In which our intrepid hero gets sick and starts a computer lab

Greetings from my courtyard. Yes, my house has a courtyard. Don’t get too excited: it’s just a walled-in back porch. For some reason, Ghanaians call it a courtyard. If I were you, I’d get more excited about things like indoor plumbing and extra-sharp cheddar cheese.

Anyway, here I am. I’ve moved my lounge chair outside because for the last few days, I’ve been stuck indoors due to a boil on my face. For those of you who have never had the joy of a soft-tissue infection, a boil is basically an infection of the hair follicle. They’re angry, painful, merciless things, and this one happened to take over half my left cheek, give me a low-grade fever, and keep my mouth from opening wide enough to do anything useful (like eat solid food, brush my teeth, and spit) for about two days. Luckily, thanks to some antibiotics and a schedule of hot compresses that makes the Berlin airlift look disorganized, my boil (which I’ve named Gus) has started to reduce in size and let me do fun things like eat again. (Aren’t you glad I’m done with the parentheses for this paragraph?)

Ok, that’s enough of the medical stuff (I put the fun in furuncle!) — let’s talk about computers. After several weeks of downloading, installing, redownloading, borrowing memory in order to boot install CDs, weeping, and gnashing of teeth, I finally got my 5 computers up and running for the student body of my school. For those of you who are interested in what I’m running, I’m going to post a more detailed report to my blog later today or tomorrow.

Anyway, I have set up the computers in the staff common room and told the kids that they can come in to use them any time I’m in there. So far, it’s been one of the more popular after-school activities I’ve seen. And it’s an incredibly rewarding thing to see your students finally see what the big deal is, even though all they’re doing is drawing a picture or playing a typing game. The closest these kids have ever come to a computer is reading about it in their science textbooks, and I felt nigh on jubilant on Monday evening as I walked home because I managed to help them take their first steps toward computer literacy. I win so hard.

The storm clouds are inching ever-closer to me, and the last time I checked, my laptop doesn’t like water. Therefore, I think I’d better head indoors and start the next round of hot compresses. As always, take care and don’t forget to write.

Published by

Grant

I'm just this guy, you know?