Technology: Friend or Foe?

On Sunday I got in around lunchtime from Maseru. Looking at my house, I realized a thorough cleaning was in order, especially if I was going to have a visitor this week. Everything got wiped down, swept, mopped, and scrubbed. By the time I got to the pile of clothes on the floor it was late in the afternoon. I wouldn’t even have started it if I didn’t know that this week was going to be busy with trips to the villages. It hadn’t been long after I started washing when Tim came over. There was a frustrated look about his eyes and he walked with an exhausted gate. The people over at the TabithaCare office had been writing their trimester report and a serious problem had arisen just as they were preparing to submit it to the main office. Tim was coming over as a last chance attempt to solve the problem and thus make all their work worth something. Being oh-so busy with unwanted laundry, I dropped everything and came right then!

Technology can be a frustrating thing. There are any numbers of things that can cause overwhelming frustration but as I have learned—at times the hard way—it does not always need to be this difficult.

The people in the office were very frustrated by the time I was called. It was late in the afternoon and as the skies over Semonkong turned there usual dark blue and purple the light inside started to out compete the light outside. The three people in the office were huddled around the one desktop. This computer and I already have a history. Multiple times I have come over to check on one thing or another and my opinion of it doesn’t hover much above modest disdain. Because of this I understand their frustrations!

One of the office people, however, made a statement of hatred for how aweful technology is for them. I could not reisit defending technology as a tool that we must learn to wield like any other. You can't give me the cow pulled plough any more than I give any one person in Semonkong a computer and expect great things without first learning how to make good things happen. This was the manager who made the statement and he agreed. I sowed the seeds for future conversations about their computers if they so wished.

TabithaCare is the support and preventative arm of DocorsAide which works with the clinic here at the mission. This group works with support groups, families, and communities to improve HIV/AIDS mitigation and community responses.

The desktop sits by the window of a room no bigger than some people’s bathrooms ( an average sixe bathroom in the states). There are several calendars on the walls from several organizations. Undoubtedly they are free because NGO’s rarely have the funds to pay for aesthetics in the office space. Without the calendars the dingy wall would simply drain any enthusiasm for work all together. [May I note that these are all the expectations of an overly conditioned American who has grown up to expect a certain environment in the office. Whether research conclusions determining dingy offices are a factor to decreased productivity is a nugget of thought for another day!]

Anyway, we worked everything out and got the file sent. I’ve advised them to find some time when we can set up computer procedures that would help keep the computer clean. They are more than enthusiastic. As a side note I think we should discuss procrastination as a bad habit too so they aren’t sending the next trimester report a day later at 6 pm with worried eyes and tight shoulders.

Update: On Monday, they asked me to come back and help them out again. They were working on that same report again. Yep, We are going to talk about how to keep deadlines!!!