9 January 2006

Today was a long day full of meetings at UNZA, starting at 9 a.m. Raja picked us up in the morning (a bit late as usual, though he is improving) and we went with him to print out a sheet of the professors’ contact info and meeting times before heading off to the university. Raja also warned us that professors have a tendency to get busy or otherwise cancel or miss appointments. This didn’t surprise me at all since I experienced a similar phenomenon while setting up the mirror site at the University of Nairobi, Kikuyu Campus.

Our first meeting was with Mr. Ackim Zulu, head of electrical and electronic engineering. He teaches Electrical Power Systems and Electronics and Electrical Machines. Raja briefed Mr. Zulu on the project and then we discussed some of the steps we would be taking throughout the week in order to set up both OCW and iLabs. Mr. Zulu seemed excited about the project and agreed to convene faculty from electrical and electronic engineering for our presentations next week. The first iLabs and OCW presentations are tentatively scheduled for Monday morning and afternoon, with a break in between for lunch. We also took a picture with Mr. Zulu with Raja as our photographer, a role Raja kept for the rest of the day.

Next we headed to our meeting with Sebastian Namukolo, also at the school of engineering. Mr. Namukolo teaches Network Analysis, Electronic Engineering II, Electronic Engineering III, and a coordinated independent project-based study. He has previously attended UCF and worked for Aragon National Laboratories. Mr. Namukolo was really excited about the potential impact of iLabs. He mentioned that some of the lab equipment at UNZA is very old and that there are courses that he teaches for which he lacks circuit components. He was also concerned about how old some of the books that the students at UNZA are using are. Perhaps when Clinton and I return to MIT, we can look into getting textbooks and circuit components donated to UNZA. I know that I, for example, still have my lab kit from 6.002 which I haven’t touched in over 3 years and which includes various circuit components that I’m sure would be much more useful for UNZA. Mr. Namukolo (and assumingly UNZA) has also been involved in a 20 year project with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The agency is willing to fund a course (including all logistics) for UNZA faculty on medical or nuclear instrumentation. He asked us if it would be possible for MIT to find the means by which to host such a course. The course could be any time of year and would last for 2-3 months. As long as MIT could arrange for a location and faculty to teach the course, the IAEA would provide all the funding to get the UNZA faculty to attend the course. I think this is another project whose feasibility Clinton and I can look into when we get back into the U.S.

Our next meeting was with Mr. Peter Kalebwe, professor in the department of physics who has 17 years of teaching experience. He currently teaches A-Level (freshman) Physics, Digital and Analog Electronics, and 4th year Nuclear Physics. His biggest worry is with the lack of hands-on experience that 3rd year students in digital and analog electronics receive. He told us that A-Level physics is one of the required courses for all 1st year students. Since there are typically about 1,000 1st year students, it wouldn’t be feasible to make iLabs available to all the students. Instead, he plans on incorporating iLabs into the curriculum of the higher-level students, who are fewer in number. We also recommended that he use iLabs with the 1st year students, but in a demonstration-type setting. In other words, after teaching the students all the theory, Mr. Kalebwe could show the students the real vs. theoretical results using iLabs. He really liked the idea and even mentioned that there was a big lecture hall, which is equipped with a digital projector that he could use for such demonstrations. Mr. Kalebwe was also Raja’s old physics professor. We made plans to have the physics and natural sciences presentations for OCW and iLabs on next Tuesday. We also arranged to meet up for dinner later that day and Mr. Kalebwe accompanied us to the following meeting with Dr. Kaumba Chinyama.

Dr. Chinyuama is also in the department of physics and teaches Solid State Physics I, Solid State Physics II, and Electromagnetic Theory. We met with him briefly to tell him the overview of the project at UNZA. He seemed interested in both the OCW and iLabs components of the project and was willing to lend us whatever assistance we needed.

Next, it was time for lunch, and I was really glad because by this point in time I was starving. Raja drove me and Clinton to a nearby hotel where we could eat some traditional Zambian food. Unfortunately, most of the food there didn’t sound or look too appetizing. The hog’s tail was one thing but the caterpillars honestly made me feel a bit queasy. Raja, Clinton, and I decided to play it safe and get beef stew. I got a side of beans and Clinton and Raja got some vegetable, which Raja said was spinach, though it sure didn’t look like it to me. In either case, Raja and Clinton liked it. We also all got a side of nshima, the staple crop for Zambia. Raja explained that shima comes in a solid, grainy form, you add water and boil it, and voila, you get this sticky lump of white stuff. Nshima looks similar to a mound of mashed potatoes but it’s thicker and grainier. I thought it tasted pretty good.

After lunch, we headed back to the university. We stopped at the Mingling Bar, a little cafeteria on campus where Clinton and I bought Apple Max, a native Zambian drink which is very similar in taste to sparkling apple cider. Afterwards, we headed off to a meeting with Evans Lampi, a professor in computer studies in the department of natural sciences. I have to say that I liked the idea (and sound) of computer science being a natural science. Mr. Lampi teaches Electronics, Computational Physics and instructs students in both OCW and iLabs. He explained to us that there are four electronic courses in physics, all of which could potentially benefit from iLabs. We notified him of the presentations that were scheduled for next week and then went to a meeting which we thought would be our last one for the day.

This meeting was with Mr. John Chanda, who is the network manager for UNZA and has the responsibility of maintaining and updating UNZA’s computer network. We explained the technical aspects and requirements OCW and iLabs, namely that we would need a public external IP address for iLabs and for OCW, we would just put all of the content on one of the local servers (as was previously was agreed upon). Perhaps there was a previous miscommunication but in either case, Mr. Chanda notified us that there wasn’t enough room on any of the UNZA servers for all of the OCW content. What’s worse, all of the computers that Mr. Chanda oversaw ran under Unix and the few that had USB drives only supported USB 1.1. This means that even if we got Unix to recognize our external drive, we wouldn’t really get around the bandwidth problem, which was the main reason for installing and configuring a mirror site of the OCW website. There was also security concerns both of having the service broker stolen and of not being adequately protected from viruses on the UNZA network. The physical security concern was quickly dealt with as the laptop would be placed in the room with all of the other UNZA servers and Mr. Chanda was the only person who had the key to this room. As for protection from an external attack, Clinton would put anti-virus software on the laptop, which is really the best we could do. For OCW, we considered buying additional hard drives and setting up a computer as a pseudo server to host all of the content, but we soon found out that the cost of this option was prohibitive. We ultimately decided that we would buy another network card for the service broker and connect the external hard drive to the laptop on a separate IP address in hopes of getting around the issues of having OCW and iLabs competing for bandwidth. The IP address for OCW would also be local so that all requests for OCW content did not unnecessarily leave the UNZA network.

So, we said our farewells to Mr. Chanda and drove to a local computer store to check the prices for laptop network cards. The cheapest we could find was for 225,000 kwacha, which is about $65. We decided we’d buy it if we didn’t come up with a better solution. Raja, Clinton, and I also talked about the possibility of backing up the external hard drive so that the university would have a version to revert to if need be. Since buying another external drive or simply hard drives onto which we could back up the content wasn’t a possibility from a financial standpoint, Raja called a friend of his who could potentially back up all of the content somewhere, and he would contact us later with all of the details.

When we returned to the university, we once again met with Mr. Chanda and two other network administrators. We discussed at length all of the technical details of the project but soon faced great opposition from both of network administrators who joined us. The main problem was with exactly how the service broker would fit into the larger picture and what role it would serve. Try as we might, neither Raja, Clinton, nor I could convince one of the network administrators to approve the iLabs component of the project and obtain the required IP addresses. He kept saying that this server was against UNZA’s policy. At this point, we all started to worry that we’d need to cancel a part of the project or try using a higher authority to overrule the decision. Luckily, we eventually realized that there was a simple misunderstanding with what the iLabs service broker actually did. The network administrator understanding of the iLabs architecture diagram was that the iLabs service broker would be the communication medium between UNZA’s intranet and the entire internet. In other words, he thought that our server would control all of the communication between UNZA and the outside world. We were all laughing once we cleared up the misunderstanding. We then obtained both the external and internal IP addresses, send the external IP to Kirky back at MIT, and called it a day.

Unfortunately, Mr. Gershon Chishimba, head of the department of physics, and Prof. Davidson Theo, former head of the computer studies department were not able to formally meet with us today but I’m sure we’ll get a chance to talk to him over the course of the next two weeks.

Raja then dropped me and Clinton off at our apartment, where Mr. Kalebwe would join me and Clinton later that night for dinner. Clinton and I decided to walk to the nearby internet café to check email and try to find a search and replace tool to replace all the misdirected links on the OCW external drive. I downloaded what I thought was a search and replace tool, which later turned out to be software for expediting the download of the tool, so the time I had spent downloading the several megabyte file was useless. Of course, we still had plenty of time to find the necessary software.

Once we returned to our apartment, we found Mr. Kalebwe there waiting for us. He told us that Raja would soon be coming over to meet us over for dinner. We were a bit surprised by this since we thought Raja couldn’t join us for dinner, but once he arrived, he explained to us that there would be a family dinner at his house and his parents wanted us, including Mr. Kalebwe, to join them. So, Raja drove us to his house and we spent the rest of the night with his family and their guests eating an amazing though a bit spicy (at least for me) dinner. The food we ate was so much better than the fast food we had been living on for the past two days. Also, while I was there, I got a chance to drink fresh mango juice, which was delicious.

Clinton and I began fading fast once 11 p.m. hit, especially since we still hadn’t adjusted to the change in time and had woken up very early that same morning. Once we got back to the apartment, I headed to my room and slept like a log.