Thursday, June 15, 2006
The Network
- 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.
