Teased, again and again!

Yesterday, Friday 25June, was a full day, I was busy from 8:30 am till 9:30 pm when I finally returned to the JETS guesthouse. Unfortunately, by time the generator was off for the night and the guesthouse was pitch black and locked. After some knocking and banging the door was opened and I group my way to my room and fall into bed.

The biggest downside of today was that I was not able to charge my computer, so when I booted up Saturday morning my computer had only a few minutes of batter left. I opted to head to my office in the administration building, for some reason the Admin Building has much more reliable NEPA (electricity) and it had NEPA.  Unfortunately it was just a tease,the NEPA lasted only 10 minutes… booo.

So on to plan C… my one hope for Saturday ws to find an internet café to email home, post blogs and now possibly charge my computer… I am off on adventure.

I was directed to an internet café only five minute walk from the campus. I found it easily and hope began to build. It is small and was packed with people perched at each computer. I asked the attendant if there was a plug so I could charge my computer while I waited. I don't think she understood me and said, "No." I waited outside for maybe 10-minutes and them moved inside (it was hotter but I thought I might not be forgotten if she could see me. I do stand out being the only white person. By the grace of God a friend, Augustine, came in shortly and he chatted on my behalf and guess what they found a plug!!! So I sat and typed a bit as my computer charged, waiting for a computer or port to open up.

Soon enough Augustine was finished… somehow he was given a port right away. I moved into his spot; hope grew. I have emails to send and blogs to post and most of all I longed to feel connected to my world.

I plug in the cable, click internet, the tech configures something on my computer and I see it is loading… and loading and loading. It fails, I 'retry'… loading… loading… loading it fails again. Basically I repeat this cycle of hope and frustration for almost 60 minutes. Hope dashed more times than I can count. Finally I give up; it simply isn't worth it. And if the Google homepage takes this long to load, will it load my Gmail page????

Maybe internet is only a figment of imagination here in Nigeria.

Augustine kindly waits all that time with me and we walk back to JETS together. One good thing I did get my computer mostly charged!