The director of the organization that sent me here introduced a very interesting concept to me while he was passing through Malawi last week. He said that after almost twenty years of living and working in Africa this phrase had stayed him through many frustrating times.
AWA – Africa Wins Again.
The concept implies the frustration felt when despite all of your efforts, things still do not work as you feel they should. And it is completely beyond your control. Today I had my first AWA moment.
I have been trying to upload pictures of my first week for as long as I have been here. I am not sure why this feels so urgent, but this morning I decided those pictures are going up, if it is the last thing I do. I brought my laptop in to set it up at work. I spent an hour and a half with a co-worker trying to get the computer settings to accept the new IP address, allowing me to connect to the local network. For whatever reason, my computer is having none of it. So my housemate, who also works with me, kindly offered her USB key to move the pictures off my computer and upload them from another computer. However, the second computer of choice proved useless as it was set to prevent uploads and things like that. Then, in another act of kindness, my housemate gave me her own computer to use, seeing my growing frustration. I sat down, all excited to finally upload and add captions to these photos. Opened Facebook – at which point, the computer screen went blank and stopped working. Computer overheated.
Africa Wins Again.
Stay tunes for the photos. They will eventually appear.
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