I am sitting on the outbound from Bamako to Charles de Gaulle and thinking about what might have been the most amazing event that happened anywhere in the world today – the fact that Mark at Labtracker received an email from Maggie who was sitting in GAIA’s Hope Center clinic in Sikoro, Mali, working on the “donated” computer. The internet worked! Maggie asked Mark gently, politely for help from a place as far away from Ground Zero as one could possibly be. You are my heros today. You are.
If I give you the visual picture (or you can see it yourself using google earth at the northeast corner of Bamako, Mali) perhaps you will see why I am so amazed and thrilled and ecstatic – look and you would see mud, and dogs underfoot, and the rocks in the stream bed that we call the road in front of the clinic, and abandoned stuff, and happy kids (picture attached), and the worn desk that the even more worn computer sits on, and the patients patiently waiting
I can’t believe it myself. There are two travel-battered but functioning computers, that are sending email and receiving information about HIV/AIDS treatment right there at the fingertips of the Hope Center doctors, and they are working as of today. . . It’s like going to the end of the earth (practically speaking, since the taxis we take can go no further) and finding a superhighway right there. INTERNET!. EMAIL! COMPUTERS IN THE CLINIC IN SIKORO THAT ARE SENDING EMAIL!.
Here are the people who made that happen: Thank you Matt Berg of Geek Corps Mali who convinced me that it could happen, and Thank you Arturo Peres Reyes who took his own computer (and his wife’s) and put them in my hands outside a tapas bar somewhere in Berkeley, and Thank you Matt Obert who figured out which thing went with which and put open source (low giga) software on the computers to run them, and Thank you Dan Davis who donated the labtracker software, and Thank you Mark at Labtracker who patiently walked us through the install (over the course of quite a few days), and Thank you Maggie who was right there at the interface between internet and the dirt and the mud and the stones, making sure all the electronic bits worked after waiting literally six hours for the download, and Thank you Ludovic who simply walked in, plugged the cord in, did his magic, and “ping” sent me an email right away. That made it possible for Maggie to ask for help FROM THE CLINIC. That’s why, Mark, that email, that you received today, from Maggie, was a small miracle.
With that miracle, in that moment, in that magical moment, anything at all became possible.
If we can bring internet to Sikoro, we can do anything.
Look at the street. See the town that surrounds it in your mind. Cry some tears of joy.
If you know anyone else who wants to get on this team – this miracle team that can move mountains – tell them about this. Tell them we are building a clinic at the end of the earth, to stop AIDS in its tracks. Not only do we bring condoms, and medicine, and HIV specialists, but we are bringing information – the very latest, now, new, hot information to the doctors who are taking care of our patients. Send anyone who wants to help to http://www.GAIAvaccine.org. We’ve only just begun. There’s a clinic to build, and patients to care for, and somewhere in the future, a vaccine that will end AIDS.
This is amazing. We are a community of people who can make miracles happen. I believe we can.