The big news today on my “Road to Busara Road” is that I’ve booked my airline tickets to Kenya! I’ve also booked my ticket from Nairobi to Kisumu after the SLS program. Haven’t yet figured out how I’m going to get from Kisumu out to Kaimosi Mission. Was thinking of renting a car, but my agent at the Mennonite Travel Service gently guided me away from making that drive alone, especially late in the day (“The roads are pretty interesting out there,” he said).
Today I leave for another writing sojourn at Pendle Hill, trying to get some kind of a draft written all the way to the end of the novel before I leave for Kenya. The weather forecast is for clear, sunny, and warm days ahead. Perfect fall weather to enjoy Pendle Hill’s beautiful campus – too bad I’ll be in my room with the shades drawn!
And finally, on the computer front – just to wrap up this lousy story line – I’ve decided, after a third failed attempt at salvaging something from the hard drive and a third costly estimate on a “clean room” recovery, that I’m going to just give up and reconstruct what files I can from old flash and Zip drives, plus old printouts. I do want to give a shout-out to Computer Troubleshooters here in Philadelphia. They put considerable time and effort into working on my computer, and then they didn’t charge me a cent because ultimately they weren’t able to recover my data. So I’ve given them the old machine, which they’ll fix up with a new drive and donate to a nearby zoo – a somewhat happy ending to this sad techno-saga.
Now it’s onward with the work ahead. As ever, thanks to all who have been such wonderful support!
Busara Blog 
Have a productive time at Pendle Hill. And, though it’s sad news about the computer recovery, it’s a pleasure to imagine zoo animals using your old machine. Imagine what a tiger can do with Windows Vista! Remember, you can use our office scanner to convert the old printouts into files.
Thanks, Sam!