Joseph

I am staying in an apartment block near the Camara hub and just outside Mombasa. I have stayed here before - its an ideal location in terms of getting access to the hub as its literally within a kilometers reach of the place.

An old man called Joseph is one of the security guards minding the apartment block. Basically he opens and closes the gates and keeps an eye on things during the night. He is probably in his mid sixties, has silver hair, is as thin as a rake and is not unlike Morgan Freeman in looks. His weather beaten face has clearly seen a lot in life much of it tough and challenging.

He is lovely company. He has an easy going manner and a deeply infectious laugh where he throws his head back and his eyes go white bright and glisten with tears.

He keeps himself amused during the day via an old battered 14" portable TV connected to a rabbits ears aerial via a cable that has more sellotape on it than actual co-axial covering. The picture on the television reminded me of the pictures they sent back from the first moon landing except the audio was of higher quality then.

The TV broke down during the week. It just went dead. My first instinct was to tell him to dump the TV and we would look at how to get another one. He told me he was going to fix it.

The following day I wandered over to Joseph on the way to the hub. There he was sitting with the TV taken apart patiently testing each component on the circuit boards with a tiny hobby multimeter. It was old but it worked.

I asked him what he was doing and he said he had borrowed a multimeter from a friend and he was looking for the 'failure'. When he found it he was going to get a new one from the 'Electrical' shop.

The 'Electrical' shop was a place up the road where electronic components were scavenged from old appliances and sold on as spares.

And there was I with a supposed degree in electronic engineering and totally unable to help. Joseph had never finished secondary school.

I came back that evening and the television was fixed. Joseph gave me a thumbs up as I passed by. It had cost him 5 schillings to fix the television (5p).

And we were worried about computer maintenance in Africa....