 15 computers donated by HP in 1999, coordinated by PeaceCorps volunteer. The lab was pretty bad. Of the original 15 only 12 remained. New computers have made up for the loss of the others, but I still don't know what happened to them. Only 9 computers would boot, and all of them were trashed; icons all over, themes loaded, random shareware installed, programs menu a mess. I managed to reformat three others, but the remaining two were not working- one was missing a hard drive and the other wouldn't power on at all.
It was a bit disconcerting to see the work of a previous PeaceCorps volunteer, who had done an amazing job putting together this lab, go to near waste. She had documented everything she did, so it was easy to see what was missing from the lab and what fell apart. The community education classes she started stopped once she left because no one wanted to take the time to teach them. Classes are still taught here, amazingly enough, but they only hold 12 learners at a time due to failing computers (they would have been down to 9 had I not stopped by), and I can only imagine the entire lab shutting down in a year after the last computer failed to start.
It's clear to me now what is needed here in terms of IT volunteers. It's not to have PeaceCorps provide teachers for computer classes, it's to provide computer education to community members and teachers so that they can run the classes. They also need competent volunteers to run around form town to town getting labs operational again. Slowly, knowledge will be transferred and Namibians will be able to do all this on their own.
I'm going to talk to Waldo (my APCD) and see if this is even remotely a possibility. Until then I'm thinking about the first term next year- I can't wait to start teaching!!
Okay- I'm super-thrilled that my computer seemed to be on the mend, so I'm making these entries short- don't want to push my luck. I've posted pictures and added text descriptions to the most recent pictures I posted- check them out!