Alex

Yesterday I stayed on late in the workshop in the hub. It had been a busy day meeting different groups and people connected with the project. There is a pretty good internet connection here now in the hub so I decided to write some reports in the workshop before going home.

Alex is one of the volunteers here. I had noticed from day 1 that he opens and closes the workshop each day. No matter how early you arrive or how late you leave he is always here.

I discovered why that is the case last night.

Alex is 24. He left school in 3rd year in secondary school because his family could not afford his school fees. He started doing odd labouring jobs to support his family and eventually became a painter. He painted the entire Digital Hub for free (inside and outside) during the initial renovations and has been a committed volunteer since the hub opened 3 months ago.

2 weeks ago, he was made homeless and since most of his family live in the western province he has no family support structure here. To help him out the management of the hub have allowed Alex sleep in the workshop over night. In the meantime they are on the look out for some accommodation for him. His bed consists of a curtain from one of the windows that he takes down and lays out on a concrete floor.

I asked him was it comfortable and he said he had got used to it.

I then discovered that the poor bloke had not eaten the entire day. I asked him did he want to join me for dinner and he agreed so off we went to a nearby restaurant and had something to eat.

He has two brothers and a sister. His sister died last year giving birth to her 7th child and all 7 children are now back with his mother and father in the western province. The unrest at the beginning of the year had made things very difficult for the family and they were all displaced for some time. Things now seem to be settling down even in the rural areas where the in fighting was at its worst.

The reason he had not eaten today was because his father had sent him word that he was gravely ill with Malaria and that he desperately needed 1500 schillings to pay for medicine. Alex had been trying to raise the money by begging friends to help for most of the day.

It made me realise that it only takes a conversation to uncover the most desperate circumstances that people find themselves in. It also was a sobering reminder that even though it is wonderful that people are volunteering their time in the workshop, people could easily end up being exploited. The desperation people have here, to learn skills so they can get out of poverty, is something that many organisations public and private exploit.

There is a thin line here between giving your time and giving your life.

The good news is that I have just come from a meeting with potential sponsors of the hub where, thanks to the conversation with Alex, we were able to urge people to support the feeding program here. I am hopeful something positive will come out of that.

The least we can do for the volunteers is to feed them properly. In time, as the hub begins to generate revenue we may be able to offer some kind of on going allowance to those committed to the venture.

It is a challenging dilemma. Education for the future or a job for the present. And it comes back to the decision Alex's parents made asking him to leave school to help support the family. This is the typical dilemma facing the majority of families here...

Are we right to encourage people to take significant time out to learn, where they are not able to earn money (for them and their families to simply survive) so they can better themselves in the future?

Its really a balancing act between survival in the short-term versus longterm investment in their future. You realise that in the developed world we have the luxury of being able to make that choice. That is not the case here.

That said, technology not only enables education, it also enables enterprise. My hope is that the technology can accelerate education to enterprise activity thus bridging the gap in this dilemma.....

I asked Alex about this and he was convinced that this can happen. I sincerely hope he is right. Many of the volunteers already are discussing entrepreneurial ideas so there is a basis to my hope. I will talk about one of those ideas in another blog.

As I said, you only need to have a conversation with someone here to realise how damn challenging this whole situation is!

P.S Just as I am writing this I have been told that they have found a nice clean room for Alex nearby to the workshop;-) he has just been given the keys....