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Closing in [2015-11-03]

It’s been a long time since my last post, and I’ll use the excuse that we’ve been at six different locations in the last week.  We finished the teacher and student orientation training at Oldadai Secondary School and installed a server at the United African Alliance Community Center (UAACC).  We also visited the four schools that had labs installed in 2013 and 2014: Ilkiding’a SS, Mwandet SS, Mlangarini SS, and Mukulat SS.  We are looking forward to a quieter day tomorrow, when we will visit the Arusha District Office and go through some of their used computers to see if they can be used for clients.

In my last post I reported that there were some serious electricity problems at Oldadai, but it looked like there might be an easy fix.  Unfortunately there isn’t.  The issue is that the school only has single phase power, so they need to request the electricity company to provide three-phase service to the school.  It’s not clear how long that will take but if they want to use the computer lab in the interim, they must use a generator.  The holiday break for students has just started, so we are hoping that the work will be done prior to the students’ return in January.  The computer teachers asked us to provide the orientation training using a generator, so after a morning of waiting around trying to get everything working, we finally got that done last Wednesday.

Thursday, Friday, Monday, and today we visited the four 2013/2014 schools to make a few updates and check out their systems.  Two of the schools just received free internet for a year, and happily all of the schools are now on the grid.  We are still digesting the observations, but in general the hardware seems to be working well yet.  Of great concern are the erratic electricity supply and the disappointing level of computer use over the past year.  Those two things are probably at least partially related but there is more analysis to be done before drawing any conclusions.

The work at UAACC over the weekend was a happy breath of fresh air for Neal and me, literally and figuratively.  UAACC provides a wonderful family environment for about 20 kids, as well as classes in English, art, music, and IT for the local community.  Pete and Charlotte “Mama C” O’Neal have built this place over many years, and it was a wonderful respite for us in spite of the hard work.  Working with Monica John from Arusha Node Marie and Herman, the very knowledgeable volunteer IT guy at UAACC, we did all of the usual installation stuff: setting BIOS, memory checks, Ethernet cabling, and server setup.  The UAACC lab is composed of 11 machines with several different model types – as such, it was an interesting challenge.  I was disappointed that we didn’t get all 11 machines to boot to the network, but at least it’s a start for the folks there.  Neal and I reveled in the calm, peaceful atmosphere surrounded by trees and plants; after several weeks in our little room at the Lutheran Centre in the middle of Arusha, it was heaven!  And since Saturday was Halloween, the kids had an all-night, outdoor scary movie marathon.  Neal, Monica, and I joined Pete and the kids.  The kids, laying on a sea of mattresses spread out on the floor, lasted longer than we did…

The primary task over the next few days is preparing for the system administration training for the computer teachers, to be held on Saturday morning.  We are looking forward to bringing everyone together to discuss how to keep the system running well.