New!

W.H.O. gave us some textbooks, two new computers and actually best of all, two back-up batteries. The back-up batteries will allow us to leave two of the computers on until exactly when the power goes off, instead of turning them off at five minutes to two, just in case. Sometimes power will stay on until 2:20, maybe longer. Twenty-five extra minutes doesn’t seem like a big difference but actually is.

Yet, if W.H.O. had asked me, instead of asking probably no one at all, “What expensive equipment can we buy for the school?” I would’ve answered, “No need to send two brand new computers—we’ve already got more computers than the power supply to the school will allow us to turn on at the same time. But you know what would be great? Maybe more than just two back-up batteries, maybe four, and that way all of the computers that we can simultaneously turn on could have a back-up battery.”

Of course, W.H.O. had no way of knowing that we already had computers and that we would therefore have had a use for more back-up batteries. Also, the part of me that loves shiny new gadgets (a part I had not realized I had until moving to a place where shiny new gadgets are few and far between) really loved installing that new computer. The squeak of the Styrofoam, the static cling as the protective plastic sheet pulled back from the monitor’s screen, the silky smooth cables not covered with irremovable dust, the electric blue of the lit-up power buttons.

It's so...new!

The computer lab. Only four computers are operational at one time.

I made that poster on the wall.

No water flows through those faucets, so no worries.