We're Google-ing and the President is Living Next Door

A number of Namumu staff members are becoming technologically savvy these days. It took me a little while to convince some of these guys to get serious about their computer skills, but the computer trend has caught on and now the movement is gaining steam. Mrs. Mutelo, Namumu’s Office Assistant/Secretary is pounding out memos and other Word Documents on a daily basis. Zenzo and Clever, Namumu’s Accounts Assistants, are getting pretty good at typing up spreadsheets and other accounting documents. Mr. Simamba, the Executive Director, is learning his way around Microsoft Office and Namumu’s email program. Even Mubita, my right hand fishing man, has been practicing data entry on Excel.

Zenzo and Clever are my guys, my star pupils. We recently had a few internet browsing lessons where they learned the finer points of google-ing. It’s been fun to see two guys, guys who come from an area and a culture where access to information is often very limited, start using a program that can give them access to just about any information they could want in a matter of seconds.

Although, I’m concerned that I may have created a monster. Now they want to get online all the time and I’m worried that their work-day productivity will take a hit. So far it hasn’t been too much of a problem. But I’m definitely NOT going to introduce them to Facebook. Lord. Namumu productivity would grind to a halt. We’ll keep it to google-ing, for now…

In other news, I celebrated my one-year anniversary of life in Mother Zambia last Tuesday. My celebration? I had my usual supper of bread and eggs, read with my girls for a while and went to bed at 9 pm. Ah, the wild and crazy life of a Siavonga bachelor...

Speaking of reading, the number of Namumu readers is shooting through the roof. In addition to my nightly girl readers, a good number of boys are reading consistently these days as well. I’ve been keeping most of the books in the sitting room at my house and there has been a steady stream of children checking out books on a daily basis.

And also, now that my hair is getting longer, while reading, every night, I get my hair braided by anywhere from one to five of the Namumu girls at once. Emasculating? Yes. Painful? Sometimes. But they seem to enjoy doing it and it makes everyone laugh, so I go with it. And you know what? Every now and then I think it looks pretty good. I’ve taken a number of pictures and will consider revealing them one day.

For your Junior update, my neighbors have a few new family members staying next door these days and I’m happy to report that Junior has a new little friend to play with, a fat little two-year-old boy cousin.

Besides being amusingly obese, this kid bears a striking resemblance to the President of the Republic of Zambia, Rupiah Banda. Go ahead and google image search this man, and then imagine that exact face on a two-year-old boy’s body. Yep. That’s what I see every morning when I look out my kitchen window.

To tell you the truth, I don’t even know what this kid’s name is. I only call him Rupiah. The name has really caught on, too. Everyone in his family even calls him Rupiah now. While I can’t take credit for first noticing the resemblance (it was pointed out to me by another Namumu child), I will take full credit for perpetuating the nickname. At first I thought his mom was pissed at me for comparing her baby boy to our overweight president, but now she always laughs at it. And she loves me, so it’s cool.

So, life is still good here at Namumu. It’s raining nearly every day now, but the rains should be ending soon. As soon as they do we’ll be doing some major winter planting around here. I’m sure there will be plenty of water-pump malfunctions and cow battles to blog about in the near future.

Until next time…