Heavy rains, strong winds, lightning, thunder, the sound of crickets and frogs, normally rule night-time in Sahn Malen. What normally starts off as a decent night with almost no disturbances after the noisy generator is off will certainly turn into a mozzie carnival once our bodies dissipate heat enough to agitate them. It is not unusual to hear one or two buzzing mozzies at 3am even after a pre-slumber raid with “shell-tox”-the wonderful insect killer spray.
A silent night is normally disturbed by one or two flashlights and the sound of buckets of water aimed at the toilet. The word “flooding” has become a household phenomenon. I coined the word “flooding” to describe a condition known to medical professionals as diarrhea. With limited knowledge on the prognosis of our condition, we are yet to devise a strategy to circumvent this problem even with the intervention of our mini CVS which boasts Imodium and other anti-diarrheals. What started out with one individual has now circulated the whole camp with only two strong survivor strains failing to contract the disease. It might be time to call FEMA.
“Cokorioko”- the cock crow commences around 6am. One or two GMin members wake up and inform every other member that it is now dawn-time to wake up and get ready for the day trip to the neighboring villages. Dress up, get some food, do some packing, upload-the morning briefing- and take the road. Myself and Faaez get to stay back and enjoy the cool morning breeze, the silence after the noisy crowd departs, and maybe a few pages from “The Ascent of Money” by Naill Fergusson and “Lone Survivor” by Marcus Luttrell.
Take a few stretches, run around the house, hit the bathroom, get some more food, and walk briskly though the soccer field to the Roman Catholic and Islamic primary schools together with Faaez. Meet with stakeholders-teachers for classes four and five, and the head masters- and finalize the list for the kids getting XOs. Get back to base after the morning rounds and patiently wait for 3pm to start the peer-tutoring session. In the meanwhile, the porch will be occasionally flooded with kids screaming “fiba babu, malaria fiba babu wu wu” krio for look like a baboon, malaria looks like a baboon, boo boo: this is a famous line in the kick-out Malaria soccer tournament song composed by Sao.
Tutoring session starts about 3pm, and it becomes another problem to get the kids who are not in the program to leave the veranda. Get the generator started, fix the extensions, get the XOs charging and get the tutors to fidget them while they figure out what program they want to mess with. Steal some time and browse the internet before the malaria team gets back. Jake arrives, get soccer balls and bibs, and head-off to the soccer touch to get the games started.
The team arrives in packs of threes and fours and scramble their ways through the door just to stare at the table and cupboard in search of food. Get some food, head to the field and enjoy the soccer game of the day while some stay back to enter data or get some rest. Game finishes, everyone is home. It is now time for the pineapple. After Sam takes out his dagger and shave-off the pineapple’s skin, David can’t help but bully everyone to get the juice.
Dinner arrives, get our grub on, and get ready for download. Talk about the day’s event and plan the next day. Clem takes minutes and pastes the activity list behind the door for the eye seeing of all campers. Spray the rooms will shell-tox and get ready for bed.
Good night.
Carlos
Friday, July 17, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Date: 11:32 AM July 7th 2009
Venue: Our quarters, Sahn Malen
Hello again. It's another wet day here in Sahn, most of the others are away to another village to distribute the malaria nets. Carlos and I(and Clem, who isn't feeling well), have stayed behind to work on OLPC stuff.
It's been a good week for OLPC thus far. Since I last posted, we have:
.Finalized the lists of students who will receive XOs
.Recruited 12 new peer tutors(in addition to the four from the last distribution)
.Had daily, 3-hour(on an average) training sessions with the prospective peer tutors, teachers and team leaders who will carry out the project.
.Had a village meeting to introduce the project and emphasize its importance as one of the two pilot OLPC projects in Sierra Leone. (The feedback has been great. The community members we have talked to were very supportive and excited about the project.)
.Re-flashed/NAND-blasted the 100 XOs. The process worked like a charm. As I said earlier, it really is amazing what cool technology has gone behind the creation of these cuddly machines.(Nand-blasting is an OLPC technology whereby one laptop with a developer key, wirelessly relays the upgrade to any number of XOs in the immediate vicinity. It is significantly faster than plugging in a flash stick and a power cord into each XO and waiting for it to upgrade).
There are two schools in Sahn Malen: The RC School(Catholic) and the National Islamic School. We have decided to saturate Class 5 in both the schools and the numbers come down to 56 in RC and 29 in Islamic. That leaves us 15 for the peer tutors, teachers and adult team leads. The numbers in RC might go down since there was too large a discrepancy between the pass-rate for Class 4th(almost 100%) and the one for Class 5th(less than 10%). If they do go down, we will deploy the remainder at a centre in Pujehun(started by GMin member Ellie Nowak) which provides recreational space for children after school, and which, because of its location, will be a good base for publicizing the project.
The daily training sessions have been very heartening. The kids are fast learners and there have been some impressive projects we have seen in Paint, Scratch and Etoys. Also, wikipedia has been an instant hit here. The teachers, although slower and more deliberate than their students, are nevertheless engaged and happy to have the project come to their schools. In addition, we have identified four adult team leads who will help the peer tutors organize XO sessions after school and in addition, will be providing technical support to the project after we leave.
Another thing: I tried running the Linksys WRT300N routers directly from the solar panels that we got for the XOs, and it works! The only catch is that the router hangs once there isn't enough light so you need to unplug and start again once the sun comes back out. It would be great if I could get this to work because it essentially means that combined with the N-radio wireless distributed system functionality in DD-WRT, the routers could essentially be placed anywhere with enough sunlight.
Otherwise, we're looking forward to finally receiving our solar panels(which were accidentally delivered to Sao Tome) so that we can wean the project off of the expensive gas generator.
Ah! It has started pouring again. I should go get my laundry off the line(which by the way perpetually smells moldy because of the humidity).
Until next time!
Faaez
Venue: Our quarters, Sahn Malen
Hello again. It's another wet day here in Sahn, most of the others are away to another village to distribute the malaria nets. Carlos and I(and Clem, who isn't feeling well), have stayed behind to work on OLPC stuff.
It's been a good week for OLPC thus far. Since I last posted, we have:
.Finalized the lists of students who will receive XOs
.Recruited 12 new peer tutors(in addition to the four from the last distribution)
.Had daily, 3-hour(on an average) training sessions with the prospective peer tutors, teachers and team leaders who will carry out the project.
.Re-flashed/NAND-blasted the 100 XOs. The process worked like a charm. As I said earlier, it really is amazing what cool technology has gone behind the creation of these cuddly machines.(Nand-blasting is an OLPC technology whereby one laptop with a developer key, wirelessly relays the upgrade to any number of XOs in the immediate vicinity. It is significantly faster than plugging in a flash stick and a power cord into each XO and waiting for it to upgrade).
There are two schools in Sahn Malen: The RC School(Catholic) and the National Islamic School. We have decided to saturate Class 5 in both the schools and the numbers come down to 56 in RC and 29 in Islamic. That leaves us 15 for the peer tutors, teachers and adult team leads. The numbers in RC might go down since there was too large a discrepancy between the pass-rate for Class 4th(almost 100%) and the one for Class 5th(less than 10%). If they do go down, we will deploy the remainder at a centre in Pujehun(started by GMin member Ellie Nowak) which provides recreational space for children after school, and which, because of its location, will be a good base for publicizing the project.
The daily training sessions have been very heartening. The kids are fast learners and there have been some impressive projects we have seen in Paint, Scratch and Etoys. Also, wikipedia has been an instant hit here. The teachers, although slower and more deliberate than their students, are nevertheless engaged and happy to have the project come to their schools. In addition, we have identified four adult team leads who will help the peer tutors organize XO sessions after school and in addition, will be providing technical support to the project after we leave.
Another thing: I tried running the Linksys WRT300N routers directly from the solar panels that we got for the XOs, and it works! The only catch is that the router hangs once there isn't enough light so you need to unplug and start again once the sun comes back out. It would be great if I could get this to work because it essentially means that combined with the N-radio wireless distributed system functionality in DD-WRT, the routers could essentially be placed anywhere with enough sunlight.
Otherwise, we're looking forward to finally receiving our solar panels(which were accidentally delivered to Sao Tome) so that we can wean the project off of the expensive gas generator.
Ah! It has started pouring again. I should go get my laundry off the line(which by the way perpetually smells moldy because of the humidity).
Until next time!
Faaez
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Bakar, Mame and the last king of Snotland
three friends from nextdoors. McSnot(title credits: Clem Wright) isn't
too happy because he just had a bath I think.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Solemn beginnings
Date: 7:15 AM June 26th 2009
Venue: Our quarters, Sahn Malen
The air last night was heavy and overbearing. It was as if everything was in the grip of an invisible hand- nothing moved. And then the wailing started. It was the cry of a bereaved mother. Hers was the third child to have passed away in the village last night. More villagers joined in, in a disturbing chorus of wails and laments.
It is morning now and the new day brings with it new promise. The weather is pleasant; the older, stagnating puddles of water have given way to newer, fresher ones and from the scarce few barren patches of soil on the main path, spring forth new shoots of grass. These will be walked over today and be trampled to death, but as inevitably as they will die, will new blades spring up the next day too.
Ah! The sun shines through the blanket of clouds in the sky and the green fields take on a brighter hue. I like this.
It seems that the experimental deployment of the 30 XOs done in December didn’t go that bad after all. David met with a couple of kids last night who have done some great work with their XOs. Anthony, the lead teacher for the project sounded very engaged and I’m confident that we will find more people who will be able to lead the project well beyond this summer. Tomorrow, we will carry out an informal survey of children who got the XOs last December to inform our new deployment this summer.
Off to breakfast now. Will upload this later, since it seems more and more plausible that we will have some internet here.
Later,
Faaez
Venue: Our quarters, Sahn Malen
The air last night was heavy and overbearing. It was as if everything was in the grip of an invisible hand- nothing moved. And then the wailing started. It was the cry of a bereaved mother. Hers was the third child to have passed away in the village last night. More villagers joined in, in a disturbing chorus of wails and laments.
It is morning now and the new day brings with it new promise. The weather is pleasant; the older, stagnating puddles of water have given way to newer, fresher ones and from the scarce few barren patches of soil on the main path, spring forth new shoots of grass. These will be walked over today and be trampled to death, but as inevitably as they will die, will new blades spring up the next day too.
Ah! The sun shines through the blanket of clouds in the sky and the green fields take on a brighter hue. I like this.
It seems that the experimental deployment of the 30 XOs done in December didn’t go that bad after all. David met with a couple of kids last night who have done some great work with their XOs. Anthony, the lead teacher for the project sounded very engaged and I’m confident that we will find more people who will be able to lead the project well beyond this summer. Tomorrow, we will carry out an informal survey of children who got the XOs last December to inform our new deployment this summer.
Off to breakfast now. Will upload this later, since it seems more and more plausible that we will have some internet here.
Later,
Faaez
Bo town
Date: Tuesday June 23rd 2009
Venue: David’s house, Bo
Took the 6 AM bus from Freetown to Bo this morning. With our 100 XOs and bulky luggage, I am sure we made a lot of passengers unhappy today but we had little choice: all other means of transporting the XOs were proving too costly. The bus finally left at 6:40 and we left the bustling Freetown for the calm of what the Leoneans call the upline(Ishmael Beah thinks that term is pejorative but people still use it anyway). The journey was surprisingly smooth. Apparently the road between Bo and Freetown has been newly constructed and it was not nearly as bumpy as Mathias has described his journey in 2007 to be. It was otherwise uneventful except that we bought our first pineapple in Sierra Leone on the way and a man who claimed to be a qualified doctor, made a long speech on the bus in order to sell traditional medicine imported from China.
Bo is beautifully chilled out. The general consensus in the group is that we love Bo much more than Freetown. David’s mother place, where we are crashing for the night has an orchard full of all kinds of trees: mango, guava, coconut- you name it. It’s a great break from Freetown’s crazy hustle.
Since it also has relatively stable electricity, I finally got to check the routers Sam got for us. They are beautiful beings(yes, routers too can be beautiful) We got five WRT300Ns, v 1.1. That’s an overkill, as Sam aptly pointed out, but since we got them refurbished from not-a-very-reputable source(digitalet.com), we thought we should get one extra to hedge it. Also, we found them pretty cheap(40$ apiece if I remember correct). The v 1.1 have 8 mb of memory and the best thing is that flashing them with dd-wrt works like a charm(a custom version for the specific model is available at dd-wrt.com; just check the wiki for the article on wrt300n). DD-WRT is a linux-based firmware for routers that you can flash your routers with for added flexibility(you can increase the throughput, make a hotspot, use WDS etc.). Since your router is basically a mini computer, this nifty piece of software replaces your manufacturer’s firmware to give you full control of the hardware you own. Do however check out the wiki pages for entries on your model if you decide to use this, because it has been known to ‘brick’ routers.
Also talked to Zain(the major cellphone company here) about internet availability. Sahn doesn’t have very good coverage so we’re going to have a trial run there with a modem a guy at the Zain office in Bo lent us. I also took a picture of a map at the office that showed where all their towers are on the map so that when we use an antenna to try and extend the range, we know where to point it. To avoid any complicated hacking, we are going to try and use a standard TV antenna for extending the range of the EDGE modem. I am not sure how the physics of it work out, but I hope that we’ll get enough gain to up the signal by a couple of bars, which should be enough for getting a good EDGE connection going. Will upload details on the deployment once we get it done.
I am off to bed now- must try and digest that scrumptious meal David’s mom fixed us.
Until later,
Faaez
Venue: David’s house, Bo
Took the 6 AM bus from Freetown to Bo this morning. With our 100 XOs and bulky luggage, I am sure we made a lot of passengers unhappy today but we had little choice: all other means of transporting the XOs were proving too costly. The bus finally left at 6:40 and we left the bustling Freetown for the calm of what the Leoneans call the upline(Ishmael Beah thinks that term is pejorative but people still use it anyway). The journey was surprisingly smooth. Apparently the road between Bo and Freetown has been newly constructed and it was not nearly as bumpy as Mathias has described his journey in 2007 to be. It was otherwise uneventful except that we bought our first pineapple in Sierra Leone on the way and a man who claimed to be a qualified doctor, made a long speech on the bus in order to sell traditional medicine imported from China.
Bo is beautifully chilled out. The general consensus in the group is that we love Bo much more than Freetown. David’s mother place, where we are crashing for the night has an orchard full of all kinds of trees: mango, guava, coconut- you name it. It’s a great break from Freetown’s crazy hustle.
Since it also has relatively stable electricity, I finally got to check the routers Sam got for us. They are beautiful beings(yes, routers too can be beautiful) We got five WRT300Ns, v 1.1. That’s an overkill, as Sam aptly pointed out, but since we got them refurbished from not-a-very-reputable source(digitalet.com), we thought we should get one extra to hedge it. Also, we found them pretty cheap(40$ apiece if I remember correct). The v 1.1 have 8 mb of memory and the best thing is that flashing them with dd-wrt works like a charm(a custom version for the specific model is available at dd-wrt.com; just check the wiki for the article on wrt300n). DD-WRT is a linux-based firmware for routers that you can flash your routers with for added flexibility(you can increase the throughput, make a hotspot, use WDS etc.). Since your router is basically a mini computer, this nifty piece of software replaces your manufacturer’s firmware to give you full control of the hardware you own. Do however check out the wiki pages for entries on your model if you decide to use this, because it has been known to ‘brick’ routers.
Also talked to Zain(the major cellphone company here) about internet availability. Sahn doesn’t have very good coverage so we’re going to have a trial run there with a modem a guy at the Zain office in Bo lent us. I also took a picture of a map at the office that showed where all their towers are on the map so that when we use an antenna to try and extend the range, we know where to point it. To avoid any complicated hacking, we are going to try and use a standard TV antenna for extending the range of the EDGE modem. I am not sure how the physics of it work out, but I hope that we’ll get enough gain to up the signal by a couple of bars, which should be enough for getting a good EDGE connection going. Will upload details on the deployment once we get it done.
I am off to bed now- must try and digest that scrumptious meal David’s mom fixed us.
Until later,
Faaez
Freetown
Date: June 21th 2009
Venue: Marianella Guest House, Freetown
So we’re in Freetown. The flight here was pretty uneventful. Had a four and a half hour layover in Nairobi. Not the best airport for something like that, I assure you. The seats are hard and partitioned: nightmare for travelers like us who started their journey at 2:30 in the morning.
The later part of the 10-day workshop in Rwanda was great. I feel excited about going ahead and putting all those ideas to practice. I was impressed by the great amount of innovative and really cool technology that’s under the hood of these cute-looking green machines. It was also great getting to know all the awesome people from the other 29 teams. If any of you are reading this post, good luck with your deployment. I am looking forward to hearing more about how your it all went.
So, Freetown finally. The city is one big scenic sauna- it really is that humid. As we rolled in on the ferry that connects the Lungi airport and the main city, I couldn’t help thinking what a beautiful postcard picture the scene would make: a calm sea and gentle slopes backed by towering green hills… If only I weren’t sweating like a pig that was told it’s halal.
I had mostly packed jeans and long pants(thank you Mr. Esmann for the kind advice), but any illusions I had about wearing them were corrected the very first day. Immediately went and got some pairs of shorts from the local market. Mathias says they probably belonged to a fat German tourist before me, but I haven’t seen many of those around. And besides, they had the tags on, so I should be okay.
The XOs had already arrived at the UNICEF offices so went and checked on them yesterday. Since we’re transporting them to Sahn(which happens to be quite a journey away), we re-packaged them(in a neat assembly line that Mr. Ford would have been proud of) so that each small XO box would take three laptops instead of one. The solar panels still haven’t arrived. An extra consignment of a hundred chargers has though. We could have done equally well with some power strips though since we’ll primarily be using solar panels anyway and the original chargers that ship with individual XOs take the whole 110-240 V range for input.
Sam got five WRT300N Linksys routers. I have the firmware for them here so we just need to re-flash them. Hope that goes well(James Elkins from the Cornell team mentioned that he had some problems re-flashing the Linksys wrt54gs routers).
On Friday, we went and saw Edna Jones, who heads the Sierra Leonean UWC national committee at the Ministry of Education. We told her about the project and she introduced us to the relevant people- deputy ministers, the attaches for Kanema(for the Tulane project) and Sahn etc. The deputy ministers promised us audience this week so we can talk about the project to them. It should be good to have them on board.
Otherwise, it’s been a lot of great food(cassava leaves and peanut butter stew are lovable and ample proof that appearances can be deceiving), getting to know Freetown and other team members and chilling. Things happen at their own pace here and it’s useless to try to rush them up. You just have to go with the flow. That’s what I am going to try and do.
Signing out for now,
Faaez
Venue: Marianella Guest House, Freetown
So we’re in Freetown. The flight here was pretty uneventful. Had a four and a half hour layover in Nairobi. Not the best airport for something like that, I assure you. The seats are hard and partitioned: nightmare for travelers like us who started their journey at 2:30 in the morning.
The later part of the 10-day workshop in Rwanda was great. I feel excited about going ahead and putting all those ideas to practice. I was impressed by the great amount of innovative and really cool technology that’s under the hood of these cute-looking green machines. It was also great getting to know all the awesome people from the other 29 teams. If any of you are reading this post, good luck with your deployment. I am looking forward to hearing more about how your it all went.
So, Freetown finally. The city is one big scenic sauna- it really is that humid. As we rolled in on the ferry that connects the Lungi airport and the main city, I couldn’t help thinking what a beautiful postcard picture the scene would make: a calm sea and gentle slopes backed by towering green hills… If only I weren’t sweating like a pig that was told it’s halal.
I had mostly packed jeans and long pants(thank you Mr. Esmann for the kind advice), but any illusions I had about wearing them were corrected the very first day. Immediately went and got some pairs of shorts from the local market. Mathias says they probably belonged to a fat German tourist before me, but I haven’t seen many of those around. And besides, they had the tags on, so I should be okay.
The XOs had already arrived at the UNICEF offices so went and checked on them yesterday. Since we’re transporting them to Sahn(which happens to be quite a journey away), we re-packaged them(in a neat assembly line that Mr. Ford would have been proud of) so that each small XO box would take three laptops instead of one. The solar panels still haven’t arrived. An extra consignment of a hundred chargers has though. We could have done equally well with some power strips though since we’ll primarily be using solar panels anyway and the original chargers that ship with individual XOs take the whole 110-240 V range for input.
Sam got five WRT300N Linksys routers. I have the firmware for them here so we just need to re-flash them. Hope that goes well(James Elkins from the Cornell team mentioned that he had some problems re-flashing the Linksys wrt54gs routers).
On Friday, we went and saw Edna Jones, who heads the Sierra Leonean UWC national committee at the Ministry of Education. We told her about the project and she introduced us to the relevant people- deputy ministers, the attaches for Kanema(for the Tulane project) and Sahn etc. The deputy ministers promised us audience this week so we can talk about the project to them. It should be good to have them on board.
Otherwise, it’s been a lot of great food(cassava leaves and peanut butter stew are lovable and ample proof that appearances can be deceiving), getting to know Freetown and other team members and chilling. Things happen at their own pace here and it’s useless to try to rush them up. You just have to go with the flow. That’s what I am going to try and do.
Signing out for now,
Faaez
Kigali too
Date: June 10th 2009, 11:10 PM
Venue: Cyber café, Kigali, Rwanda
Passing through the lively streets of Kigali in the morning today, I just couldn’t help thinking what a cool music video could be made here. Like something MIA would pull off. The shops that lined the streets all had colorfully fun, painted walls- very few boards; And the light has this amazing color. The kind we usually photoshop our photos to death for. Something to do with the red soil and clean skies I think. And oh! There’s an “Obama Shop” near our hotel on Nyamirambo! How cool is that?(update: on our last day here, we noticed that the Obama had been painted over. Apparently shops here are pretty versatile with their brand identity etc.)
It’s really amazing to think that only a few years ago, this country went through the horrible experience of the Rwandan genocide; it seems to be doing exceptionally well for that. The streets are clean, most of the people we met, optimistic and the government has quite a few innovative programs going on(although one could argue that most of them are dependant on foreign aid for their survival. But hey, at least they’re putting the aid to good use). The government started KIST, the Kigali Institute of Technology(the place we had most of our training sessions at, btw) some years ago and they dub it as the MIT of Rwanda(It even has a Media Lab :P), and of course, they have a massive OLPC deployment going on too.
The workshops have been excellent so far. Comprehensive, but not too demanding. Among other things, learnt to open up and fix basic XO hardware problems, set up the school server, learn to use the basic XO programs, etc. There was ample time to get to know folks from other teams and exchange some useful ideas with them. I am looking forward to the rest of the week.
Faaez
Venue: Cyber café, Kigali, Rwanda
Passing through the lively streets of Kigali in the morning today, I just couldn’t help thinking what a cool music video could be made here. Like something MIA would pull off. The shops that lined the streets all had colorfully fun, painted walls- very few boards; And the light has this amazing color. The kind we usually photoshop our photos to death for. Something to do with the red soil and clean skies I think. And oh! There’s an “Obama Shop” near our hotel on Nyamirambo! How cool is that?(update: on our last day here, we noticed that the Obama had been painted over. Apparently shops here are pretty versatile with their brand identity etc.)
It’s really amazing to think that only a few years ago, this country went through the horrible experience of the Rwandan genocide; it seems to be doing exceptionally well for that. The streets are clean, most of the people we met, optimistic and the government has quite a few innovative programs going on(although one could argue that most of them are dependant on foreign aid for their survival. But hey, at least they’re putting the aid to good use). The government started KIST, the Kigali Institute of Technology(the place we had most of our training sessions at, btw) some years ago and they dub it as the MIT of Rwanda(It even has a Media Lab :P), and of course, they have a massive OLPC deployment going on too.
The workshops have been excellent so far. Comprehensive, but not too demanding. Among other things, learnt to open up and fix basic XO hardware problems, set up the school server, learn to use the basic XO programs, etc. There was ample time to get to know folks from other teams and exchange some useful ideas with them. I am looking forward to the rest of the week.
Faaez
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