Another hot week in the mad house!!!

[This is Charlotte pretending to be Geoff, for a change]
You could claim, quite rightly, that it's less than a week since my last update. My response to that would be twofold 1) report me to Trading Standards if you like and 2) it is Thursday afternoon and I am sat in my garden in 35 degree heat with nothing more pressing to do than sit here wittering - where are you?

The week was always going to be busy because it had been long awaited. The official opening of the paediatric ward and the new OPD was on Tuesday, with the guest of honour expected to be the Minister of Health. I had found a copy of an invite last week that rather unhelpfully said it was on Monday the 13th so the hospital secretary had had to rush around, or in local terminology 'run up and down', sending correction memos to all concerned. For some reason, I assume space constraints, she neglected to correct the spelling mistake about the anti-natal services offered. Or perhaps I misunderstand and they are really doing their level best to prevent births on the Maternity Ward.

But it was also going to be busy for me. The IT Manager (the whole IT Dept) was still on a course in Lusaka. This meant that Abraham, with his IT technician hat on, was covering. As his de facto driver, I have become, by extension, Assistant to the IT Technician. Apart from anything else, it is thirsty work because the network is spread all over the hospital with switches placed in obscure places. Last week we had dealt with part of the network failing because someone had unplugged a switch and not bothered to plug it back in after themselves. There are only 6 IP addresses allowed on the internet at any time so the instant messenger is permanently blinking even when everything is running smoothly.

On Monday things went mental. Half the network became separated. They could see each other but not the rest of the network and vice versa. It was time to learn how the whole thing worked. I shan't bore you with the details but I have worked out there are two wired networks, with many switches in each, connected by a wireless bridge. Each half also has a wireless gateway for the non-wired computers. Don't worry if you can't follow, just understand that it is complicated. So when half the network disappears one would assume the bridge was the break point. However, the IT guy did not really leave clear instructions other than a process of going switch by switch and turning them off and on again until things start to work again. It is a hard job, IT. So off we go - out of the hospital, down the long ramp, past the chapel, over the deep sand, over the broken bricks, up the steep ramp the width of a wheelchair into HR. Off and on. Now down the ramp, over more deep sand to Procurement. Off and on. Back round to the front of the hospital, up the ramp, past the medical wards and matron and physio, along to OPD. Over the bumpy concrete to get in there. Room 6. Off and on. Room 2. Off and on. Out again, down the ramp, across the sand (I mention it because it is a bugger to push a wheelchair over sand) to Accounts. Everything appears fine at this end of the wireless bridge. Abraham is despondent. Everything is working, he says. Apart from the network :). I tell him that we must have missed somewhere. Where is the other end of the bridge? He says there is nowhere else. I am reminded of my father's story about finding 5 ends of bowel. There must be a receiver for the wireless I press. He says we can try Medical Records. So off we trot across the sand and up another steep ramp, round 2 sharp corners and into the office. I can see two boxes of tricks. One blinking and one not. Abraham doesn't even ask the owner of the office to check them so I do instead. Mr Phiri fiddled with the cables going into the lower box. Abraham cries out with pleasure 'it is working now. This is why we need Muzungus. They carry on when we have given up'. Of course it is a mixed blessing fixing things - now the requests for Internet access are back!

On Tuesday morning I took our camera to watch the goings on. At the allotted start time the canopy was still being erected above the seating area. This is Africa. The Provincial Minister was expected. Whilst everyone waited some people from Tiko's provided a spectacle. Coming in the side entrance I noticed 3 people. They were noteworthy because one of them was Muzungu - Scandinavian or German - and too old for the cap he was wearing and the woman was wearing hot pants. Do not misunderstand. She was tall, thin, beautiful, had massive sunglasses on and was wearing lots of jewellery. On the streets of any town in summer she would have got admiring glances. In a rural hospital in Zambia when a Government official was expected she drew gasps of shock and disgust. It didn't help that they were openly laughing at the arrangements. Rather unexpectedly I felt a pang of defensiveness. So what if things were a bit odd and the minister had a sofa to sit on. At least they were trying. You can't just rock up uninvited in offensive clothes and then openly poke fun. They were ejected but just before that final moment I gave them a piece of my mind. They just laughed in my face.

On Wednesday we had more fun with the network. This time HR and procurement had been separated from the rest of the world. To make matters worse, the Prof's wife Wieke, had also been disconnected. I bumped into her in the hospital as she was headed to play with some of the boys Geoff had in traction on the surgical ward. She told me about the trainee licentiate calling the Prof in for a guy haemorrhaging blood only for the Prof to rush in and find no blood at all. She also asked me if I knew about dinner at their house on Sunday. Sunday? I thought it was Saturday. My husband hasn't kept me up to date. I said. Oh no, she said. I am sure it is my husband that did not say. Perhaps we will never know. Geoff claims his innocence!!!!

Later we visit the house to try and fix the Internet as Wieke has to send her articles to the Dutch magazine she works for. First we had to get into the house. It is 4 steps up from ground level. Luckily their home help, Aaron, was around to help carry Abraham in. Once in, it became apparent that Wieke's laptop was not playing ball. It is in Dutch, so quite what it was saying was unclear to both of us. I pressed a different button and everything disappeared. Oooppsss!!!! I had to run to the hospital to look at another laptop with Windows 7. I borrowed the Pharmacist's. As I asked to borrow it I noticed my hands cupping in front of me in the gesture of submission I had seen so many times since I arrived. My subconscious is culturally astute. Turns out that Microsoft put the Disable button in a really dumb place, judging by the number of people that hit it accidentally even when working in their first language. We failed to fix both the network and specific problem.

This morning we started again following the same route as Monday. All the switches were fine but I noticed that one fewer lights was flashing on two of the switches than previously. The only thing left was to track the cable from procurement to OPD. I did not like this conclusion because it suggested a cable problem, which I was not really happy about trying to fix. I have never had to reattach connectors to structured data cable before. I followed the cable up the procurement office wall and through into stores. Here it tracked across the roof beams to a connector by a window. I asked a bloke stood by if he could climb up on the bags of beans and a fridge to unplug and replug the connector. He looked confused but did as I asked. Then told me the cable went nowhere from there! I suggested it went out through the window. Oh, you are right! From there i tracked it across a roof and down a wall. The cable passed into a hard plastic pipe for protection. Towards the bottom the pipe was kinked at more than 90 degrees - please don't be broken, I thought. I straightened the pipe. Immediately Abraham, sat under a nearby tree for shade, cried out that it was working. To be sure I bent the pipe. It stopped working again. OK problem identified. I just needed to break the pipe and stretch it out so it didn't pinch the cable. 'do we need to get a man?' called Abraham.'No, I do not need a man!' I shouted back as I kneeled on the floor. It was trickier than I thought and I did not want to damage the cable myself. I tried to use a key to open the pipe back up. 'I think we might need a man!' :)

Abraham decided we needed a rest from all the rushing up and down. I did say that I had only seen him sitting all morning :) so we tried to check the email of a friend of his that is doing a degree. We couldn't get it to work, even when we rang her. I asked what sort of degree someone that couldn't work yahoo could get. 'It is tricky. Muzungus can do it because they are sharp. It is hard for the rest of us.' he said. 'Abraham, you can't say that!' he looked puzzled 'Why not?'. 'Because it is racist. The obverse of what you just said is that black people are too stupid to use email. I would be in trouble if I said that.' I responded. 'but it's the truth...' was his only answer.