Super Mario, brothers

I’ve not spoken of the computer center in about three months, so it’s about time for an update. Go back and read this post, so what I’m about to tell you makes sense. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

That was then. In the following three months, I’ve been trying to get the leaders to come together… JUST ONCE… to form a computer committee and allow us to open the center for good. However, things here have stalled out. We agree on a meeting time, Emily and I wait, no one shows up. Over and over. It’s been more than three months since the “soft opening”, and the machines are collecting dust.

Finally, last week, the leaders came by to talk to us. It seems they’re worried about the computers. They started by telling me a little story.

“When our village beat the others to get the right to have a Peace Corps volunteer, we were the envy of all the surrounding communities,” they began. “But now, nearly two years on, we have nothing to show for it. We’ve squandered our chances at projects, and we have computers sitting collecting dust. Now we’re the laughing stock of the municipality.” Wow, I was kindof caught off guard. Until that moment, I had never heard a single word of remorse about their unwillingness to collaborate with us.

“Jaime, what else needs to be done to get the computers running?” Nas asked. “We know you will only be here three more months, and we don’t want this opportunity to slip away.”

I shrugged. “Nothing. They’ve been ready for a while. We just need a committee to allow me to open it, and to tell the public about it.”

“But what about the outlets? The electrical wires?”

“They’re in there. It’s all there,” I replied.

“But who paid for that?” Nas asked.

There was a pause, then Emily spoke up. “Jaime did. Out of his own pocket. He installed it all, too.”

They chatted some more, and the issue of the light bill came up. Ever since the meter was installed (and the ensuing drama about paying for it), bills have been arriving. But since the village leadership is broken, no one has been paying them. Nas estimates that they will cut the power after three unpaid bills… which is right about now.

This is when I re-explained my plan for paying the bills with the revenue from the computer center’s tiny user fees. It’s a sound model, and only needs their green light. They mulled the idea over, and decided it was a good one.

“We need to allow people from other villages to use it, too,” I continued. This was one of the sticking points earlier; some locals wanted to hoard the computers for just our village. “That way, we can get more interested teenagers to run it, and draw in more money to pay the light bill. But it will also have benefits for others in the village. People who come will want to buy snacks and sodas in the local store, things like that.”

After the brief lesson in economics, they seemed satisfied. “We also had this other idea,” Don Ximon said in his slow and quiet manner. “We we thinking that with the new distance learning class that started this year at the school, computers would be really helpful to them. Maybe we could just give the computers to the teacher, for his class? That way, they would get used.” The implied ending he didn’t say aloud was, “and we won’t have to do anything at all.”

I pondered it some. The problem with that idea, though, is that it puts the computers under the control of a single person, the teacher. As we’ve seen several times already, that is a very tempting opportunity for embezzlement and abuse. Also, it defeats my primary vision for the project: to make these computers, which are the property of the community, available to the community…. not just the 20 distance learning students.

I explained my reservations to them. “And if we want the students to use them, that’s great. They can pay their tiny fee just like anyone else. We can even give them a reserved time block. But the most important thing is that we have an elected committee to oversee this. It can’t be part of another committee like the Health Committee; they already have too much work as it is.” I nodded to Manuel, and didn’t add, “and they would steal all the money.”

“What needs to happen now,” I concluded, “is that you need to get the village together and elect a committee of interested people. I can’t do it; I am not from here, don’t speak the language, and it’s not my right. It’s your right and responsibility as leaders to do it. Once we have a committee, I will be an advisor and do everything else we need to get this thing working.”

They agreed, and promised to meet back in two days to tell me the plan for organizing a computer committee. That was about two weeks ago; I’ve not seen them since.

Lately, I’ve been leaving the door open while I’ve been working on the machines. The village’s school is next door, and when recess starts, I am visited about a dozen kids that are pretty eager to play with these wonderful machines. Chalio is one of them. I showed him how to power up the machines a few days back, so he’s my defacto lab assistant right now. I feel like I’m staging a grassroots protest of sorts: if the leaders won’t get together to make this happen, I am going to at least give the people a taste of what they are missing out on. Maybe that way, they will be moved to complain to the leadership and motivate them to take action.

Word processing isn’t very interesting to the younger kids, so I figured I’d get some video games. Although excessive gaming is not healthy, for these kids it’s a way to get them accustomed to the keyboard, the mouse, and even basic things we take for granted like “the red X at the top of the window makes it go away”. These old computers are able to run a Nintendo emulator, so I downloaded one and a bunch of games to plug into it. I wasn’t a huge gamer way back when, but I had some favorites, and they’re all so old-school now that they are free: great classics like Castlevania and Spy Hunter and Choplifter. It’s funny how perspective changes over time, though. A few days into the experiment, I realized that some of the old standbyes are definitely NOT appropriate for a bunch of Guatemalan elementary school kids, and will have to be deleted: Double Dragon (evil thugs graphically beat up your girlfriend, and you have to go beat them up in return) and Operation Wolf (shoot the enemy soldiers as they go about their business) are examples. If anyone wants to recommend some good, nonviolent NES games, please leave a comment. Joh especially.

And today I got some final bad news. Ever since it was built, the Health Post (within which our lab is located) has flooded every time we get a big rain. This is just one of those things you have to deal with in a third-world country: an inch of water on the floor of your computer lab from time to time. You keep everything up on blocks and tables, and continue with your business. But today an engineer from the Ministry of Health came, and decided that they are going to jackhammer up the floor in my computer room and put in drainage pipes. This could take MONTHS at the speed things happen here, which means that on start day, all the computers will go into the storage room with the syringes and gauze pads and manual autoclaves. And will stay there until after I am gone. Will the next Peace Corps volunteer be able to reassemble the computer center? Will the computers disappear while in storage? I may never know.