Back Home Again :)

A summary of the day:

Woke up with a headache (I never get headaches!)

Walked all the way to Town Square with a full backpack and carrying a tower cpu (all the cabs were going the other way and were full). Funny, I get honked at left and right whenever I don't need one but when the two times that I did, they were nowhere to be found! Oh, for those who haven't been to Jason's, it's about a 15-20 minute walk to town square – fortunately it's all downhill. My arms were about three minutes from falling off.

Waited for over three hours at Rhino Park for the combi to fill and then another 45 minutes at a gas station for no apparent reason. We only had 17 people packed into this one.

Sat next to a guy with a nice sticker of Osama b L on the binder protecting his resume. He insisted that Osama b L himself gave 'em the sticker yesterday in Rhino Park. (Yeah, he crawled out of his cave in Afghan/Paki just to hand out stickers in Namibia.)

Next, this gentleman proceeds to apologise profusely (for about 5 minutes - seriously) and then insists I help him immigrate to the United States. Not believing me, he keeps pestering me for the first hour of the trip, waking me up on EIGHT separate occasions! Fortunately he passed out thanks to some heavy drinking earlier.

I sweat off 20kg thanks to the intense heat inside the combi. I then realized I hadn't drank enough water either. If only there were some invention that would allow air to move rapidly around the inside of a vehicle, thereby letting sweat evaporate. And make it something that you could look through and see the outside as well ... if only ...

Had my headache amplified by the incessant thumping of the base. I was lucky enough to have a front row seat for the sounds. One of the speakers did blow out, which brought a huge smile to my face.

I forgot to bring along accessible food for the trip. I'd already spent a small fortune in my 15 days there (sorry Amanda, we're really gonna travel bare-bones, poor PCV style, unless the N$ keeps getting weaker. Still have some US$ I haven't exchanged.)


The silver lining in the overcast day:

Through the use of Azureus I can now download The Daily Show!! Even saw an article online where he's not only happy that people download it, he encourages it. I so love Linux. It only took 50 minutes to figure everything out. It's like riding a bike, you never really forget. Phenomenal cosmic power, iddy-biddy living space. (That one's for you Dan)

Now I can't wait to get the old Dr. Who shows. Saw the Tom Baker ones were all bundled together :)

Time to finish watching Miracle and get to bed! Hey, it's good to be back home again.

All Good Things ...

As Q (John de Lancie) said to Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) in the second part of the series finale, and coincidentally the title of the two part thriller of ST:TNG, “But then again, all good things must come to an end...” Yes, indeed. And so ends my “trek” in Windhoek. All told, I’ll be heading to Tses Thursday morning, tying the record of 15 days set by a health volunteer just a short time ago. I leave with a working Schoolnet computer (with a new motherboard), a 4-in-1 DVD/CD burner bought for N$450, two other pieces of hardware purchased for N$140 + 1 Top Deck candy bar (I made her an offer she couldn’t refuse) and a much better relationship with and understanding of Schoolnet. Oh, I also scored TWO t-shirts, including the much-valued one that tells Microsoft “where to go” and the story behind its creation. They may also have a deal for my school for a copier through one of their suppliers! Well worth the time up here as our copier has both feet, well, more like nine toes in the grave. That pinky toe is holding out.

Ok, the story behind the t-shirt: Back in the year 2000 (ha ha for any Conan O’Brien fans if you remember that skit), er… anyways, they were about to sign a deal with Apple computers to install the operating system and software on their computers they were selling to schools here. Microsoft then jumped in and said that they would do it for free, implying, but not saying, that the software was included. They jumped at that offer and after signing found out they’d have to pay over R$1000 per computer to install the software! Too late to go back to Apple (that bridge was sorta burned), so they paid Microsoft for those computers and then went to Linux, that cute penguin, altering it to make the Openlab operating system.

I’m looking forward to getting back to site and getting back into teaching. Now I can do a movie night for the learners who behave – which will be about 15 out of 200 or so. I hope they can remember me.

Pics of the Windhoek Seige

I know, I know ... this pic was from the cat-sitting weekend. Had to put it on the blog






If Brock only had a caliper, he could compare the size of the M&M peanut with the faux M&M. The blindfold taste test wasn't enough.







Avacado, bacon and banana pizza. All you can eat buffet. Taking pizza creativity to a whole new level! Right. Led to a serious discussion about opening our own place, titled "All You Can Dare to Eat". If you finish all 12 rounds, you get a certificate and bragging rights. How about sushi pizza?





Your eyes tell you this is just a stream. When you got downwind of it, your nose overrode that assessment.






Cocoa powder in pancakes with a peanut butter and icing sugar topping! Next we'll add chocolate chunks to the mix.








Carrie and Coppelia sitting in the shade in Town Square. Behind them are the 33 meteorites found in the Gibeon area. (If you like meteorites and want to learn more about them, click here)






Jason and I taking a walk to the Parliment grounds. It smells as good as it looks No sign of Big Ben, ha ha (hey look kids - Big Ben, Parliment. I just can't get left...)






Carrie, Jason and me watchin the sun set from the cone. Here's a link to see some other pics of what it looks like and what the ascent is like.

Those pics care of Jason's blog.







Brownies! Add a peanut butter like topping and they are mouthwatering. We polished off the pan between the four of us.








Jason teaching computers at his school. That is a projection unit.










Grade 12 learners deciding which pictures of their Matrix they want printed. Click HERE and HERE for more on what that is. NO, it doesn't involve a Mr. K. Reeves.









A picture of his school grounds in Katutura.












Windhoek High School. This is by where Jason lives & we walk by it every day. The most expensive school in the country. The learners here get dropped of in cars! My learners either walk from the location, farm of hostel or get dropped off by donkey cart. None of us teach here.







The device that lets me upload my pictures whenever, wherever.







Me doing some burning and watching the fake news. Fortunately from this view you cannot see the two-tone tan on my forehead.

Computer Watch, Day 8 - updated

When will the computer be ready?

** Just found out: MONDAY 25 SEPTEMBER **

After watching the analysis of the use of the question mark (a.k.a. “the Cavuto”) on the Sept 13th episode of The Daily Show, I couldn’t resist it’s inclusion in my blog. This would be categorized under the CNN use of it. What if … ?

I feel a little like David Blaine now, trapped in a vessel of my own design, except that I lack his talent, money & following. No cheering (or jeering) throngs/masses awaiting my entrance or departure. However, being in Windhoek for this long I have learned how to make money disappear. Sure, I knew I should’ve gone home Friday night and almost did, but that is like a week ago now. Murphy’s Law will kick into effect the second I step into a combi or hop on the train – sir, you computer is ready. But if I continue to stay, that watched pot will never boil. Why not just lock me in a block of ice? Why not!

I’ve had a chance to spend time with people I didn’t see much of during break, so that’s been a big positive. I'm also very grateful that Jason doesn't mind me staying for so long. (saying that he gets a few visitors would be an understatement) I got to see how the other half have it when I visited Jason’s school. Even busted out some of the Khoekhoegowab. In fact, one of the staff at his school went to St. Therese (my school)! She stopped by to talk later on. Small community here.

The biggest news has been that I now can upload pictures off my camera at any time! Hooray!!! I broke down and got a USB SD (and many other kinds) flash reader. Could I afford it? Yes and no. I just got tired of having to travel at least 80k (many times up to W’hoek also) to get the pics off my camera. Economically I could and did justify the purchase. Another positive side-effect: Now I have close to 2Gb worth of portable storage space. Oh, I also now have some movies (now that the dvdrom will be working) that I and my learners can watch.

When I wasn’t burning DVDs, spent the time reading, grant writing, helping to plan restaurants (All You Dare to Eat) and taking the peanut M&M taste test challenge, getting hooked on podcasts, watching a movie a night, popcorn with Italian cheese seasoning, licking the bowl of brownie mix clean, eating lots of ice cream, experimenting with chocolate/cocoa content and pancakes, doing a picnic in Zoo Park, listening to the /Aë //Gams Arts and Cultural Festival, taking in the Vagina Monologues, burning more DVDs, climbing to the top of the cone to watch the sun set, working on my bandana tan line on my forehead and other things which currently have slipped my mind. I did find out I can get a 4-in-1 DVD/CD burner from Schoolnet for N$410.

Sorry for the randomness. My learning style is not concrete sequential, but abstract sequential, as you probably can tell from my blog entries.

Schoolnet Pics

I promised the guys there to post some of the Schoolnet pictures. Here they are:






The "warehouse" entrance

Come on and enter!

All the free internet you can stand

Need a monitor?

Or a CPU? I've got N$1 if you can
guess how many are in the pile!

More internal CPU goodies

Some of the Schoolnet guys

My computer under the surgical knife

The warehouse is also an art center!

Adventures in Schoolnet Computing

How many days does it take to get a computer fixed? So far, I'm on day six in Windhoek. I typed this up yesterday (Monday) while I was visiting Jason's school in Katutura.

Thursday morning September 14th I arrived in Windhoek after an uncomfortable three hours of sleep on the train. (to travel 420k took 10 hours) Remember the Far Side cartoon that had a guy standing in a high vaulted storeroom with shelves near the top, well beyond his reach titled “Inconvenience Store”? Well, these same people must’ve made the passenger cars for TransNamib. Not truly convenient for comfortable travel unless you are Gumby or Plastic Man.

I took a taxi over to headquarters, located in Katutura, a suburb of Windhoek. I’d never been there before and didn’t think to Mapquest it. The driver didn’t know where it was, even though he got directions from someone at the station and then got angry with me when I wouldn’t get out in the middle of this industrial park area with a computer. Sometimes we wonder what the actual qualifications to be a taxi driver are. I’m guessing a dilapidated car, a yellow dashboard taxi sign and a pulse. No working knowledge of the city, town or village necessary.

We flagged down a passing student and she helped me find the place. The entrance to that place was tucked away in the corner of a building - you’d never know it was there! I only had to wait about five minutes before the boss came to open things up.


Aside #1: People from PST said that he didn’t like PCV’s, resulting from a bad experience with two demanding volunteers. I found him to be a very pleasant person. In fact, he let me go anywhere I wanted to, including the workshop area in the back.


The actual Schoolnet door was tucked away inside this warehouse-like building, actually an arts center. It looked something akin to what you’d expect Jobs/Wozniak’s first place outside their garage to look like. The workshop was filled with rows of monitors, piles of CPUs, hard drives, mice and any components you could imagine. A computer geek’s dreamland. In the lobby area they had a vending machine with three cd burners, and you could get free copies of Openoffice, Openlab, Project Gutenburg books and some other things. I did find it a little ironical that the computer they used to play music was a WINDOWS computer. But that’s all they trusted it to do. Everything else was Openlab (a modified version of Linux) or Mac. Teddy was the guy I talked to on the phone and the man who worked on the server computer. I knew all I needed to know when I talked about a Counter Strike tourney we’re planning in October or November and his eyes lit up. He just spent about six hours the weekend before playing CS with his friends.


Aside #2: Schoolnet uses a thin-client service. That means that only one computer, the server computer, has a hard drive. The remaining computers use an Ethernet connection and boot from the server - the wave of the future for inexpensive computer labs for those outside of the developed world. However, if the server computer goes down the whole network is down. You can’t even boot the computers.


I spent almost the entire day in the workshop talking to the staff and trying to help with the repairs. The memories of the math lab in college (a Sun Microsystem lab with laser mice and UNIX operating system) – emailing ‘core’ dumps back and forth with clever puns (subject line: “How do you CORE an apple?” ) with Pine and Elm mailing programs. So glad I learned how to navigate with that operating system (ls, cp, mv, cd and such). Knowing DOS helps, especially for getting away from the GUI, but many of the commands are different. I stumped them with a problem, for a while.

I needed to back-up some files on my computer but with the USB port and cd/dvdrom not mounting, it was a problem. After almost an hour of trying they discovered another, easier way to copy files (connecting the computers via cable) with the command “fish”. The other option was to use the console to log in and copy file by file … all 3,000 or so. Only would have taken four hours to do it that way instead of the 45 minutes the GUI way. After re-installing the programs, using a new IDE and 3-in-1, we got it to mount both cd/dvds and USB! Triumph!!!!! Until … then we checked to see if the other computers would boot off of it … failure L just couldn’t get the others to “read” the server computer. I left shortly after that, at almost 5pm. As of today, they are still working on the code in a couple of the files. I’m lucky enough to get the latest version of Openlab installed. Guess we found a bug.

If there were any issues between Schoolnet and Peace Corps, I think they are pretty much patched up. Heck, I got a free Schoolnet t-shirt out of the deal. In fact, we know there'll be at least one employee at the Counter Strike weekend in the future. That’s about it for the adventure with Schoolnet. I’m still Windhoek, with my principal’s and PC’s permission, but it still feels like playing hookey. Jason and I are stopping by in a couple hours to see how things are going. They said it should be ready by Tuesday, at the latest. (as of today it’s now bumped back to Wednesday or later - there's a hardware problem)

More of the adventure soon to come: Daily Show mania, climbing on top of the cone, parliament grounds, pizza, desserts (lots and lots of ‘em) and peanut M&M taste challenge. Click here to see some of the things on Jason's blog.

The picture editing thanks to Jason’s laptop computer and Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0. By far the best picture editor I’ve used so far – sorry PSP.

Ending the Week on a High Note

This was typed on Friday but forgot to upload it.

I woke up late today, only making it to school by 6:40am. What little did I know that the day would inspire me for the third term. There were some fireworks at the staff meeting. Teachers who weren't doing their job were called out (had their names mentioned at the meeting)! The staff loved my ideas for using the computer lab as a reward for learners who aren't behaviour problem, don't abscond and do their homework. I'm creating id cards with their picture if they meet the criteria. Hopefully it will make a much bigger impact next year. It was refreshing to see the teachers who care to start to speak out. Sometimes it feels like you're trying to bail out the Titanic with a thimble. By my observations, four of the ten teachers are passionate about teaching.

On my way back to the hostel, I broke up a fight between two primary learners. It was just a little pushing until one learner pulled out his uncapped pen and tried to stab the other (the one who was instigating things, swearing in Nama)! I kept my eye on the instigator after I broke things up and noticed that he was protecting his right pocket with his hand. I walked over and asked to see what was in his pocket (nobody pulls out a pen and tries to stab someone without a reason) and bingo, he was packing a knife! In fact, most learners have some sort of knife or weapon.

Caught a hike down to Keetmanshoop to drop off some pictures to Shoni for the health calendar next year. First, UNAM and unfettered internet access (quick check of yahoo and gmail). A walk to the train station for my ride back to Tses that evening (can't leave the cat along for too long). At the train station I met someone explaining a lot of math problems to the person working there. Turns out the gentleman was a retired mathematics teacher. It was fun to sit back and let him teach us some tricks to multiplication and what. He even raced the worker's calculator and won most of the time. I also got to talking to the other gentleman (grew up near Keetmanshoop) – at the age of 18 he was forced to join the South African Defence Force and fight against SWAPO during Namibia's struggle for independence. If he hadn't joined the SADF, he would've served six years in prison. His travels to England, Germany, Finland and finally back to Keetmanshoop. Both his grandmothers are still alive, at the ripe ages of 96 and 98 years old!

I talked to them for so long that I had barely enough time to purchase some groceries, walk to Jay & Shoni's in Tseiblaagte (opposite end of the town – a 35 minute walk one-way), talk and drop some things off and walk back to the train station. Somehow I pulled it off, with four minutes to spare. A bad science fiction move starring Nicholas Lea (played the backstabbing character Alex Krycek in The X-Files) titled Threshold. I only wish I had someone else with me so we could make fun of the movie. It was brutally bad with plot holes so big you could drive the state of Alaska through them.

Another note: every time I walk in the Tseiblaagte location, the children yell out, “Jay!” It's funny because while we both have long, dark hair (he has dreads now), but we don't look much alike. You know you're safe when you hear people yelling out your name however.

I may have a new career option after service – singer. The young woman behind the register at Spar said I have a very nice voice. It was then I realized I'd been singing Neil Diamond songs out loud.


The village council made a payment to NamPower, so we're fine for the moment.

Swakopmund and After

On the last leg of our free, mulit-stage hike to Swakopmund, we shared the back seat with a shy dog.

Dylan, Sandra & Amy striking best introspective pose in the bungalow. Don't just stand there, let's get to it. Strike a pose, there's nothing to it. Vogue.

I imagine this is what the new Albert Lea courts appear. I was involved with coaching tennis for eight years and they get new courts after I leave for Africa. Not nice.

Sitting on the beach, trying to help Encyclopedia Brown solve the mystery that Dylan is reading.

Oh, but we read these mysteries while interlacing impromptu sarcasm. Apparently Wilford and Bugs have some serious issues, which I feel are not appropriate to discuss in this public forum.

Eating at Ocean Basket and watching the fog roll in. Is it fog or mist? And what's the difference? And why am I asking so many questions? I could just Google it!

Amy toasting her fish and chips meal. She proceeded to go on a rampage, knocking everyone out with the frying pan.

Yes, Dylan ate them all. Remember the old "Life" cereal commercials? Well, Dylan is the evil twin of Mikey. He ate all the chips, the plates and then the table for good measure. Dylan likes it, he eats everything.

The breakfast of champions!

Hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil.

It's soothing to watch the waves crash against the rocks.

We walked by this colourful building on our quest to find Wesley Snipes.

This was our last dinner at the bungalow. Yes, it was blueberry tart and chocolate cake. Amy and I ate most of what remained of the chocolate cake for breakfast the next morning. Chocolate cake for breakfast?! Sounds like a Bill Cosby comedy routine. Wait, it is.

This is what the hike point in Swakopmund looks like. We stuck out, throwing around a paritally inflated football. Amy and Dylan both threw better than Dante Cullpepper did last season.

Ok. If you're from the midwest, look closely at this picture and see why it's included. Hint: why are these tires sold in Namibia?!

Amy after her battle with a Magnum Death by Chocolate ice cream bar. She was happy with the result, however some shrapnel got on me.

In Amy's defence, our hike was incredibly hot. Dylan & Sandra were sitting over a geothermal vent, literally. Liquid hot magma was about to erupt! If Yellowstone National Park or Iceland are missing a vent, we found it! The chocolate bar I brought along was liquid well before we got to W'hoek




Brock had this great idea of doing a 100 hole minigolf marathon. The only takers: Brock, Matt, Amy, Mariel and me. It was a blast! We played 100 holes for N$10! That works out to ten Nambian cents per hole, or about two pennies a hole in US dollars (after rounding up).





Guess who just got a hole-in-one? Mariel doing her hole-in-one dance.

Thank goodness for Megan, Mariel and Matt we have this sign to ensure our safety in W'hoek!

Taz and Beth's boyfriend's dog in Mariental play the introduction dance. Taz won.







Patrick cutting up those pungent white onions, thereby taking one for the team. Eating one small piece will make you cry.






Megan and Sandra putting the finishing touches on the "toasties." They are bread, cheese, onion, tomato and whatever spices you want to put on them. Bake them in an oven until the bread is toasted. Yummy!

Dylan stirring the truffles. They're not the real kind of truffles, but they tasted great. A bit like artichoke heart.

Waiting at the Gibeon hike point in the middle of a dust storm. I got a free hike out of it because I looked pitiful enough.

Some clever marketing by Pepsi.

Don't those names just make you laugh?






With the power and water off in Gibeon, I have three new visitors for a while. Taz acts just like a human sometimes.






This is what we volunteers do a lot of the time ... read.







Vegetable pasta with a peanut sauce. In place of lemon juice, we used Oros Orange (unsweetened). Mix with peanut butter and cayenne pepper and it doesn't taste bad.