Yesterday I got a frantic call from Father McGuire, the principal of Chanel College. He's got the computer room ready, all wired for 20 PCs, but half of them aren't working. I said, tell me what the problem is. He said, when the computers start up, there is an error message. I said, don't worry, just follow the instructions, hit F1 and everything should be fine. He said, OK, but can you come up here anyway and have a look. I said, no problem, I'll be there in 45 minutes. I'm thinking, how did I get myself into this. Good question. How did I get myself into this?

Ok, back when I was working for the Department of Education, I had to rebuild 150 or PCs that were donated by the ANZ bank for use in secondary schools around Samoa. Somehow, Chanel College, a Catholic school was in on the deal and took possession of the first 20 PCs that we built. I don't know why. I don't really care.

Father McGuire, a sinewy, gray-haired bespectacled Kiwi, came down from the canyon where sits the Chanel campus and hauled 20 boxes back up to his school. I thought that was the last I would hear from him.

A few weeks later, Father McGuire calls me at work and wants to come up to the school to talk about what they need to get the computers up and running. Corbin, a fellow PCV, teaches up there, but she's an older volunteer and doesn't know much about computers. I said, no problem. I was happy to take any excuse to get out of the office.

I sit down with Father McGuire and explain to him some of the major issues involved. Heat and dust will kill computers. On top of that, the irregular electricity, namely a power surge will fry the PCs. You’re going to want a cool environment, I tell him. Air-conditioning is ideal, but if you can’t afford, fans are a reasonable substitute. UPS devices, uninterrupted power supplies, aren’t necessary because you’re not working on critical applications. But you’re going to want surge protectors as a buffer between the electricity and the computer. Otherwise, the first time the power surges, you can kiss your computer program, tofa soifua. Also, you’re going to want to keep the windows in the room closed and the computers covered when not in use to keep out the dust and the pollen.

Then I tell him how much this stuff is going to cost.

Now Father McGuire is pulling his hair out and seems like he’s about to have a nervous breakdown. He’s a frenetic man under normal circumstances, but on this day, he is positively freaking out. And this man is a Catholic priest. He’s explaining to me that Chanel is almost insolvent. He said, he didn’t want to let the dog loose in the manger. I had no idea what he was talking about. He said, If the US goes to war with Iraq, the resulting cost increase from petroleum base products could put the school under. He’s banking on the computers to bring in new students that will bring in more school fees. I’m thinking, what petroleum based products does this school consume?

I start to feel sorry for Father McGuire. I’m trying to console him. I’m trying to stay calm. I can’t believe that I am sitting here trying to counsel a Catholic priest. I tell him that there are so many avenues to raise money. There’s the High Commssions of both Australia and New Zealand. There’s JICA, the Japanese International Cooperation Association. There’s countless churches and rotary societies in the States that would be willing to help out. And Corbin cans always write for a Small Project Assistance grant from the Peace Corps. In a worst case scenario, he could sell half the computers to another school and still be able to teach classes with 20 kids. Don’t worry it will all work out.

Meanwhile the computers are collecting dust in one of the rooms upstairs. Naturally the room is not air-conditioned.

That was about 3 months ago.

Cut to yesterday. I’m back at Chanel. I taxi it up to the school. The Father has hired a Samoan teacher, Suani, to teach the classes. He brings me to the computer room. There are no fans. The windows are open. There are no dust covers. The computers, sitting on newly painted red desks, are plugged into cords that hang down vertically from the ceiling so the room has the feel of a of bad sci-fi movie from the 50s. There is no sign of any surge protection. This is fucking hopeless, I think to myself.

I start looking at the malfunctioning PCs. They are all having the same problem. They can’t see the hard drive. Now, when the PCs left the warehouse where I was putting them together with my counterpart, Nehru, they were working fine. However, these computers are really old pieces of shit donated by a bank that no longer needed them so that they could feel good about themselves.

I would open the cases of the computers to remove the hard drive and the box would be full of dust. I’m not just talking about a little dust. It looked like someone was using these computers to store dust. I’m not joking. We were lucky to get any of them running. In the end, we had about 110 or the 150 in working conditioning. The rest of the hard drives were just hosed, completely unsalvageable.

So now, after sitting a hot, dusty room on at Chanel College for about 2 months, half of these beater computers had come up lame. I managed to fix one of them there on the spot, but the rest of the hard drives were going to have to be re-imaged or replaced.

Again, I felt bad for the Father, but what could I do. I told him exactly the kind of environment he would need to keep these computers up and running, and wasn’t even able to manage that. The tragedy is that even if all 20 were up and running, it’s going to take one power surge, and believe, the power here in Samoa is about as regular a septuagenarian.

Before I left, Father McGuire invited me upstairs for tea. He said, if electricity wasn’t so god damn expensive, he would put one of the air conditioning units that they’re not using in the computer room, but they can’t afford it. I’m looking at him, smiling. This priest just said “god damn.”

I explain that there’s little I can do. I suggest he call down to the DOE and see if either can replace the computers that are not working or re-image the hard drives. That’s the best I can do. I wish him good luck and head back down to town, feeling somewhat helpless. On the way home I decide that I’m going to write to Seagate, Maxtor, and some of the larger hard drive makers to see if they might be interested in donating some of their old stock to some worthy causes in Samoa.