Brave New World

When it was founded, the Peace Corps placed volunteers like me in remote locations, far from the amenities and the conveniences of modern life. Flush toilets and refrigeration would be left at home. Mail would arrive after months in the postal system. Travel was long and at times dangerous. This was true in 1961, and it continues to be true today.

There have been some significant changes, though. Most notably, I can blog. I can e-mail. I can keep in touch electronically. When I go to my office, I can maintain relationships, hear about life and love, and I can stay in the lives of my loved ones throughout the world.

A highly useful device, a computer can do so much more than provide access to family and friends. It can also help with work. I can type a report, research program options and information needs online, print materials out. A computer is an indispensable work device. This is true in the US, and this is true in Africa.

If I write a report by hand, my report no longer carries the status of a typed and printed report. My peers in the health care community have computers. The mayor’s staff has computers. Many boutiques have computers. Flush toilets are still a long way away, but even in the remote corners of Mauritania, without a computer, I’m just another guy.

Recently, both of the computers at my office died. Whether from physical or information problems, neither works, and neither has worked for awhile now. This has kept me from producing requests and proposals that have been essential to my work, and it has significantly hindered my communication with the bosses in Nouakchott.

This is a lot of pressure to put on a computer. If my ability to work is seriously hindered by my access to a device, the device had best work. When it breaks, life brakes. Coming to the RIM, I expected not to need computers to live in Africa. I could live without a Western toilet or shower, a stove or a tv. It has been more than slightly surprising to me that, while the life comforts that I am used to are completely absent, expensive and complicated tools have become essential facets of life.