Electronically challenged

Sunday evening when I got to the apartment, "Home Sweet Home" for the next month, the young man who guards the building informed my Rwandan driver that we would need to buy electricity, because the meter was low. Apparently whoever watches this had slipped up. We were directed several blocks away to a small cantina with a sign that says in Kinyarwanda, French and English "Buy electricity here." Armed with the number of the account or the meter, I never knew which, I marched into the cantina and looked helpless. That seems to work well, especially since I am usually the only "Mzungu", white person, in the place. I waved the paper with the numbers and said "electricity" in my best (and only) French accent, and they got the picture. I was directed to a girl about 15 years old at the corner table with a laptop and a printer. The Rwandan driver decided I might need help (I did!) and came into the cantina just in time to run interference for me with an intoxicated local who was practicing his English on me. We left in a hurry and presented the receipt to Venust, the guard, who did his magic and voila, the power is on!!
Then I was unable to figure out how to open the safe. It was the same safe I used last summer, but it now had a new door with a big combination lock, but I had no combination. That might seem like an insignificant problem until you understand that the cell phone and the "stick modem" were in the safe. A stick modem is a USB device that you plug into your laptop and it gives you dial up Internet access.
Always up for a challenge, I first began thinking of people I could call to ask how to open the safe. Oh yeah, no phone. Then, I thought I would email the coordinator for the volunteers. Oh yeah, no modem. Then, as darkness fell and I realized that I was alone, without a car, phone or Internet, and that I had no way to communicate with the hospital short of walking there, I began to feel some abdominal cramping. My infectious disease doctor friend Tom says that 50% of travelers to the developing world will become ill in the first week, then 50% of the remainder will become ill in the next week, etc. I had been in Africa for 19 days on Sunday, so you can guess what happened next.
Monday morning a driver miraculously appeared to take me to the hospital. I explained my situation to the local staff, and one of them offered his laptop to me. The Internet at the hospital is VERY SLOW, and I was only able to write a quick email to the coordinator before it gave up completely. Later in the day, I could never load messages from my Inbox before the connection "timed out," but I had seen a part of one message from the coordinator that helped me to open the safe Monday evening.
As I settled into bed with my antibiotics close at hand and my cell phone on the charger, I looked to heaven and asked God to bless the Rwandans who manage to greet me warmly, enjoy their friends and maintain their sense of humor in this electronically challenged country.