Most of this week has been very frustrating. The internet signal has been weak at Tumona
Secondary School, and we've been struggling to find a way to get a stronger
signal. And Eric has been struggling
with the digital library we're trying to install at the school – a variety of
problems have cropped up requiring him to re-format SD cards, download
software, and copy large amounts of files.
It doesn't help that the electricity keeps going out and that the
internet, even at the hostel, is slow and unreliable. It especially doesn't help that the school is
having a bunch of new chairs and tables made out back by a welder who is using
the school's electricity – which consists of only one circuit. We figured out too late that when the
arc-welder makes an arc, the voltage in the school's one circuit swings widely
enough to corrupt the data on the SD card of the Raspberry Pi; at least it
didn't fry any of our electronics (that we know about).
Eric at work at his station
Monday we went to Arusha to buy some
equipment. We had been told that several
cell phone carriers offer more powerful modem/routers with external antennas,
that might be able to pick up the weak 3G signal. We also had figured out that we had better
get a voltage regulator and an uninterruptible power supply. Of course, the VodaCom claimed to have the
router we needed but it was out of stock; a man at a very slick electronics
store also advised us to get a “booster”, which is “exactly what you want” --
but it was out of stock. He offered to
find out when it would be back in stock, or offered to have one hand-carried
from Dubai. In the end we settled on an
AirTel modem/router which was supposed to be able to do the job.
Monday afternoon we returned to Tumona to
discover that, as feared, the AirTel modem was completely unable to do the job,
and we were stuck with another useless piece of equipment. That evening we called a Board member of
Foot2Afrika named African who sells very expensive remote internet access
packages; we didn't think he could do anything for us but he agreed to come out
to the school.
Tuesday, the power was out at Tumona, and Eric
took a taxi back to the hostel so he could work on the software where he hoped
there would be electricity and internet.
African came out to the school and agreed that the signal was too weak
for our modems, and that his service was too expensive for the school. However, he called a client who had recently
upgraded from an antenna-based 3G system, and she offered to sell us her
antenna. She was all the way up in
Marangu (about 40 kilometers away, high up the slopes of Kilimanjaro). But at the end of the day Karen and I piled
into Lukumay's car to make the drive.
Meanwhile Eric was sitting at the hostel, in deepening frustration with
the way the software and hardware for the Raspberry Pi were acting.
I should mention that all this time Karen was
teaching health classes to the Form 3 and 4 students, demonstrating condom use
and answering students' questions such as: “Do condoms give
you fungus?” “If a girl pees right after sex, can she get pregnant?” “If you
are homosexual, is it wrong?” “Where can I get a condom?” Her classes have been
very intense and rich experiences, and afterwards I always see her surrounded by students still
asking questions. The big frustration
for her has been the fact that there seems to be no way to set up condom
availability for young people at the school or in the community. She's pretty determined, and hasn't given up.
Condoms
Wednesday, I went out to Tumona hauling my
suitcase full of random cables and electronics, along with the new antenna,
which looked pretty much like the radar antenna on my father's boat. After some trial and error to figure out the
right direction to point the antenna, I had a great signal, and reasonably fast
internet coming into my computer. Peter
the welder (have I mentioned him before?) was on hand to help me screw the
antenna to a tree so we could be sure we had a stable signal – we did. As I sat outside at my laptop, a crowd of
students and a few teachers gathered round.
After some discussion with the welders who were making the chairs, Peter
built an iron bracket to attach the antenna to the roof, and getting wifi into
the school became a fairly simple matter.
It would be somewhat slow for the U.S., but it was truly fantastic for a
village school in Africa.
Peter with his Bracket
I refused to climb this ladder to attach the antenna
to the roof beams. Peter was not so squeamish.
I came upon this scene too late to prevent it, so all I could do
was to photograph it.
If you look closely, you can see the white antenna
sticking off of the bracket.
I called Eric, who was feeling pretty optimistic
by that time, and he came out to the school where, after some more work he had
the digital library up and running. By
the end of the day we had the basic setup done – we still had to relocate some
cables, adjust the antenna, and add a network extender to bring the signal
further into the school. But it was a
very pleasurable end to several days of hard, frustrating work.
Today was a day of configuring computers, and showing
teachers how to use the various educational materials on the digital library or
to find materials online. There were a
few frustrations, the main one being that when the antenna was attached to the
roof it wasn’t quite pointing in the right direction for maximum signal
reception; but it’s too high up to reach with the ladders that have been
available. When more than two computers
are using the internet it slows to a crawl.
And Eric can’t get the indexing function to work on our digital library,
so the only way to find anything is to browse topics. Still, it’s a huge step forward, and at the
end of the day we were rewarded by a crowd of teachers and students clustered
around the four laptops, completely caught up in trying out the new technology.
Tomorrow we will try to resolve some final issues, and keep training teachers and students. It's Friday the 13th. Fingers crossed.
Saturday the three of us are off on safari with Johnson. Karen and Eric planned the safari and had invited me to come, but I declined to accept until I felt sure we would not just get the equipment up and running but would also have at least some opportunity to show it to the teachers.
