Our recent trip to Senegal highlighted the difference in resources that we have available here and in Senegal. My friend Brent and I went to Gueoul to upgrade the infrastructure in our computer classroom there. For a relatively modest expenditure of money, we were able to bring the classroom up to a reasonable standard of speed and reliability, making it a real, useful tool for our students and the community. Later it was inspected by some of our collaborators at the University of St. Louis, who declared it fully the equal of any computer classroom in Senegal.
The vision that what I just said might have put in your head is that of a gleaming computer classroom of the sort that you’d see in an American college. That’s not what you’d see if you went to Senegal and had a look at it yourself. It’s a pretty bare-bones operation by first world standards, in a plain concrete room with inexpensive plastic lawn chairs to sit on, and a generally improvised look to it.
But that’s the beauty of it – by American standards it’s not much, not much at all. But to our girls in the community of Gueoul, it’s a bridge to the 21st century, and a new and exciting set of tools wasn’t available in Gueoul, and isn’t available at all to the vast majority of the people in students. For the little bit of money we spent, we’ve managed to give our kids something that, although it looks a bit primitive, provides them an opportunity that’s the equal of what kids in the first world get.
Although it’s pretty amazing to me. We tend to think that our little bit of money and effort can’t really do much for anybody, but this computer classroom proves how untrue that notion is. In Gueoul, we’ve managed to do a great deal on a very small budget, and that’s a really amazing thing.