Dan here... It has been
awhile since I have posted a blog. This
past week, I was asked by the Kapsowar Theology School to come and teach….a
computer class. All of the students were
about 30 - 35 years old. Most of them
have had very little experience working with computers especially the
internet. Of the 10 students, only one
had an email address. This would be
almost unheard of for someone back home to not have their own personal email
address, let alone someone in their 30’s.
Kapsowar is definitely a different place from America in terms of
technology. Most people here do not have
internet, they have never done a Google search, and they have never seen or
heard of Facebook or YouTube. These are
things that we take for granted in America.
They are part of our weekly if not daily lives.
Everyone in the picture at the top of this post is staring
at my laptop screen. They were all
huddled around the computer watching as each person took a turn to setup an
email address for the very first time.
This is how I spent most of my first day of class, helping my students
setup an email address. I then showed
them how to use email. I helped them
setup email accounts on Gmail and we practiced sending emails back and forth to
each other. For most, it was the first
time in their life to have ever sent an email.
I then moved on to showing them how to do a Google search. They seemed amazed at the amount of
information that they could find about any topic in the world so quickly. One of their searches brought up a YouTube
clip. This pretty much ended the
class. They were so enthralled with what
they could find on YouTube. While all of
them have seen TV before, they probably do not own a TV. YouTube has opened a whole new world. They suddenly began to realize they could use
the internet to help find information for their sermons and theology classes.
On a different note, the medical director and I went down to
one of our sister hospitals in Kijabe last week. Kijabe hospital is much larger than Kapsowar,
and they are looking to pilot an EMR system in a smaller hospital. The meeting went well, and we plan to partner
with Kijabe to implement an EMR system here in Kapsowar. We are working on trying to find servers,
pc’s, and networking equipment. Assuming
we can get the equipment we need, we plan to install EMR in the next month or
so. Once it is installed, I will be
training a whole new group of Kenyan’s how to use a computer for the very first
time.
