Cristo de la Concordia: Our wired correspondent

Second in a series

Previously: Part 1

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia -- LEAMIS International Ministries likes to work closely with its hosts when planning which cottage industry or other educational workshops to include during a short-term missions trip. LEAMIS wants its program to be driven by local needs, rather than by the incoming team and its concerns.

Gaston Saavedra, pastor of Cochabamba Christian Community, told Debra Snellen that there were computers at the Nueva Conocer school and that a computer workshop would be a good idea -- teaching students how to use Microsoft Word and Excel. Debra asked me to teach it and I set about making plans. Steve Mallard of Tennessee Technology Center at Shelbyville was a great help to me in finding curriculum, and I had matching English and Spanish textbooks in MS Office, so that I could easily work with the English copy and hand the Spanish copy to my translator.

But as the trip got closer, Debra began working with Rudolf Band (Gaston's nephew) and Ronald Trujillo. Rudolf, a native of Germany who moved to Bolivia with his parents about the time he graduated from school, is the executive director of OESER, the school's parent organization.

They were somewhat mystified by the talk of MS Word. No, that wasn't what was needed at all. The people in Villa Candelaria needed to learn Skype and instant messaging programs.

The change in subjects threw me for a loop, coming a very short time before the trip, and it was an early indicator that our surroundings would not be as primitive as on previous trips.

Skype ( www.skype.com ) is a computer program which allows voice conversations over a high-speed Internet connection. There are services like Vonage which will completely replace your home telephone service with an Internet-based phone number and account. Skype isn't like that; it does not give you a traditional telephone number for use with incoming calls. You can (for a reasonable charge) dial out long distance to traditional telephone numbers. Or you can talk with other Skype users for free, using an instant messenger-style "buddy list" interface.

The reason that people from Bolivia are interested in using Skype is because a number of Bolivians have emigrated to Spain, either temporarily or permanently, in search of better pay. Those who remain want an inexpensive way to make contact with their relatives abroad.

At least, that was how Rudolf and Ronald explained it to Debra.

But on the first night of our computer workshop, it didn't seem like there was much concern about being trained in anything.

The computer workshop was scheduled for Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings at 6 p.m.

Ronald had taken Debra and me down into the city for dinner Monday night, but we really didn't have time for a sit-down meal and by the time our food was delivered, we were already late. We had our meals boxed up to go and dashed back to the school. There was an argument between Ronald and our driver about whose fault it was that we were late, and I was tense over that as well, even though I couldn't understand what was being said. We hadn't asked for the nice dinner out, but I felt as if we were responsible for it.

I was already stressed out over being late and over the argument. To make matters worse, what we found when we arrived at the school was chaos.

There were about 10 computers in the school's computer room, but on our first night only four of them were hooked up to the school's Internet connection, and the organizers of the workshop had allowed more than 20 people to sign up for the course. People were packed into the computer room like sardines. Some of the alleged "students" were local teens who were obviously already Internet-savvy and were more interested in a chance to goof around on the computer for free than in listening to anything I had to say. I tried to get everyone's attention, but that night's translator, Rudolf, seemed to have little interest in getting everyone's attention.

I felt overwhelmed, even panicked, and I pretty much just shut down. I was more emotional than I should have been over the situation, but this computer class was one of only two or three parts of the trip for which I felt completely responsible, and at that moment it seemed like a disaster.

We got little if anything accomplished that night. Afterward, Debra laid down the law. The school would get the other six computers hooked up to the Internet and, for the other two scheduled classes, would divide the students into two shifts so that we would have a reasonable number participating at any given time.

Two nights later, I went into our second session with high hopes. I got there early to power up the computers, not waiting a repeat of the first night's late entrance.

Class time came, and my students started arriving. (Bolivia, like most Latin American cultures, treats time differently than we do, and it's rare for everyone to have arrived for an event by the announced start time.)

The first shift of students arrived, and I began to think things were going to work out after all.

But then word came that, for some reason, I would not have a translator for the evening. Later, we would find out that a translator had been scheduled but had been forced to cancel out unexpectedly. At the time, we had no explanation and I had no idea whether anyone had even bothered to get a translator in the first place. I seethed with anger at the official who I thought was responsible for the situation.

There are some LEAMIS workshops that could be taught relatively well even without benefit of translation. Some physical skills can easily be demonstrated, with only a few simple words or phrases thrown in by way of explanation.

But computer software, and Internet services, are a completely different matter. Debra knows more Spanish than I do, although neither of us is fluent, and we tried, as best we could, to get some of our students started with setting up Skype accounts. But there were a million little hurdles to overcome. I started my presentation by showing them how to go to the Skype web page and download the software. But I wasn't sure they would understand that this was a one-time process; once the software had been downloaded and installed on a given computer, it would not need to be downloaded again.

Another example: how do you explain, without benefit of a translator, the difference between your real name and the "user name" that you select for a chat, e-mail or Skype account? Also, since the web pages and the downloaded computer software were set up to display in Spanish, I would sometimes not be sure how to answer a question about what was on screen, simply because I couldn't read it.

We quickly discovered that signing up for a Skype account requires an e-mail address, which half of the students didn't have. So we had to stop and try to sign up those students for a free Hotmail account. Would they understand what was going on, or would they think that this was just another part of the Skype sign-up process?

We made as much progress as we could with the first shift, and then the second. It was nowhere near the disaster which had taken place the first night, but it wasn't exactly satisfying either. Also, I noted that some of the teens were already pretty Internet-savvy. Why couldn't they teach a course like this themselves? LEAMIS' whole goal is to encourage self-sufficiency, and this seemed like a case where the community already had the resources to do what needed to be done. What was I doing there?

After the first two nights, we still hadn't had any actual Skype conversations. We only had two headsets -- one which I had brought with me from the states, and another which the school had managed to scrape up somewhere. My plan was, as soon as we had two people up and running, to let them talk to each other, just so that they could see how the process works. From that point, we could start swapping people out so that everyone could have a chance to talk.

The third night, thank heavens, we had a translator again. We managed to get some people up and talking, and I began to feel better about the situation.

Even so, as the night progressed, different students were at different stages of the process, and others were amusing themselves while waiting their turn at the headset or what have you. Sometimes, it was simpler for the translator just to answer simple questions herself. A small boy who had been brought along by one of the adult students was sitting on the floor leaning against one wall, and at one point, with little else to do, I plopped myself down on the floor next to him and started looking up a couple of computer terms in my Spanish-English dictionary.

Later on in the evening, Debra approached me excitedly, with the translator in tow.

"Tell him what you just told me," Debra said to her.

The translator proceeded to tell me how amazed she was that we'd gotten as far the previous night as we had, teaching e-mail and getting people signed up for Skype accounts despite the language barrier.

At the end of the evening, as we were shutting down the computers, Ronald handed me the headset I had brought with me to Bolivia to use in the class -- a little $15 model, especially designed for Skype, which I had purchased at Wal-Mart. I handed it back to him and told him the school should keep it.

TOMORROW: The buddy system