I knew it was going to ?happen.
I knew that despite the replacement chargers, extra bottles of Advil and a plethora of bug spray and sunblock, eventually something would happen to me in Rwanda for which I was woefully ?unprepared.
My computer is broken.
According to my assessment, it has the equivalent of a flesh stab wound. It hasn’t hit any major arteries, but there’s the potential for it to bleed out. Currently, it’s in a self-induced coma. We’ll know more in the morning.
This is currently being written using old-fashioned pen and paper.
I’m writing from the light of a single bare bulb, which is the usual form of lighting in modest Rwandan homes. I’m within the safety of the also-typical mosquito net canopy, enclosed in a sea of frothy white. Malaria-infected mosquitos won’t be sucking on my blood tonight.
If this reaches you, know that either my computer has resurrected itself or I have found access to a different one.
Please take hope in that, as I know you must be ?concerned.
My computer breaking down the night before a research proposal and, incidentally, this column were due is something I thought could potentially happen.
Not to mention in Eastern Africa my access to computer repair centers is limited.
There just wasn’t a high probability, just like the chances of my luggage not arriving when I first got here were slim. And yet, that happened to me too.
At home, technical difficulties may be annoying, but they’re manageable. You know exactly where your resources are and how to use them.
One of the biggest ?differences with living abroad is realizing an absence of that security.
Sometimes it’s just different resources.
Here, I can get my computer fixed. People use laptops here, too, and this is a big city. I know there are computer repair centers.
It’s just that finding one requires something extra. It requires a special trip to town in a cramped, sweaty bus that’s actually a van.
It involves counting on the fact that my computer technician can speak English without really being able to guarantee it.
This new environment has lost a bit of its initial glamour, and I’m looking at it more practically as a place I’m living in for the next two months.
It would be a whole lot easier now to just take my computer to UITS like I could in Bloomington. The fact that I could fix this problem so easily at home makes me pretty bitter right now.
In the end, though, these little annoyances of travel work out.
My luggage did arrive from Nairobi only a day late, safe and sound.
I’ve located a computer repair center, and I probably won’t have to replace my whole computer.
These annoyances are not the best parts of traveling, for sure. There’s no free IT help across the street here.
And yet the best parts of being here are so much more rewarding than the best parts of everyday life at home.
So it doesn’t matter if I have to sacrifice a few comforts along the way. I’m making a tradeoff.
All in all, I think it’s a good trade.
cjellert@indiana.edu
