here are two pictures of typical village bridges. Papua New Guineans have an incredible sense of balance, rarely wear shoes, have very wide flat and thick soled feet. I've never seen one slip or fall (I've seen a few stagger).
So why do we care about these pictures of bridges other than that they are interesting to see?
Bridges are a huge thing here. The two main types, car bridges and foot bridges are both hazardous. The car bridges often wash out. There is so much rain here, that since moving here not a year goes by where some bridge somewhere isn't washed out making it so that travel and receiving supplies is difficult.
Everyone knows to do a bridge check before commencing a trip, otherwise you could face turning around. (a bridge check is asking around, and seeing who was last stuck at a bridge and if it's okay now.. it's all word of mouth, no official organization tracks bridge status).
Imagine you're a white-skin walking across this bridge with a laptop in your sack, and possibly some other electronic equipment. You definitely do not want to slip!
Well, as an I.T. guy, we often have to use variables to decide what types of laptops to buy or other items.
Criteria we use ranges, but among the top are:
-is it ruggedized?
-how long will the battery last?
'Ruggedized' defined: 'Able to be operational after being dropped, getting wet, having geckos live inside of it, will not short out when cockroaches climb inside, and rarely loses data when the wrong adaptor is used to charge it'
We've had laptops wind up at the bottom of the ocean, take a bath in a river, become a warm cozy home to several different types of creepy crawlies, rust over from living too close to the ocean, corroded internals and externals.
I once even had a hard drive enclosure corrode itself shut, such that I had to use a prybar to get the drive out to salvage the data. Once I did, I found gecko eggs inside.
And you know you live in a 3rd world country when a server crashes and your FIRST thought is 'a rat got inside and relieved itself on the power supply'
I recall crossing one such bridge trying to keep my balance, the nationals laughing at how uncoordinated I looked, and then having my daughter say 'daddy hold my hand, I need help'. Thinking 'wow, if I fall now I damage my daughter's sense of super-dad-dome'. But we got across fine. The trick with most things is to put fear aside and just do it.
Come on... anything else is boring (-;
Anyway, enjoy the pics.
