So we’ve been living with a dysfunctional generator for a while and although we were equipped with a small back-up generator, this back-up contraption has also experienced a number of near death experiences when we did manage to get it going and temporarily supplying with a few volts to run the bare minimum at school. We’ve weathered quite a few days without technology, lights, and air conditioning. Those days gave a whole new meaning to ‘back to basics’ in our little realm of education.
On Thursday, I decided to commemorate the arrival of our new generator with a special inaugural ceremony. We had finished the installation of the new machine the day before and had waited until the late afternoon when the kids were gone to light her up. This is a beautiful piece of sophisticated machinery, if you’re into that kind of thing. State of the art with multiple dials, an impressive looking LCD panel, well placed switches, and an array of non-threatening, well defined buttons with symbols on them telling us what we’ll get when we press them. Compared to what we had before and aesthetically speaking, this thing was almost ostentatious in its lack of ostentation. It looks like something Steve Jobs would have thought up.
Bangoura, our head maintenance guy, and I were privy to a 20 minute training workshop highlighting the workings of our new machine, especially how to turn the thing on in the morning and turn it off when closing down the campus in the afternoon. Our trainer was this enthusiastic electrician fellow by the name of Dyutit. Dyutit is an Indian man who could probably write a book about the intricacies of electrical generators. Unfortunately, he speaks a very broken English laced with a heavy indian flavored accent, to a point that I found him almost incomprehensible. Bangoura, on the other hand, doesn’t speak nor understand English all together, therefore he was a very good student in that he did not say anything, nor ask any questions, just smiled and nodded. However, that said, Bangoura did give me a thumbs up when Dyutit pointed to the Red button and said “off”, and then to the Green button and said “on”. As far as I was concerned, that's basically all we needed to know, right?
All the rest of the stuff Dyutit told us, in my opinion at the time, was irrelevant. But then, as time goes by and I am getting older, and wiser, and as I approach the threshold of eldership, I seem to be saying this about a lot of things. I’ve become so much more selective in regards to the stuff that I choose to assimilate and store in my brain. Wasn’t it Einstein who said that man only uses 7% of his brain? I like to think that I’ve already used up my 7%. I have to be careful not to clutter any redundant stuff in my brain, otherwise there will be a shortage of space when I really do need to learn something. But then, come to think of it, I began thinking this way right about the time that I was in Grade 2. Not that I lay awake at night worrying about this, but it is food for thought. Or is it? All the while thinking and worrying about this, is this not in itself taking up space in my brain? I digress...back to the generator.
At the end of Dyutit’s seminar, he asked the usual are there any questions? question. Nope, I said, so let’s get this baby running. Dyutit pointed to the green button and in his heavy indian accent flavored broken English muttered something that I did not understand but was convinced that he was saying, I am leaving you the honors of pressing the green button to start up the machine. I pressed the button, and the big beautiful blue box started purring, like a big contented lap pussycat. It was music to my ears.
The following morning I arrived at school and was immediately struck by how quiet and serene it was. Without that aggravating rumble of the old generator, not to mention the smell generated by the pollutive exhaust spewing from the old retired pathogenic piece of junk, our campus’ QOL index (quality of livability) had vastly improved. Our school had become a much more livable and pleasant place to be. From my office, I could even hear the kids playing out on the field as opposed to the constant rumble of the generator. Again, it was music to my ears.
This new generator represented a milestone in the history of our school so I decided to make a big deal of it at the morning assembly. Five minutes before the assembly, I instructed Bangoura to turn the generator off so that we could flamboyantly start it up again at the assembly. The generator was running so quietly that no one noticed when it was shut off, except perhaps for a few of the high school girls who were already on their Facebooks and the sudden shut down cut them off from one of their 16,348,549 token friends.
Got everyone around the new machine and randomly selected a student who would be the ‘chosen one’ to push the button to launch the generator. Actually, it wasn’t that random. I chose Djebril. Djebril is my new found buddy. He is 4 years old and will be graduating with honors from our Pre-Kindergarten next week. Since a couple of weeks ago, Djebril and I have become soul mates. It happened over an intense conversation over cars. You see, Djebril’s dad bought a new car last month, almost the same time as we got our new car. Well, it wasn’t exactly at the same time; Djebril’s dad bought his car last October, but according to Djebril, it was exactly at the same time that I got mine. Also, his dad’s new car is exactly like mine, except his is a different make and model, and, oh yeah, mine is white and his is black. But, it is exactly the same car. When I pointed out to Djebril that my car was white and his dad’s was black, he asked “why”? Anyways, I chose not to dig deeper in search of an answer to Djebril’s existentialistic question and I told him to go play on the swings. Djebril and I have been buds ever since.
So Thursday morning we’re all assembled around the new generator. Djebril is standing on a chair with his finger ready to push the green button. I improvise one of those short yet eloquent kennedyesque ask-not-what/we-are-gathered-here orations before inviting everyone to join me for a countdown.
Trying not to look too disappointed, I dismissed the kids and told them that we’d have to do this again once we figured out what had gone wrong. I explained to Djebril that he had done well and sent him off on his way. My little buddy was obviously clueless about the anticlimactic disappointing malfunction that had just occurred. As a matter of fact, none of the kids seemed the least disheartened by what had just happened.
As I was making my way to the office to phone Dyutit, one of the high school girls came up to me and said that they had a generator similar to ours at home, and that this generator needed to cool down before it would start up again. Aha, I faintly recalled Dyutit saying something to that effect yesterday during our training...some kind of safety feature which would disable the generator for 20 minutes after shutting it down so that it would have enough time to cool down before starting it up again. I guess this was one of the tidbits of information that I should have kept in my memory bank instead of deleting it directly into the garbage bin of my brain. This nonchalant attitude towards collecting and storing data in the archives of my tired brain had come back to bite me. I guess I need to revisit that. Soon after, we got the generator purring again, all the school’s AC’s began humming and the high school girls returned to their friends on Facebook.
I admit I was a bit disappointed about the embarrassing failed launch. At recess, the staff and I just laughed it off. Sure, it didn’t work, it was broken, it malfunctioned, it was disheartening, it was unexpected, it was unpredictable, it needed to be fixed. But then, it was so Africa.
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