Crossing the Mississippi [2014-05-10]

Neal and I have enjoyed spending some of our vacation time each year bicycle touring on a tandem, including two west-to-east crossings of America.  Traveling from place to place by bicycle offers a unique perspective on the countryside, and oddly enough it also seems to offer so many metaphors that fit our work with Reneal IEO: the value of patience, the payoff of seemingly slow but sustained effort, the necessity of perseverance to continue through the varied but always-present challenges (headwind/traffic/bad roads/rain/flat tires/etc. in biking and hardware glitches/software bugs/heat/utility outages/complicated scheduling/etc. here).  One specific biking metaphor struck me this week.  On each of our long distance trips, there were complex emotions as we crossed the mighty Mississippi River: a feeling of joy and accomplishment, of so many miles behind us.  At the same time though, there was a sense of sadness combined with a sudden reminder of life-after-the-ride.  While there were many challenging miles yet to go, there was a realization as we crossed the river that the end of the long journey was now closer than the beginning.  So although we are here in the Philippines, this week it felt to me that (metaphorically at least) we “crossed the Mississippi”.

We are down to one more month here in the Philippines, and execution of our 2014 projects is coming to a close.  We look back at the road we’ve traveled this year and can see six new schools with the Reneal IEO low-cost computer system installed.  Our home school here in Compostela now has upgraded servers and reorganized IT labs.  Reneal IEO has shared trainings with many teachers and system administrators, and we have scouted for new schools for 2015 projects. There will be bumps in the road ahead almost certainly, but we feel so much joy at these successes and so much excitement for the school year ahead as these systems get used by students and teachers.

But… there are many miles to go yet before the end of this journey.  We have one more school where we will do an installation next week.  We will make another follow-up visit at each of the six 2014 schools.  Neal is still working far into the night to get the system to run on two different types of NComputing nodes.  Jade, Ma’am Nerry, and I are preparing sessions for In-Service Training for the teachers at the end of May.  Neal has some Philippines Student Information System database work to do yet.  And this last week was just one of those weeks when it seemed that there was a headwind blowing no matter which way we turned.  Each day brought some unexpected little software problem that Neal had to solve.  Jade and I battled flaky computers.  We spent last Saturday on a shopping excursion in Cebu City to purchase parts for the new server that Neal assembled Sunday; the purchases required seven separate bank ATM interactions (not all successful).  Meanwhile Neal and I pined for spinach and falafel wraps and Fry’s Electronics, and it’s been 90 degrees in our bedroom each night. 

Even so, we both feel deep sadness that our time here in Cebu is winding down.  Soon it will be back to “life-after-the-ride”, and we’ll be missing the daily joys and challenges of our work in the schools here.  And as any bicycle tourist will tell you, the thing we always miss the most is the kindness of the people we encounter along the way.  Our evaluation visits this week were very exciting!  So thankfully we have our 2015 projects ahead to keep energizing us, both for our last month here and in “life-after-the-ride” in America.  Visit the “How to Help” page to see how you can support Reneal IEO 2015 projects in the Philippines.