Because you couldn’t go online, everything had to be done in person. Patzer spent most of his time busing and hiking from village to village, often just to reinstall software with a USB drive.

“Imagine you have hundreds of these little villages that take two or three days to travel to. I mean, the logistical nightmare of the whole thing is just bonkers,” Patzer says.

But Oscar Becerra, who used to run the laptop program at the Education Ministry, says it’s still an improvement.

“If you bring a computer to a kid who’s living in the 15th century, you’re bringing him to the mid-20th century,” Becerra says. —NPR.