Hit Where It Hurts

Since I last blogged, to say a lot has happened in Samoa would be an understatement of the most severe kind. Of course, like much of the rest of the world we had our Swine Flu scare in September, but apparently that was a warm up. There was a hotel fire at Tusitala that burnt it to the ground, an apparition of the Virgin Mary on the Congregational Church main office in Apia, an 8.3 strength earthquake, and the subsequent tsunami that devastated the southern coast of the island of Upolu.

That was my introduction to my newest blog before this morning. Then something much closer to home struck. Right after fifth period, the power went out, then seconds later came back on, and I stood there watching my computer lab (14 networked computers) go up in smoke. Literally, the power supplies and monitors filled the room with the smoke. Not the mention the flames bursting, yes bursting, out of some of the power supplies. I have little hope the computers are salvageable except for a few parts.

After explaining what I saw to PCV Paul, a man much more experienced in things electrical than I, he and I both felt it was a power surge, and that after the initial power loss, perhaps the power came back unregulated, and obviously too strong. There is a fuse box, but none of the fuses blew, which leads me to believe it’s broken. I had the principal and vice-principal look at the damage. All the other teachers were comforting saying it wasn’t my fault and not to worry. My principal even said I should go relax, there was nothing to do. Their Samoan outlook was much better equipped to handle this sort of situation than mine. I, however, could not help but think was a waste it was. Wasted computers for the kids to learn with, and wasted hours spent working to improve the lab.

As for the next step, I have to continue preparing the kids for their final exams in two weeks. It will be a little harder, but thankfully we have already finished all of the practical work that requires a computer. In the long term, I’ll have to look in to getting new computers from the church. The decision will have to go through several committees and be approved. So I’m not expecting anything until at least next year. I’ll keep you posted.

And now for some photos (Sorry, none of the lab on fire).

Fellow teacher, Terry, came over with his broken printer last Friday. I told him I had no real experience fixing printers. He didn’t care, neither did he, he said. (He’s a funny guy like that.) So we proceeded to take it apart, both of us knowing the other had no clue what he was doing. As you can imagine, we were unsuccessful in fixing it.

Art Benavie, UNC professor and the mastermind behind the freshman seminar The War on Drugs. Crang will remember taking it with me. Three hours a week with Professor Benavie inquiring into student’s drug habits and “personal narratives”. Five years later, by sheer fortuitous chance, I read in magazine that he wrote a book! Drugs: America’s Holy War. I would love to read this book. It would be hilarious.

I just recently finished hanging all of the Year 12 and 13 students’ major projects in desktop-publishing on the walls in the lab. I took this picture this morning – it’s the last one of the lab in working order.

Just Fix It, Please

After talking recently with PCV Max, a fellow computer teacher on Savaii, he pushed me to write this blog about all the strange, yet true things that happen with computers here in Samoa. As a computer teacher, that basically means anytime someone’s computer breaks (or fax machine, or copier, or printer) they often bring it to me (or another Peace Corps computer teacher) to fix. And why not? Our help is free, whereas other tech support, only to be found in Apia, is very expensive and not very supportive. Now, if you remember me as someone who was not particularly knowledgeable about fixing computers in America before I left, I certainly won’t be the one to correct you. However, due to the sheer number of busted computers I am forced to look at on a weekly basis, my skills have greatly improved.

First, the laptop with the screen upside down. It looked like this:

What do you do? Well, I looked in display settings; couldn’t find anything. Then I thought hey, System Restore might fix it, so I tried that and it worked. Later, I talked to the above mentioned Max (my computer guru) and he blew my mind by telling me it was a keyboard shortcut on some computers. And then he re-blew my mind when he knew, from memory, that it was CTRL + ALT + Up. Who the hell knows that? And who the hell needs a keyboard shortcut that flips their screen upside down??

I work at a mission school and many of my co-teachers are church ministers. Church ministers are well-off in Samoa and many of them have laptops. Few do anything to guard their computers from viruses. Take for example, the computer of one such person, which contained such crazy viruses that it would shut any window of significance that you tried to open (msconfig, regedit, an antivirus that I tried installing). The kicker is that I only had one afternoon to look at it because said person’s cousin needed the battery charger in Apia the next day. So what do you do? Well rather than waste a lot of time, I reinstalled his operating system. In the process of backing-up all of the files, there was a, how shall we say? - an adult section. Do you copy it? Do you not? Ahh, Peace Corps how you challenge me.

As you might guess, church ministers have many church minister friends. Even though they don’t teach at my school, that doesn’t mean their computers are any less busted. Take this story as an example:

Church minister: “Yo brother Owen, I need you to come fix my friend’s laptop.”

Me: “OK, well maybe I can come after school.”

CM: “No, we’re going in 5 minutes, I already talked to the principal about it.”

So I get in the truck (I had already finished teaching for the day) and we head over to this man’s house. It’s not clear what the problem is with the computer. “It’s really slow,” the man says to me when we arrive. So I poke around a little bit and sure enough it is ridiculously slow. I mean like god-awful slow. I open the Control Panel and go to Add or Remove Programs, and lo-and-behold there is a program installed called The Amazing Slow-Downer. “What the hell?” I say to myself. “Who would ever put this on their computer?” Anyway, I delete it and boom, the computer is fast again. Good work - I am the computer master. Or so they tell me. But good luck like that can only last so long in Samoa.

The hard drive is also almost full so I delete some more programs, then all of the sudden the computer shuts down right as I delete one. “Hmmm, that’s strange,” I think to myself. The computer reboots and EVERYTHING is in the font Wingdings. It looks like this! The Start menu, every program, even the clock!! I can’t read anything. After a series of failures on my part to remedy this, I Google the problem, export the fonts registry from a working computer, put it in the Wingdings computer, open it, restart and Voila! It’s all good.

When I got my assignment to be a Computer Studies teacher in Samoa, I wasn’t really expecting to be fixing computers left and right. I was more expecting to be teaching (silly me and my expectations). However, the reality is a considerable amount of my time is spent doing just that. Other Volunteers, at least here on Savaii, have similar experiences. It’s not my favorite of living and working here, but it does offer some very unique stories!

And now for some pictures.

In addition to my garden outside, I started growing some things inside, just to give them a head start. Pumpkins, tomatoes, two type of chillies, and coriander.

I was gifted with a sizable leg of pork. Jealous? Didn’t think so.

Somebody’s gotta cut this thing up.

The finished product.

This is a new book that my Dad sent me – no more than 2 months old. Look closely in the red circles and you can see the termites!

This past Sunday there were literally thousands of these tiny bugs flying around inside my house, into my ear, and up my nose. I went to bed, and when I woke up they were all dead on my kitchen table. It was like Christmas in September.