Crafty computers

This morning we headed off to Samfya where Camfed has an IT Resource Centre. On the ride we had a very interesting discussion about witchcraft. Apparently, there are well known and wide spread rumors of witchcraft in and around Samfya. Hearing this made me very curious and I urged the others in our group to tell me more, but they were not willing/able to go into much more detail. Whether it was due to the fact that it made them nervous to talk about it or they simply did not have much more information about the rumors, the group did not talk much more about witchcraft in Samfya other than to say that some of them heard of these rumors.

It turns out that many in Zambia and other parts of Africa can view growing wealthy or being "rich" as something evil. In other words, having too much money or making too much money can be seen as evil or going against God. I wondered if the accumulation of money seemed unachievable to some and so they could easily explain it all away by labeling it as evil. Or was it the fact that they had so often witnessed riches or wealthy people leading to corruption? Colonists, imperialists and mineral-centric entrepreneurs that Africans have heard of from the past. Moreover, many governments inside and outside of Africa have seen corruption grow out of the prospect of great wealth.

Either way, there were many in Samfya that started describing some charities' practices of giving money to needy people around Africa for “no reason” as witchcraft. There are those Samfyans that see giving equipment or supplies to Africans or sponsorship of businesses as witchcraft. I even heard there were rumors of some being put to death around Samfya after being accused of witchcraft.

While we ate outside a small café in the center of Samfya, a police officer walked past us into the café. Everyone sitting around the table went silent and started whispering amongst themselves in Bemba. I asked what they were talking about and they said nothing. But once the officer left the café and walked past us into the distance, someone explained to me that he, too, had been accused of being involved in witchcraft. And I have to admit that even though I did not have any real fear, it all seemed a little bit freaky. In fact, I know that many forms of witchcraft exist and I personally believe that a few even possibly can work magic...especially some of the voodoo I have read about taking place in remote areas of the world. But witchcraft does not scare me, per se, as I believe it can be used for doing good, too. However, it does really stir my curiosity.

At one point Mr. Rain seemed nervous and even a little disturbed about the talk of magic. But as I know he is a religious man, I reminded him that Jesus rising from the dead and turning water into wine and such religious beliefs can also be seen as forms of magic - but believers see these as a good sort of magic – a magic from God. He reflected for a bit and it seemed to calm him, at least for the time being. A couple of days later he confided in me that he had been thinking a lot about what I had said and that the more he thought about it, the more it made sense to him – that for believers, God and Jesus had also performed miracles or some sort of “good magic”. It seems my words really made him think long and hard about this.

When we arrived at the Samfya Resource Centre (SRC), we met Penelope and discussed what had to be done at the SRC. The router and switch are currently sharing an uninterpretable power supply (UPS) with many other devices including a server and a printer. That means that when the power cuts, which it does very frequently in Samfya, the SRC has 10 minutes maximum of connectivity and then the router and the switch will be cut off.

I proposed moving the router to a dedicated UPS and the switch to another, perhaps shared with the server, and that we have the server do an auto-shutdown 3 minutes after the power outage. Then we can move 4-5 T1 computers to the small batteries that I brought to the SRC. In this configuration, 4-5 T1’s could continue to work on the internet for 6-7 hours after a power outage. This will be a vast improvement to the 10 minutes they currently have from the time the power cuts out.

Today we received very unfortunate news. Melody’s dad was in a car accident and was being transported to a hospital because his injuries were fairly serious. He had 4 broken ribs, a head injury, a dislocated leg and his spinal chord had been shifted. Poor Melody was terribly upset and it really changed the elated mood of the whole group, especially for our vehicle. The 4 of us have grown very close and were having such a wonderful time, and Melody’s energy was an enormous part of this great energy between the 4 of us. The life was sucked right out of her for the next couple of days. What’s more, her boyfriend, Eddy, had called her 3 days earlier to tell her he had 4 deaths in his family in 2 days. Poor Melody - our hearts are with her!