January 27, 2010: The Metric System

The trip begins with the distinct feeling that we’ve forgotten something. Pretty standard concerns obviously, although perhaps more legitimate when we’re packing an entire solar powered computer lab in three or four suitcases. Heather, the Smallbean Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and my partner in crime on this journey, did well. She managed to distribute her half of the Smallbean solar and technology materials in her checked luggage, staying below the 51-pound limit and avoiding the $50 British Airways penalty charge. I was not so lucky. The larger of my two checked bags weighed in at 30 kilos. I’m no metric system expert, but according to the nice ladies at the British Airways check-in counter, no amount of juggling of possessions would have gotten our last and heaviest bag below the legal limit. So thank you, whichever Smallbean donation went toward the $50 overweight fee. We promise that the solar suitcase, solar panels, netbooks, etc, contained inside its Jonah like innards are well worth the expense.

We arrive in London at 5:30 am. The next leg of our journey doesn’t depart until past dinnertime, so we have about 13 hours to kill in the United Kingdom. An old friend of mine from college lives in London, so the plan is to venture out into that grand old city on the Thames and taste ourselves a bit of just how not-far the American dollar goes in Europe these days. We’ll also be able to shower, charge personal electronics (via 220 grid current – no solar yet!), and rest in the UK as we prepare for the next leg of the journey. The luggage will stay checked at Heathrow. Thus far we haven’t heard a peep of trouble from the solar suitcase and hope it stays that way in London.

January 29, 2010: The Arrival

We have arrived in Kwala. After a 13-hour layover in London, our flight departed at approximately 7pm. 9 hours in the air and 3 hours of forward time zone movement later, we landed in Dar es Salaam (Dar) at 7am this morning. There were no problems whatsoever with Tanzanian customs and we walked out of the airport with our bags unsearched. But it was clear that the smaller of my checked bags (containing the battery for the solar suitcase and a number of DC adapters and cables among other less noteworthy items [clothes, toothpaste, etc.]) had been searched by TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) or someone from the British equivalent. But nothing was missing and a full inventory taken upon our arrival in Kwala revealed that everything appears to have made the journey from Boston to Kwala safe and sound. Hurray.

We were met at the airport by the Newton-Tanzania Collaborative (NTC) driver, an extremely nice man named Omari who just returned from 6 years studying electrical engineering in France and Algeria and who is now having major problems finding an engineering job in Tanzania. In his spare time he volunteers for NTC and he’s really really excited about the solar suitcase and the other solar gadgets that Smallbean has brought to Africa. And heck, what could be better from a Smallbean perspective than an electrical engineer who just happens to understand solar energy hanging around Kwala Secondary School?

We drove through Dar es Salaam on the way to Kwala. Lots and lots and lots of traffic, with over an hour spent sitting at stoplights in town with street vendors dodging in and out of traffic selling everything from macadamia nuts to pillows. After a stop for breakfast or lunch (or whatever meal you wanted to call it after traveling for three days) we set out on the road for Kwala. It was paved and marked every few miles by gas stations either operating or under construction. About an hour or so from Dar, we made a left onto the direct road to Kwala. Dirt, full of holes, canyons, valleys, and Tanzanians on bicycles and motorcycles called piki-pikis. It was also 19 km’s long, cutting past tiny houses made of sticks and a thick mud material and small plots growing corn and another crop I didn’t recognize. It took us about an hour to travel these last 19 km’s, eventually twisting and turning our way into Kwala proper. Small buildings, lots of people, lots of dust, very dry. The school sits on the far side of town, perhaps half a kilometer from the town hubbub. Approximately 8 or 10 low lying buildings made of cinderblock and with tin roofs. Square windows open to the elements, which from what I can tell so far, is an East Coast mid-July style heat.

We meet up with our colleagues from NTC who were sheltering from the afternoon heat. We unpack the Smallbean bags and discover that everything has arrived safe and sound. A relief--knock on wood--but the whole process was quite a bit easier than I would have dared believe after months and months of logistical planning. With some assistance we assemble the six solar panels into a single large 2 by 3 panel and then speak with the fundi, the carpenter who will be installing the solar panels onto the roof. At this point my new arrival excitement begins to fade and I’m left with a feeling of exhaustion, too much heat and no real sense of time after three days on the road. But it’s nice to be in Kwala, even if I have no real sense of what Kwala is at this point.

January 30, 2010: Hotel California

We just returned from purchasing water in Kwala village. It’s about 9am and already hot as hell. The land is amazingly dry. The village is full of well-meaning folks staring hard at Heather and I. We are with Lisa, the mizungo from NTC, who has been living in Kwala since September and is known to everyone in the village. She speaks Swahili quite well and is almost always involved in an elaborate ritual of good morning – how are you – I’m fine – and you – thank you for asking – goodbye – with the people we pass along our way to the water store. I’m struck by how difficult it is to arrive in a new place and have no idea how to speak the language.

Months and months of theorizing aside, most people in rural Tanzania don’t speak much English, and I don’t speak any Swahili. Language is key here. In a sense, we have a headstart because we’re building this computer lab and teaching the kids how to do something practical, which is of course easier than trying to teach them math or science that is less doing and more talking. But it’s going to be a massive challenge. Particularly in explaining the second half of the curriculum, the meat of the Citizen Archist Project. It’s all well and good to say that it’s fine for the interviews to be conducted in Swahili or even better, dialects from the various villages, but the key over the next few days will be to make people understand, grasp, be excited about, the idea of telling stories about what life is like here in Kwala. We absolutely have our work cut out for us.

Yesterday we met with the Smallbean Project Archvist, a very nice woman named Lilian who will be the Smallbean person on the ground in Kwala once we leave (along with Lisa Walker and other reps from NTC). Initially the meeting was a challenge, with Lilian not speaking a great deal of English and Heather and I of course having woefully nonexistent Swahili. But, after ten or twenty minutes and we grew a bit more comfortable with each other, it became clear that Lilian was often more shy than not understanding. That said, it was further proof of the gap between expectation and reality on the ground in Africa and other Citizens Archivist Project (CAP) locations. Lilian has some basic understanding of computers based upon some instruction provided by Lisa Walker of NTC using the school’s only other computer in the library. However, she’d never used a digital camera and ditto (understandably) never used an audio tape recorder. But by the end of the meeting she seemed enthusiastic to go forward and the best we can do from here it take things one day at a time, specifically tomorrow at 4pm.

In other news, the fundi that was supposed to install the door on the computer lab and the solar panels on the roof failed to arrive today. It’s unclear where he disappeared to or why, but I hope he appears tomorrow. For now, all of the CAP computers and other materials are holed up in the same bedroom shared by Lisa and Heather and the solar panels (assembled now into an impressive 2 by 3 frame) sitting in the living room of the NTC coordinator. Goals for today are as follows: 1) get those panels up on the roof; 2) get a door on the computer lab and a locked cabinet in that room so we can start setting up the lab; 3) greet the third member of the Smallbean team when he arrives, Tristan; and 4) hope that Lilian continues to be enthusiastic and capable as the fourth member of team Smallbean.

Lastly, just before dinner yesterday we went into Kwala town for a beer at a place called Hotel California. Perhaps 20 Tanzanians were clustered around a small TV watching the semifinal of the African Nations Cup (Algeria versus Nigeria). We sat under a covered cabana drinking cold Castle beer in an assortment of mismatched chairs but in a drinking establishment, all things considered, that made me feel just a little closer to home. A gigantic African full moon lingered above our heads, orange and

February 2, 2010: If Dinner Starts at 7:00, Arrive at 7:20

The first night of class was yesterday evening. The computer lab is still unfinished, so we held class in the library. Earlier in the day we informed the 11 students from the school (spread across the four forms of Kwala Secondary School) that they had been selected for the class. They were excited. But I don’t think any of them knew what to expect. Sort of like Team Smallbean. The run-up to the class was chaotic. The Tanzanians are lovely, lovely hosts, but occasionally their very liberal attitude toward starting times can be a challenge to work with. For example, if dinner starts at 7:00, it generally means that one should arrive at 7:20 or so for the meal. At 7:00, dinner likely won’t be ready and your hosts might be secretly a bit annoyed.  Arrive at 7:45, which we did one evening a few days ago, and that’s a bit too late. After a few days here, we’re adjusting accordingly, generally arriving for a 4:00 meeting at the perfect time – 4:12

Last night was a further challenge however. About 90 minutes before class, one of the senior teachers that we’re staying with asked me to take a stroll around town.  A hard request to turn down. And Heather was enlisted into the kitchen to learn a bit of Tanznian cooking from another one of our hosts, the head mistress at the school. 8:00 quickly drew close, with me still stuck in the village, Heather stuck in the kitchen, and no preparation being made for the 8:00 class. At 8:03, along with our NTC compatriots, we sprinted down to the classroom. The students, undeniable proof that they were excited for the class, were there and waiting. We welcomed the kids and hurriedly set up for the class, all of us wondering how we’d allowed six months of planning to be so easily upended by the well-meaning hospitality of our hosts.

The class was not without its hiccups. Like all first days everywhere I suppose. Our overhead projector declined to function. Our Tanzanian teacher was twenty minutes late and, well, Heather and I have a lot to learn about teaching. But, in the end, things went really, really well. We showed the kids a short movie containing pictures from Boston and our answers to a short series of interview questions. We took a class photo. We split the kids into groups and explained the basics of the laptops. It’s very interesting that there is quite a range of skills in the class when it comes to computer use. Two or three of the kids have used a computer before, thanks to lessons taught by Lisa Walker in the school’s library using a desktop computer. The varying skill levels comes across in their use of the mouse, and particularly the track pad.

For kids completely new to the computer, double clicking is a challenge. Too often, in their excitement to double click they jerk their hand up and to the right as well, which means that if they do manage to double click successfully (which doesn’t always occur anyway) they are almost always clicking somewhere else on the screen. On the other hand, the kids with a month of two headstart on the mouse are driving the cursor all over the screen, opening and closing programs with ease. All of this bodes very well for Smallbean.

At the end of class we explained their first assignment. On Wednesday, NTC is organizing a Hip Hop show where the kids here are creating songs about Kwala. The kids in our Citizen Archivist Project class will use cameras and audio recorders to capture the performance and upload to the computers. This is Monday evening. We have one day’s class to get the kids up and running on the cameras and audio recorders. No sweat.

February 3, 2010: The Fundi...

The third Smallbean volunteer arrived today. Tristan will be our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) creator and audio visual guru extraordinaire. For now, he’s tired and delirious after his journey.  Class went very, very well today. We introduced the students to the cameras and the digital recorders. They caught on quickly, practicing taking photos of themselves and conducting short interviews in both English and Swahili. We also had the benefit of two Swahili speakers, Lilian (our Smallbean Project Archivist) and Omari, the wonderful electrical engineer who picked us up from the airport last week and is now back to help us with teaching the class and conducting interviews around Kwala. Tomorrow we are off to the village to begin interviewing people from Kwala. This will be very exciting.

In other news, the fundi continues to be pull your finger nails out slow. We are still teaching from the library, with the computer lab continuing to be under construction. The most recent delay has been the installation of a secure door to keep the computer lab and it’s equipment safe and sound. The solar panels continue to wait their turn to be placed on the roof. I am very excited for when this occurs. Hopefully, tomorrow...

February 4, 2010: Bongo Flava

Today was by far our most successful day in Kwala, with the only major fail of the day at the end when we ran out of water and all of us going to bed thirsty and brushing our teeth by the last drips of water from our 10 liter bottles. But up until that point, it was an awesome day. We conducted three oral history interviews in the village. The first was Bibi, a timeless woman of at least 90 who lives in a house behind the Secondary School. The interview was conducted by Lilian, the Smallbean Project Archivist, in Swahili, with Heather recording the interview. Next up was the Stationmaster at the Kwala railroad station. The railroad was built by the Germans in the early 1900’s and is part of the Central Line. The interview was conducted by Omari, the newest member of team Smallbean who is always joking that soon “Smallbean” will become a “Bigbean”. We sat in the railway station, the stationmaster standing behind his desk and Omari and me in the visitors’ chairs on the other side of the desk. The interview drew three or ten spectators as it progressed, mostly others affiliated with the railroad in some way. The interview lasted approximately 90 minutes and covered just fewer than 50 questions. After a stop at “Hotel California” for some quick cold sodas from glass bottles, Omari and Heather interviewed one of the two doctors in Kwala. She was able to magically carve 45 minutes out of her afternoon and provided what I’ve heard was a wonderfully informative interview. In the case of both the doctor and the stationmaster, Omari conducted the interview in Swahili. Tomorrow, he will translate the shorter answers into English and provide brief summaries of the larger answers. We have a system where each question and answer appears as a different track in iTunes and then metadata associated with the question and answer is filled into the “Info” section associated with the file. We hope this makes things easier for the folks building our digital archive back in the States.

In the evening, we held our third Citizen Archivist Project class, where our students used their new skills to photograph and record the Hip Hop show (also called “Bongo Flava”), with thirteen performances from Kwala Secondary students in the classroom around the corner from our still classroom library. After some last-minute practicing with the recorders and the cameras, our class filed into the front of the jam-packed classroom and took up recording positions. Just as the first song began, Asha, the smallest girl in our class, shot to the front and thrust her audio recorder just below the mouths of the singers, a natural (of course, we haven’t listened to her recordings, so fingers crossed we’ll find out tomorrow that she was actually recording…). The show was amazing. Our kids were amazing. Pictures will be posted when we reach a functioning internet connection, but rest assured, it was an awesome event. Tomorrow we teach the kids how to upload all of the music and pictures they recorded onto the computers. Afterwards, the next step is dispatching the kids and their new skills into Kwala village! This will happen for the first time on Friday. Hurray.