What He Was Doing.

J was the reason we ended up in Ethiopia, specifically.

When we signed up to go overseas, J was a newly minted Master of Science in Computer and Information Science. His skills would have been in demand anywhere, and they were particularly desirable to Food for the Hungry as the organization worked to update technology in all of their international offices. He was initially offered a position in Mozambique, in southeastern Africa, but there was a fairly unstable political situation at the time and I would not have been allowed to accompany him, so it was easy to turn that down. Ethiopia had also recently wrapped up a civil war but was quiet enough that we could be there together; and FH/E was eager enough to have J there that they agreed to cover the cost of our housing, which meant we could get there sooner.

(It was actually pretty common for expatriate employees to have 100% of their living costs covered by the organization, which was a pretty sweet deal -- but since we were technically volunteers we were resonsible for raising the bulk of our own financial support.)

So when we arrived, J's first order of business was to assess the technology situation. Not surprisingly, most work was still done with typewriters and ledger books, with paper copies saved in row after row of standard black binders. There were a few desktop computers in the building, used primarily for spreadsheets and word processing. Those were the days before Windows 95 so we were using DOS-based programs like Lotus and Word Perfect. It goes without saying that PCs were the norm at FH/E and everywhere else in Ethiopia, which was a real adjustment for those of us who were (and are) Mac users. Electrical service was no completely reliable, so unsaved documents might be lost without warning when the power went out. There was no network in place and only one or two printers -- so whenever one needed a hard copy, one had to save the file to a floppy disc (!!!), upload it onto the secretary's computer, and manually print the document.

J has spent the past fifteen years co-owning a business that specializes in data networking but back then it was all new to him. He turned to his buddy Paul to help him figure out how to set up a local area network and to work up the order for specialized tools, cables, and network cards -- and a few battery-powered backup systems, also a new-to-us concept. He took some time to map out the attic, a maze of eucalyptus rafters, corrugated metal, spiders, and rodent corpses. And then -- the wait. For the order to be processed and shipped. For the shipment to travel thousands of miles to Ethiopia. For the packages to be cleared through customs and delivered to his care. A process that took weeks, if not months, from start to finish.

So it's good that there were plenty of things to keep us busy in the meantime.