This is what a Peace Corps experience is.

When I first volunteered for Peace Corps I knew I wanted to help.  I wanted to help, but had no idea what that would actually mean.  Wanting to help is a great idea, actually helping seems to be something else.  The image in my head of what it would mean to be genuinely helpful has been elusive and fuzzy.  In a euphoric moment however, I have recently encountered and experienced exactly what it was I was seeking.  I have had my first real Peace Corps experience.

I have been teaching computers at the Primary School for a few weeks now.  At the end of last term I pushed several teachers through an intense crash course on everything the XO computers could do.  In case you aren’t familiar with what the XO is, I can tell you a bit of what it is.

The One-Laptop-Per-Child program (www.laptop.org) was started by Nicholas Negroponte about a decade ago.  Nicholas Negroponte was the director for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab for many years.  The Media Lab is one of the most prominent and advanced technology centers in the world. MIT’s Media Lab could be considered a rocket-powered space station on an intergalactic voyage.  The mission of this voyage is to create new ideas and new technologies, and then applying these ideas and technology.  I’ve been a fan of Nicholas Negroponte for a number of years, particularly after reading his book Living Digital.  After Professor Negroponte left MIT he started working on the OLPC project, whose aim was to enable all children of the globe to have access to information technology.  Focusing on economically poor countries and students, the OLPC foundation created the XO.  The XO was designed to be a low-cost computer, low enough to be put in the hands of every small child in the developing world.

It’s not a great computer by the standards we expect today.  It wouldn’t have been an icon of powerful computing 5 years ago either.  It has a 266 Mhz processor, which is slower than most of our phones.  It has 1GB of memory which actually is the short-end of what many new netbooks are coming with.  It has roughly a gigabyte of storage.  These all might be seen as shortcomings in a computer for us.  If we saw it on the shelves at Best Buy most of us would walk away, or at least the sales guy would try to get you to move on.  These features are only describable to the children using one word.  A word that is continually overused in modern society, just ask Bill Engvall.  These computers are Awesome. I can share with you a glimpse of the joy children experience with these computers, only because it has been captured in a few photograph  An unrelated survey was given to a 5th grade class this week.  In the survey it asked the children what is their favorite class.  So many of them answered computers, I’m honored.

The first class was fun.  It consisted of trying to get children to point out the various part of the XO.  What are the speakers, where is the camera.  Almost everyone has played with a cellphone here, so it became “the camera that is just like the one in the cellphone.”  And the speakers were “just like the ones on the really loud buses.” Most children memorized the parts of the computer pretty fast, but lacked mastery in approaching the mouse.  The mouse in the case of XOs a touchpad.  I still feel obligated to call it a mouse, because 30 years after its creation, the mouse is no longer a pointing device.  It is a concept.  And it is a concept that I took as granted.  I somehow lured myself into believing that mouse usage was universal, and had somehow already established itself in the collective unconscious of children all over the globe.  The lesson learned by me was not to skip anything with these children.  Any knowledge I have is completely new and foreign to them, including the simple word “click.”

At the end of the first lesson, after getting the children to turn on and immediately turn off their computer, I asked them an interesting question. One of the more popular questions asked by Peace Corps volunteers to their students is “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Because the question has been asked here by plenty of volunteers before I got here, I was prepared for the answers.  Almost all students answered one of a few things.  Police, soldiers, teachers, and nurses.  One student wanted to be a banker, and the other an accountant.  It is true that children want to grow-up to be the occupations they are exposed to.  The children are ready and ripe for something as intense and powerful as computer and the internet.  I feel there is a critical mass of curiosity building in these students, and computers are the perfect relief valve.  Not to be caught in a trap of dismissing the children’s interest as ‘status quo’ or ‘to be expected,’ I asked them an additional question.  “How do you think computers would be used in the job.”  A few kids muttered some answers, but one hopeful policeman said “it would help me catch thugs.”  These kids were ready for computers and I was ready to get them working.

The first class was an introduction to me as to what my service could actually look like.  It wasn’t until my second class though that I felt my own awe at what I was experiencing.  Our second class consisted of a review from the first class, including “phone cameras” and “bus speakers.” My main focus was trying to get the students acclimated to moving a ball through a maze in a very simple game.  It is literally a maze, such as the ones we find on the back of cereal boxes.  The object is simple, get the ball to the end of the maze.  Movement requires the use of the arrow keys.  Up, down, left, right.  Simple concepts once you have been exposed to them, and had time to experience just what “left vs. right” might mean.

And it was in that moment when I was looking at the different faces in the room that I realized I was engulfed in the “help” I had so incredibly wanted to bring.  I was aware of the physical presence the silence of the students had on me.  I heard nothing bu intensity from the students. I immediately went to the front of the room, something told me I needed to see this from a beter perspective.  The silence of the students was they key for me to recognize that something was happening.  The students were entranced by the glow of the screen, and completely absorbed in the decision of going “left vs. right.”

Knowing that I was there and I helped these students engage a part of their brain that up until that moment was untouched, gave me the incredible satisfaction of helping.  And it gave me my first real Peace Corps experience.