I decided that my “Meet My Students” posts don’t have to be about just, well, my students. Omwen (pronounced oh-mway-nay) Sam is our school’s lab technician who also doubles as our librarian as well as technology manager (i.e. charging mobile phones and managing our solar power system).
Omwen Sam
He is 52. The first born of six children, four of which died of AIDS in the 1990’s. He lives about one kilometer away from the school and rides his bike in everyday to open everything up; he is the man with the keys.
Sam is great. He’s one of my favorite people at the school and in my community. He’s almost always happy. He must have a lot of things providing happiness for him in his life.
He’s always interested in what I’m doing and what’s going on in my life. He’s fun to talk to. He provides a refreshing presence during some dreary mornings in the village.
I taught him to type using my laptop. Since then, he has been tutoring himself on our lab computer and learning how to use Excel and Word. Pretty cool.
Like I said, he manages our power supply and charges cell phones. In Kamuge, this is a very busy position to have. Since power is hard to come by, people (pretty much anyone in the surrounding community) always want their phones charged. And the politics surrounding this issue are complicated.
The school is only supposed to charge phone for teachers and staff. My head teacher erupted with passion today as he was discussing this policy and the lack of adherence to it. We decided to discuss it amongst the three of us to reinforce the need to follow this policy.
The problem is that whoever agrees to charge a phone for a community member makes about 300 shillings. Good money for them. My neighbor has been charging phones for people out of my office without my knowing, shady. But he is making a killing! Time to collect the keys. Just another day in Kamuge.
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