The mairie recently got solar panels, and thus electricity, and a computer. Everyone is really excited about it, obviously. And I, apparently, have been appointed “computer expert”. Those of you who actually are deserving of such a title should find this amusing… I know probably as much as the average American does, but was a bit concerned about being expected to answer every technological question they came up with.
As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. They really just wanted to use Word and Excel, and I am more than qualified to teach someone how to cut and paste. We went over incredibly basic skills, but they were the most useful skills for the work they were trying to do. For the most part, they wanted to be able to store records in the computer, so we made a template for birth, death, and marriage certificates. Then they needed to write letters, type up meeting minutes, or record a budget.
For weeks, I was constantly running between my office and the secretary’s desk, helping her undo a delete or cut and paste something, or into the mayor’s office, trying to figure out how to say “double click” in Hausa… But lately they haven’t needed my help nearly as often. Rabi, the secretary, can now do pretty much everything she needs to on a daily basis without any help from me. The other day she pointed this out. She was beaming. I remember how frustrated she had seemed when we first got the computer. It was overwhelming; a huge amount of new skills to acquire in a very short period of time, and some of the male staff could be a bit impatient with her. Tasks that she could have done without help in maybe 20 minutes on the typewriter now took an hour and a half, with constant pauses to ask me to explain things or show her something. But now, she is confident and capable of doing her work on the computer. I asked her if she preferred the computer or the typewriter, now that she has gotten the hang of it. “The computer,” she said immediately, smiling (this is a woman who just a few weeks earlier seemed about ready to throw the computer out the window and/or burst into frustrated tears). “It’s faster. If I make a mistake I don’t have to start all over again. And we have the birth certificates saved, so I can just change the name and date without retyping the whole thing. And years from now it’ll all still be there if we need to find something. It’s so much better.”
As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. They really just wanted to use Word and Excel, and I am more than qualified to teach someone how to cut and paste. We went over incredibly basic skills, but they were the most useful skills for the work they were trying to do. For the most part, they wanted to be able to store records in the computer, so we made a template for birth, death, and marriage certificates. Then they needed to write letters, type up meeting minutes, or record a budget.
For weeks, I was constantly running between my office and the secretary’s desk, helping her undo a delete or cut and paste something, or into the mayor’s office, trying to figure out how to say “double click” in Hausa… But lately they haven’t needed my help nearly as often. Rabi, the secretary, can now do pretty much everything she needs to on a daily basis without any help from me. The other day she pointed this out. She was beaming. I remember how frustrated she had seemed when we first got the computer. It was overwhelming; a huge amount of new skills to acquire in a very short period of time, and some of the male staff could be a bit impatient with her. Tasks that she could have done without help in maybe 20 minutes on the typewriter now took an hour and a half, with constant pauses to ask me to explain things or show her something. But now, she is confident and capable of doing her work on the computer. I asked her if she preferred the computer or the typewriter, now that she has gotten the hang of it. “The computer,” she said immediately, smiling (this is a woman who just a few weeks earlier seemed about ready to throw the computer out the window and/or burst into frustrated tears). “It’s faster. If I make a mistake I don’t have to start all over again. And we have the birth certificates saved, so I can just change the name and date without retyping the whole thing. And years from now it’ll all still be there if we need to find something. It’s so much better.”
No comments:
Post a Comment