A (Very) African Exam - Written by Chris

Note: In order to understand this blog post, you should know that a dongle is an external USB that you can plug into your PC to get internet on the go. They are very common in Africa, and not-so-common in the Western world.

How do we do school in Africa? That's a long story to tell, involving a lot of adventure, mishaps, and bemusing situations. Right now as I right this blog post offline I am sitting outside a bicycle repair shop on a broken lawn chair in the middle of the city. This may not be the way an average Canadian kid prepares for an exam, but this is how I am spending my day before a final exam which will take place tomorrow. Why? Because I need internet for the exam. You are probably completely confused now, so allow me to back up.
[Note: the rest of the blog post was written about a week after my exam.]

Me and Johnny have been homeschooled for as long as we can remember. Ditto for our younger sister Sarah, and (soon) our four year old sister Elianna. Our family homeschooled while we lived in Canada, and that didn't change when we moved here to Malawi - if anything, getting decent education at a “conventional” school would have been much more difficult (and expensive) here, since we would have had to go to boarding school to receive an education that would meet international standards. So we continued home schooling, even into high school. I am currently finishing grade 11, and Johnny is finishing grade 9. We generally take between 8 to 10 courses per year, some with text books and some through an online government school based out of Lindsay, Ontario (hence this blog post). Anyhow, fast forward to about a week ago, when I was preparing for an online exam for my course Environmental Science (hats off to my teacher, “Mystery”, for an awesome semester). These exams are worth 30% of your final mark, and you have to take them at someone else’s house so that the school knows you didn’t cheat. I asked my friend’s mom, “Aunty” Leslie to be my proctor, and she readily agreed - with one hesitation. Their internet was extremely slow, and she recommend that I bring my own internet source. “No problem, I can bring my external internet dongle,” I replied. I knew that the dongle was out of repair, but I figured it would be a simple matter to have it fixed at the local internet shop. How hard could it be, right? Well… wrong.

About a week before my exam our 1998 Colorado SUV broke down, and a gaggle of visiting mechanics failed to fix it (a week after the exam, it’s still broken). This pushed dad into a flurry of stressed activity as he tried to figure out how to get our new solar system home (thank you so much for donating it, Warkworth Free Methodist Church) from the trade capital (Blantyre), fix the car, and also not put our ministry here on the back burner. “If worst comes to worst I’ll get on my bike and head downtown to get the dongle fixed,” I told dad. The day before my exam, I decided that time was running out, and me and Johnny saddled up and took a scenic 3 or 4 kilometer bike ride into the town centre. We first headed to “Africycle”, an NGO that sells and repairs bikes, to get our back brakes fixed since neither of us had fully functioning back brakes (which, trust me, is not a good thing on our mountainous roads). While the bikes were repaired I walked a block to the internet kiosk, hoping to find a techy who could help me fix the dongle. In my pocket I had about 60,000 Malawian Kwacha (about a 80$ USD), partially to buy bananas (a staple in our family), pay for our bike repairs, and also to guarantee that we had a lot of extra money to buy a new dongle. And in my backpack I had the dongle along with a computer to test it on (since the “techy’s” don’t have their own laptops). Anyhow, I walked down the dusty, busy street - past an open-air welding shop and a mini-bus station - feeling like a very rich man. I got to the internet shop only to discover that they were closed. I’m not sure why since Eid al-Fitr had been the previous week and there was no national holiday, but closed they were and there was no arguing the fact. There were a few internet service guys outside the shop selling 4G SIM-cards to Malawians, and they directed me to a friend who was, apparently, a techy. This man explained to me that the SIM-card in my dongle had probably expired from lack of use (we normally use our router for internet), and directed me to the 4G stand so I could get a new SIM-card. He said that once I had bought the SIM-card I would have to go home and reinstall the driver software, and I complied, slipping the new card into my pocket as I headed back to see how the bike repairs where going. When I arrived I sat on a rickety plastic lawn chair waiting for the bikes to be repaired, chatting with the Malawian guys and writing the beginning part of this blog post on my computer (which, remember, I had in the backpack). In about twenty minutes our bikes were repaired and good-as-new thanks to the Africycle guys, so me and Johnny biked back home, choosing a scenic route from which we could watch the beginnings of a sunset creep over the beautiful Malawian countryside. On our way we passed dad, who was also on a bike and headed to the government buildings in the old quarter of the city so that he could pay the import taxes for our solar system. Needless to say, it was a very bike-filled day. Before arriving home we stopped to buy a hand of bananas at a local roadside stop. Me and Johnny had a chuckle when it took a full five minutes for the shop owner and a Malawian lady to finish their chat before we were serviced.

Back home I plugged the dongle into my computer’s USB port, swapped the SIM cards, and reinstalled the software. Surprise, surprise - it didn’t work. Fairly frustrated and starting to wonder if I would have internet for my exam, I waited for dad to return home and told him the whole saga. Dad shared my frustration, and promised that we would figure it out the next day - the day of my exam, which was going to take place at 3PM. Next morning dad biked up to our colleagues house to borrow their dongles and see if we could get them running. Meanwhile, I did some last minute studying, adding to an online study document that my online classmates back in Canada had created. Dad returned with the dongles from our colleagues, but they didn’t work either. By this time it was about 11AM, and I was starting to stress. We ate lunch and then dad biked into town with the SIM-cards, dongles, and a computer, hoping to get them repaired at the shop while running some other errands. I continued studying, on Johnny's computer since mine was having issues; all the while I was watching nervously as the clock ticked its way towards 3PM. Dad finally arrived at the gate around 2:30, panting hard after a long uphill bike ride (kudos to you, dad). I shoved the dongle and a computer in a backpack just as our colleague Marieke dropped by to pick me and Sarah up - Sarah on her way to horseback riding lessons at a local farm along with Marieke’s girls, and me on my way to the exam at “Aunty” Leslie’s house. I arrived at the proctor’s house around 2:50, with just barely enough time to set-up my computer and internet and log into the exam. I was just thankful that the whole ordeal would soon be over. 3 hours later after a fairly tough exam I was finished, and Leslie’s husband (“Uncle” Robby) drove me home, along with his son Colin who came over to our place for a sleepover. Me, Johnny, and Colin had fun re-watching the Fellowship of the Ring and playing some old Wii games, and the day ended on a happy note.

Thus ends the saga of my exam. The lesson I have learned, for the umpteenth time, is that nothing is easy in Africa. I’m so thankful for my family, as well as our friends/colleagues, all of whom are so gracious when I’m up to my eyeballs in school work and need a helping hand.

Fun note: the bike repairs for my bike cost 1,500 Malawian Kwacha, and for Johnny's 500 Malawian Kwacha. That's a grand total of 3 or 4 Canadian dollars. The SIM card cost 500 Kwacha, which is about 1 dollar. Some things in Malawi are very cheap! On the other hand, you could pay 20$ for a simple block of cheese.