Monday February 8, 2010

After a weekend in Dar es Salaam, we returned to Kwala late on Sunday night determined to get our solar powered computer lab operational. And today, that is exactly what happened! We arranged for a second fundi from a nearby town to help us with the installation of the solar panels on the roof. By mid-morning, both fundis (old and new) were working to complete the door to the computer lab and install the solar panels on the roof. After some precarious moments, we were able to mount the panels onto the roof, pass the wire through the roof and presto, the solar suitcase took care of the rest. We now have a solar powered computer lab in Kwala!

This evening, we held our last day of class in the NTC library because we still don’t have lighting in the computer lab. It was great to see the students after a weekend off and we started the class with a basic Microsoft Word lesson. The students, although trying very hard, had a lot of difficulty with Word, largely because their typing skills are very poor. This is their first exposure to QWERTY keyboards and it’s easy to forget just how strange the process of typing actually is. We’ve brought along Mavis Beacon and the kids will be taking intensive Microsoft Word and typing lessons over the next weeks and months. Today’s class was a reminder that as smart and talented and dedicated as these students are, there is just a large amount of rote practice involved in learning how to type. Give a kid a camera or a recorder and two days and amazing things happen. Give a kid a blank Microsoft Word page and ask them to type out twenty interview questions, and it is an absolute challenge given the short time that Team Smalbean is here in Kwala. But again, we are leaving great people here at the school who will work with the students over the coming months to have them typing 45 words a minute in no time!

During the second half of the class we had the students tag the photos that they took during last week’s scavenger hunt. These tags (words such as “mother, boy, bucket, chicken, house, cooking, stove, motorcycle, student, teacher,” etc.) will help us organize and subsequently access the photos and movies from Kwala that will soon reside in the Smallbean digital archive. We had the students label the photos in both Swahili and English (to the extent they knew the word).

Things are finally rolling along here in Kwala. We have solar power. Tomorrow we move into the new computer lab and begin work on our final project with the kids, extended Citizen Archivist Project interviews of citizens of the village of Kwala. Additionally, the adult members of Team Smallbean are heading out into the village tomorrow to conduct additional interviews around town. Stay tuned for updates!