OpenZambia

17 January 2006

2006-01-19T05:53:00.000-08:00

Presentations at the Department of Natural Sciences

Clinton and I arrived at UNZA for our second set of presentations, this time for the department of natural sciences. Once again, we arrived an hour early to have extra preparation time. The lecture theatre where we presented was a bit less accommodating than the one we used yesterday. There was a giant rectangular blackboard (green in color) in the center of the room. We tried projecting our presentations onto it, but it was really hard to see anything. Since there was a flat white panel of wall right above the blackboard we decided to try and project onto there, except that didn’t work out as well as intended. Perhaps simply because of the big angle, the presentation was even harder to see with the projected area resembling a skewed trapezoid. Luckily, we had the head technician from the physics department with us who soon arrived with a dry erase board that we mounted on top of the blackboard using metal wires. We still had the problem of a very small projection onto the board but once again, the technician came to the rescue. He brought us an extension cord so that we could move the projector out to the second row of desks thereby greatly increasing the size of the projected images. We tried to remedy the angle problem by propping the projector on erasers but that didn’t have the desired effect. For the third time, the technician found a solution (this guy is really impressive). He brought a little jack (similar to the one that is used to lift up a car except this one looked like it couldn’t support as much weight) which we used to lift the projector to the right height, completely getting around the problem of moving the projector to just the right angle. It was almost 10 a.m. by the time we finished so Clinton and I were both glad we had given ourselves all of the extra time for set up.

We started the presentations around 10:15 a.m. with initially about 4 or so people in attendance. Once again, over the next several minutes more faculty (and this time students as well) began arriving. Clinton said that at one point in time he counted a total of 17 people in the room, of whom at least half were students. Today’s OCW questions included how come computer science is not one of the most frequently accessed courses and what will the url of the local OCW site be. As for iLabs, the faculty and students asked if the students had remote control over physical laboratory equipment, how easy is it for educators to upload the labs onto iLabs, would there be a dynamic signal analysis lab, would there be bandwidth limitations, wasn’t the entire process slow because it was run using Java, and would there be live demonstrations at some point in time? We spoke with a few of the faculty right after the presentation and decided that we would hold a demonstration for OCW and iLabs on Thursday morning (we couldn’t do it that day because the internet was down). The new OCW hard drive still hadn’t arrived but we agreed that even if we didn’t have it by Thursday, we would still do a demonstration using the MIT OCW site.

Surprise Lunch Visit

Before heading back to Kepa, Clinton and I stopped at the server room to check up on iLabs, change the local iLabs url, limit the access to OCW (to UNZA IP addresses) and go through email. When we got back to our apartment compound, Clinton said he was going to go off to Arcades (the shopping complex in town) for lunch and to look around. I decided to prepare lunch before catching up on some work. This was the second day I was going to eat the peanut butter and banana double decker sandwich (you should try it if you haven’t yet). As I was preparing my lunch, Raja made a surprise visit and brought Will (a friend from MIT who had just arrived in Zambia) with him. I ended up leaving my beloved sandwich in the fridge and going out with them for lunch at a really good, but equally expensive restaurant (I had assumed that Clinton was in town, but later learned that he had watched with a bit of disbelief and confusion as we drove away in Raja’s car, leaving him behind).

Even though I love peanut butter and banana, the sandwich didn’t compare to how good the Indian food was. I think what I ate was called chicken korma. In either case, the food wasn’t spicy at all and the sauce had coconut (which I love) in it. It was delicious. After dinner we all had masala tea (I think it’s traditional Indian tea with milk and spices. It was my first time having it and I must say it’s quite tasty).

More Indian Food for Dinner

The rest of the day passed rather quickly. Raja stopped by again later on in the day to drop off the hard drive and tell us that the new OCW hard drive had arrived but was delayed in customs. This worried him a little bit since customs may ultimately require 48% of the cost of the hard drive in order to let it pass through and he wasn’t sure if he wasn’t going to be able to be of much help (especially since he was leaving for the states on Thursday). For now, all we can do is wait and see what happens.

After Raja left, everyone from last night’s home cooked meal (except Kennedy) headed out to Muskaan for dinner. The original plan was to get Croatian pizza at the Black Night Café but the café was already closed by the time we got there. The 6 of us all ordered different dishes to share. Mine of course, was rather spicy (although I had asked the waiter to make sure my dish was as mild as possible). I think Clinton was in the same boat and neither he nor I could finish our dishes (I wouldn’t even try his, trusting his assessment of it being very hot and additionally, my tongue was already numb from having bitten into a chili pepper). Once we got back to the guesthouse I went right to sleep while Lia and the guys made some tea and the rest of the company stayed up for a while talking.

16 January 2006

2006-01-16T05:49:00.000-08:00

First Set of Presentations at the Department of Engineering

Early Arrival and Setting Up

We had our first set of OCW and iLabs presentations today for the department of engineering. Clinton and I arrived at UNZA at 8 a.m. to setup for the 9 a.m. presentations. We figured that an hour would give us enough time to set up all of our equipment and take care of any last minute things that might come up. Mr. Zulu led us to the lecture theatre that his secretary had showed us last week and we began setting up. Surprisingly, things went really smoothly. We had our own projector and an extra adapter that we borrowed from one of our guesthouse mates, Satu, and we had our laptops and the projector set up well in advance of the commencement of the presentations. There was no projector screen, but there was a flat white wall between two blackboards in the middle of the lecture theatre that served as a fine substitute.

Successful First Presentations

When 9 a.m. arrived, Clinton and I were still the only ones in the room and I have to say I began to worry a bit. What if the people had forgotten about the presentations? Or worse, what if people weren’t interested in seeing the presentations? By 9:15 a.m., we had a total of 3 faculty in the room, but we had both the head of the electrical engineering department and the mechanical engineering department so we weren’t in such bad shape. We started the presentations a few minutes later and more people began trickling in with time. By about 9:30 a.m. we had around 15 faculty members total in attendance (there didn’t seem to be any students, but that’s not a surprise considering most students are currently on their breaks). Both the presentations lasted a bit under and hour and a half at the end of which we took questions. For OCW, the faculty were interested in what format the course content was in, if people could access the OCW materials outside of UNZA (and a follow up question addressed the concern that if the idea really does catch on in Zambia, will people outside of UNZA drain the university’s bandwidth), and what would happen with OCW if an e-learning initiative became profitable. As for iLabs, the faculty were also interested if people outside of UNZA could use it, if it involved real laboratory equipment, and if there had been a stress test performed to determine how much of a load iLabs could handle.

Finishing Up for the Day: Internet Café, Groceries, and Dinner

After our presentations, Clinton and I returned to Kepa. I spent the next few hours going to the internet café, buying food for breakfast and lunch for this week (I couldn’t do it on Sunday because Melissa had already closed by the time I had gone there to buy groceries), and writing postcards for friends and family back in the states. Clinton and I also decided to pay for our entire stay at the Finnish guesthouse in advance, since the dollar has been steadily declining in value (and we made the right choice as the rate was soon 31,000 kwacha to a dollar). Raja stopped by later at night and I went out with him to the Black Night Café next to Melissa for some hot chocolate. We spent the next few hours talking about MIT, Raja’s outsourcing project, and in general catching up.

When I got back to the apartment, Mina and Lia were preparing some mushroom risotto for dinner. We spent some time talking and then all of us (including Clinton, Satu, Yuho, and Kennedy) ate together. We talked about politics, football, and everything in between. I got tired pretty early so I was the first to head off to bed while the rest stayed up talking late into the night.

14-15 January 2006

2006-01-15T05:44:00.000-08:00

Finding a Cab

Clinton and I got up really early on Saturday morning, probably around 4 a.m., packed up a few last minute things, and headed outside to find a cab to take us to the bus terminal. Raja had told us that we’d be able to find a cab, but when we walked out of Kepa and didn’t find any taxis at the street corner where they usually wait, we began to worry a bit. We decided to walk up Bishops Rd. towards the internet café in hopes of finding a cab there. It was still dark out and the roads were completely empty – no people and no cars – so I was definitely on my guard. After walking for a few minutes, we saw a car approaching. The driver honked his horn as he passed (the typical means of a taxi asking if you want a ride), so we stopped, turned around, and waved for him to come pick us up. Raja had warned us that we’d probably get overcharged a great deal, as prices tended to go up at night when few taxis were in operation. At first, the 40,000 kwacha seemed absurd but we both realized that we didn’t have another feasible alternative, as we weren’t sure when another cab would arrive and even then, if they’d be able to offer us a better deal.

Ride to Central Bus Station

We told the cab driver that we were headed to the central bus station. He seemed a bit confused even when we had told him it was near a 2cas (this was the landmark that Raja had mentioned to us). After a while he just said, “Oh, no problem,” as these cab drivers tend to say even when they don’t know where they’re going. Yet, somehow, they always manage to get us where we need to go, and so did this driver. He stopped by a gas station to ask for directions (I was expecting something like this happen) and it even worked out for the better since Clinton could use the ATM there. After we took off again, we started driving on a lot of local roads, which worried me a bit (the dark didn’t help either). I kept hoping that the next road we drove on would be a main one and that this guy wasn’t taking us into the middle of nowhere to rob us. Fortunately, it all turned out well in the end. We got to the bus station and the driver even took us over to buy tickets. Of course, once we had gotten the tickets and he led us over to the bus we would be taking, he asked for some monetary compensation for his services. We gave him 10,000 kwacha, which really didn’t seem like a whole lot extra (considering how much we paid him for the cab ride itself), and after all, he did get us there safe and sound.

Waiting for the Bus to Leave

The cab driver had originally told us to just go sit on the bus once we had our tickets, but one look at the completely dark and seemingly empty bus quickly changed our minds. We waited outside for a little while. It was still early in the morning (around 5 a.m.) so it was a bit cold and we were looking for a good excuse to get on the bus. When we saw another passenger get on, we took this as our cue to follow. When we got in, we found the first three seats of the second row occupied by someone sleeping. We decided that it was probably the driver who was just taking a nap before the ride. Clinton tried to sit a row or two back and actually ended up sitting on another person who had also been sleeping. Now, we weren’t really sure what to think. But, we didn’t ask any questions, and instead just sat up front talking to pass the time. After some time passed, the first person we had found got up, turned on the bus lights and started cleaning up (we later learned that the second person was just another passenger). People began trickling onto the bus very slowly at first, which surprised us since Raja had told us to be at the bus station promptly at 5 a.m. since buses left at 5:30, 6, and 6:30. I thought that perhaps we weren’t leaving because the bus wasn’t full. This concept might seem strange to someone who is used to buses running on schedule (as is typical in the states), but when I had been in Kenya this pastsummer, transportation often left when there were enough people to leave. In either case, Clinton and I just waited (perhaps we also didn’t want to push our luck any further).

We didn’t learn until we had gotten back from the trip that we had simply bought a ticket for a different bus company (Zoom Trailways) which actually left at 8 a.m. This bus left a bit past 8 (when the entire bus was close to full) so we had to wait over 3 hours. I think in the end, we were just really glad to leave (and perhaps all that waiting made us appreciate leaving all the more). Whatever the case may have been, we were soon on the road.

Arrival at Livingstone

I slept for pretty much the entire 6 or so hour ride there, while Clinton was mostly reading. The bus made several stops in towns on the way to Livingstone to pick up and drop off passengers and one official rest stop in the middle for food. The rest stop wasn’t very good. The “cuisine” was fast food, primarily deep-fried chicken, but food was food (We hadn’t eaten anything that morning so we weren’t going to be picky) and it was cheap (so even better).

When we arrived in Livingstone, it was already past 2 p.m. so we decided to quickly check into Ngolide Lodge and head off to Victoria Falls before it got dark. Ngolide Lodge was rather nice (although it didn’t have a restaurant), but really expensive (264,000K for our double).

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls made the entire trip well worth it. The place is absolutely beautiful and only costs $10 (but we only had kwacha so we had to pay a higher fee of around 90,000K). When I asked the guy who sold us the ticket if it would be safe to take pictures with my camera, he said something along the lines of, “Oh, no problem. There’s only little sprays of water here and there.” Little did we know that by sprays he meant gushing downpours and heavy winds. Needless to say, we got completely soaked, although that only made the experience more memorable. After all, we not only saw, but also felt and tasted the Falls. We took a lot of pictures (it’s amazing to think they were all of just water) and even one or two with the locals, before heading out. We decided to check out the craft stores set up right outside the entrance to the Falls before leaving for dinner, but as soon as we heard the prices, we realized that it wasn’t even worth trying to bargain with the vendors.

Dinner at Zig Zag

One of the reception clerks from our lodge had recommended Ocean Basket for dinner, but when we asked the cab driver about the place, he told us that there wasn’t anything on the menu under 70,000K. He said that the Zig Zag restaurant, in the other direction from our lodge, was a less expensive option with relatively good food. When we arrived at Zig Zag, it was relatively early in the evening, around 5 p.m. so the restaurant was still on its break (we seem to have a knack for coming to dinner at these times) and only the bar was open. Fortunately, a person who seemed to be the manager told us that he couldn’t just not have us eat (or in reality, he didn’t want to lose the potential business) so he gave us menus and told us to place orders as usual. They served breakfast all day so I decided to get a granola and yogurt (freshly made) parfait, Clinton got a burger for himself, and we got a plate of nachos to share, along with two smoothies for drinks. I have to say that the breakfast food was extremely good. It had raisins, nuts, granola, honey, coconut, and so much more. The smoothie tasted more like a milk shake but it was still pretty good.

Breakfast to go and Fresh-Picked Mangoes

Before leaving, we decided to ask the waiters how early they were open for breakfast (our bus was at 8 a.m. so we were hoping to be able to grab a bite to eat or take some food to go so we wouldn’t be starving again). The restaurant would open at 7 a.m. so we set up an arrangement where we would pre-order breakfast now and pick it up to go tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. We also asked them if there was some place where we could buy fresh fruit, like mangoes. The waiter told us he could pick mangoes for us (there were several trees right outside of the restaurant) and asked how many we wanted. We said 2 or 3 (they would all be for me since Clinton wasn’t the biggest mango fan, although he did quote SNL a few times). The cook and two of the waiters then set out picking mangoes for me. We offered to pay them but they wouldn’t accept any money.

Back at Kepa

After dinner, we headed back to the apartment. I fell asleep almost immediately (I think I’ve spent most of my time in Zambia sleeping). The next morning, we stopped at Zig Zag to pick up breakfast and then went back to the Zoom Trailways bus top. The bus left soon after 8 a.m. and after another long trip, we were back at Kepa. We spent the rest of the night preparing for Monday’s presentations and relating the weekend’s stories to our housemates.

13 January 2006

2006-01-13T02:46:00.000-08:00

After Clinton and I got up today, we headed over to the internet café and supermarket to buy some groceries for next week since we were awaiting to hear back about the status of the external hard drive. We bought lunch (breakfast for Clinton who seems to have been “eating” Fanta for the past few breakfast) and when we got back to the apartment, we found Raja waiting for us. He told us that Aaron had tried to fix the external hard drive yesterday but with no success. He even took it out of the external casing and tried to access the content on the drive by setting up the drive as a slave on one of his computers. Unfortunately, the controller in the drive had fired, so he was unable to retrieve any of the content. Raja, Clinton, and I headed back to the internet café and emailed Farnaz and Kirky updating them of the new developments. Raja then dropped us back off the apartment and Clinton and I decided to go to UNZA to confirm the rooms and times for all of our presentations for next week (we figured it couldn’t hurt to double check).

We first headed over to Mr. Zulu’s office. Unfortunately, he was unavailable but his secretary took us downstairs to the lecture theatre where we would have the presentations on Monday for the school of engineering. The presentations would start at 9 a.m., as originally planned. She asked us if we would need a computer laboratory as well, but since the OCW materials weren’t ready, we told her it wasn’t likely. We then headed off to the department of natural sciences in hopes of running into Mr. Kalebwe. He wasn’t available either so we headed down to the see the head of physics. He kindly offered to show us where our presentations on Tuesday would be held (it would be in a similar sort of lecture theatre to the one we had just seen at the school of engineering). These presentations would start at 10 a.m., also as originally planned. Before finishing up at the university for the day, Clinton and I asked Mr. Chanda for access to the server room, so that we could ensure that iLabs was all set to go and get a few snapshots and other materials for our presentations. The iLabs server was in good working condition. The domain name, however, had not yet been updated so that icampus.unza.net/ilab wasn’t working. Mr. Chanda assured us that this would be taken care of on Saturday.

Since it was still early in the day, Clinton and I decided to head back to Kabwata, the crafts village where Raja had briefly taken us earlier in the week, to buy some gifts for our family and friends. There are little huts set up all over the village with crafts located either within the hut or right outside of it. Most of these huts are owned by men. However, on your left as you walk in, there’s a big hut which is solely run by women. These women decided to combine all of their crafts and work as a team, splitting the profits evenly among themselves. Of course, you still have to haggle with the merchants, all of whom promise to give you a good price but will rip you off if you give them the chance. I felt somewhat obligated to purchase wares from the women’s hut and support their establishment, though I must say that their crafts were of a high quality and they had much more of a variety than any of the other huts. I only bargained a little bit, mainly because after a while I just started feeling bad. The few dollars difference in the price in reality didn’t make much of a difference to me (I spend almost $4 each time I take out money from an ATM here) and I knew that the crafts were worth much more than the few dollars in the U.S., so I knowingly let myself get ripped off. I only hope that the money is put to good use.

After Clinton and I got back to our apartment, it was still pretty early but we decided to head off for dinner. Raja had mentioned that we might need to get to the Lusaka bus station by 5 a.m. the next morning in order to catch a bus to Livingstone so going to bed early seemed like a good idea. We walked over to an Indian place down Bishops Rd. that Raja recommended to us. There were about three guarded gates that seemed good candidates for the entrance to the restaurant. We tried each one in turn with no success, and then it started raining. We were ready to give up when we saw some people going through one of the three gates. As it turns out, this gate led into a local compound but luckily for us, one of the employees of the restaurant happened to be walking by and overhead our conversation. He explained to us that the restaurant closes daily from about 3 to 6 p.m. and as it was only a little after 5 p.m., they had not yet opened. He decide to let us come in and wait outside of the restaurant (protected from the rain) until they were ready to open (this was most likely because we were an extra source of income as opposed to the fact that we were hungry, but we appreciated it in either case).

The restaurant was very nice and the food was really good, and not surprisingly, both of these aspects were reflected in the prices. We were however, rather surprised by the almost 30% service and other taxes that were added onto our bill. It seems that in restaurants like this one, all of the tips are split relatively evenly among the waiters and other restaurant staff.

After dinner, we headed back to the apartment. I packed for the weekend and was planning on getting some work done, but soon fell asleep. Raja woke me up and gave me all the details for the Livingstone trip. He said we needed to be at the bus station b 5 a.m. (which I wasn’t too happy about) and gave me the name and contact info for the hotel where we would be staying. I spoke to him for a little while longer, told him to relate the information to Clinton and went back to sleep.

12 January 2006

2006-01-12T00:34:00.000-08:00

Thursday was very much uneventful. Our only accomplishment was securing tickets back to Nairobi on January 24. The travel agent took nearly an hour to get us tickets because she entered all of our information into a command prompt type system; there were no name, address, number fields as we’ve come to expect in the U.S. Instead, she would enter info on a command line and file it using key commands since Kenya Airways does not have an online registration system. They don’t accept American Express, either.

After purchasing tickets, we headed to the internet café to check mail and attempt to put the blog online. We checked email, but there was so much that we had to reply to that the blog never got online at that time. With email checked and running late for our meeting with Raja at UNZA, we returned to the Kepa compound to get a taxi, but once again our taxis were being chased by the police. The taxi finally showed up and we were once again at UNZA campus.

It turns out that the first time we’re late, Raja is on time. Unfortunately, he had to leave so was not around when arrived at 11:20 for a 10:30 appointment. With the OCW hard drive still being offline, we had nothing to do and decided to have an early lunch. The Mingling Bar on campus offered hot dogs, burgers, and polony (bologna) sandwiches. Marta learned yesterday that pork is not the food to eat in Zambia; besides, the hot dogs looked way to pink to be cooked properly. We decided on hamburgers. The hamburgers looked nice from a distance – the usual meat and bread, plus vegetables. Once we bit into them however, we discovered that they were pretty cold and a little pink on the inside.

Once again, Marta was unsettled by lunch at UNZA. (Both times, it was her decision to eat there.) I on the other hand have a stomach finely trained by years of unhealthy eating. The pinky burger didn’t faze me one bit. Perhaps it’s because I eat chocolate, Fanta orange, Coca-Cola, and apple juice for breakfast (in that order, by the way). I bought Frosties (Frosted Flakes in the U.S.), but they don’t taste right, so I stopped eating them.

With lunch over, we decided to check in with Raja. Unfortunately for me (my dad, who pays my cell bill), the university had no outside line we could use. So I had to call Raja from my phone. According to Cingular’s website, this call cost about $3.99 per minute. The call lasted less than two minutes, and we learned that Raja was at the bank which was for some reason very crowded. He had no idea when he would be at UNZA. So, we decided to explore the campus and take lots of pictures. LOTS of pictures because it’s such a beautiful campus.

After our adventures around campus, we returned to the server room to do what we do best, check email and facebook. After about an hour Raja finally showed up and we took the hard drive, once again, to Aaron to be checked out. Aaron wasn’t there, so we left the hard drive for him to look at. With this task completed, Raja dropped us back off at the university while we waited on Aaron and he ran a few errands. Around 5 PM, when the university closes, Mr. Kalebwe took us back to Kepa. Raja was tied up and Aaron was still working.

It was raining and I must say that Kalebwe’s driving scared me, especially since I was sitting up front with him and his defrost didn’t work very well so we couldn’t see very well. On the way we stopped for fuel and a fast food dinner. Marta had Subway which she was excited to discover tasted just like...Subway! I feel it’s very hard to contaminate or improperly cook fried food so I had ZamChick fried chicken. After getting our orders to go, we were once again in the car. When we were leaving the shopping center Kalebwe was having a bit of difficulty getting to the exit. When we made it around a certain turn, a woman said from her window, “It’s one way!” To this Kalebwe replied, “It’s raining!” I didn’t know whether I should get out and start walking at this point or just start laughing (which I’m doing as I type this). The weather being what it was, I decided to take my chances in the death seat.

By the graces of the African driving god, we made it back to Kepa safely. There wasn’t much to do so I read a few chapters of “Memoirs of a Geisha” until the power went out. I have a new understanding of “pitch black” after this experience; I could see nothing. Marta, on the other hand, had her laptop as a source of light, so I decided to see what she was up to. She and Lea, our Italian house mate, were discussing literature. Since my collection of readings includes everything by Tom Clancy and Dan Brown, I was pretty much left out of this conversation. Eventually, the way all conversations have a habit of doing, we were on the subject of race/ethnicity. Lea had a hard time understanding that racism still had a place in America. I also explained to her the election system in America and how race can play a role all the way down to local city elections. Eventually, we ended the night with her explaining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thus ended the uneventful day.

11 January 2006

2006-01-11T00:33:00.000-08:00

Wednesday was our first opportunity to get into the server room at UNZA. We arrived at UNZA around 11:30 AM and had lunch in the canteen at a great price (K10,000 [$3] for soda and t-bone/sausage with rice). After lunch we headed to the server room to set up the servers. We felt that John Chunda, the network manager, was a little leery of our being in the server room, probably because he assigned a poor fellow to watch us while we were in there. We say “poor fellow” because he basically got to sit and watch us check email for 5 hours.

The iLab Service Broker was easily setup and placed online. After testing we realized there was a problem when we were unable to access devices to use in the microelectronics lab. Luckily, Kimberly DeLong (Kirky), our MIT iLab contact, was online and received our email relaying our semi-success. Within a couple of hours she was able to find and fix the problem, allowing us to complete the setup of the iLab Service Broker.

The OCW server setup was not completed. Perhaps the external hard drive just hates us, but today it refused to turn on. Whenever we plugged it in and activated the power switch, the light on the power supply would blink. According to Maxtor’s website, this is a problem with the external enclosure. Hopefully the data remains in tact and we can try to obtain a new enclosure tomorrow.

Besides the aforementioned happenings, our time at UNZA was chilling (thanks to the air conditioner in the server room) but uneventful. Perhaps the strangest occurrence on Wednesday was to walk out of the KEPA compound that morning and see that all the taxis were gone. The security guard at the compound explained that our taxis were not licensed and were currently being chased down the street by the police. We couldn’t believe it. A few minutes later a car comes screaming around the corner, nearly hits 3 folks standing a little too close to the street and stops in front of the compound. Sure enough it’s our taxi so we hop in. (Illegal taxi, or not, it’s our only way to UNZA and quite cheap at K20,000 [$6].) All the while driving, our driver is looking behind him to make sure no police are behind him. What a ride this was!

The day’s activities ended with dinner at the Lusaka Club. Shigeru was paying so we made sure to get the most expensive entrees they offered (Just kidding!). I [Clinton] had the prawns butter garlic, which was simply excellent. I love shrimp and this was by far the best I have had. Marta had the sweet and sour chicken which was “the best thing [she’s] had had here so far, except for the food at Raja’s house.” It seems that our meals, at least dinner, get better each day, so we’re happy we aren’t stuck with the expensive and un-tasty fast food near the guest house.

Over dinner we discussed our thoughts on the OpenZambia project. Our biggest concern was that we would get things up and running and either the servers would not be maintained (not really a tough job, but someone has to do it), or the professors would be hesitant to incorporate iLab and OCW into their courses. One professor might have a problem with OCW. The head of the Physics department regularly downloads Physics Electricity & Magnetism (8.02 at MIT) tests, changes them a bit, and gives them to his students (Poor kids, having to take MIT tests!). Obviously if the students catch on to this after using OCW at UNZA, he will have to come up with new tests since the solutions will be available to them.

Our greatest concern with iLab is that the professors will not use it because of its limited uses. When we met with professors in the Engineering and Physics departments, they were quite excited at the prospects of being able to complete resource-intensive digital micro processing labs online. We had to stress to them that the microelectronics web lab is not that complex. We feel this is going to be a point that needs to be stressed in our presentations next week, so that they aren’t disappointed when they get the opportunity to use iLab for themselves.

Shigeru did point out that this is a pilot program and our goal should not be to change the entire university so that OCW and iLab are incorporated into every course. Rather, our goal right now should be to get OCW and iLab in a few courses and over time learn how it is used, what is liked or disliked. This way we can incorporate the feedback into the systems at UNZA and other locations. While we certainly would like to see OCW and iLab incorporated university-wide, we agree that we cannot change the entire university in 2 weeks. At this point we are just worried that the project will not be used at all; however, we hope to incite some enthusiasm in our presentations next week.

So, all things considered, Wednesday was a good, productive day. Tomorrow we’ll book tickets for our trips to Victoria Falls and Kenya, search for another hard drive enclosure, and, hopefully, have the OCW server up and ready.

10 January 2006

2006-01-10T00:33:00.000-08:00

When we arrived on Saturday, our internal clocks were pretty messed up; we sometimes fell asleep in the middle of the day on Saturday and Sunday, which messed us up even more, causing us to wake up fully refreshed in the morning…at 3 AM! Monday’s activities definitely put an end to this. After meeting the various contacts at the university and having dinner with Raja’s family and friends, we were dead tired. Today we woke up, without alarm clocks, around 7:30 AM.

Today’s activities began with a walk to the internet café to check email and see what was going on in the rest of the world. Following this we took a trip into Town Centre to purchase a new Ethernet card for the server to allow it to run both OCW and iLabs without bogging down the UNZA internet stream. This trip included our first Zambian taxi ride. The driver drove much slower than Raja and had some pretty decent music. The trip cost K50, 000 ($15) compared to about $30 in Boston. We discovered that technology is very expensive here. The Ethernet card which might cost an average of $20 in the United States cost K225, 000 ($65). Taxis are cheap, technology is expensive! After making the purchase, we headed to UNZA to meet other contacts.

After arriving at UNZA we met up once again with Peter Kalebwe and Prof. Shigeru Miyagawa who arrived in Lusaka early this morning. We had lunch at the same place as yesterday, and it was wonderful. We confirmed that the mystery food from yesterday was indeed caterpillars. Marta was ecstatic (see picture)!

Back at UNZA we met with Vice-Chancellor Robert Serpoll and Dr. Mbale Jameson, Head of the Department of Computer Studies. Both meetings went quite well. The Vice-Chancellor’s position is similar to that of president in American universities. Vice-Chancellor Serpoll has been in office for 3 years and increasing the use of technology on campus has been one of his key concerns. OCW and iLabs will aid him in addressing this concern, so he was very enthusiastic about our installing the two servers.

Dr. Mbale Jameson was appointed as head of the Computer Studies department about 3 weeks ago. He too was quite excited about the installation of an OCW mirror site at UNZA. OCW will greatly aid his department in teaching its various courses. OCW will also be used to allow students access to information for courses that are either not offered or have no instructor, such as Computer Graphics. Dr. Jameson was also kind enough to appoint Evans Lampi as the administrator of the server that we are installing. Evans is an instructor for courses in Electronics, Computation Physics, C++, and Java. He is eager to utilize OCW to access programming assignments from MIT subjects for use in the courses he teaches at UNZA.

Early today (midnight) when we were preparing the server for setup, we discovered that the external hard drive containing the OCW information was not being recognized properly by our server; the drive was made for Mac OS and Windows 2000/XP, but the server runs Windows Server 2003. Since we had more meetings today, we could not initially deal with this problem; however, Raja came through for us once again. After finishing the meetings, we rushed to the office of Aaron, a friend of Raja’s who repairs computers. He confirmed that the drive worked by connecting it to his own computer and when he connected it to our server, the drivers that came with the hard drive worked. We don’t know what he did, but definitely thank him for his help.

With the server ready to go online tomorrow, we returned to the KEPA guest house to meet a new roommate, Lea. Lea is from Milan, Italy and will be in Zambia for a year working with a U.N. campaign (can’t recall which one, maybe food/hunger elimination). Lea is a very nice young lady and we stayed up to nearly midnight discussing various issues ranging from education in the U.S. compared to Italy/England to past loves and relationships. It was wonderful to have someone to chat with.

Our chat was supposed to last until about 9 PM at which time Raja would return to take us to dinner. For some reason he never showed up, so our dinner included Fanta orange soft drink and Lea’s very tasty Maltesers, chocolate malt balls. Mmm, yummy!

9 January 2006

2006-01-09T00:29:00.000-08:00

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.