Still Alive and Winding Down

June 8, 2009 by Stephen Day.

Sorry for the lengthy delay since I last posted, but things have been busy here. In April I had two weeks off while the students went home, but had plenty of work to keep me busy. In May, I was sick for a week, which was not fun. But things are going well. Classes have ended here at Msalato and exams will soon begin. I leave Africa for the USA in 51 days. I am eager and hesitant at the same time. I love my work here and, in many ways, would be happy staying here five years or more; however, there are also some things that I won’t miss upon my return to America (like random power outages and extremely expensive Internet access, to name two). I will definitely miss the people and their spirit. I will also very much miss teaching. I love it! It is very hard work, but worth it. I am still looking for a job, so I would appreciate your thoughts and prayers.

Well, I thought I might share a few stories, since it has been so long since I posted. The first is entitled the “Blues Brother Experience.”

This story starts off about a year ago when I decided to figure out what the college needed technologically. I realised that the college had been given a wonderful gift from Trinity Episcopal Church, Wall Street (in NYC, obviously) in the form of a grant a few years ago that provided for a new server and 24 client computers. However, those 24 computers had dwindled to about twenty due to theft and there were still many other needs. The grant that I wrote included money for forty new client computers (to add to our existing lab, to degree classrooms and to go into staff offices). Also, I included expansion to our server, a new printer and software to manage printing throughout the campus. This grant request totaled nearly $40,000 US and you can view it here. Well… the grant had no where to go, so it sat in a preverbal drawer.

A few months ago the communications director learned about the opportunity for a grant from the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming. She spent a good deal of time working on a grant request with someone from that diocese and included the huge technology grant that I came up with. Before the diocese even reviewed the grant request officially, a parish in the diocese volunteered to provide $4,567 US for the printing system. This money provided for a new colour laser printer/copier/scanner made by HP, software to manage the printing throughout the network, and a computer to run that software and function as a printer server. This money was wired to the school’s bank account and all was well, right? Well, sort of…

The parts for the new computer were somewhat specialised and therefore needed to come from America; however, many Internet-based computer parts stores have problems with credit cards that have billing addresses located outside of the USA (even when it is a USA bank) and so the missionaries here could not order the parts needed. Also, the stores often have a problem with shipping orders to locations other than the billing address of the credit card holder. So… this added further complications. In the end what I had to do was have my father order the parts and have them shipped to himself. He got them and then mailed them to Georgia where the Msalato’s communications director was staying for two weeks. She then sent a personal check to my father to reimburse him for the purchase of the parts and shipping them. Then she brought the parts with her to Msalato and got reimbursed by the college. We had to do the same thing for the print management software, but it, thankfully, was a download from the Internet.

So we had out computer parts and software, but what about the printer/copier/scanner? That took more work. Tanzania, like much of the developing world, is a cash based society. In Tanzania they use the Tanzanian shilling which comes (in bill form) in denominations ranging from 500 to 10,000. That sounds big, but the equivalent of $1 US is about 1,320 shillings. So the highest denomination bill is the equivalent of about $7.50 US. The printer/copier/scanner costs $1,250 US and I was also buying spare toner cartridges and a few other things that brought the total up to about $2,200 US. How many shillings does it take to equal $2,200 US… three million (that’s three hundred bills). So we had the money… but the store that sells the printer/copier/scanner is in Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of Tanzania. Dar is located about 500 kilometres from Dodoma and is a seven hour bus ride away. So I got a ticket on the bus from Dodoma to Dar for a Friday morning. I got picked the first of three daily buses to Dar with the hope of getting into downtown Dar by 3 pm. Unfortunately when I got to the bus station at 6:30 am for the bus that was supposed to leave at 7:00, I was told that bus was cancelled because it had broken down the day before. So I went back to Msalato and waited around for a couple of hours and then caught the 9:30 am bus. So I was on my way to Dar with three million shilling in my over stuffed pocket. The college’s bursar had wanted to give me a huge manila envelope to put the cash in but I opted for a small cloth bag because it was less obvious.

So I am on the bus to Dar. Once we get near Dar we hit traffic and it slows down. We end up pulling into downtown at 5:30pm. I jump in a taxi and race off to the computer store to buy the printer/copier/scanner and get rid of all that money in my pocket. However, I get to the store and… it is closed. Also, no business hours are posted so I don’t know when it opens (I had called previously to find out when they are open, but never got through and my emails were not replied to in time). I get back in the taxi and then am off to the guest house where I stay the night. I plan to get up early the next morning and call the store and hope it opens early.

On Saturday I start calling the store at 8:00am. No answer. I keep calling until shortly after 9:00 and no answer. So my taxi picks me up and we try a few other stores, all closed. I buy some groceries assuming that I will have to stay until Monday. Then on a whim I call the store around 10:00 am and… they answer. I rush over (it took 30 mins to get around town… traffic) and order what I need. I finally got rid of all that money. Then I rush over to the bus station and got a ticket on the early bus from Dar to Dodoma for Sunday. And when I say early, I mean early - 6 am. That is the earliest a bus can legally leave in the country.

So it turned out okay, but was quite an experience. So why the title - “The Blues Brother Experience?” Well, my mother told our vicar (or rector) about me having to go to Dar and do all of this with a bunch of cash. He emailed me and said that he envisioned me in a black suit with a briefcase handcuffed to my wrist with the money in it (hence the Blues Brothers reference. I felt at many points like I was standing out so much that I could have been dressed that way and was so nervous about having all that cash (that belonged to someone else) on me that I was getting a bit paranoid. Anyway, I laughed at the image that my vicar’s story gave me and so I share it here. I also thought my college best friend would get a chuckle out of the Blues Brothers reference since he is a bit of a fan.

Well, I shall share another story soon. Hope all is well with alls y’all.

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