A Simple Task.....

I just want to give a small example of what can make life irritating in a rural generally unelectrified Botswana village.

The nurses at the clinic asked me to make a few small changes to a form they were going to use as part of a project to compare diagnostic and treatment methods for malaria.

(There is a lab technician who has come from down south to complete a study on whether the tests we are using to diagnose malaria are effective as well as the effectiveness of the drugs we use to treat it. He arrived in late March (the height of malaria season here happens to be in about January or Feb, when the rains are still frequent) and so the timing was a few months off for maximum effectiveness and he incidentally has been able to examine about 1 case of malaria. The whole thing is likely going to be a bit of a waste of time and money.)

I quickly recreated the form on my laptop, making the changes and completing the whole thing in less than ten minutes, as the generator was still on at the clinic because it was morning. The nurse asked me to get about 30 copies of the new form. It should have been easy enough.

I saved the new form on my flash drive, put my laptop in my backpack and headed off to the police building on foot, as all the ambulances were gone. It’s maybe a kilometer or two from the clinic. No problem.

When I get to the police their generator is on (hurray!) and one of the police officers shows me to where the computer that is attached to the printer is. Within two minutes of inserting my flash drive it becomes infected with no less than 73 viruses, the worst of which is the dreaded “re a leboga” (we thank you) virus, which works by pulling up thousands of windows attempting to connect with the internet, effectively freezing up the computer. How every computer in the village can be infected with the same virus when only two can (rarely) connect to the internet is beyond me. I remove my flash drive and head back to the junior secondary school (half a kilometer back in the direction from which I had come).

I arrive at the junior secondary school and am told that the computer there also has the virus, and cannot perform any function involving a flash drive. Sigh.

I cross the road to the mortuary, where I plug the flash drive into my own computer to remove what have now become 761 viruses. This takes about 20 minutes, all the while quickly draining my battery, as despite constantly carrying 2 plug adaptors to connect my computer to a power source, I have forgotten to schlep along the square to round plug that I need to charge at the mortuary. I head back to the school to borrow a plug adaptor, which takes another 30 minutes to find and swear in my blood that I will return it.

Back to the mortuary. So at this point I am busy trying to make plan, as it seems that the three computers in the village that are connected to printers are all so virus ridden that I cannot print from my flash drive, and as none of them are currently connecting to the internet, I can’t plug in my laptop to try to download the installation software in order to try to print from my computer. Ok.

I scan through the rolodex of people in the Okavango subdistrict in my brain, scanning not by name or location but by access to resources. I try to think of the people who might simultaneously have the following: electricity, a working computer that has working internet, a printer, and a fax machine. I come up with Ricky in Shakawe as the closest and most likely candidate. I call him to see if he has all four of these resources at present. He does. I head back to the mortuary, and email him a copy of the form to print and try to fax back to the junior secondary school, where I should then be able to make the 30 copies provided they have paper and the generator stay on. I text Ricky the fax number for the school.

I send the email. Ricky receives it. He prints it. And his fax goes off line. At this point I cannot bear to go back through the mental rolodex and trying to get this to work again. He tries again for the next few days. I put the whole situation out of my mind in order to avoid losing it. He decides to give the form to P, who will be going through Shakawe the next day. When she gets to Gumare she will attempt to fax the form back to the school. I will meanwhile have to keep calling around to see if the fax has been sent, and if they have had paper in the machine to receive it. And there is how I spent the better part of a Monday. Hopefully we can get the forms by next week. I don’t think I will ever lose it when the copier jams again.