Six Weeks in Rwanda

I was able to finish the application for the Truman Award with plenty of time to spare. Jutta offered to nominate me, and Colleen and Dr. Pedrow were kind enough to write my reference letters. I sent all of the materials to Jutta on Monday, and she received them today. Now it's up to the judges...

A while back, I made the case for a custom Linux distribution designed specifically for Rwanda. As it turns out, this is much easier than you might expect. When I have some time, I'd really like to take a shot at doing it. Lifehacker recently linked to this Information Week article , and this prompted me to look into the prospect of rolling a distro all by myself. I could make a number of different flavors of the operating system, tailoring specific packages and applications for the governments, the schools, or the telecenters. A more generalized version could even be targeted for Swahili-speaking countries or even Africa as a whole. The first step will be to choose an initial target audience and select a suite of applications appropriate for their needs. Stay tuned.

In 2006, I went to Rwanda on an internship with Washington State University's Center to Bridge the Digital Divide. My team helped establish an Internet telecenter in a rural village, and WSU decided to make a television commercial about it. Now they show it on television during breaks of Cougar football and basketball games.



I found some discussion of this commercial on the Spokesman Review's website. Check it out, it's kind of fun.

These are some notes I took at a lecture by Paul Rusesabagina, the man who inspired the Academy Award nominated film Hotel Rwanda. He visited Washington State University on February 7, 2006.

1. "You can always find a solution."
2. "You can always get what you want."  (when talking about cramming 32 people into a car and a van)
3. he called the Mille Colline "a small island of fear in a sea for fighting"
4. the phone lines were cut, but the fax machine still worked
5. the UN's 2500 person peacekeeping force was reduced to 260
6. he tried "calling the White House to shame them into helping"
7. April 23
   1. woken up at 6AM after going to bed at 4AM
   2. at gunpoint, told to get all refugees out of the hotel
   3. negotiated for 30 minutes to get dressed
   4. used that time to call Rwandan generals
   5. was able to avoid any deaths
8. the refugees at the hotel were forced to drink the water in the pool and eat only corn and beans
9. the dead bodies on the side of the road were all people that Paul knew, lived with
10. the hotel used generator for a while, but they all broke down, they lived without any electricity
11. his wife was injured in the first evacuation attempt, was bedridden for weeks
12. the people at the hotel established a "blood brotherhood"
    1. if the parents were killed, the eldest child was in charge
13. Paul told a military officer "one day this will all end and you and I will have to face history"
14. he went to ask Gen. Bizimungu for protection
    1. militia men entered the Mille Colline
    2. Bizimungu and Rusesabagina went to Mille Colline
    3. Bizimungu stopped the militia men just as the refugees were about to be killed
    4. they had been dragged out of their rooms and been made to kneel at the edge of the pool
15. after the genocide, dogs were fighting over human flesh, flies were everywhere
16. Paul returned to Kigali after evacuating to the RPF side
    1. reopened the two hotels in July
17. "the best fight is to fight with words" "the best fight is to win because you are stronger"
18. "with a gun, you can win for a day"
19. he was almost assasinated in September, fled to Belgium
20. there is genocide happening right now in Burundi, Uganda, Darfur, and the Congo
21. "never again are the two most abused words" "they have become again and again"
22. What we can do
    1. raise awareness
    2. freeze Darfur oil money
    3. "one day they will have to face history"
    4. "they are calling fro the darkness, somewhere from a forgotten continent"

Yesterday I was talking to Jutta online and she pointed me toward The Truman Award of Leadership and Innovation by Young Professionals in International Development , sponsored by the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Society for International Development. It's a $500 cash award for young individuals who are focused on international development, and includes an award ceremony in Washington, D.C. The application looks relatively simple, but I need to ask two people for letters of reference. This would be a very prestigious award to receive.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has come out with a new website called Free Rice. By playing a vocabulary game, you can help purchase rice for hungry people in the Third World. For every question you get right, the WFP will buy 20 grains of rice. The best part is that you don't have to sign up or anything, just get online and play. It gives you the chance to build your vocabulary, and it feeds people in poor countries. The rice purchases are funded by advertisers, whose ads are tastefully placed at the bottom of the screen. Try it today, and play for a meal for someone who needs it.

During the summer of 2006, I did an internship in Rwanda and helped establish a rural telecenter in a small community. The got me interested in the Third World and development work, and this interest continues today. I will use this blog whenever I want to share my thoughts on developing countries and related subjects.

Part of Rwanda's Vision 2020 Plan is an initiative to establish a paperless government. They are setting up telecenters in every district that government employees can use to do their business.

How will these people be trained? Since many of these people have little or no prior computer experience, they have no bad habits. This means that they have a great chance to learn the right thing the first time. What an opportunity! Here in the US, most people learn to use computers through a process of trial-and-error. This means that they often learn the long way to perform tasks. They rely on menus because they don't know the keyboard shortcuts, or they develop carpal tunnel syndrome because they weren't taught how to type correctly. Rwandans are ready to learn, so the government should make sure they are taught, and taught the correct way.

A similar argument can be made about the platform they will be trained on. Most of us in America are stuck in a Microsoft rut. We use Windows and Office, and feel violently uncomfortable when Mac OS X or (gasp!) Linux. Microsoft makes great products and has earned its reputation, but I think that Linux would be the best option for Rwandan telecenters.

Why?

First of all, it's open source. This means that the government won't be locked into a proprietary cycle of upgrades. Companies in the US are resisting the switch to Windows Vista because it is so expensive. Of course, they'll have to make the change sooner or later if they want to keep current with new versions of Office, Visio, Project, etc. Upgrading Linux, on the other hand, is painless. For example, a new version of Ubuntu comes out every six months or so, and the update process is seamless.

The second reason the Rwandan government should focus on Linux is its flexibility. Windows is developed for the Western world. This means that it is appropriate for Western countries. It solves Western problems. Rwanda is unique and different from that world. It faces its own set of challenges and requirements, and deserves an operating system that it tailored to its needs. A distribution of Linux that is geared specifically to the Rwandan government would not be difficult, costly, or time consuming to develop, and could be customized to serve government officials better than any possible alternative.

Because all open source code is freely available to the public, developers can modify any Linux program to support Kinyarwanda. There are already versions of Firefox, an Internet browser, and OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office alternative, available in the Rwandan local language. Code accessibility might encourage more Rwandan students to pursue careers as programmers or engineers. Linux is known for its strong community of developers. As Rwandans work more and more with Linux, they will become an integral part of this community and develop relationships with professionals from all over the world. Choosing Linux could be a huge boost to the Rwandan economy, creating jobs and connecting the country to the global economy.

Moving toward Linux would encourage Rwandans to embrace technology because it would be openly available, totally customizable, and a jump-start for the Rwandan tech sector.

It is widely accepted that France played a huge part in allowing (if not blatantly assisting) the genocide to happen in Rwanda in '94. I think that the French government will never disclose the true nature of its involvement, because that would be too embarassing and implicate them in terrible crimes against humanity.

"Although France denies the allegations, a former French soldier last year alleged that French troops had trained the militia responsible for the killings in the two years leading up to the genocide."

Interesting article, explores the French role in the genocide.

The telecenter times is using some of the pictures we sent them as stock photos for other stories. As Jutta said in an email she sent me, "our pics are starting to be used as stock photos for the telecentre movement."

This is a strange article, but very typical of Rwandan newspapers.

We rode this road twice while in Rwanda, and it is definitely in need of repair. Apparently, the Chineese built the roads in Rwanda while it was still a Belgian colony. Federal funding has largely ignored the roads since then, so there are many potholes and rough patches.

"'Those who carried out the genocide should be executed in order to forever eradicate the culture of impunity that has always marred Rwanda. The only solution: sentencing them to a grave punishment, which their past actions merit,' said Francois Ngarambe, president of a genocide survivors group, Ibuka (Remember in Kinyarwanda, the national language)."

Rwanda just abolished its death penalty. This is a big step, one that will allow the country to receive many more genocide suspects from abroad. However, this is quite a sacrifice, and many of the citizens disagree with the change. Anyone who orchestrated such a terrible genocide deserves death, not life in prison.

On Thursday we gave a presentation of our trip/project to the Dean. It was fun to see everyone again, and I was surprised to find out how much I miss Rwanda. Sometimes I get nervous when I talk in front of people, but I wasn't at all nervous for this presentation because I knew the material so well and was very excited to tell others about our trip.

In the evening, we meet everyone for dinner at Sakura. Virgil couldn't make it, but Ashley, Jutta, Colleen, Frank, and Jerman were all there. We had fun telling stories and reminiscing together. We gave Frank his shoes and Jerman his funky thermometer. Colleen got some wine from Germany and a small peace basket.

This made me chuckle a little:
"Without a secure and reliable Internet, Rwandans will continue to be reluctant to provide confidential information online, such as credit card numbers."
The thing is that practically no one in Rwanda has a credit card. These people have nothing that an identity theif would want.

This article talks about the importance of Internet privacy in Rwanda. This is interesting to me because I think that most Rwandans don't have a concept of online privacy. I didn't meet any people while I was there that would complain about the current system. Most of the time, they feel fortunate to have any Internet connection at all.

The Simbi sector is very close to Maraba. We visited the Simbi sector office to give a demonstration during our project.

Here's a brief article about our project that was printed in WSU Today.

Here's an article about our opening day that appeared in the New Times and on AllAfrica.com.

Well, we're now 5 weeks into the project. I'm in love, that's for sure, with this country and with the folks I encounter. Once I was told (beginning of week 2) that rather than helping with training, I was to write the biz plan and project-manage the launch of the coffee cooperative's shiny new telecentre, things got busy. It's a crazy biz environment, craaaaazy slow on the one hand and super-easy-going on the other. I can't explain it. I've spent most of my time setting up a biz team and support structure for our coffee cooperative guys who will be running this new telecentre - most of whom had never sent an email in their lives. And marketing the telecentre idea to the local community whilst trying to find out what types of services would really work here; our telecentre is amongst the first in a really rural area here in Rwanda, with a clientele consisting of 97% of people who only speak Kinyarwanda, and about a sixth who can't read or write. Not really with enough cash in hand to pay for our brand spanking new broadband connection. But they do want and need to use communication and information. The public phone landlines in town (at least a day's salary away) are expensive, and the teachers here get by using 20-30 year old books. The guys working in local administration have courriers go to town on their behalf; everything stops till those get back. Skype will be a huge improvement here. And entertainment and community spaces for chatting and exchanging ideas are needed too. I continue to be amazed at how much enthusiasm I encounter whenever I go to a school or local authority office, with my wee powerpoint presentation. The vision is there, absolutely. Everyone needs training though. On everything. Hope we can keep our student volunteers motivated (and compensated by the project till things take off) to offer computer training to the public, in return for a glow of the glory of having created a new infrastructure for knowledge and wealth creation. That's the theory.

The football (worldcup) has definitely helped in building relationships. After each day's worth of running around and chasing our daily rainbows, we go back to Butare, meeting students and other guys who may help provide the continuity we're craving so badly. The local sorghum beer is great, so no probs here. And Germany did manage to come third.

One more week to go. I can't believe it. So much to do, so much fun to have, so little time. Can I stay forever?

The monkeys we saw at Nyungwe this weeked were owl-faced monkies. The scientific name is cercopithecus hamlyni.

Yes, I know that you've all been patiently waiting for another blog post. Well, here it is. There are too many things to write about, but I'll just focus on the two main events of last week, the soft launch of our telecenter and a day trip to Nyungwe National Forest.

Things have finally started to come together for our telecenter. (In America, we call telecenters "internet cafes.") The coffee cooperative has assigned a few people to be members of the steering committee, the manager girls are receiving basic computer training in Butare, and the network is up and running. We had to buy a new router a few weeks ago because the old one kept dropping the laptops from the network. Now that we bought a new one, though, we've only lost our connection a few times in a two week period. We ordered a bunch of equipment using the project budget, and it's started to trickle in from Kigali and abroad. We should have furniture at the start of this next week, and we just received a shipment with an external floppy drive, floppies, speakers, a Skype headset, replacement printer cartridges, and office supplies.

On Wednesday of last week, we had our soft launch. We opened our doors to the public and had a day full of open house demonstrations of services. I was in charge of planning the whole day, so I set up each of our six laptops to showcase a different service. Here's what each one did:

1. Email (signing up people for Yahoo.fr accounts)
   
2. General Internet Browsing (how to search the web with Google)
3. Skype (letting people try out the test call)
4. Google Earth (a tour of landmarks in Africa, Europe, and America, ending with my house)
5. Multimedia (Rwandan and American music videos)
6. Photo Studio

I manned the photo station, and that was by far the most popular service. We decided to give away free portraits to all of the people that visited our telecenter. Everyone loved it! I took over 250 portraits, and we stopped only when the printer ran out of ink. After taking each picture, I marked each person's hand with an X to ensure that each person got one photo. By the end of the day, though, people started washing off the mark and coming back for seconds. I was able to catch some of them by showing them that I already had a picture of them on my computer. I'm sure that a bunch of people were able to sneak by me, but that's okay.

In the evening of the soft launch day, we had a free screening of 2Fast2Furious. We rented the DVD from a place in town, figuring that the people would like to see something with a lot of action and relatively simple dialog. Once it got dark outside, we set up a projector outside and shined the movie up on one of the walls. There were at least 50 people who came to enjoy the show. Some of them had obviously never seen a movie before, asking if the events were taking place live. They really loved the fight scenes and the car crashes, and they were surprised to see so many white people. I think movie screenings will be a popular service for our telecenter.

This weekend we took a trip to Nyungwe National Forest. We went with a PhD student from Cal Berkely named Mike Demmer. He's been working with us all during the past week on a related project, and we've hung out a lot. We left early in the morning, drove two hours to the park, and bought our permits. We were assigned a guide, and we took off on a four hour hike. It was great! Nyungwe is the largest rainforest in the Great Lakes Region, and it is known for its diverse plant life. Our guide's name was Vedaste, and he explained to us how each plant has medicinal uses. He also talked about how poaching has caused many problems for the health of the forest. Keeping poachers out is the main goal of the park staff. Our trek was about 7 miles long, and we pretty much climbed down one small mountain and up another. Along the way, we were able to see four waterfalls. The park used to have elephants (until they were all poached), but now the only significant wildlife are birds and monkeys. We were able to see a bunch of the birds and hear even more. We only saw one monkey during our hike, but we spotted a bunch on our drives into and out of the park. It was a wonderful trip, and we were all very tired by the end of the day. Even the drive between Butare and Nyungwe was very beautiful. I hope to post pictures later today or early tomorrow.

Last time I wrote quite a bit about our problems with obtaining GPRS cards. Well, we still haven't found an acceptable solution. We received three different shipments of hardware, but there's always a different type of problem with prevents us from being able to get them connected to the Internet. This week we sent Jean-Claude Habimana to Kigali twice to try to get the MTN USB GPRS cards to work, but they were unable to do anything more than we had already accomplished. Next we went to Terracom to try out an EZCall EVDO solution. They were reluctant to give us an EZCall phone to play with, but we pretty much demanded that they give it to us. After fiddling with the installation for a while (with a huge amount of help from Mike Demmer), we were able to use the EZCall like a modem to call a phone number. Now we're waiting for a Terracom technician to visit us and tell us the phone number, user name, and password we'll need to access the network.

Since we've had so many problems with hardware and logistics, we've decided to put the whole remote site portion of our mission on the back burner. This was the main goal for Ashley and I, so we're pretty disappointed that we weren't able to accomplish much. If we can get something to work in the next couple of days, we will still try to write an operation manual and cirriculum so someone else can go to the villages and get the cooperatives connected to the Net. In the mean time, we've been doing a lot of work to support Jutta with starting the telecenter. She is very busy every day, so Ashley's taken charge of training our manager ladies while I've been working on network troubleshooting guides and getting the computers ready for opening day. Our telecenter (which the cooperative has chosen to call the "Maraba Vision Telecenter," by the way) was open with reduced hours on Thursday and Friday of last week, an I was in charge of monitoring the computers and taking money, as well.

For the coming week, our last week, we have so much to do. I'm in charge of planning the opening day festivities, which include schedules, invitiations, press releases, etc. Should be pretty fun. I also have to get DeepFreeze installed on these computers, which has been a story in itself. Jutta is in charge of meeting with the stakeholder groups and writing the business plan. Ashley is working on the operational manual and overseeing the training of our manager ladies.

Okay, my hour of Internet is almost up. (I'm in a cybercafe in Butare as I write this.) Hopefully, I can write again soon.

Here are some more of my pictures from Rwanda. This set includes our trip to Goma and our visits to some rural areas to present the services of our new business.

Rwanda1

I finally got a moment (and some time with a good Internet connection) to post a few of my pictures. You must realize, though, that these pictures are all about two weeks old. I have a lot more coming, but who knows when I'll be able to post them. Click here to see the first batch of pictures from Rwanda.

Jutta had a chance to upload a few of her pictures. Click here to see them.

We made the news! AllAfrica.com recently featured this story on our project: http://allafrica.com/stories/200606280858.html

Colleen left for the States last weekend. Since she's been back, she's had a chance to upload a bunch of pictures from her camera to the Web. To look at them, click here.

Okay, three weeks down and three to go. How did that happen? We've been so busy and having so much fun that time has passed really quickly. We've run into a lot of problems since my last post, but we've also found solutions for most of them.

As I said earlier, one of our tasks is to go out to each of the cooperatives and train them to use a GPRS enabled laptop to access the internet. The first problem was that we didn't have the GPRS cards. They came a day later than we expected, but that wasn't a big deal. The real problem was that the cards didn't fit in the PCMCIA slots of the laptops. Tim decided to tackle this problem himself, and he eventually was able to order some adapters which should be here by the midde of next week. That puts Ashley and I more than a week and a half behind schedule! We'll have to be a little creative in the way we visit the cooperatives, but we might still be able to get everything set up.

A more pressing problem is the fact that some of these cooperatives are out of range to receive the GPRS signal. There was some miscommunication before our team arrived, and the booster antennas were never ordered. When we contacted MTN, the local phone service provider, they said that they had no boosters in stock. There weren't even any available in Kigali! We were left to find a solution on our own. Jean-Claude has been calling people all week and getting different answers from everyone. Some say that our GPRS cards aren't designed to accept booster antennas, while others seem to think that the antennas are readily available somewhere.

We've followed a lot of leads and run into a bunch of dead ends, but I think we've finally found an acceptable solution. Early in the week we called Albert and asked him to look into the situation. Today I met with him and he put me in contact with a lady from Grameen. She said that her company is in possesion of a few of the boosters we need, and she offered to let us borrow one until we can order more. She also offered us the contact information of Grameend's supplier. If we can get that one antenna, we'll be able to go out to the cooperatives and train the people to use the machines. Then they'll just have to wait until enough boosters can be shipped.

Our team has been working with a guy named Mike Sun. He's a doctoral student from the US studying computer engineering. Mike has been working on this project for a long time now, and he has a good handle on all of the interactions with Terracom and MTN. He's been able to help me a lot with the Internet cafe networking issue. He encouraged us to stick with Windows because administration is easier. Even though we really like the idea of using Linux (it's perfect in many ways), we decided to take his advice. I had the idea of using DeepFreeze, a program my Dad told me about. It is a utility which restores the computer to a set state each time the machine reboots. This way, the cafe technician can spend less of their time clearing viruses and other junk off the hard drive and more time helping people with the services.

When I reinstalled Windows on the Linux machines, I realized that many of the drivers were missing. Dell didn't include a driver disk with the computers, for some reason, so I had do download all of the drivers from their website. This was a big problem, though, because our connection is unstable so it is impossible to download large files. I called up Didier, the NUR tech specialist, and asked him to use the University's connection to download the files. He was happy to help, and I'm picking up the files this weekend.

The spotty connection to the Internet had been very curious to me, so I asked Mike Sun about it. It was strange because the machines didn't simply lose their Internet connection, but their connection to the switch was completely lost as well. We looked at the network for quite some time, and finally decided that it must be some kind of problem with the router. Sure enough, we looked up the router model online and found nothing but bad reviews. So we need a new router. We asked Tim to buy one on his trip to Kigali this weekend, but who knows if he'll get around to it. The cafe will definitely need a reliable router if it's ever going to make any money.

This morning we went to one of the rural villages near Maraba to give a presentation of the services our Internet cafe will offer. When we got there we had to wait for a long time to find out which room we would be in. During that time, I took out my camera and took some pictures. At first the people were shy and didn't want their picture taken, but eventually a couple of them agreed to let me take their photo. Once they realized that they could see the picture right after I took it, my camera became a big hit. Everyone crowded around and wanted to be the next person to pose. I even let a few of the people take the camera and take a picture themselves. Finally our room was ready and I went to help set up the projector and the laptop.

When everyone started to pile into the room, I had a good idea. I connected my camera to the computer and uploaded the photos I'd just taken. Then I put them on the screen as a slideshow for everyone to see. That created quite a ruckus! The people were talked to each other and pointing to the screen, very excited to see themselves. They all wanted copies of their pictures, and I told them to come to our Internet cafe to have them printed. What a great advertising tool!

Ashley's Powerpoint presentation went very well, and the people were amazed by the possibilities of the Internet. That's our biggest challenge here: explaining the Internet and convincing these rural folks that it is something they want to use for both business and fun. The biggest hit was a music video that we got from little Jean-Claude. Our friend Gilbert from NUR acted as the translator, and he did an excellent job of explaining everything to the crowd.

Oh, before I forget, I have to tell you about our weekend. As I explained in my last post, we were invited to spend the weekend in Goma by the owner of a hotel there. We rode the bus to Kigali on Friday evening and ate dinner with the Olds. It was our last time to see Virgil and Jerman in Rwanda. We stayed at the Hotel Gloria. That was a pretty bad choice. It was a very cheap hotel, which is good, but the beds were really sketchy and there was no running water.

The next morning we met with Thierry and rode the bus to Gisenyi. It was a beautiful drive through the countryside which took about three hours. When we got to the border, there was a man there with a letter for us. It said that he would take us through all of the border formalities and take us to the hotel. He even paid for our visas!

When we crossed the line to enter the Congo, we noticed a drastic difference between the two countries. Goma has an active volcano which erupted in 2002. As a result, the whole town is covered in dark gray ash. What a contrast to the beautiful orange clay of Rwanda! The people there are very, very poor, too. The streets look exactly like something you might see in a Save the Children commercial. It was really sad to see how these people lived in such poverty. There are UN trucks and troops all over the city helping out, but the people there need much more aid than what they are currently getting.

Our guide drove us to a much nicer part of the city and toward Lake Kivu. It was there that we entered Hotel Karibu. Our host, Victor Ngezayo, had left us a note telling us to meet him for dinner. This gave us a chance to check into our rooms, take a hot shower, and explore the hotel. It's probably more accurate to call it a resort than a hotel, though. What a wonderful place! When we checked in at the main desk, we were greeted with fancy glasses of pineapple juice. Our rooms were in little clusters with a great view of the lake. There were tropical flowers everywhere, and the grounds were meticulously maintained.

At 6:30, we met with a hotel employee who guided us down toward the lake. We found Victor and his daughter Nyutta there at his house. We also met his wife Bridgette there a little later. Eventually we made our way down to the lakeside. We had a delicious candelight meal while we overlooked the water and watched the stars. Victor told us all about his business career in coffee and his political aspirations. One of the most popular topics was his experience with learning to fly and making trips around the globe.

We went to sleep around 11, and I slept very well on those comfortable beds. In the morning we went for a swim in the lake. I could only tread water for a little while, but Jutta stayed out for a good half-hour. Thierry even jumped in, and we found out that he doesn't know how to swim at all. It's okay, though, I was able to help him get out without too much trouble. There was Congoleese coffee waiting for us when we got out, and we had breakfast up by the pool. Victor had a political meeting to go to, so we hung out by the water until lunchtime. Bridgette cooked us authentic Congoleese food and we left the hotel around 1:30. We didn't even have to pay, because we were special guests of Victor! I'm sure the rate at Hotel Karibu is very high, probably around $140 a night.

In Kigali we stayed the night at Bibi's place. It was very nice of her to take us in for a night. It was a bit strange, though, because the people there kept talking about the "muzungus" all night. She also didn't have any running water. The next morning we met Colleen and the 4H kids at the Chez Lando. We were able to take showers in their rooms. Ashley and I caught the 10AM Volcano back to Butare, and Jutta followed at noon. Fun weekend, huh?

Tomorrow we have another couple demos, so we're staying in Butare this weekend. I want to check out the museum while we're here. The girls are having their hair braided and dresses made. Since our Internet cafe will be in a different room than we originally planned, we have scheduled a Terracom guy to come and move the antenna for us. We also have an electrician scheduled to install some more wall outlets this weekend. On Monday we're meeting with an artist to hire him to paint a mural on the wall. Ashley and I hope to start going to the cooperatives by Wednesday, and I really want to get the cafe network up and running by then (but we need a good router first). If I could get the DeepFreeze on those machines before Wednesday, that will be good too.

We've been networking like crazy. We meet so many people every day. Have I said this already? It's been hard lately because I've started confusing names and faces. Anyway, we had a great meeting with Tim Schilling and he was able to set up clear goals for the rest of our trip. Tim is the head of the PEARL project, which is using money from its USAid grant to set up the Maraba Internet Cafe. He gave us these two objectives:

• Develop a business plan for the Maraba Internet Cafe and attempt to get the business running before we leave.
• Go to each of the cooperative sites, deliver a GPRS enabled laptop, and teach the people there how to connect to the internet and communicate with PEARL and the other cooperatives.

On Tuesday night we were invited to dinner at the house of a Russian couple in town. They both work as professors at NUR. They were very happy to entertain us, since they said that they don't often have a chance to have guests over.

Wednesday was the training day for the cooperative accountants. We met them at PEARL with the laptops we'll be installing at Maraba. Some of them had never even seen a computer before, let alone used one to create Excel reports for their jobs. I help one girl by first showing her how moving my finger on the trackpad made the cursor move on the screen. In a few minutes I had her drawing with Paint, and in an hour or so she was working hard on the typing tutor program I had brought. By the end of the day, she was touch typing in Word without ever looking at her fingers! The people we worked with were so dedicated; they didn't even want to take a break for lunch. On guy, a student at KIST, was a pretty advanced user, but he was still very interested in learning more. I ended up showing him how to make a simple website because he wants to start his own e-commerce business someday to sell coffee from the cooperatives.

In the afternoon I went to Maraba with Jean-Claude to set up the network there. Jean-Claude is very easily discouraged when things go wrong. He usually gives up if he runs into a problem. We've all learned this very quickly, so we have to be very motivated when we work with him. Today we needed a screwdriver to open up one of the desktop cases. Jean-Claude said that he forgot his and that no one in town would have one. I asked our driver Gaspard, though, and he drove me to the town mechanic. He lent us a couple of screwdrivers and we went on our way.

There was a problem setting up the network because Jean-Claude had forgot the router configuration CD at the PEARL office. He suggested that we all drive back to town (30 minutes round trip) to go get it. I told him that he could go, but that I would stay behind and try to make it work. While he was away, I worked with a couple of NUR students and we were able to connect a couple of the computers to the Internet. We simply bypassed the router and connected the Internet to the first port of the switch. When Jean-Claude came back, we'd been surfing the net for a good half-hour. I explained to the university students how we had just implemented a peer-to-peer network and how that was different from the server-client network we had originally wanted to install. They were very interested in the process because they had talked about networking in class but had never had the chance to work with one in a hands-on fashion.

The next day (Thursday), we went back to Maraba to finish the network setup. We brought all of the laptops and all of the accountants. I set up the computers, and the accountants learned to use the Internet and send emails. This is very impressive, especially considering that some had only been computer-users for less than 24 hours. Gilbert, an NUR student, gave an excellent description of the Internet that everyone seemed to understand. At the end of the day, though, it was decided that all of the computers needed to be disconnected and brought back to PEARL. I tried to convince everyone that this was not necessary, and that it would take too much time and effort to bring them back up and set everything up all over again. Everyone was too quick, though, and the computers were back in the box before I knew it. This means that I lost a whole day's worth of work!

In the evening we went to the Faucon to watch Sweden vs. Paraguay and have dinner. We got a huge three course meal for 2000Frw! We were joined by Cleophus, Gilbert, Jean-Luc, Peter, and Sam. It was very fun, especially since we didn't have to talk business all night.

Today we went up to Maraba because Jutta had a meeting with all of the potential Internet cafe managers. Its purpose was to get everyone on track and excited about running an Internet cafe. My job was to get some computers online and demonstrate how the Internet can be used. We ended up calling Tim Schilling at PEARL and having a conversation for everyone to hear. It was great! All of the people in the room were very excited about the concept and I think that Tim was very impressed with our progress.

Tonight we're heading to Kigali. We will meet the 4H group (another of the projects Colleen is heading up) and maybe take a trip to Goma. We met a hotel manager from there when we landed in Kigali and he invited us to visit and stay in his hotel.

We're meeting so many people! It has been really fun over the last few days to talk to Rwandans and make friends, especially when we use our limited (but growing) Kinyarwandan vocabulary.

On Friday the 9th, we ended the evening by having dinner at the Ibis Hotel with Gerald (a NUR professor). We were joined by a student name Cleophus, who is very interested in using ICTs to bridge the poverty gap in Rwanda. We talked for some time, tried some banana beer (it was pretty good but tasted more like wine), and went to the local disco.

For Saturday, most people from our group left to go see the gorillas. The three student team members stayed behind. First we met with Herbert, who introduced us to his friend Moses. Moses is apparantly the CEO of a US-backed company called Rocket 2020. His job is to set up telecenters in the major cities of Rwanda and return a profit to his investors. He is a very big talker, and he claims to have a special blessing from the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame. However, he has never contacted the ICT Workforce in the Ministry of Education or been in contact with any of the major players we have met. We will have to see how legit he is.

We decided to do some work and figure out how we would set up the network at Maraba. We talked to a man named Mike who is doing consulting work at NUR, and he had some very good ideas. He is working with Sun Ray ultra-thin client technology for the university, which is very exciting to me. If only we could have this at WSU! With Mike, we decided that the best approach for Maraba would be to have the laptops serve as thin clients and have an off-site server to save data. Perhaps we can use some server space at NUR.

In the evening, Gerald took us to an authentic Rwandan restaurant. It was very much like the Ethiopian food we had in Kigali. You eat it with your hands. We had rabbit, potatoes, and banana beer. Beer is a very common drink in Rwanda; it is safe to drink in case the water is bad. Herbert and Cleophus came with us.

Today we went to the university church in the stadium. It is very much like a gospel church in the US, except that there are people playing soccer on the field at the same time! After that we met with Gilbert to gain access to one of the computer labs. In doing that, we met someone new named Jean Luc. We all went to lunch together at a real Rwandan restaurant. The hotel restaurant is quite expensive, so it was nice to pay less and eat with the locals. At lunch we met Vincent, a Rwandan university graduate who works with a British health-related NGO. We made arrangements to see his office sometime. He is using radio theater to promote the prevention of malaria, TB, and other issues that are important in Rwanda.

We started a little project today to create a new online Kinyarwanda-Swahili-English-French dictionary, which we call kamusi. I started it as a wiki with a group of the Rwandan students. Anyone can get on and edit this site as long as they know the password: gilbert. The students seemed very interested, and hopefully this can become a good resource for people trying to learn a new language in Rwanda.

Well, we all made it here in one piece. I was very sick on June 4th with a fever, so the flights to Brussels were very difficult. The plane was cold (like planes usually are), but this was especially bad news for me. I wanted to sleep, but was very uncomfortable. When we got to Brussels, I was in pretty back shape. Carrying around my bags and looking for our hotel was not very fun. Once we got our rooms, I went straight to bed. Everyone else went out to see the city, but I missed out because I decided that getting some rest would be a wiser use of my time. I slept for a few hours, and my fever was gone when I woke up. The group came back and I was able to walk around a bit with them. We saw the Basilica, which I hear is the fifth largest cathedral in the world. Then we had dinner at a tiny little cafe. I had a big problem trying to withdraw money (the machine said I had entered the wrong PIN), but I was able to get some in the airport on the way out.

The flight from Brussels to Kigali was eight hours long. It didn't seem too bad, though, since I was feeling better. I was able to read all of Left to Tell in one sitting. When we arrived in Kigali at 8PM, it was already very dark. The sun sets here around 6:30, and it gets dark very quickly. The moon and the sun both sit very high in the sky, too, since we are so near the equator. We rode vans over to the Hotel Chez Lando, which is a very beautiful hotel. The rooms are quite nice (nearly new) and the staff is very cordial. The beds are comfortable and the whole place is surrounded by beautiful gardens. We ate dinner at the hotel restuarant, having kabobs and Rwandan beer. Kabobs are the standard food here, usually served with rice or chips (fries).

On our first full day in Kigali, we met Albert, Colleen's partner for the project. He is a very helpful contact, since he understands English so well and has such an easy time navigating around his native country. We talked for some time in the hotel lobby and then proceeded to the bank to exchange our Euros for Rwandan Francs. While Albert discussed an exchange rate and made all of the necessary arrangements, which took quite a while, his nephew Thierre showed us around some of the tourist shops. Tierre works for Albert as his driver, and he is a pretty good friend to Ashley, Jutta, and I now. He speaks French and English very well, and has been working with us on our Kinyarwanda. After we got our money we went to the Kigali Genocide memorial. It was a powerful place, with a museum inside and mass graves with gardens outside. There are over a quarter of a million genocide victims buried there, from what I understand. After lunch at the hotel, we met with the ICT Taskforce at the Ministry of Education. We explained our plans to them, and they shared the details of their many initiatives with us. It was very intereting to hear how much work they are putting into ICT throughout the country.

The next day it was off to Butare. It was a two hour drive. We stopped in Gitarama along the way to check out their telecenter. It is supported with help from USAid and has a special focus on getting women to take advantage of technology. There are about twelve computers with flat panel monitors. They are in nice condition and are relatively new, I think. The connection speed is very slow, but it is certainly better than nothing. It was really good to be able to talk to the staff and get a feeling for how a real Rwandan telecenter works.

Butare is a small town with a big university, like Pullman. We were slightly mobbed when we showed up, but the crowds dissapated quickly. We moved into our hotel, our home for the next month. Then we took a tour of the university and called it a night.

Today we visited the PEARL headquarters and the Maraba coffee cooperative. It was good to see the place where we will be doing our work. We also had a meeting with the vice rector of the National University of Rwanda. I'm running out of time, so I'll have to end there. More to come!

We've arrived. At last. Rwanda is prettier than I'd ever imagined. And the people are stunning. Beautiful and super-excited when you try to pronounce a few werds in Kinyarwandan (miserably failing). So far we haven't really 'done' anything, apart from spending a couple of nights in Kigali. Now here in Butare, where the National University is, we've been visiting various ministries and such, mainly to show how awe-struck we all are in the face of all the new initiatives that the folks here have been creating over the last few years. I'm just hoping that we can actually contribute something too... The reception at the university was super-friendly, and being here is pretty much like life on steroids, permanently.

Kinyarwandan is crazy. The local language is virtually impossible for us to pronounce - but that has so far not stopped any of us little fools. And the locals smile and proudly help us along. It seems most foreigners don't make any effort at all, so we're on a winner already.

The people are beautiful. Some are tiny (beautiful), some super-tall (like way taller than I, even the women), and we've already learned several cool handshakes and other local customs (like men kissing each other on the cheek 3 times). It's been easy to make friends, and it seems all our weekends are already planned out. There's simply so much to see and do.

On the weekend, we're preparing our first lot of workshops... but now it's all about watching Germany win their first footie match! At least the Rwandans 'get it' about the world cup, and I've had several guys promise me they'll root for Germany. Let's see if they mean it.

The people we work with will probably be pretty interested in this site too. Is there a way to view it in French?

I hear that this is a pretty popular website among Rwandan Internet users. I'll have to include a link to this site on the Maraba homepage.

This commentary by a Rwandan reporter is an interesting look at how Rwandans view the usefulness of the Internet. It's our job this summer to broaden the horizons of the people we meet, and showing them the sheer power of the Internet will be an important part of that.

I read Romeo Dallaire's book earlier this year, and now it's being made into a movie. They'll actually be shooting in Kigali while we're there!

This article is all about what we're doing this summer!

An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography
by Paul Rusesabagina

Hardback: 207 pages
Publisher: Viking Penguin, 2006
ISBN: 0-670-03752-4

My roomate Weston and I each bought a copy of this book after we went and saw Paul Rusesabagina speak at WSU early this spring. We waited forever for the book to be sent to us, and when it came I absolutely devoured it.

In this book, I especially appreciated Mr. Rusesabagina's use of voice in his writing. He has a very personable style, and he writes exactly the way he speaks. It is good to hear about the genocide from a Rwandan's point of view. I thought that Rusesabagina's discussion about the motivations for the genocide were the most succinct that I've seen yet. He speaks plainly, yet his words are powerful. It is easy to see how this man's personality and character were able to stave off the attacks on the Hotel Des Mille Collines.

Every time I read an account of the Rwandan genocide, I am horrified by what the victims had to go through. It is surprising that anyone would ever want to talk about their experiences, let alone write about them in a published book. I think, though, that Rwandans understand the significance of their history and want to prevent such things from happening in the future. This is why we need to read these types of memoirs: so we will be committed to stop them from ever happening again.

This library at telecentre.org looks like a good starting point for the kind of teaching we'll be doing. "Managing a telecentre" and "Managing technology" seem to be our two greatest concerns.

I've been thinking of using a social networking service to show Rwandans how the internet can be used for both work and play. It's been hard to find a bare-bones service that is simple to understand and use, though, which will be essential. This Ning site, though, allows you to develop your own social networking site. Hopefully I can use it to create something appropriate for people who aren't very familiar with the Internet.

I think that Romeo Dallaire is a perfect individual to sit on this committee. His traumatic experience in Rwanda will force him to approach this job very seriously. After seeing that kind of savagery, his life is dedicated to preventing it from occurring in the future.

Today we met with Jerman Rose, one of the people that we'll be flying to Rwanda with. Jerman is an expert at entreprenurship, especially with regards to developing societies. He will be leading some workshops during the first week on the ground. He came across to me as being a very astute, very professional individual. He gave us some good pointers to keep in mind as we teach the people in Rwanda:

1. Learn the names of the people you meet.
2. Be sensitive to feedback when teaching. (People will say they understand you even if they don't.)
3. Take time to assess the situation once you get there, and use that to your advantage.
4. Treat everyone with respect, especially those from a lower social class.
5. Make the lessons fun and enjoyable.
   

Okay, on Monday I went and got my immunization meeting taken care of. It was pretty easy, I got a shot for yellow fever and pills for typhoid. I'll also have to get a malaria pill perscription filled, but I don't have to take those until the trip starts.

Today I received my copy of French with Michel Thomas. It is an 8 CD set which claims to be able to give you everything you need for basic French conversation within 10 hours. Should be pretty fun, I've already listened to the first lesson. The guy says that the trick is to not try to remember, just speak.

Today the three of us (Jutta, Ashley, and I) met at Main Street Smoothie to discuss our plans for the return trip from Rwanda. Here's what I'm thinking:

After finishing our time in Rwanda, I'd like to stay for an extra week and see the sights and the national parks. Then we might stop off in Nairobi for a few days (two or three) so Ashley can see one of her friends who's in the Peace Corps. Finally, I think I'll stop over in Europe for a week to see Brussels, Prague and some of Germany. These plans are preliminary still, but I think that this would return me to the United States around the first of August. This way, I can finish off the summer with a bit of sightseeing.

I just finished watching Gorillas in the Mist, the 1988 movie about Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) and her gorilla studies in Rwanda during the 1970's. It was a long film, but the scenery was beautiful. I hope that I get to see some sights like that during our trip. Also, I wonder if poaching is such a huge problem in Rwanda these days.

Some British explorers are trying to find the source of the Nile, and they are looking in Rwanda right now. This is an interesting article because it shows how countries take so much pride in developing notoriety and getting media exposure.

This is the official Rwanda tourism website. It has exquisite pictures of the national parks and other sights to see. I'll have to check this site out more carefully and see what I really want to do during my free time while I'm there.

President Kagame on the new film Shooting Dogs:
"'These films, much as they illustrate what took place here in 1994, should be able to depict this country's current trend of events regarding unity, reconciliation and the systematic development path being trodden,' Kagame told the press."

Kagame disagreed with the critics of the film, saying, "It is like criticizing the commemoration of the genocide. It will of course have some traumatic scenes but that is the way. It is not the film that traumatizes, but what happened."

Since I've been studying Rwanda, I've been able to find mountains of resources related to the genocide itself, but not much information on how the country has recovered since the atrocities ended. I agree with President Kagame when he says that we need to focus more on post-genocide Rwanda.

"Rwanda is for all Rwandans, and coexistence is the only viable and lasting solution. Trauma treatment or none, reconciliation and unity need to be given the front seat -- with utmost urgency."

Rwanda is due to receive $1 million (US) to provide its people with Fuoxetine, a depression treatment drug. This editorial provides the unique view of a Rwandan editorialist on the issue of rehabilitation and recovery after the genocide.

Here's what the LMI team has been doing over the past week:

On Friday I participated in a Skype conference call with Jutta, Colleen, Brian King, and Sabou de Almeida. Brian is from USAid and is the coordinator for the Leland Initiative in Africa, the brains and bucks behind our project. Sabdou is the LMI coordinator in Guinnea-Bissau. Ashley couldn't make the call because she didn't have Skype installed yet. Sabou tried to join us, but he was having problems with his internet connection. This online meeting of sorts was quite helpful to me because it presented the big picture of USAid's activities in Africa. Brian talked us through a slideshow, but I had to leave half way through it to get to class.

Ashley, Jutta, and I had lunch on Sunday so Jutta could fill us in on what we missed. We ate at Sella's and had a good time.

We met again on Tuesday with Colleen and Candace Chenowith at the Study Abroad Office in Bryan Hall. We talked a lot about the travel aspects of the trip - what to bring, how to prepare, how to change money, etc. It was a lot take in, and I realized that I'm going to need that whole month from May to June just to pack and get prepared. We handed in our forms, talked about Rwandan culture, and even got a list of Rwanda books to read.

That's it in a nutshell (I'm leaving out a whole bunch of details, though). I think we're going to plan on a Sunday lunch again, so I should have more to write after that.

"Telecentrers lead to job-creation, sustainable growth and investing in poor people to facilitate their participation in the development."

The Rwandan government obviously believes that ICT (information and communication technology) is the key to getting their country on the fast track of development. One billion dollars is a significant amount of money, and it should help the country immensely.

An explanation of PEARL.

"ICT is no longer a reserve for urban communities. It has permeated to the villages and been embraced by all. Computer knowledge is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity. Even deep in the villages people are yearning for computer knowledge which can be used in almost any type of development activity."

Last night we had our first meeting as a group. I met Jutta by the Coug and she gave me a ride to the new Thai place in town. There we met Ashley, Virgil, Colleen, and Frank. It was great fun to talk to everyone we will be traveling with. They're all very nice people who seem quite dedicated. I really got the sense that the CBDD does important work that truly makes a difference in the world, and I'm glad to have the chance to contribute. I'm even more excited to go after meeting everyone. Oh yeah, the food was pretty good, too.

The Rwandan national anthem. You can read the words and hear an .mp3 version.

The official website of the Rwandan government.

"We made the film in Rwanda because the Rwandans wanted us to. They were appalled that Hotel Rwanda was filmed in South Africa, with South African actors." - David Belton, writer/producer of Shooting Dogs

There has been some controversy over this new BBC film. Shooting Dogs portrays the Rwandan genocide, and was shot in Rwanda. It "is facing criticism for exacerbating the trauma experienced by genocide survivors."

"...the BBC has spent money on a fictional account of genocide, a film that takes our knowledge of this terrible crime no further forward at all."

This editorial criticizes the new BBC film, Shooting Dogs, for inaccurately portraying the Rwandan genocide.

"The Rwandan Ministry of Health intends to increase the use of mosquito nets from 29.7% to at least 50% by the end of the year."

"About 60 percent of annual deaths in Rwanda are due to malaria..."

"Most Rwandans suffer approximately two to three episodes per year... A person suffering from malaria will miss, on average, eight days of work or school to recover."

"Rwanda's Leading Newspaper."

The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda
by Alan J. Kuperman

Hardback: 162 pages
Publisher: Brookings Institute Press, 2001
ISBN: 0-8157-0086-5

This was in interesting book because it defends the US government's actions during the genocide in 1994. The author argues that the Clinton administration was not aware of the atrocities being committed until three-fourths of the victims had already been killed. In the best case, he claims, with the United States acting promptly and throwing all of their resources at stopping the killing, we could have save a maximum of 125,000 out of the estimated 800,000 victims. This is quite different from the conventional wisdom, which says we could have easily stopped the genocide if we had wanted to.

This book provides an interesting perspective on humanitarian intervention, and it presents a number of lessons we can from the Rwanda situation. The author writes as if he is preparing a report for a government agency, so some readers might find his style a little dry. He utilizes facts and statistics well, though, making his counterfactuals realistic and believable.

Here is a good starting point to find information on Rwanda, especially in relation to USAid.

This article shows that the people of Rwanda still feel the effects of the genocide every day. It has permeated their culture, and their lives are lived differently as a result.

This sounds a lot like the program we'll be doing this summer: getting coffee growers connected to the world coffee market. This company is doing it through radio, we'll be doing it through the Internet.

On Tuesday I accepted an internship through the WSU Center to Bridge the Digital Divide. I'll be going to Rwanda for six weeks this summer, from June through the middle of July, to set up computers, networks, and Internet connections. I'll also be teaching Rwandans to use these computers, and the idea is that they will set up Internet cafes to pay for their web connection. I'm part of a team of three WSU students, and we'll be working with Colleen Taugher from the CBDD.

This week, then, I've been working on getting my passport, immunization shots, and paperwork completed. I've contacted the other two team members, Jutta Tobias and Ashley Giesa, through email, and we're meeting with Colleen for the first time next week.

I'm planning to use this blog to record my Rwanda experience. You can check here every few days for links to Rwanda articles, reviews of Rwanda books I've read, and to see where I'm at and what I'm doing. Hopefully, since the whole project is based around Internet connectivity, I'll be able to make regular posts. I also plan to post a few pictures here, with complete albums at my website, Dupyshon.com.