Virtual Meets Real - Scary!

Remember when I was left alone in Mukono for three months by my husband...? He went on sabbatical to write his PhD... The first night he had gone, when I was feeling very strange and bereft, I had a facebook message from Dutch friends - do you want to play Settlers on-line tonight? This was amazing, because, they were by then in Mexico, and I was in Uganda - and yet we played a real game of Settlers of Catan, with no delays, on a games website. You can chat to each other in the box at the side, trade cards, move your pieces - it was really great fun, and felt just like being with those great people.

But just for a few minutes, I was on the games website when they had left it - and a "voice" in a box invited me to join another game. I knew that if you didn't have a "real" friend to play with, you also could play with bots, who had names - so I asked this newcomer, "Er, excuse me, but are you a real person - or a bot?" "Haha I'm real, I'm ...  from Holland." I was outta there! I didn't even reply!

That was ages ago, but last week something else funny happened, where virtual became real. I was making some favourites list, of books set in Africa, on Goodreads. I gave five stars to "Blood River" by Tim Butcher, and to "Dance with the Devil" also by him. Two minutes later, an email appeared in my inbox - from Tim Butcher! I opened it thinking it was some automated reply - but it really was an email from Tim Butcher, thanking me for giving his books a high rating, and saying how, as a relatively new author, he is still thrilled to get reader feed-back. I was so excited to get his email! I wrote back saying that I had truly loved his books and had recommended them to zillions of people. But I didn't tell him I had reviewed his book on my blog - because it suddenly felt like I had been over-enthusiastic and maybe even a bit gushy! If I had know Tim Butcher was going to read my review, I might have written it a bit differently! Now he might read this. Oh dear!

Then again, a while ago I had written a blog about my two years in Zambia at a girls school. Well, this week I got an email out of the blue, from a former pupil of Mukinge, not from my time there - but she said she read my blog about the school and just appreciated me going there and shared happy memories of that school.  It was really lovely to hear from her. We both ended our emails, "God bless you." That's a good outcome of blogging, right - connecting with someone and sharing good memories and some encouragement.

It's just that when virtual proves to be real after all, it is unnerving. It's probably important for us to realise that. We are seeing young people getting into all kinds of trouble because of not realising that. We are seeing people saying terrible things about other people on Twitter - perhaps because they don't quite realise that - would they say that thing to or about the person if they were standing right in front of them?

Strange new world we live in.