Technology Withdrawl

Before I left Canada, I was acutely aware I had a serious addiction. I carried my netbook almost everywhere, and I go to bed with my iphone. Email, Google, news, weather. I was connected in some form, nearly every minute of my life. And now I have almost nothing. I have a very basic cell phone, akin to the first one I had in 2003. I've had to learn how to text again without a QWERTY keyboard. It has been challenging, and I still think it is a slow and painful process. Also, I've found people don't reply to texts as quickly here either. It is raining again right now, someone called me, but I realized I don't even know how to turn up the volume on my phone (Note: I've since figured that out since I wrote this initial blog). I had to tell them to call me back later. I'm also struggling with the concept of phone units. I know that many people still use pay-as-you-go, but I am missing my very large plan, and data. This is especially true since in the community where I live people look at me as the white person with money (little do they know), and therefore lots of phone units, and if I leave my phone out (read: anywhere but my pocket) they use it sans permission.

Now, for my computer. On Friday, my baby met water. For fear of rain, I travel with it in its neoprene wetsuit, and a plastic bag, but in the office, a water satchel broke and splashed over it. No damage was done to any drives. My SD Card reader even came back to life. But the keyboard still doesn't work properly. I sent it to Tamale for repair. Our director says they computer people in Tamale can fix anything, and so I pray. It was only a small amount of water, but then again, it is a small computer. I am going through separation anxiety and hope it will come back ok. I think this is part of what is making the transition and adaption to my life so hard, I am without my security blanket.

I will confess, however, I turned data roaming on my iphone a little bit, and have downloaded my mail a couple of times. I am scared to see what my bill will be, but for sanity purposes, this was something that I needed to do. (It helped reduce the trama level of my computer incident). So thanks to those who have sent messages and weekly updates along, they've helped me to feel partially connected to the world. I've also taken to reading the paper as much as possible. It has been a unique experience to once again have a physical newspaper in my hands. I still know what is going on in the world to some extent, and am enjoying reading Ghanaian perspectives on international events, even though I question the accuracy of some of the facts reported.

Anyway, here's another prayer my computer will be safely back in my hands next week. I miss it disparately!

Note 1: This post was originally written by hand, and has only just been typed up. That too, was a long and painful process. I have realized this week that my brain seems to be connected to my keyboard.

Note 2: (Aug 25) Computer is en route back to me ... but I won't have it until the weekend. By the time the techs got to it, it was apparently ok. I hope I find this to be true when I see it again myself. I guess I was just impatient in letting it dry out completely. However, I maintain that if I didn't send it away, it wouldn't have self-healed. That's just the way things go.

Note 3: Being unplugged and unconnected really isn't that bad at all.