More News From Tumona Secondary School

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.