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Computer classroom at the edge of the Sahara By Judy Beggs, member of
Englewood Rotary, Colorado District 5450 I am sitting in Guéoul, Senegal.
Guéoul sits out at the edge of the Sahara.
The harmattan winds bullied in hard the other day from the
north, after a long blow over that desert.
The sky was filled with sandy hot air, and you couldn’t find
the horizon. Suddenly,
it was 106 degrees, face all sweat covered and stinging.
This is winter, the cool time in Senegal, but the harmattan
trumps the calendar. You know what brings me here. The Rotary-funded
computer classroom. I’m here, and happily… trying to find a way to
make a computer classroom work in such unlikely circumstances. How’d we get to this point?
The accounting firm of BKD, Inc., had some used laptops and
asked could we use them in Guéoul.
I said “sure,” but at the time, I sure thought it was a silly
gift to take to sub-Sahara.
Sometimes, something just wants to happen, and you
are in the path, and it’s pretty clear that you better get
busy and just be helpful. The idea that unfolded was to
establish a computer classroom paired with a Cyber Café.
The Cyber income will eventually create income to pay for the
computer classroom.
Pretty good idea, actually, but easier to dream up than to do.
Rotary noticed us, and suddenly we were in the
throes of writing a grant application to build out that classroom
and send a container of desk top computers.
A RI grant application is a lot harder than it looks. An
“angel” is essential.
The name of mine is Frank Sargent.
Some Rotary District 5450 clubs threw some money
into the pot:
Englewood, Arvada Sunrise, Wheat Ridge, Breckenridge Mountain, and
E-Club One.
World Vision said they’d help us get a container in-country. The container shiped in December. There is so much red tape, and we are hopeful it’ll get through undamaged and intact. In Boulder, Colorado, Fairview High School’s
advanced French class is collaborating with Guéoul’s Lyceé by
exchanging biographies and essays.
The students at the Lyceé will learn the computer in order to
write an essay describing a day in their life.
Six people in Denver donated cameras so the essay can include
pictures. And…five volunteers from Denver came to Guéoul for
two weeks in January 2010 and taught simple art projects in the
schools, learned how to cook mafe gerte, studied African drumming,
ate ceeb u gin every day.
We’ll do something like this again next January or February,
2012. Want to come? Doing a project in a “developing nation”?
The things that went wrong,
are going wrong, are trying to go wrong…the things that should be
easy that become impossible. The unintended consequences – both bad
and good. The dramas, the politics, intrigues, the staffing
problems, the equipment problems, the power struggles among the
school directors and community leaders. The cultural surprises.
Language difficulties. I’m going to the Cyber now to send this note off
to you. I’ll trudge
thru that heating-up sand, squinting against the glare of sun
shining through sandy air.
Donkey and horse-drawn wagons will pass by the front door of
the Cyber. Roosters
will crow. Goats will
bleat. Cats will slink
about. A herd of
big-horned cows will pass by on their way to outlying fields.
The women will come from the market, baskets on their head.
A world from the 1800’s. I’ll go into the Cyber, with access to you and the
whole world, I’m even now still struck by the incongruity.
Over 500 students start
computer classes next week.
Yalla, baax ne.
(God is good.)
Alhamdulilahi ! How the project is changing lives:
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Things
lined themselves up.
Peace
Corps Senegal thought it was a great project and a Volunteer took it
on as a secondary project.