Lost Data

The last few days have been a roller coaster ride.  The weather hit record highs for early March.  Monday, at 110 degrees Fahrenheit, the Back-UPS security system failed, and the library computer was forcibly shut down twice, damaging the hard drive the second time.   Unfortunately, it was open to the library’s ResourceMate program at the time and the data was lost.   It was a long four days, but finally, after reinstalling the software several times, with many glitches, we were able to get the back-up data from two weeks previous to work.  That meant two weeks of data lost, but at least the lost data was that from the slow Internet time during the FESPACO film festival when library activity was considerably reduced.  After spending 2 ½ hours yesterday in a chat session with a representative from the software company, I was relieved to find that the misbehaving back-up data file was not corrupted as suspected, but actually worked.

The other blow was the loss of my cell phone yesterday, containing important French and US contact information. The phone mysteriously disappeared from my purse and I don’t know whether it was stolen, or just fell out at an inopportune moment.  It had been an unlocked phone, so I could easily switch SIM cards depending on whatever country I was in.  As of a few weeks ago, under pressure from US telephone providers, Congressional legislation has been enacted making unlocking future phones bought from these telephone companies illegal.  I have another phone with me, but it is locked so that it is useless to me here except as a camera and an alarm clock.

The missing telephone

This afternoon, as a much needed change of pace, my housemate Rebecca and I will be taking a bus to Bobo-Dioulasso (Burkina Faso's second largest city) and the following day on to Banfora, to see the waterfalls and unusual land formations there.  Monday, I hope to meet with a representative of FAVL, Friends of African Village Libraries, a U.S. based organization that works in a number of locations here in Burkina Faso.