Kassblog

I continue to be amazed at the degree to which improved Internet connectivity has brought Botswana several times closer to the States in one instant. Now that Botswana Telecom is offering ADSL service to anyone, web access is a lot faster, and FTP and Skype are now possible. Of course, faster access has an even greater impact on the ability of the MaP community to reach out and touch the rest of the world.

Packets still have a long way to travel, so it makes sense to have a backup strategy. I am able to FTP files to the Maru-a-Pula web site, though I will mainly rely on the Website Baker administrative interface to make most changes. Skype has the potential to make conversations with MaP staff from this distance so much richer and less expensive. But it may be more effective to Skype their phone numbers, in order to maximize the benefit of our fast connectivity and not overly tax theirs.

We have ordered the router that will allow the school to share the three Internet connections they have. Up to this point, they have used only one ADSL connection. I am curious to find out how much the perceived speed of access increases once they are using all three.

It never seems easy to return from Botswana. First, the hour flight from Gabs to Jo’burg was 40 minutes late due to bad weather. I ran through the terminal to catch the London flight and managed to frighten the gate staff because I somehow managed to get there without a boarding pass. They assigned me to a seat occupied by a lady who would not move, so I stood in the airplane galley for a half hour while they sorted it out. Finally, I received good news: an upgrade to “upper class” (as they call it)! After the obligatory features tutorial, I enjoyed lightly fried Kingclip with champagne for dinner and slept in a fully reclined bed! Did you know that Virgin stocks laptop power adapters? Too bad their Mac adapters were 10 years out of date!

The adventures continued. The plane had to make an unexpected landing in Tunis because one of the passengers had a heart attack. She was okay but had to deplane and get to a hospital. When we arrived in London, the police met our plane on the runway to collect a passenger who had experienced some kind of psychotic break during the flight. I missed my connection in London and was sent home via DC instead — six hours later than expected.

I am sitting in Sir Sereste Khama Airport, waiting for the boarding call to Jo’burg. Thus begins about 30 hours of sitting and waiting until I arrive home. I will sit through flights of one, 10, and 11 hours, layovers of one, one and three hours, and a final BART ride of one hour. I will likely be insane by the final leg! Thankfully, I have my laptop, iPod, two books, and the inflight entertainment to keep me more or less occupied during the trip.

I kept my last day as simple as possible. I presented my preliminary recommendations to Kofi, Andy, and Phil. We made some final changes to Andy’s computer. We imported 200 professional photos of the school into his iPhoto. Andy was particularly excited to begin emailing photos widely. We also gave him an admin login to the new MaP web site — the first time I have heard of a school of 600 students handing over direct editing privileges to the school principal! Andy was once a professional journalist and has a clear vision for how to market the school. We’ll be okay.

We spent the afternoon running final errands — Microsoft documentation for Phil, South African jazz and gifts for me. Ironically, installers arrived just this afternoon to link Andy’s house to the school network by radio signal. A little earlier, and I could have had Internet access in the house for the entire trip! The daily evening walks to the computer room were charming enough but not so convenient.

Final reflections on this trip will come later. For now, we can clearly see the path forward for MaP technology. The resources are in place, and changes are already happening. Great thanks to the MaP staff and Andy for hosting me so well during this trip. I will look forward to continued contact with the school and a return visit as soon as possible!

After toying around with us the last couple of days, the rain is finally falling in earnest. Pula! The country has received a lot of rain lately, but everyone is grateful. A few months ago, Botswana went through a severe water restrictions that caused most people’s garden’s to die out. On the technology front, we saw a few fireworks today! We found that the old AppleCentre of a decade ago has split into two parts, one for sales and the other for support/service. We met with both, in order to acquire a few Mac Mini computers and to get a quote to wire the department offices and many classrooms that are currently unwired. Here, we learned the dark history of networking at Maru a Pula, which due to tight budget restrictions, has completed several small, disjointed wire projects over the last few years. The result is a jumble of equipment and connections that don’t play very well with each other. Needless to say, we are going to try to finish the rest in one coordinated effort.

Our second stop was at the photographer’s, Illustrative Options. There, we picked up digital copies of school photos shot last year, which we plan to use on the web site. See below for a sample shot from SOS Children’s Village. I was pleased to discover that the company does not nickel and dime the school to reproduce the photos on our web site. The fees that the school originally paid did not explicitly cover web publication, yet the proprietors were happy to have their work reproduced on the web if cited.

Photo by Illustrative Options

Our third meeting was with Joe Thomas of Avantec, which designed and built our alumni web site. There, I learned that one in-person meeting is more valuable than six months of email exchanges and phone calls. We got a lot accomplished in about an hour that will help iron out the last few remaining bugs and allow our alumni director to complete all her necessary work.

Believe it or not, I actually feel on schedule with the plan for this week. In 10 short days, we will have participated in enough meetings and crafted many plans that will allow the school to move forward in a definite direction in the near future. Naturally, I have a lot to do over the next couple of weeks. I will complete my written report before the opening staff meeting of the second term on May 10. Andy, Tracy, and I will bang out the rest of the new MaP web site and give it a big launch at the school. I will follow up on the many requests I received to research software applications in different disciplines. Finally, I will happily Skype my way back to my colleagues here at MaP on a regular basis to follow their progress and provide support where I can.

Tomorrow, I shop for friends and family, pack, and leave!

Last night’s concert was fantastic. I had no idea that David Slater could collect a dozen opera singers mostly from Botswana. Angela Kerrison and Sibongile Khumalo were particularly excellent. The Sedireng and Gaborone choruses showed greater exuberance for this special event. Having just come from the U.S., I was struck by the high degree of racial harmony in Botswana. Black Batswana and white South Africans get along especially well here. Mutual appreciation and cooperation rule.

I took in my only game park visit of the trip. If I were here longer, I would absolutely make a trip to the Okavango, Chobe, or central Kalahari. Since I am only here for ten days, the local Mokolodi Nature Reserve just had to do. Our guide, Tshepo, took us to all the right places, and we had close encounters with giraffe, elephant, and even an orphaned cheetah in an enclosure.

This afternoon, Andy and I made progress on the web site project. It is a great pleasure to work with a school principal who has a clear story about the school that he wants to tell. We completely reworked the information architecture of the site to capture this vision. We replaced the section “About Maru a Pula” with “At A Glance,” and “Programs” became “What Makes Us Different.” We are adding an entire section for parent information. This is how information architecture design should work. I just hope we like it as much tomorrow and that it passes muster with the marketing professionals out there!

The end of this trip is quickly approaching. Tomorrow, we will meet with Fatema Khan, the local Apple expert, and Joe Thomas of Avantec, who developed the new alumni web site. Tuesday is my last day in Botswana.

It has come to my attention that some friends of Phil are reading this web site. In lieu of Phil’s own report, let me show you him enjoying a light finger supper with the U.S. Ambassador to Botswana, MaP alumni, and current staff.

I took a break from IT work today, instead meeting with friends around town. Sheila Case took me over to Jenny and Daniel’s new quilting shop today, I saw the MaP Marimba band play at one of Gaborone’s new malls, and Andy took me out to lunch at Sanitas with Alan Wilson, Jeremy and Helen Long. Tonight is the grand finale of the Maitisong Festival with Sibongile Khumalo headlining a classical program of Negro spirituals and Mozart Symphony 40.

Here is a classroom shot from earlier this week. The MaP campus is a collection of mostly small buildings with lots of space between. This is beautiful but partially explains why the school has not yet wired half the campus.

While not working on IT today, I reflected on the ease with which I have reintegrated into this community after an absence of 10 years. Though many of the personnel have changed, the place feels very much the same. How can that be?

“What I’m proudest about is that sense of a community, an outpouring of a community that thrives and prospers. It’s not just a seat of learning; it’s something far greater than that.”

- Deane Yates, Founding Headmaster of Maru-a-Pula

The members of this community share a set of values that they transmit to new arrivals every year. The feeling of the place stays the same despite all of the changes in personnel. Old timers who return find that the warmth, modesty, justice, and intensity very familiar indeed. Everyone belongs in this place and is welcomed back upon return. This aspect of the school is one of its greatest strengths, allowing it to grow exuberantly during good times and remain resilient during the bad.

Today, we set out to pick up necessary supplies — a small router to set up a test environment for the new servers, RAM for Brenda’s machine, and the school’s first wireless access point. We were directed to Incredible Solutions at Riverwalk. Nothing could have prepared me for this modern shopping experience, apparently in place since 2002. The pace of development here is incredible. Ten years ago, you could only buy computer supplies from tiny shops that also provided services. Now, I felt like I was in Best Buy. I wish I’d brought my camera to show you — you could hardly believe the rows and rows of blank CDs, iPods, digital cameras, laptops, and printers available for purchase. They even had a Skype phone! Prices weren’t bad, either. The router cost the equivalent of $100, and Phil picked up an iPod Shuffle for himself for $120. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the WAP. The school will have to wait a little longer for its wireless, though hardly anyone has a wireless-equipped laptop to use it, anyway.

The web site is moving into a new stage of development. As I mentioned before, the software is installed and running well. I have also pulled content from a variety of other sources and lain out the site in a rough fashion. We continue to wait for the graphic design. Now, I need to edit the pages for HTML format. It’s great that the HTML carried from one site to the other when I copied and pasted in Camino. However, some of the formatting doesn’t fit the new site and needs to be stripped. On Sunday, Andy and I have a date to review the organization of the entire site, so that the architecture best reflects the intended priorities of emphasis. We are simultaneously pulling photos from other publications for the site, mostly shot by professional photogs within the last two years. Finally, we will edit for voice, creating a sense of common language with content that has come from disparate sources. By then, the graphic designer should have finished, and I will apply the template to the site. Hopefully, this won’t take more than a couple of weeks. I am optimistic that I will able to use the web editing interface effectively from the States. If that fails, I can always ask Phil to help FTP files! Truly, the West has become so much closer since ADSL has become available in Botswana.

Phil started to really help people today, ticking off some of the to-do items we had compiled in the last few days. RAM installed, Brenda’s machine now flies as it should. The staff computer local profiles are cleared, allowing everyone to log in without error. We found out that the school does not implement full roaming profiles. Instead, there is a standard profile that is copied to the system each time a user logs in. The system is supposed to delete the local profile on logout, but that has been failing. Login was prevented because one file name in the local profile was too long to overwrite. Go figure.