THANK YOU to everyone that sent me anything over the last month! I got it all late Wednesday and was blown away, like didn’t sleep that night. Some people spend way too much on shipping. Don’t get me wrong, I love packages but they’re expensive! You don’t have to, letters are great and I don’t feel so bad about it. My closest neighbor loves it when I get packages though, wow contradict much? Once I find out if this new PO Box works I should have access to mail about once a week.
I met the district engineer Mukaila, a great guy. He introduces me to everyone at the District Assembly (DA) which is similar to our state governments. I stopped by his office yesterday to say hi and they were working on inventories of every office of the DA since many people will change due to the election. They had a brand new flat screen Dell and there was a guy on it typing with one finger. They were using Word to make the inventory lists and having trouble with the columns, well heck Bill Gates has trouble with columns in Word. All I could think about was Dad when I called about accounting. His first question was always did you put it into Excel yet? If I said no he’d tell me to then he’d help. Well the Republic of Ghana owes ya Pops. In 2 hours I had all 15 offices of the DA set up with reusable spreadsheets. They couldn’t get over how fast I got it done and treated me to my favorite chop bar for lunch. When the owner came out with my usual fufu order without asking they about lost it.
These are extremely intelligent people; let me make that very clear. There just is no training for IT. Anyone that knows much about computers works for an NGO or has left the country. Here they are with amazing technology at their fingertips and they didn’t know the difference between putting a computer in Sleep Mode and Shutting Down, BSed my way through that one and wanted to call Suave to see if I was even close, I was using numbers and stuff.
So many NGO’s throw money at Africa because they have this image of poor people in mud huts. It’s changing so fast right now but some things are staying the same and it makes for a chaotic symphony. PC told me I’d be reading by candle light every night even, I usually watch MASH. People in my village and some of my PC friends do live like that though. Africa doesn’t need more technology; they need to use it to help even things out. This is coming from an American where the gap between rich and poor is astronomical.
Anyways last week was a down week, this week’s been great. Hope all is great back in the States.

Bless: Close your windows and lock your door and do not come out around midnight tonight.
Me: Umm ok.
Bless: Tonight is the festival that we kill many animals to prevent diseases. If you are not killing them you will surely catch the diseases from the air.