Church of the Brethren Sudan Initiative

Even preparing for this whole trip has been so...African. So many details, most of which don't come together until... they finally come together, or we try Plan B. Here's a case in point:

I finally get the laptop to take along two days ago, on Thursday, three days before we were to leave, and realized that I had no way to power it off the solar panel unless I obtained a converter. So after searching for the part on the internet without much success, I called Dell. A helpful customer service rep worked hard to make sure that the parts would go out the same day, shipped overnight, even though the computer system stated that the scheduled ship day would be next week.

Hallelujah! By 11:00a yesterday, Friday, I had the Dell shipments in hand.

Fifteen minutes later... I discovered they shipped the wrong part. So another quick call to Dell... they tracked down the right part that I had actually ordered, but would not send things for a Saturday delivery.

So... so I called the company in Minneapolis that manufacturers these things for Dell, and they agreed to ship me the part overnight with guaranteed Saturday delivery... and this morning, it arrived.

Well... "all" I need to do now is to wrap up all my responsibilities here for the next month (who will be making sure to look to see if I have bills due? is that class ready to roll?), test everything to make sure it works... and get packed. I'm guessing that I'll get very little sleep tonight. {I was right--I didn't. --EE}

--Enten