Next, the 8 computers and 2 printers were brought into the church and they were placed on the table to be presented to the community. There was a loud cheer, and excited buzz and the computers were shown to the assembled party. Next, the village leaders presented to us some Batik cloth that they had purchased for us to make shirts from, and instructions that we should wear the shirts back to the village before we leave. Because they were not clear what our measurements would be, they were apologetic that they couldn’t make them into shirts already. The material is very beautiful, in shades of green, and we could find a tailor in an adjacent village to make them into local styled shirts. As the ceremony wound down, and we all made our thank you’s and welcomes, the computers were gathered up and taken to the Chief’s house to be kept there until the next day. We left the church and walked over the the school building to see where the computers would be placed and again, the whole way there we were surrounded by excited children.
The computer lab is an 8×12 room in back of the headmaster’s office. They had prepared a line of tables with a tablecloth along the center of the room, longways. the front wall of this room has a row of bookshelves with small stacks of educational books. The back wall of the room has louvered windows, the walls and floor are cement, and the roof is tin. The temperature here has been over ninety degrees, and if physics wasn’t your thing, the sun on tin on a 90 degree day is one way to make an EZ-bake oven, but the breeze through the windows kept the temperature inside down to just “hot” but not searing. One of the amazing things about the school – the whole building was one of Nell’s many projects there at Mafi Dove as a Peace Corps volunteer, there, 10 years ago. The project to build the school was part of what she did to encourage the village to invest in education.