So a few nights ago I got carried away with the running water in my house and I splashed a bit on the wall, which dripped down into the outlet and blew a fuse in my house. So now I have no lights or fans, which means for three nights now I’ve had to rely on candles while I wait for the electrician. It’s annoying, but also kind of nice and romantic.
A few of you have asked me how Lamu was, and the answer is, I haven’t gone yet. The solar computer lab is apparently a few steps away from the part where I come in, so in the meantime I’ve been frantically testing different programs to put on the twenty-or-so old iBooks that have been donated. They’re pre-Intel Macs, so it’s a little more complicated to get all the Linux stuff working, and to be honest, I haven’t actually installed Linux onto a real system since about 1999, when I helped set up a dedicated Red Hat server for my high school’s web site! I’ve tried really hard to get Sugar to work, so give the kids in Lamu a One-Laptop-Per-Child experience, but it’s a 1000-step process that I don’t have time for, and even after those steps, it’s buggy on old PowerPC Macs. I did get it working, but by the end I was cranky and exhausted and impatient with each of the quirks that came up, so I’m scratching it. Oh, well. We’ll see what else I can come up with.
Me and my super-Linux-savvy friend setting up a web server in my room, 1999
The video yearbook project is moving along— we’ve shot video for classes 3-8, which leaves 1-2 and the three kindergarten classes. The lower classes will be the hardest, since the younger the kids, the less likely they are to know how to spell their names for the camera. So far so good, though.
A still image from the video yearbook-in progress:
Lastly, my top secret Nairobi project may have been canceled… it’s definitely not looking good. In fact everyone seems pretty sure that it’s cancelled, but I remain optimistic, mostly because I’m not really in the loop. Stay tuned.
3 replies on “Blogging By Candlelight”
Hey I have that same futon
Hi Paul,
I really enjoy your blog, great job and very entertaining!
I am surprised to see pictures of your digs, I would have thought them to be more primitive. News broacasts here tell of a terrible draught, with animals dying etc. Your comments please.
Best wishes
John
Water is a problem everywhere in Kenya, but whereas in Mombasa it’s just an inconvenience and intermittent source of Cholera, it’s really the drier western regions where elephants are dying, which makes much more dramatic news. Not sure which pictures you were looking at of my house… if the one from this post, that’s my house in high school in America! But yes, my lifestyle is not particularly primitive, very atypical Peace Corps.