Friday, June 23, 2006
Half Way
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.
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.
permaLink posted by Kylan @ 6:57 AM 
