Summer news [2019-06-28]

The last month has been relatively quiet here at Reneal headquarters.  Neal is on the mend from shoulder surgery, so he hasn’t been able to work as much as usual.  Reneal Team Philippines is waiting for the enrollment database to finalize before they make their beginning-of-the-year school visits.  And it’s the mid-year break in Tanzania schools.  Nonetheless, we’ve been keeping busy with some unexpected tasks.

Sir Louie Romano, our very dedicated colleague at Cebu Technological University in Carmen, discovered the Cisco Packet Tracer simulation package.  He asked Neal if it can be installed in the server there for students’ use.  Neal has been working on that and is making progress.  It will be an exciting new capability for the students at CTU-Carmen.  Reneal Team Philippines also set up a new computer lab at CTU-Carmen for the students of long-time Super User Sir Jezreel Buot.  We hope this will be a great help to additional students there.  Thanks Lloyd Tuñacao, Rhog Sampan, and Ervin Formentera for your hard work!

We had yet another round of internet problems at our home school of Compostela National High School.  This is the kind of thing that keeps one awake at night…  Thanks to some great joint troubleshooting with Sir Chester Pascua, the computer teacher there, we FINALLY found the root cause of the problem – a spare cable had accidentally been connected between two network switches that shouldn’t be connected.  I think (hope!) that the mystery is solved, and that the teachers and students there will now have good internet access.

In Arusha, computer technician Robert Nyangaka provided teacher orientation at Olmotonyi Secondary School.  This is a school that had computers already.  In February Reneal’s team, assisted by our partners Habari Node and Arusha Node Marie, added a server and a gigabit network switch.  Now the students and teachers there have access to the full set of educational resources on the server.  Robert and Reneal School Liaison David Nyangaka have also been visiting all of the schools to help determine what work needs to be done when Neal and I arrive in August.

 My last few days have been spent doing incoming testing and preparation of another set of laptops obtained from Renew Computers (www.renewcomputers.com) here in the Bay Area.  We are so grateful for their program that supports acquisition of used computers by non-profit organizations! 

With these computers, we now have everything we intend to take to Arusha in late August.  Additionally we have a wonderful supply of units for early 2020 work in Tanzania.  We are so grateful to our donors who have made it possible to reach our goal for serving additional students and teachers in Arusha District!

 [Photo: Installation of the new computer lab at CTU-Carmen]