Computers in Africa

Computers have a difficult life in Africa. With the generally unstable
electricity's fluctuating voltage damaging the machines' electronics
and hardware and computer viruses paralyzing the software, PCs don't
last too long here. Our school wanted to start up computer class again
for the final trimester. Unfortunately, due mainly to viruses, only
three of our six machines would even start up. With our administrator
stressing out, we went into geek squad mode and saved the day. Even
though neither of us is particular techno saavy, our basic knowledge
went a long way here and we managed to get the entire lab running
again. Basically we reformatted the machines', completely erasing the
infected hard drives and reinstalled Windows with a bootleg disc
procured by our director in neighboring Malawi. We also deactivated
the USB posts so teachers will stop reinfecting the computers with
their flash drives. We'll see how long they stay clean -- our
colleagues love to fatalistically draw analogies with our region's HIV
epidemic, joking how African computers are just like African men,
difficult to keep virus-free. So with computer class in full swing
again, we're both in the lab about ten hours a week, showing people
how to double-click, highlight, scroll, explaining what the spacebar
does and how to save documents and make capital letters, and plenty of
other tasks that probably seem innate to most of you reading this
blog.