Greta – enjoying her comeback tour. Technology – not doing so well.

June 9

 

            Greta is doing well. One of the songs I like to sing on her is the synth-heavy "Africa" by Toto (it sounds very different on acoustic guitar; I think better), and one of the lines in that song is "I heard some rains, down in Africa..." Well, tonight, we heard some rains. It was intense. The tin roofs magnify the sound of all the raindrops and wind, and the end result is somewhere between a dull pounding and a pulsating roar. It's very hot and humid during the day, and almost every night we've had low-level thunderstorms roll through. Tonight, though, it was a pretty serious one. I stood out on the porch, supposedly safe from rain but actually getting pelted with spray off the ground and from the rain. The wind and rain ripped across the opposing building in sheets, filling the air with gray mist. The outdoor lighting on the opposing building is mostly incandescent bulbs hanging by their cords; they're given about a foot and a half of cord, so the wind was playing havoc with them. They bounced around behind the gray sheets of rain. The only other person outside was a very disgruntled looking security man who was sitting and watching the entrance for cars. I think he shook his head at me once, as if to say "You're crazy. Go inside." Eventually I went in, and not long after the rain died away.

 

            Greta may be doing well, but rumour has it the Eee is not. Bailor took it back to Freetown, and it's experiencing some sort of bizarre hard drive error, right when it boots up. That's pretty annoying, because we chose the Eee specifically for its reliability. At this early stage it's definitely a manufacture error. On the other hand, it may work out alright, due to the fact that Amazon has a 30 day guarantee, and Allan is returning to North America on the 26^th of June, 29 days after we bought it. To be honest, I've definitely encountered more tech problems than I've solved since arriving. Let me just enumerate some of the (more or less) unexpected obstacles:

 

1. No one has legitimate copies of windows. They are all weird, virus-ridden, and inexplicably lacking important drivers, such as monitor drivers that let you have anything more than 4-bit resolution.
2. The internet connection, when it isn't in Freetown like it has been for the last four days, has a download speed of 1 kb/s, and 4 kb/s when it's raging. I never thought I'd ever care about kilobytes again; I was wrong. Incidentally, that may limit the number of photos posted to the blog. More importantly, it prevents us from downloading drivers for the desktop computer and Bailor's old laptop.
3. Despite the slow internet, somehow every computer has managed to download some of the internet's finest hard-drive slowing filth. Using them is a bit like running in quicksand. We improved the desktop by wiping it and then reinstalling windows... but now the resolution is 4 bits. Just like I never thought I'd meet a real kilobyte, I also never thought I'd meet a single digit screen resolution.
4. There is no power unless we turn on the generator, which costs about one USD per hour to run. That's not small change here in Kono. Plus, the generator often runs out of oil, and then it has to go off for an hour and a half while someone gets oil...
5. Bailor's old laptop doesn't have the right drivers to use the wireless modem, our internet,  which is effectively a cellphone on a USB cord. That's created a bit of a chicken and egg problem.
6. Even if we get the computers working, there is no one at the clinic full time who could even find the "Control Panel"; they are learning how to use Word and Excel.
7. Tech support? In Kono? To be fair, there are some reps in Freetown. But I don't think NOW has ever used them. The main computer problem-solving tool is really the internet, and when the problems take down the internet, or when it's not around,

 

That's made me revise my hopes for setting up OpenMRS here at the clinic. They need a reliable, cheaper source of power and one or two people with more computer expertise, or else a computer system is just a disaster waiting to happen. Nonetheless, we'll still make a prototype version; by that I mean we will design all the forms and set it up on the computers, to wait for the day when it makes sense.

I'm keeping a list of some possible tech solutions for the clinic, solutions of the kind that would attract an Engineers Without Borders group from a university. Near the top is definitely some solar power – the clinic gets sun all day when it isn't raining, and presently it only rains at night. If you have any other ideas, please post them – we're all in this together, and the people of Kono and NOW need the help.