As my days turn I to years I’m realizing that time is slipping by too quickly.
My days are long and exhausting and at the end Of the day I’m too wiped out to blog or even remember what happened.
So I’ll try just documenting what my days are like as they unfold. I hope it gives you some insight into what we’re doing.
6:30 Workout, get ready for the day.
8:00 To Keep, email Sam and Josh Hamby about importing 15 Chromebooks. We will donate one to Josh’s non profit for every five he brings in. Then we will sell the others for $250 in-country. This way we can break even and get the machines in the hands of educators that need them. Problem: we can’t afford to $3,000 initial investment because donations and income are at an all-time low.
10:00 Home to prepare some videos for hardware repair training. I was going to use our Professor Messer A+ training but I found it’s too old. Paid $100 to upgrade to the latest videos and started downloading them (yikes! Will take forever!). Started working on his slides and used Automator to create watermarked contact sheets which saves paper and discourages sale and duplication.
11:00 Umeme (power company) shows up and threatens to shut off our power for non-payment. We owe for two weeks of power. They also tried to shake me down about an illegal connection and a fine of 1M shillings ($400). They tried to explain that I was too technical and I wouldn’t understand. I laughed at them and sent them on their way.
11:30-12:30 To the bank to get cash to pay power bill. To the power company, wait in line, pay cash (everything is cash here). Ironically power was off at the power company office so they couldn’t bring up my records. Keeping the receipt as it’s good as gold.
12:30 MTN stick ran out of airtime. Now Professor Messer lesson downloads will take forever. Average time to download 200mb lesson on capped MTN: 8 minutes. Time on Orange unlimited: 4 hours. Ouch. I have two techs I need to train, but I don’t want to give them old training.
1:00-3:00 In the leather shop to catch up with the team, hang out with Jen and work on a knife scabbard for a customer.
3-5 Bible study with Keep staff.
6:00-8:00 Our American friend Josh who is among other things a great mechanic, had a look at our truck for us in preparation for our trip to Kenya. He found that a local mechanic ripped us off and charged us for bearings he didn’t put on. Call the mechanic, take him to Josh and after unraveling a series of lies the mechanic says he will repay the money. Of course he will, because he knows jail is the alternative. Tomorrow at noon, he’s agreed to meet at central police with the money, about $200.
8:00-9:00 Hang out with Jen and Declan. Minecraft and BBC’s Merlin.
9:00-10 Setup and babysit Messer downloads. I can’t query them because it’s hosted on amazon and the auth tokens timeout before a download finished. Working a script to automate this. I find out its buggy because by morning I’ve downloaded 2.5 copies of the same video overnight. :-(
Bed time.
