Got an itch

Today we went to Nangweshi in the Shangombo province. Here we found no electricity and no running water. When we pulled into the guest house where we were staying, I have to admit it became crystal clear to me that we were staying in the least developed part of Zambia that I had yet visited.

We each had a small hut and inside the hut I found a bed, a TV (that did not work), a table and a large mosquito net (torn) partially covering my bed. Beyond that, I had several unexpected roommates as there were many creatures in the room moving about – a lizard, a few spiders, plenty of mosquitoes, a few flies and at least 2 visible cockroaches scurrying across the floor. I had not had so many simultaneous roommates since the dormitory at my prep school had a massive sleepover for all the boarding students in the TV area.

While there was still sunlight, I decided to hang my own personal mosquito net that I was traveling with (which had no holes) and to unroll my sleeping sheet (like a sleeping bag, but only a sheet). It was so warm in the sun-drenched hut that sleeping with any more than a sheet was unfathomable. In fact, I had only used my sleeping sheet once before on this trip, but it was clear by the state of the sheets that were on the bed, my own personal sleeping sheet was going to get some use here. We had planned on staying two nights here.

For dinner, we had a choice of meat, which I assumed to be beef on a bone, and nshima. I had consumed a sufficient amount of nshima already and did not feel like eating it again and so I asked – ok begged – for some rice. They delivered and I happily cracked a can of tuna and ate it with my rice. I shared a couple beers with some of my travel companions while we ate in virtual darkness.

In the middle of taking a bite of my tuna and rice, some local boys started speaking loudly – almost aggressively - to me. I asked them what they were saying. “Hey muzungu! You don’t like nshima?” I tried to explained that I had eaten nshima for 4 nights in a row and was simply tiring of it. They continued with their line of questioning, "Why does Camfed only teach girls and not boys. We want to learn, too!” I then tred to defend myself saying that I was a volunteer and was hardly the decision maker for the organization. And with these two explanations delivered quicker than a pro pitcher's fast ball, the boys smiled and each put his right hand to his respective heart (a sign of respect) and they disappeared into the darkness without another word of harassment.

It was hard to fall asleep that evening and my roommates were bounding around my room and the night just seemed to encourage them. The heat made it hard to fall into a slumber and I was dreaming of being under a fan (or a sexy African queen fanning me) while I fell into a deep sleep. I must have eventually fallen asleep because I suddenly woke up to terrible itching on the bottoms of my feet. I was too long for the bed and my feet were pressed up against the end of the mosquito net I was sleeping under. So even though there were no holes in my netting, my biting roommates found the bottoms of my feet irresistibly tempting. After all, they were pressed up against the mosquito netting just begging to be feasted upon. So my roommates ate dinner as they feasted on the bottoms of my feet. God how they itched, and any one who has ever been bitten there knows that no matter how much you itch, the itch is never satiated and you just keep going back for just one last itch. It is one of the worst types of itches I have ever had. It felt like a "7-yesr itch" of the worst kind and it was almost impossible to alleviate this "need to itch".

At Nangweshi Basic we installed more solar panels and another 8 computers. This time we installed in front of an audience of roughly 70 kids between the ages of 7 and 17. They were all whispering to each other excitedly and pointing at the computers as we worked on them. They seemed to be in awe of what they were seeing in front of their very eyes. These glowing boxes with moving graphics and colors. There was no doubt they had never seen computers before and the lot of them were anxiously awaiting the opportunity to put their own hand on these strange, futuristic machines.

The solar panels posed a problem as we had to run the panels’ cables out of a rear window and under a tree just to reach a point in the yard where the panels would be sitting in direct sunlight for the majority of the day. The cables were just long enough to reach under the tree behind the classroom, but the school had asked us to install the panels on the roof.

It took me an inordinate amount of time to explain a few things; firstly, I did not have a welder nor was I skilled in the art of welding; secondly I did not have a 20-meter ladder to reach the rooftop, thirdly, I did not have insurance covering a fall from said roof. So we did not mount the panels on the roof, but instead installed them, safely back at sea level in the backyard of the basic school.

The teachers who we trained on installing and using the computers were quick to start asking for more equipment upon our completion of the installation. They asked us if the school could get additional solar panels for improving the efficiency of re-charging the battery. They also asked for a printer and internetr access. I told them that the sponsors were the decision makers for future investment, but went on to explain that if we see the schools taking good care of the equipment and the students using them and learning from them, and there is a general perception of a successful utilization of the computers, that there would be a good chance of the sponsors agreeing to providing additional equipment.

Again there was a real buzz here when we were installing the panels and the computers. The staff and students were thrilled to get this equipment supplied to them and we were thrilled to be supplying them with the equipment. These computers clearly would allow the staff to teach about computers, the students to learn about computers, the school’s education program to improve through these computers and the community to thrive with these computers. Everyone and everything seemed to be benefiting from this installation. I have never before felt like I was making such a perceivable difference with the work that I was doing with my own hands.

Puddles, Bubbles and Troubles

I have now given nicknames to the new group of fearless travelers on our mission to mentor young ladies into successful business women and spread solar-powered IT across Zambia. I can only hold my head high if I can do this with a group of professionals with ridiculous names.

Penelope has a tough act to follow after Fatuma (Flash). When I first met Penelope she was a serious talker and dropped a lot of fancy IT “buzz words”. She said she was very interested in IT and learning and had done a lot of IT in the past. But as she had not yet proven herself in the field as an experienced “troubleshooter”, I had decided she had only earned the first part of the name. So I call her “Troubles”. Until she can prove herself in the field, she is simply “Troubles”.

The group told me that Mr. Rain was not a legitimate nickname as it is a literal translation of his Bemba last name. So I was inspired by the story of Lazarus giving nothing but a red balloon to his wife every Valentine’s Day. All of us were giving poor Lazarus a very hard time for this fact. The girls especially continued to say that he can’t give his wife a balloon for Valentines Day. Lazarus consistently defended himself with the same response – “But it’s big…and it’s red!”. So now Lazarus is “Big Red”.
Our new driver, Justin, had car troubles on the first part of the trip and as we had already set out for the second half of our trip 5 hours late, we were about 7 hours behind schedule and I was becoming increasingly annoyed. Zambia still has problems with night car-jackings, especially with Toyota 4X4s (which I was seated in), so we were given explicit instructions not to travel at night. As the sun quickly fell out of the sky and night approached, we were still 4 hours from our final destination and I was growing more and more concerned. We had already been driving for 10 hours. Any of you who know me well understand that when I am concerned and annoyed, it can make for a lethal combination.

Justin was driving at a snail’s pace barely breaking 100 km/h (we had traveled at between 130 and 140 km/h before Justin came on the scene) when he suddenly pulled over, jumped out of his vehicle and ran off into the ever-darkening distance. When he came back towards our vehicles, I jumped out of the car, briskly walked over to face him and impatiently asked, “What are you doing? We need to hurry up and get going…we still have a long drive ahead of us!”. He smiled widely as he proudly held up a bag of colorful little balls and replied, “I wanted a bubble gum!” I almost lost it right there and then. And that was when Justin became “Bubbles”. Earlier in the trip, Justin proved to do a very good job looking after Ruth’s son, Junior, while we explored Victoria Falls and so I eventually promoted him to “Uncle Bubbles”. The girls nearly keeled over with laughter every time they heard it for the remainder of the trip.

Ruth became “Goldie” because the day I came up with it, everything she was wearing was gold. Her shirt, her bracelet, her toenails - even her hair had a gold hue.

On the way back from the West, Mwangala still had no nickname. So many of the nicknames accrued over the last four weeks had a similar ring – we had Dongles, Googles, Troubles, Bubbles, and so the last nickname I came up with had to stick to the theme. Mwangala’s new name came to me when we thought the vehicle which Uncle Bubbles was driving had a new round of technical troubles (the battery had died 10 times so far on the trip and he had a flat tire). So Big Red turned our vehicle around and we went back to aid the second vehicle, but as we approached, Mwangala waved us away from the bushes she was tucked into. It turns out they did not have technical troubles with their car at all. The truck had stopped so that she could simply relieve herself in the bushes. That’s how Mwangala became “Puddles”.

The group now has two nicknames for me. Sometimes they call me "MacGyver" (after the American action adventure television series created by Lee David Zlotoff and executively – and excellently - produced by Henry Winkler). They also call me "Shoots" (the better half of the IT team "Troubleshoots"). I prefer Shoots as MacGyver implies they take me seriously.

On the business side of things, the group we mentored on this sunny Sunday was raising baby chicks to be chickens so they could resell them on the open market. The girls were paying only 3,000 K ($0.60) for a chick and selling chickens for 30,000 K ($6). As the facility for raising the chickens was loaned to them for free, they only incur the cost of the feed and a security guard. These girls will have a pretty profit after all is said and done. And the way this group was running the business and the hatchery really impressed me very much. These girls had a lot of energy and proved themselves to be very competent, enthusiastic and clearly a group of driven young ladies!

The stress of success

Today we mentored and trained 2 groups. One group was selling solar lamps, which is very practical in a region with no electricity. The other group was selling sausages and minced meat as well as a number of other products in the small store that they have rented in the Sesheke marketplace.

The contrast in the groups we met with was pretty severe. Both groups of girls have started up their own businesses and were funded by Camfed. The funding includes covering expenses such as rent for the place of business, procurement of raw materials, office supplies, electricity bills, mobile phone and internet usage, advertising and marketing, and travel and transportation costs.

On one hand, the first group seemed de-motivated if not a bit frustrated. It seems the group was having communication problems. The distance between the group members posed problems for meeting in person. The region has high rates per minute for using the mobile phones and this made it hard to speak for prolonged periods of time in order to clarify and communicate between members. Moreover, the rates for internet usage are also high which seemed to discourage using email and Skype over the phone.

All of these communication challenges seemed to have a detrimental effect of the smooth operation of the business and as a result we saw a team that seemed relatively unmotivated. All of this really affected the team leader and she seemed to be defensive and reactionary rather than listening to and acknowledging criticism. Additionally, the team seemed less interested in learning about the computers and using the internet over the telephones.

On the other hand, we saw a second group in the same region that was cohesive and seemed to work very well together. The team members seemed to be able to arrange meetings more easily and more frequently and the business seemed to be running very well. This group was enthusiastic and participated willfully in the question and answer sessions with the mentors. We were able to assess weaknesses and areas for potential improvement more easily because they were more open and participated freely in the mentoring session. As a result of being enthusiastic and involved in the mentoring session, they also got much more out of the IT computer and telephone training.

This seemed to emphasize the importance of intra-team communication. Without it, the team cohesion seems to breakdown and clearly teamwork suffers. The result is that the team loses focus, enthusiasm, motivation and eventually the entire business suffers. I have seen this before within the small teams that I have managed in my own career. When the team knows exactly what they are supposed to do and when and their roles and the business objectives are clear, the teamwork seems to grow stronger. And of course, the inverse holds true. Without clear focus, objectives, and definition of roles, the team starts to deteriorate.

The first team asked if Camfed could pay for a space for them to meet in so their communication could improve. But we had to point out that first Camfed has to see progress within the team and in the business before additional investment can be considered. To be honest, Camfed has already provided all the groups with a great deal of support, both financial and mentoring and training. There comes a point where if the groups do not start to prove themselves as a viable business that Camfed has to have a “cut-off`” point.

I really sympathize with the girls and realize that it is not what they wanted to hear, but the truth of the matter is that not all of the groups will be successful. The same holds true in the real world of business. So it was very tough for us to deliver this message, but essentially we said that if the group can start to prove it is capable of working together and demonstrating teamwork, additional investments can be considered. But if they cannot, the additional expenditures will likely not be justifiable. The group must first prove itself as reliable and motivated.

At times, the mentoring can be hard and you can see the heartbreak in the eyes of some of the groups that seem to have lost their way on the road to successful entrepreneurship.

Powerless

We are now traveling through the Western Province. We started off in Senanga and will go on to Sesheke, Shangombo, Nangweshi and finally Sioma. The west of Zambia is sandy and dry. Although we will be driving along the Zambezi River the whole time, we will have no electricity and no running water for the majority of this leg of the trip. We will quickly pass over a bridge and briefly into Namibia, so that should be cool to get to go to a third country in Africa, but we will be on extremely rough roads and we have already have had some car troubles within our convoy.

Yesterday we visited Victoria Falls and it was spectacular! This is just the end of a very wet rainy season and so the falls were gushing with water. We got absolutely soaked all the way down to our underclothes. There is such a huge amount of water pouring over the falls that we could see the mist rising from the bottom of the falls when we were 5 km (3 miles) away from the falls! Very impressive stuff!

I am on my fourth week of straight travel now and spending yesterday at the falls has been a great break from all of it. We were able to stretch our legs as we walked around the falls and we had a great laugh doing so. In fact, there was so much water and we were getting so wet, it made it hard to take photos and videos without ruining the photographic equipment. To visit Victoria Falls, the Zambians paid 5,000 K to get in ($1) and I paid 95,000 K ($25). We also went to another set of smaller falls today on our way to Sesheke and this time it was free entry for the Zambians and I had to pay 25,000 K. Being a Muzungu can be expensive!

When we arrived in Sesheke all the girls went to have their hair done. The falls took a toll on our hair and our clothing and so it was an opportune time for the girls to go straight to a salon upon our arrival. Zambians like to look good and Zambian women spend a lot of money doing their hair. Sometimes they wear wigs which have straight hair “like a Muzungu” as they described it to me. Other times they get weaves where they weave hair extensions into the natural hair. I spent 1.5 hours waiting for the girls to pretty themselves for our dinner, and by the time we went to eat, I was famished.

In the west you have a choice of nshima, nshima or nshima. That can be accompanied by chicken or fish. So I ordered sea bream and nshima and the fish was amazing. Nshima is ground maize (corn) that is boiled and stirred into something resembling a very, very thick mashed potato – so thick in fact that you eat it with your hands. You do so by pulling off a bit of the nshima, rolling it in your hand (or “playing with it” as the Zambians like to say) and then you take the ball you have rolled up in your palm and you scoop up some sauce or some green vegetable (called “rape”) with it. Contrary to its name, the rape is actually delicious and between that and the fish, I was very satiated at the end of the meal, washing it all down with an ice cold Zambian beer.

Young mothers

The girls I am traveling with on this adventure are pretty amazing. I found out during my travels here that all of them and most of the girls working at the office in Lusaka are orphans. Camfed is not only a campaign for education but also focuses on making the lives of girls around Africa more stable by sponsoring their education, clothing, food and helping them pay for their families. They do this for girls who have lost one or both parents and who likely already have one or more children of their own. Penelope, who I am mentoring to be an IT manager, lost both her parents and all but one sibling. On her own, she raises 12 kids, 2 of her own and 10 of her sisters.

All the girls I am working with and who work at the office are in a similar situation as Penelope. As we travel I realize that every time we eat a meal or stay at a guest house, the less they spend, the more they can save for their families. Unlike me - looking for good food and comfortable accommodations in each place we stay - the girls want to eat cheap and stay in the least expensive guest houses we can find so they can pocket their per diem. It took me 6 weeks to learn all of this. But now that I know it, I am starting to pay for many of the meals and incidentals. Ironically, they all get paid for the work they are doing while I am doing volunteer work and get no pay. But the per diem is more than enough for me to pay my way and then some.

A couple of the girls really impress me with how dedicated they are to the program and the work they do training and mentoring the girls. Fatuma is extremely motivated to learn IT and asks questions all the time. She will stay up to late hours with me writing IT reports and this is after long and stressful days driving long distances, installing the IT equipment and training and mentoring the group leaders.

Melody is very passionate and inquisitive. She asks great questions during the mentoring sessions and when she finds the girls are losing motivation or not focused she will look them in the eyes and have a heart-to-heart with them about how they have to work hard and take advantage of this great opportunity they have been given to start-up their own businesses. She is great with words and you can tell that she means every word that comes out of her mouth. Her words come from her heart and she has a big heart.

Ruth told me the story of how she got pregnant at a very early age and how she and her mother help take care of her mother’s 22 siblings and her sibling’s children. It is a large clan all said and Ruth takes the money she gets from Camfed and pays for raising her family as well as sending herself to school for economics. Ruth, too, does a great job with the girls and is very motivated. The first day I worked with her I could tell she would make a great mentor. She listens carefully and she does a great job of “drilling down” to get the answers and helping the girls. She inspires the girls and she tells them personal stories of her own experiences to motivate them and keep them interested.

Mwangala is a program officer and is fantastic - she is very driven and obviously interested in the girls’ projects. You can tell she cares and you can see her passion when you watch her work. I love when I see people passionate about their work and I feel it makes them much more motivated in their work and generally makes them more effective and better at their job. She asks very good questions, she keeps things positive and she re-focuses the group when they get discouraged or side-tracked.

When I consider what these girls have been through and the hardships they are faced with it is truly impressive. I feel proud to be part of the team and I also feel lucky to get to work with these young women. On the other hand, some of the petty things that I have complained about in my past or little things I get worked up about during my career – they all seem so insignificant. These girls are an inspiration and they face life head-on, even when it treats them poorly or scares the hell out of them. What they have gone through to get where they are today is incredible. If I can go as far ahead in my life as these girls have in theirs, I would do myself and my parents extremely proud, of that I am sure.

Sausage torture

Today we met with group 10. The girls were originally selling sausages. They then entered into micro-finance and then decided on the strangely unique combination of sausages and micro-finance. I wondered to myself…so if they have a slow payer do they threaten to “stone” the culprit with sausages? Or do those who prove to be bad borrowers get stuffed like a sausage? Or perhaps sausages get stuffed down the throats of those who default on their loans.

As I reflected on the various methods of using sausage for the purpose of torture, I started to realize that I really did not feel very well. Foolishly (and cockily) just this morning I was bragging to Mr. Rain about how I was the only one in the group, other than he, who had not gotten sick since my arrival in Zambia. Well we know what happens when we make proud proclamations like that, because before I knew what was happening and lost somewhere in the middle of a sausage torture ritual, I started to sweat and flush over with heat and my head started to pound. Was it the sausages? Was I making myself ill with too much of my sick sausage torture fantasy? No. This was something else. I dropped my head into my hands and for the first time on the entire trip started to feel ill.

I promptly excused myself from the training session and Lazarus drove me to the guest house where I popped 600 mg of Ibuprofen, plopped down on the bed, propped a pillow over my head and dropped into a deep sleep. When I woke up my head was still hurting but my temperature had subsided. I got up and out of the bed and stumbled to the door. When I opened it I realized for the first time how beautiful the area we were staying in was.

We were smack dab on the Zambezi River and surrounded by large trees covered in white lily-like flowers. Every once in a while one of these flowers would slowly drop from the trees and come spinning down like a small white helicopter whose body turned instead of its blades. And it would silently plop down on the ground where several of its relatives had also dropped down polka-dotting the well manicured dirt paths beneath the trees. It felt very peaceful here and I must say I felt my mood lift and my head suddenly stop pounding at the site of all of this natural beauty.

I walked down to the river bank and gazed at the ebb and flow of ripples along the top of the water. It was soothing and with that, I suddenly realized how hungry I was. I walked back up to the restaurant and gazed over the menu. Nothing. Literally nothing inspired me. Chicken and T-bone. Ugggh. So I called Mr. Rain and asked him to drive me into town. There we found 2 restaurants. One was very dimly lit and the only outside tables were complimented with characterless, white, plastic chairs, most of them already occupied by customers.

So we drove on to the second restaurant. And it was a beauty! It had three big outdoor wooden gazebos with nice wooden chairs to match. It was perfect and I told Mr. Rain to leave me there and I’d join him later. “Hello. How are you? May I see a menu please?” I asked. They had no menu, but I will give you one guess as to what they were serving - and you will guess right, of that I am sure. Chicken and T-bone. Ugggh. So I ordered chicken and chips (fries) and sat down outside in the shade of the gazebo.

45 minutes later I walked over to the woman who had taken my order and asked where she reckoned my food was. “We have no power” she said flatly. Ugggh. Had she thought of mentioning this when I first placed the order? Had she even considered that it might be relevant to the fact that my food being heated and cooked thoroughly was completely dependent on the electricity which powered the electric cooker? I guess she hadn’t. But she did say that the fries would be ready momentarily so I gladly accepted her offer to eat just the chips and a Coke. The Coke came and was ice cold and I was glad and gulped a third of the bottle down. Then the “fries” came.

The irony in calling them “fries” (the American term for the British “chips”) was that they were literally saturated with barely warmed oil. They were the color of a freshly peeled potato without even a hint of color indicating the oil had actually begun to cook the potato. And when my starvation peaked to such a level that I was willing to take a bite of this raw, oil-soaked, colorless potato, the crunch was not that of something fried in oil, but that of a potato picked fresh from the garden and dipped into Castor oil. It was the sad and impotent crunch one experiences when he takes a bite out of an old, mealy apple. I can tell you I left that place in a huff.

I asked Mr. Rain to swing by a small store in the center of town where they sold everything from flip flops to roach powder and from electric keyboards to soap. I bought two bags of chips (crisps) that looked like they had been put into a time capsule in 1870 and buried in someone’s backyard in hopes that a hungry, whiny, white man would someday find them and quench his hunger pangs on this ancient delicacy. One was called “Salted Beef” and tasted of musty, salty shoe leather. The other was called “Tomato Potato” and tasted like a piece of moistened cardboard dipped in very sweet tomato ketchup. I dreamed of lasagne or a big pizza with salami piquant covering it and a big glass of bold IItalian red to go with it. But, alas, my dreams went unanswered and so, there I sat, sadly chewing on shoe leather and moist cardboard. Right about now, sausage torture sounds like heaven!

Chocolate or Vanilla?

I had a nice relaxing break from travel for 2.5 days and rested at the guest house. We now have a new group of mentors and trainers. Our group is now made up of Penelope, who I am mentoring on this trip. She comes from Samfya and co-manages the IT centre there called the SRC or Samfya Resource Centre. Sinakiwe (meaning Gift, which is what I call her, as I can easily remember it) has joined us from Zimbabwe and she is one of the mentors who will help to monitor the progress of the Cama groups. Ruth is from the Western province and will also mentor along side Gift. Mr. Rain, Gift and Penelope are in one vehicle, and Chanda, Ruth and the new driver, Justin, are in the second vehicle.

This morning we were supposed to leave very early to go to the Western province. The trip was supposed to last 9 hours, however, one of the vehicles in our convoy got a flat tire and the spare tire was flat. As if this did not slow us down enough, Justin drives like a blue-haired grandmother on heavy sedatives. So with the convoy slowed to a turtle’s pace, and the slow repair of the flat tire which then needed pumping, a 9-hour trip turned into 12 hours. Moreover, we stopped not in Senanga which was our final destination and where we were scheduled to meet the Cama group the following day, but in Mongu which is 1.5 hours short of Senanga.

That night I was sitting having dinner with Mr. Rain. By the time we sat down just short of 10 PM, they had nothing but chicken, chicken and more chicken. So I begged for the last sausage. I also order a side of fries. I shrewdly noticed that ordering the two separately saved me 4,000 Kwacha ($1.00). If I ordered fries with sausage as a single order it was 18,000 K but separately it was only 7,000 K for each. This really confused the waiter and after calling a huddle with 3 of his colleagues, they all decided the menu (and I) was right and they granted me the 4,000 K “discount”.

As I gobbled down the sadly small, shriveled sausage and soggy fries, I noticed a group of 4 white girls walk into the restaurant. They did a double-take and I echoed one right back at them, as it was always rare to stumble across another white person, especially out here in the sticks. As I contemplated what these 4 cute white girls were doing out here in the middle of nowhere, suddenly another 15 or so joined them and, just like that, the 5 black customers became the minority for what I would venture to guess was the first time in their dining history at this eating establishment.

The other thought that crossed my mind at the time was that these white girls looked so foreign to me. After 6 weeks in Zambia and only seeing one white woman, Jane the trainer, I realized that it seemed strange to once again gaze at a white girl’s features - or 20 white girls, for that matter. And without intending any offense to any white women who might be reading this, there was something very “vanilla” (pun sort of intended) about this group of exceptionally attractive young ladies. I mean some were gorgeous and very much the type I might go for back home. But I guess I have become so accustomed to white European features over my lifetime, that there was something relatively plain about these girls. The African women I had been seeing for the past month and a half seemed relatively much more new and exotic to me.

And now as I tried to remind myself that I will be retuning to Europe in 3 weeks I am acutely aware of the fact that I really have a new found appreciation and attraction to African women. They are exotic and very feminine and their movements seem to flow more easily than their light-skinned sisters. For now I observed the white girls’ movements and mannerisms almost as a little clumsy and awkward. This can at least partially be attributed to their relatively young age. Yet still, I could not help but notice a very tangible difference between the young African girls and the white girls I now observed in the small restaurant in which I sat.

Mentoring future mentors

Today I said goodbye to Melody and yesterday I said goodbye to Fatuma. It was very, very sad. We all really bonded as a group and it was so great working together and getting to know each other over the past two weeks. We worked and played together and we became very close to one another. It made me extremely sad to say goodbye, but I know I have made two very close friends forever. They are both wonderful young ladies with the most amazing energy, drive and enthusiasm. Each of them was specially selected by Camfed.

Melody does mentoring and monitoring of the Cama girls and Fatuma runs the IT center in Samfya. Each was selected because she shows amazing promise and is absolutely devoted and dependable. The 4 of us (along with Lazarus) make a great team and have had such a great time traveling together. There is no doubt in my mind that each of these young ladies, both sponsored by Camfed, will be hugely successful in their careers and give back tenfold what Camfed has given to each of them. They are just two of the many girls who, once trained by Camfed, have taken that training and their own experiences and parlayed all of it into becoming amazing trainers and extremely admirable young ladies. They are now training other girls in Africa to learn the same skills they have learned and to potentially develop more incredibly talented trainers for future Cama programs.

Next week I head off to the Western district with a new group of mentors and trainers, along with Lazarus. I am excited for the next phase of the project and the challenges we will face over in the west. I also love teaching and mentoring, so this will give me a chance to focus on training the new girls on being IT trainers and to let me focus on teaching the new Cama groups over in the west. But I will miss Fatuma and Melody very much. At least I will get to see Fatuma again in 10 days time when I head back to Samfya.

Saturday afternoon, Sunday (today) and tomorrow I have time off. I am really looking forward to it as it is long overdue and I am excited to catch up on blogging, reading, checking emails, playing guitar and watching a couple of cheesy movies at the Serenity Guest Lodge. And I will eat Chips Mayaya in honor of Melody.

Girl power !

The groups we have been meeting have been pretty incredible. Initially Camfed selects some top performers from grade 12 and sponsors them for a special training program geared towards teaching business management and project management skills. These skills include creating budgets, communication, price structuring, finance and microfinance, accounting and budgeting, procurement and project management.

The girls are also trained on IT skills such as introduction to computer operation, troubleshooting, using email and the internet, printing, word processing, and creating spreadsheets. They also learn how to use the internet and send emails using their Camfed-issued mobile phones. After the girls finish their project and business training, they are divided into groups (referred to as Cama groups). Each group chooses a business that they want to run using their newly acquired skills and they are mentored through the business start-up all the way through to the independent and successful running of the business.

The groups are running businesses such as jewelry making, clothing manufacturing, making handbags from recycled plastic bags, running child daycare, running a photo and print shop, selling mobile phone talk time, selling mountable battery powered light bulbs, running a bakery, selling sweets and candies, and tourism and travel agency. We visit the girls on a regular basis to continue the mentoring and training process and make sure the groups are on track with their businesses.

Throughout this process the girls have been faced with a whole series of challenges. The girls live in rural areas and getting together for meetings and to run the business can pose a problem. The distance between group members and no money for transport rings about problems rotating the phones. At times the group member with the phone does not come to the meetings. We suggested budgeting some of the company’s funds for transport and told those girls with the phones that they really must make the effort to attend the meetings when they are the ones with the phone in their possession.
Many of the girls have no electricity so the girls have a challenge recharging their phones, being able to send emails and communicating with one another. As we helped them charge their phones using the portable battery, the groups informed us that it cost them 2000 Kwacha (about $0.50) every time they charge their phones. We suggested that some groups could integrate this method of making money into their business model and offer such a service – recharging mobile phones for others. The phones cost money to use and Camfed sponsors the topping up the credit on the SIM cards so they can use the telephones.

The girls told us they are lacking training and it is evident that many of them do not have much experience using the phones or the computers. I suggested another 1 or 2 sessions could be planned with the group leader during one or more of the group meetings. They need to have more time to train in order to be comfortable with the phones. If they are not comfortable using the phones and computers, they will not use them.

The Cama Trainers have been trained more thoroughly than the other members. The members must learn to ask for assistance when they do not know how to do something. What’s more, the trainers should be proactive in offering their services to the other members and passing on knowledge and training so the girls can do it for themselves, not just the trainer doing it for other members.

If the group members have children present, breaking the training session in 2 parts and allowing for a break helps maintain interest and focus. The group told us that the phones enhance communication between the members and the group leader, the ILO trainer as well as between members. We pointed out that the phones could also be used for communicating via email with suppliers and customers.

Regardless of the challenges they face, the girls are showing amazing progress. The group seems to be excited about using email and the internet over the phones and seems to be really gaining in confidence using the T1 and E2 computers. They are even taking initiative to try to find creative workaround solutions and teaching themselves new things on the computer.

Solar powerful stuff

Today we went to Lwela High in Eastern Milenge. Eight E2 computers were installed here and the computers are in excellent condition. The school is incredibly grateful for the computers and all the surrounding villages can benefit from the computers installed at the school. The school has no electricity and has a real need for solar power. Currently they use a generator for powering the computers.

The teachers admitted that if they had solar power they would definitely use the computers more frequently and hold more classes than they can at present. It seems clear that a school like this could really benefit from solar power. Can Camfed deliver solar panels and multiple batteries to this school? In fact, I presented the school with two options to facilitate raising the funds to get this accomplished. They could run an IT center for the surrounding villages charging for the use of the computers. This is common practice in and around Zambia. Also, when the school stops using the generator all the time they could reallocate those funds to a reimbursement fund for the solar panels and batteries. Currently, the school spends 65,000 Kwacha (about $15) every two weeks.

Rough roads, smooth travels

For the last two days we went to Milenge East and West. It takes 2-3 hours one way to drive to each one from Mansa, where we were staying for the last two nights, so there was a lot of driving to do. It was not easy driving as the roads are dirt or mud, depending on the rain (and it is now rainy season). The road was one long continuous stretch of enormous potholes, some so large I’d more aptly call them craters then potholes, so it was not possible to pass without a 4X4 vehicle. It must have been exhausting for Lazarus, our driver, but even for us it was not easy.

To start your day that way was bad enough before a long work day, but then to get back in the vehicle and punish your rump like that is not easy. And of course once we get back to the guest house we always have another 3-4 hours of report writing to do. The days are starting to get very long, but the work (at least all save the report writing) is very stimulating.

As we drove and listened to music I was taking lots of video. I am sure it will leave a lot to be desired in terms of smooth filmmaking, as the roads threw me all over the place, and hence the camera I was holding. Lazarus asked if I wanted to step out of the vehicle and take some footage of the vehicles descending down a steep bend and I gladly agreed. When I got out of the vehicle, I started running down the dirt road to get a good distance ahead of the vehicles and to save a little time, but as I was running, I noticed 2 young Zambian boys ahead of me.

As I ran down the hill towards them, they froze in their steps and just started at me, the Muzungu (white man). After watching me run with some degree of caution they whipped around and turn to run as fast as they could in the opposite direction. It seems I was terrifying them...the cray, white man clumsily sprinting down the hill towards them. I laughed out loud at thge site of the, running, but I felt bad that their first "white man experience" was one of terror.

When we arrived in Milenge West, we set out to install another set of solar panels, a large battery and the infamous inverter, as well as the new computers. We were sure we had it down pat after our last install (followed by a re-visit to set it all up correctly in Timba). But we were not expecting the inverter cable to be completely missing from the set of equipment that had been shipped well ahead of us. The inverter cable runs from the battery to the external DC terminal port on the inverter. When we arrived on site, not only did we find out that a teacher had taken one of the 8 computers we were supposed to install that day off-site, but the inverter cable was missing and 1 of 8 keyboards was not working properly. As there is no satellite or telephone signal anywhere within 50 km, we were forced to find a solution on our own without consulting Aleutia, Aptivate or Camfed UK.

So we sat down with our tools and with the help of Albert and Lazarus, we ad-hoc built our own inverter cable with spare parts. I was quite impressed with the work we had done and when we hooked everything up to the battery and solar panels, it all worked well! So we installed the 7 out of 8 E2 computers and used a spare keyboard that we brought along just in case as a replacement. A job well done!

Geeks unite !

Camfed is installing two different models of Aleutia computers – the T1 and the E2. The E2 computer is the older model and the T1 the newer. The E2, though it uses about 3 less watts of power than the T1, has no internal disk drive and uses an 8 GB removable flash card as its only source of storage. It is also smaller than the already impressively small T1. On one hand the flash card is nice as it can be removed and easily replaced with a new flash card in case the first one stops working. On the other hand, it is much less flexible than the T1 which has the internal drive and still the option to boot on an external USB memory stick.

That is one of the wonderful and impressive things about Ubuntu – you can boot off of a memory stick. Even a Windows or Mac system which has never seen Ubuntu before can boot off of the memory stick. When you do boot, you are then presented with a list of options, including the possibility of installing Ubuntu on the system on which you just booted up. Impressive stuff! And the OS GUI (operating system graphical user interface – essentially the “Windows” we are used to working on) is so simple to use.

If you have worked with a Mac or a Windows system it will take only minutes to familiarize yourself with using Ubuntu’s menus and applications. Using the command line is something altogether different. It is Linux so it uses mostly UNIX commands. I grew up on DOS (Windows) command lines but became familiar with UNIX command lines while I worked on UNIX middleware at Philip Morris and worked for 2 years on ZENIX (a different “flavor” of UNIX released by SCO - Santa Cruz Operations). So Linux is not completely foreign to me, thankfully, because I have needed to use the Linux command lines a more than few times for support out in the filed on this project.

Crafty computers

This morning we headed off to Samfya where Camfed has an IT Resource Centre. On the ride we had a very interesting discussion about witchcraft. Apparently, there are well known and wide spread rumors of witchcraft in and around Samfya. Hearing this made me very curious and I urged the others in our group to tell me more, but they were not willing/able to go into much more detail. Whether it was due to the fact that it made them nervous to talk about it or they simply did not have much more information about the rumors, the group did not talk much more about witchcraft in Samfya other than to say that some of them heard of these rumors.

It turns out that many in Zambia and other parts of Africa can view growing wealthy or being "rich" as something evil. In other words, having too much money or making too much money can be seen as evil or going against God. I wondered if the accumulation of money seemed unachievable to some and so they could easily explain it all away by labeling it as evil. Or was it the fact that they had so often witnessed riches or wealthy people leading to corruption? Colonists, imperialists and mineral-centric entrepreneurs that Africans have heard of from the past. Moreover, many governments inside and outside of Africa have seen corruption grow out of the prospect of great wealth.

Either way, there were many in Samfya that started describing some charities' practices of giving money to needy people around Africa for “no reason” as witchcraft. There are those Samfyans that see giving equipment or supplies to Africans or sponsorship of businesses as witchcraft. I even heard there were rumors of some being put to death around Samfya after being accused of witchcraft.

While we ate outside a small café in the center of Samfya, a police officer walked past us into the café. Everyone sitting around the table went silent and started whispering amongst themselves in Bemba. I asked what they were talking about and they said nothing. But once the officer left the café and walked past us into the distance, someone explained to me that he, too, had been accused of being involved in witchcraft. And I have to admit that even though I did not have any real fear, it all seemed a little bit freaky. In fact, I know that many forms of witchcraft exist and I personally believe that a few even possibly can work magic...especially some of the voodoo I have read about taking place in remote areas of the world. But witchcraft does not scare me, per se, as I believe it can be used for doing good, too. However, it does really stir my curiosity.

At one point Mr. Rain seemed nervous and even a little disturbed about the talk of magic. But as I know he is a religious man, I reminded him that Jesus rising from the dead and turning water into wine and such religious beliefs can also be seen as forms of magic - but believers see these as a good sort of magic – a magic from God. He reflected for a bit and it seemed to calm him, at least for the time being. A couple of days later he confided in me that he had been thinking a lot about what I had said and that the more he thought about it, the more it made sense to him – that for believers, God and Jesus had also performed miracles or some sort of “good magic”. It seems my words really made him think long and hard about this.

When we arrived at the Samfya Resource Centre (SRC), we met Penelope and discussed what had to be done at the SRC. The router and switch are currently sharing an uninterpretable power supply (UPS) with many other devices including a server and a printer. That means that when the power cuts, which it does very frequently in Samfya, the SRC has 10 minutes maximum of connectivity and then the router and the switch will be cut off.

I proposed moving the router to a dedicated UPS and the switch to another, perhaps shared with the server, and that we have the server do an auto-shutdown 3 minutes after the power outage. Then we can move 4-5 T1 computers to the small batteries that I brought to the SRC. In this configuration, 4-5 T1’s could continue to work on the internet for 6-7 hours after a power outage. This will be a vast improvement to the 10 minutes they currently have from the time the power cuts out.

Today we received very unfortunate news. Melody’s dad was in a car accident and was being transported to a hospital because his injuries were fairly serious. He had 4 broken ribs, a head injury, a dislocated leg and his spinal chord had been shifted. Poor Melody was terribly upset and it really changed the elated mood of the whole group, especially for our vehicle. The 4 of us have grown very close and were having such a wonderful time, and Melody’s energy was an enormous part of this great energy between the 4 of us. The life was sucked right out of her for the next couple of days. What’s more, her boyfriend, Eddy, had called her 3 days earlier to tell her he had 4 deaths in his family in 2 days. Poor Melody - our hearts are with her!

The Gift of Printing

Today we passed through Mpika again and went to go see Gift at the Cama Centre. We trained Gift on printing for a second time and this time with an even more in depth look at how to vary size and quality of printing as well as the type of paper they print on.

It was interesting because the girls wanted to simply charge a set fee for printing and a set fee for copying. But I explained to Gift that their costs were essentially labor, paper and toner (and eventually perhaps electricity and rent). I told her that the larger the image and the higher quality the print job, the more toner they use and the more it costs them to produce. I developed a pricing matrix for Gift based on the following:

• 3 varying levels of quality
• 3 different sizes
• paper type (glossy versus matte)
• black and white versus color
• printing versus copying.

Although it seems confusing at first, I do believe their customers would be scared away by some of their pricing if they did not adjust the pricing based on these elements. I was motivated to do come up with this price matrix when the first 24 black and white matte paper copies that we made on Chanda’s request came to 96,000 Kwacha (K) - that is $20!!

We trained Gift on using the solar panels and small battery. Gift is an extraordinarily bright girl. She is very observant and she does a great job teaching the other girls. It is clear she is bright, has a very strong character and is a natural leader. The Cama girls really look up to her and she seems much more mature than her age. On top of all of this, she is striking in appearance, with beautiful, prominent cheekbones and standing just short of 6 feet tall. I told Melody that if Gift lived in the U.S., she would have already been scouted by someone to do runway modeling. Someone pointed out that she is small breasted. “Cheekbones and legs”, I said, “That’s what they really want.”

Melody and I discussed the possibility of creating a database for the Cama girls. The DB would contain detail such as suppliers, goods and services, cost of raw goods and services by region, etc. I think that the Cama girls would find some great information if they had a way to lookup what other groups had done in terms of purchasing, contacts, sourcing goods and services and other data essential to starting and running the businesses.

Tanzania mania

This morning we have a day off in Nakonde. The Deputy DEBS, Mr. Manga, took us over the border to Tanzania where we wanted to do some shopping, as it is very cheap to buy goods which are imported from Dubai through Dar Es Salaam to Tanzania.

Getting me over the border was no small feat as I ended up requiring 4 different customs stamps in order to enter. Sadly, none of them ended up in my passport because none of it was truly legit. They wrote my name on a small piece of paper along with the number of people I was entering the country with and our vehicle license plate number. They then proceeded to stamp the life out of that small piece of paper.

Once we passed over the border we were swarmed with boys wanting to be our “escorts” who would take us to the best shops and carry our bags for us as we accumulated a gluttonous amount of the best goods Tanzania had to offer. As I disembarked from our vehicle I could hear the calls of “Muzungu” being cried out from everywhere around me. Immediately after we formed a small group to discuss who would shop with whom and how long we would stay, another group of about 12-15 boys swarmed us like bees to honey all of them eager to be our escorts. Little did we know then that the majority of them would stay along our side no matter how desperately we tried to discourage them from doing so – eventually, Mr. Manga resorting to swatting them away like flies.

We then proceeded to divide into groups and poor Mr. Manga ended up with me and Melody. Although I planned on buying nothing at all, I did end up buying a new suitcase because it was huge and well made and I do not have one back at home. It probably cost me 30% of what it would in the US and 10% of what I would have paid in Geneva.

Melody, on the other hand, emptied much of the stores of their merchandise. She handed bag after bag to poor Mr. Manga who ended up holding at least 6 or 7 of Melody’s bags of merchandise. Just for her father alone she bought 3 suits, 3 pairs of shoes, 3 shirts and 3 ties. She went from store to store and bought whatever her little heart desired. Poor Mr. Manga ended up buried in Melody’s merchandise as he struggled through the Tanzanian streets carrying it all. And after she got back to her hotel room and started proudly displaying everything she had purchased, we pointed out that she, too, would require a new suitcase just to transport it all back to Zimbabwe…and so back she went to do just that.

Mr. Rain had been admiring my shoes and said that he wanted to buy a pair for himself so I ended up buying them for him. He was very happy. And it made me very happy.

Once back at the guest house, I plopped down on the bed in exhaustion from shopping but mostly from the tiring week of travel and working very long hours. There I comfortably caught up on my blogging and emails and watched a couple movies in a very comfortable room with cable and hot water and a fridge. It was a little slice of heaven and felt great to chill out for a day.

For the non-technical

Yesterday we saw Cama groups 4 and 11 and this morning we went to Isoka. We met with group 6. For all three groups we trained on using the internet and email over their mobile phones. We also setup their T1 computer outdoors for training in a venue which had no power. Needless to say, the solar panel and battery came in very handy. Overall, the training sessions went very well and we are starting to get a good flow to the sessions.

However, during the training it became evident that even some of the most basic skills were lacking. What’s more, with some of the girls and some of the businesses (such as the baked good business) there seemed to be disconnect with how using phones and computers would aid and ease doing business.

Some of the girls who have never touched a computer cannot effectively maneuver a mouse and it causes the training to slow down to a sometimes painfully slow pace. However, I keep in mind that this is an iterative process – that each time the girls learn more, they will take on more and push themselves further.

I expect that the next time I would see any one group after a training session that their skills will have matured and even the concept of subtly moving a device on your desk with your hand so that an animated arrow on your PC monitor moves will become easier and easier. I have to remind myself of how foreign the concepts and even motor skills can be for a first-timer. It will be exciting to see how quickly they become technology enthusiasts. It also makes me wonder if some of them consider growing their business with technology or even focusing their business on providing or training on technology.

Later that same evening we drove to Nakonde which is essentially as far Northeast as you can drive before entering Tanzania.

AK-47, Flash, Fanta, Rain and Mayaya

I have given nicknames to most of the others I am traveling with.

Fatuma is now “Flash”, as she is never without a memory stick around her neck or three in her pocket. Fatuma started off very shy but has really come out of her shell. She has an amazing passion and persistence working with computers and seems to love IT. She laughs and smiles very easily and her laugh is contagious. She sometimes speaks so quietly I have to push my ear straight to her mouth to hear what she is saying. But as her confidence grows, so does the strength of her voice. She is a real pleasure to work with.

Alice is “AK-47” because she looks like Alicia Keys (really she does – lucky me, right?). What’s more, she can eat 47 chicken bones in one sitting without stopping for a breath. Yes, you heard me right – chicken bones. She can then go on to finish the scraps on the plates of the 47 other people sitting in the restaurant we are eating in. If that is not justification enough for the nickname, she can also sleep for 47 hours straight even while we drive 47 miles per hour driving over 47 potholes in the road that are each more than 47 inches deep. She does this while she lovingly hugs her snuggle buddy next to her on the car seat which she uses as a pillow - a large metal cube shaped pillow. It is a computer which is at least 47 years old.

“Mr. Rain” is the name we have given Lazarus, the driver. Actually, his family gave it to him, because his last name is Mvula which means “rain” in Nyanja. He is an incredibly proficient driver and a very responsible person and an incredibly hard worker. He can drive in anything, sheets of rain or hot sunshine. But he is much more than a driver. He is a great assistant for our IT tasks, shopping, eating, picking out guest houses, helping with just about everything. He told me he has never been in a plane before and, hence, he has not ventured far beyond Zambia in his travels. He is a very nice guy and very funny. We laugh a lot together. I don’t know what I’d do without him during my time in Zambia. Mr. Rain is married and has three kids and I am sure he is a very good family man. However, he has only received one very short phone call from his wife after 8 days on the road. I think she is trying to teach him a lesson. You see, Valentine’s Day has just passed and this year, as he does every year, he bought her a single red balloon. But this year she was mad – she said it was not sufficient. So now he plans to bring her back something very nice from his time on the road – he will bring her back a solar panel with some jumper cables - and he’ll be sleeping on the couch for a very long time.

Melody is “Mayaya” (pronounced “my eye”) because that is all she eats…that and Orange Fanta. Mayaya in layman’s terms is basically chips (American thick-cut French fries) in a tomato, pepper and onion egg omelet. It is frankly delicious. But that is all she wants to eat and she is very particular about the way it is prepared. If it is not prepared just so, she will not like it. With her Orange Fanta she is a little more flexible. She is an amazing person. She has an enormous smile which is easily evoked and she has a huge amount of energy. She lights up a room when she walks in and gives a big hug to everyone she sees for a second time. And her laugh…her laugh can be heard 5 kilometers away. It is more of a high-pitched scream than a laugh, and she laughs all the time. We all know Melody’s laugh very well – in fact I am sure most of Zimbabwe (where she comes from) knows it very well – surely all the surrounding villages from her own, at a minimum, know Melody’s laugh. I, for one, really like her laugh and it is definitely contagious. But I must admit I like it a lot less before 9 AM.

Melody calls me Mr. Fanta Nice, because I once bought her a Fanta, and she says I am a nice guy. Just wait until she sees me after 30 days on the road. It might change to Dr. Pepper Mean.

Muzungu

Today felt unproductive relative to yesterday in Timba. We went to the Chinsali High School for girls. The shipment of computers they received from Aleutia was all wrong. They received 8 monitors, 7 E2 computers, and 5 flash cards. As the flash cards are the “brains” of the computer (there is no hard drive), it meant they really only had 5 functional machines. We did our best to copy from one flash card to another, but after several hours, and opening up an E2 and adding the second flash card as a secondary drive in the machine, we failed to get 5 working flash cards copied to our new flash cards which we brought with us. So again, compared to yesterday, today seemed unproductive.

Nevertheless, the teacher we worked with seemed very grateful that we stopped and made the effort. He did indicate that even with the new computers that there were simply too many students for each computer that they had at the school. Unfortunately there was not much we could do about that at the time…only to communicate this back to Camfed. He also mentioned that there were viruses on the Windows machines that were causing problems.

We plan on sending him a new E2 (for the 8th monitor that is missing a computer), 3 flash cards with the full Ubuntu installation, and a memory stick with AVG free virus scan software on it so he can clean the Windows machines.

During the evening I decided to walk around the village a little bit. Chinsali is tiny and so a short walk and you’ve essentially covered the entire village. Nonetheless, I could not help but notice I was being stared at. Back in Lusaka people are used to seeing “Muzungu” or whites, but here, everyone was not only staring but my attempts at a “hello, how are you” were literally going unanswered. Zambians are incredibly friendly and a simple smile and most will answer back with a wide smile and bright eyes followed by a “Hello! How are you?” In fact, the word in Bemba for hello is “Mulishani” which literally means “Hello. How are you.” “Muli” or “Shani” taken on its own makes no sense. In Bemba, you greet not only with “hello”, but always accompanied it with “how are you”.

However, here in Chinsali, my hellos went unanswered. But it was not out of rudeness or disrespect, but rather a general shock at seeing a white man. And for some, their very first white man. All of this was indeed a very unique experience, but it did not change the fact that it made me feel very uncomfortable. And it made me wonder how a black man walking around a remote Swiss mountain village feels. Does he feel the same? Probably not.

Though I was stared at and kept hearing “Mazungu” being called out and whispered as I walked past the Chinsalians, I realized it was most likely (or most usually) not said with any degree of prejudice. They would say it or whisper it, but it was out of shock or being startled by something or someone so rare, but I think I can safely say that it was not out of fear. But in the case of a black man walking through a remote Swiss mountain village, no one would ever dare say aloud, “A black man!” or point and exclaim “Hey look at him”. But many if not most would have preconceptions or some degree of prejudice. And unfortunately, and perhaps I am not being fair here, but I feel I am being truthful and downright honest; it would come with some level of fear or mistrust. So I could not relate to the experience. Mine was totally different from what a black man in a remote Swiss mountain village would experience.

Solar Dreams

Today we traveled to Timba Basic School to install solar powered electricity and 8 new energy efficient computers in a place that had never before had electricity. Needless to say, they had never seen computers before either.

I was on-site to install 4 solar panels, a large battery and a DC-AC inverter for converting DC battery power to AC electric sockets for connecting the computer equipment. All of this was so I could then install 8 ultra-efficient T1 Linux computers running a free version of Linux called Ubuntu. The monitor and PC are incredibly efficient and run on less than 1/10th of the power of a regular PC/monitor combo.

I had never worked with any of this type of equipment before in my life and I knew nothing about installing any of it. But I felt it would all be fine as I had been consulted by two separate solar power experts on how to connect and install everything. So I followed exactly what they consulted me to do and set everything up without a glitch. Except for the fact that it started to pour rain and the roof started to leak water and drip onto the new equipment, it all went swimmingly well.

A few hours later, when the headmaster, the teachers and the students saw the 8 computers start up and the screens come to life, their eyes opened wide and lit up. I am sure I will never forget the smiles on their faces and the expression on their faces - the proclamations of gratitude they gave me when they saw it all up and running. The headmaster, Mr. Mutale, reached out with two hands and fiercely shook my hand as he profusely thanked me and all of us for what we had done here for them. All of them were so incredibly grateful and excited. And so was I. For them these computers were magic. And for me the experience was magical.

That night I had the most amazing dreams. I was in a nice deep sleep when all of a sudden I was awakened by a bell or a "ding" followed by a person calling out my name. It was as clear and vivid as any words I have ever heard while being totally awake. Loud and clear I heard a bell and then my name spoken - "Craig" - and immediately I woke up and my eyes opened. I thought there was someone in my room. I was sure of it. But I quickly realized I had been dreaming and that a voice had awakened me. Was it someone at my door? No...it was right next to me, almost like a spoken whisper in my ear.

I awoke to the revelation that the solar panels and DC-AC inverter that I had installed in Timba the day before were setup incorrectly. The amazing thing was that I have never set them up before in my life and knew nothing for sure and the fact that 2 experts had consulted me on setting up everything exactly the way I did made me second guess my revelation. But in my dreams it was wrong.

And just like that, as clear as day, I knew what I had to do to correct the installation of the solar panels and inverter. I was now anxious and could not go back to sleep, so as soon as the sun came up, I woke up the others and told them that I had to go back to Timba to fix it. The team asked me why and when I told them I had a dream that it was wrong and how to fix it, I am pretty sure they thought I had lost my shit. But again I assured them that I my dreams told me it was wrong and I had to go back and fix it.

So our driver, Lazarus, agreed to take me back to Timba which was more than two hours roundtrip across rough dirt roads which we could not pass over without the use of his Toyota 4 X 4.

So we went back. And I followed my intuition that came to me in my dreams. And I fixed the inverter. And everything was setup correctly. So now this small community in the Northern District of Zambia will continue to run their computer centre on solar power and an inverter. Now the students will learn how to operate PCs and will enhance their learning experience and their potential for building a career for themselves through the help of this small data centre. And I was happy for them.

And I don't know why all of this came to me in a dream. Nor do I know why I heard that voice. Nor do I know why I was sure I had to go back and change the setup against the advice of experts. But I did.

On the drive home an Impala ran across the path just ahead of us as we bounced along the rough dirt road. Moments later we saw a stealth-like zebra tucked into the woods along side our vehicle, desperately trying to avoid the straining roar of our engine. And when I finally returned to my room back in Chinsali to turn in for the night, I decided to check my email before going to bed. And it was then that I saw an email from a girl I used to be in love with - she had written telling me she had to tell me about the vivid dreams she had about me = dreams of wisdom and light.

And although I was amazed, it all made complete sense, somehow.

My trip has been magical. I feel so fortunate to have been given this opportunity and this experience.

All aboard the training train

This morning we went to the Musakanya Cama Centre in Mpika. We met Cecile and Gift, the Cama Centre trainers. They seemed to be quite savvy on the computer which was a T1 that was already installed at the school.

We brought a new color printer/scanner along with us to install at the Cama Centre. One of the groups we were training and mentoring was running a photo printing business. We trained them to install the printer and the software for editing photos. Then we trained them on using the scanner, the printer and the software to edit the photos. The girls were so happy to have a new color printer that could be used in their new business. They differentiated themselves by being able to print instant photos, whereas their competition takes two weeks to do so.

We trained the girls on using their phones for email and internet usage. Using the phones for email and internet can ease communication between group members and suppliers as well as potential customers. It does seem that the groups sometimes seem a bit baffled as to how email over a telephone will help them in their business. These girls are creating business and building skills for doing finance, accounting, understanding loans and microfinance and grasping costs and profit, but as for email, I am not sure they see the real benefit yet. They use the phones to call one another, but typing emails into a telephone is slower and more cumbersome than simple texting. I will speak with Hawa and Catherine about this and see how we can perhaps facilitate using technology within the groups. It may be a little premature, but we need the girls to start grasping the concepts and considering the implications and opportunities.

We stayed in nice cottage style guest houses at the Mango Grove. It was the first accommodations I stayed at outside of Lusaka, and so far, so good. We ate at a place called Cim’s and the food was very good…great fried chicken! But the TV was so loud I felt like I was sitting in a hearing aid convention.

Rural Zambia...here we come!

This morning we left Lusaka for Mpika in the Northern district. The drive was roughly nine hours but before we left we had to pack up the two vehicles with an inordinately large amount of equipment including 15 batteries (like large car batteries), 12 sets of solar panels, 2 DC/AC converters, 4 computers and monitors, (more than 30 awaited to be installed us in the various districts), printers, cables wires, tools, suitcases for 7 people for 14 days, and all of our personal laptops and hand luggage. And we had to pack all of this at 5 in the morning.

On the road finally it started to hit me where we were going and what we were going to do. We were heading off into some of the most rural parts of Zambia to bring electricity through solar power and batteries – to bring new computers to people who had never seen or touched computers before – to enable young women across Zambia to learn computer skills, business skills and project management skills so that they could start-up small businesses of their own. And this would allow them to have a career, an income for their families and an improved future for themselves and their communities.

In our vehicle we were Lazarus, the driver; Melody, the group mentor; Fatuma, the IT mentor; and me. The other vehicle contained Albert, the driver; Alice, the group mentor; and Chanda the Camfed representative and coordinator.

British cooking?

I was considering taking cooking lessons, as I try to do wherever I travel too for an extensive period of time. But I am not sure I need a lesson on how to take any type of meat at all and cook the living hell out of it. They simply sear the meat until it could not possibly get up and walk off the table and they serve it with rice, fries or nshima. But if I wanted to learn how to cook the life out of meat I would watch 1960’s British cooking shows. Anyway, chicken seems to be my staple here. I have eaten so much chicken I am sprouting feathers.

I feel so fortunate. I am doing some amazing work here with solar panels and these hyper energy efficient computers. Eventually, these guys might not need the dirty energy sold from the desks of some of my dearest pals back in Geneva. Why these guys asked me of all people to install these solar panels is beyond me. I have no experience doing so, but nevertheless, I am installing them in schools around rural Zambia along side installing small 10-computer networks running Ubuntu (Linux). And how much Linux experience do I have, you might ask? Let’s just say not very much. But I love a challenge and LOVE leaning new things.

Last of Lusaka

Africa is really great. I am busy as hell. They are working me like a dog out here but it keeps me (and my mind) busy so I am loving it. While traveling, I am scheduled to work most weekends, so I have very little free time. Hopefully at the end of the trip I will have some time to take a safari and see some things on my own. But Sunday I leave for rural Zambia for three weeks so I will be very out of touch. I will however get to see lots while I am out there. I will be in the Northern, Luapula and Western districts.

Thus far, Lusaka has been very nice. They seem to take pride in keeping the outlying areas very clean and nicely trimmed trees and lawns...I have to say I was a little surprised. Now what it will look like in the bush is anyone’s guess. The city itself is not pristine European standards, but it is a bustling African city and considered very developed and they seem to be very proud of their city, their country, their culture, their president and their languages (several languages are spoken around Zambia and over 70 dialects - English in the national language and unifies all the other languages).

A little cloudy on the solar panels

This week I have been joined in the Lusaka office by Hawa and Gaby from the UK office, as well as Jane who assists Hawa in the training program. Gaby is here for an audit. Personally, I spent another two days in the Lusaka office assisting and training the office staff. I also met with three suppliers to get quotes for the new office network installation. I was reminded by the second supplier, Netcom that we will need phones. Yes…good thought, I told myself. So already Netcon has won my approval as they saved us from the issue of forgetting to install phones into the new office space.

I was asked to investigate a few problems that were experienced with the new solar panels and batteries for the T1 computers. The larger solar panels seem impractical for the resource centers we have out in the field. The smaller solar panels have a very thin cable that is temperamental and might need vamping up. The batteries it seems can only be either charged or used to run the computers, but cannot both be charged and be used for the computers simultaneously. This seems very impractical as the girls will use the computers during the day (normal office hours), but the only time the batteries can be recharged with the solar panels is during the day. This poses a practical conflict.

Tonight Hawa and Gaby treated Jane and I to a wonderful dinner at a beautiful Indian restaurant called the Taj. It is inside a 5-star hotel and was up to that standard. We had a great time eating, discussing and enjoying the sounds of a great “kitsch” African band that was playing some traditional African music as well as tunes from artists such as Doris Day, Sinatra, Clapton, and even a song from the movie the Godfather. Very entertaining evening accompanied by some really nice South African wine.

Can't bare another beer

Isaac from the office invited me out for a river cruise in Kafue just south of Lusaka. We went with his fiancée, Chana. They are both very nice and were born in Zambia. However, they met each other in Atlanta in the US. So I was bringing them a little “yankee” slice of memory lane. The river area was beautiful. We enjoyed the local specialty, grilled Sea Bream, which was delicious. I also tried the Zambian staple, nshima (also called “pop”). It's a steamed cornmeal mash made from ground maize (corn kernels). It looks like a big ball of mash potatoes but has more of a doughy consistency. You pull off a wad, ball it up in your hands (I was told to “play with it”) and then dip it in a variety of dips including a tomato and onion relish (chutney) and a vegetable sauce.

We enjoyed a few cold Zambian beers with lunch. And more after lunch. And more after we moved over to the bar next to the river to watch the soccer match (football to the non-yanks). And more beer as we sat on the river cruise. And still more after the river cruise as we sat by the river watching the sunset. And even more at the club we went to after the river cruise. And on it went into the night. Needless to say, I had too much beer on this day.

But the cruise boat was beautiful. It was small holding perhaps 7 tables on each of its two decks and everything was made of a gorgeous stained wood. I have to say it was all very polished and felt pretty high class. The tables were fancily set for a posh and refined luncheon, which we philistines turned into more of a liquid luncheon. It was so peaceful out there on the river. I finally felt part of the natural beauty and peace that Zambia has to offer. It was wonderful.

12 hours after we first set off for the day, we headed home. After driving in circles trying to locate the guesthouse (I did remember the name which I was very proud of), we finally located it and after honking the horn several times, awakened some poor soul who scurried over to open the large steel gate that was firmly shut to ward off any potentially troublesome intruders (like us). My bed was heaven that night.

Meeting, greeting, eating and tweeting

Today I went to the Lusaka office for the first time. I met lots of the Lusaka staff...everyone was very nice and accommodating. I met Lazarus who will be my driver while I’m in Africa. He and I will be "trekking" all over rural Africa together. He seems like a great guy and I can only hope that I can rely on him for everything from running menial errands with me to defending me from the unknown “elements” while in the bush. He speaks English as well as Bemba and Nyanja (2 of the widely used languages in Zambia), so he's got us covered on the communications front. He seems to be incredibly patient with all of my ignorant questions and lame attempts at some semblance of “universal humor”.

In the Lusaka office they have just notified me that they will expand the office into a second building. What was potentially going to be a day and a half of meeting, greeting, eating and tweeting is potentially going to turn into a lot of work in Lusaka. We will run underground cables to connect the two buildings, install network wiring in the new building, rewire the old network wiring in the existing building and install a new wireless network that will offer supply wireless network coverage for both buildings. Gulp. Lots to do!

My trip to Samfya scheduled for Tue 16 Feb might have to be postponed!

African Serenity

My flight from the UK to Lusaka last night was great. Very comfortable with seats that actually properly reclined and a touch-screen entertainment center in front of each passenger offering over 200 movies to chose from. I got one last “western” meal on-board which, ironically, was chicken korma. But it was delicious and I acted as if it was my “last supper” and savored every last drop. Breakfast was a box of miscellaneous cold items including 6 grapes, a freezing cold muffin and a yogurt which had leaked all over the little box. At least the coffee was hot.

I arrived in Lusaka on time and had a small issue at customs with my visa. I paid $55 for a 36-month multiple entry visa at the Zambian Mission in Geneva, Switzerland (I live in Geneva). However, upon presenting this to the customs officials at the Lusaka airport, they told me if I were simply "a tourist" I could come and go as I pleased. However, as a volunteer working in Zambia for Camfed, I could only stay for a maximum of 30 days, after which I would have to reapply for another 30-day visa and pay another $200. Honesty will get you very far but it will also cost you an extra $200 !

Patricia met me at the airport. She oversees the admin at the Lusaka office and helps me with everything from expenses to lunch to mobile phones to hotels. She is great and has been very helpful. She is also helping me sort out my visa extension. So far I love Africa, but I am not sure I would want to get stuck here indefinitely with an expired visa.

I checked in to a nice tucked away little guest house aptly named the Serenity Lodge. It is comfy and the staff is warm and more than accommodating. They serve a full English breakfast (hell yea!) and a really nice fresh chicken kebab on a skewer (not the euro trash version) so the food is much better than I expected so far. I have A/C, a hot shower, a mini fridge, Internet access, and CNN and a pretty good movie channel. Hmmmm....does not feel that different than home thus far. I am sure that will change very soon. I leave Lusaka in 5 days and head for rural Africa.

Technically speaking

The computers I will be installing and supporting in Zambia are amazing! The computers are Aleutia T1s. The T1 uses extremely low power (less than 1/10th the power of a normal PC and monitor) and is powered by solar panels. It uses 15 watts of power and the monitor uses another 15 watts giving 30 watts in total. The computer itself is tiny, 20 x 18 x 3.5 cm (7.9″ x 7.1″ x 1.4″). There are 5 USB ports, an Ethernet port, a PS/2 port and two audio ports with an audio card. It has 2.4 GHz processors, 2 GB RAM and a 64 GB solid state hard drive.

There are no fans as the T1 generates almost no heat and, therefore, the unit is totally silent. As there are no fans and a solid state hard drive that means there are no moving parts. With no moving parts, the T1 is less prone to components breaking down. The computer uses a flexible waterproof keyboard which can roll up for portability.

The T1 connects to a portable battery (like a small car battery) and the battery connects to a small solar panel. 12 hours of solar charging gives the 8 hours of usable power for the monitor and the T1. It is truly amazing stuff! Not sure why the corporate, government and health care industries have not yet embraced this technology is beyond me.

Unfair weather

God it is COLD here in the UK!! I am looking forward to escaping this snow and sleet.

We have set out some basic project objectives and tried to prioritize them based on current needs and what we know about the IT infrastructure currently. However, the whole process is an iterative one and we are likely to see many changes throughout my project schedule. The UK team has been very supportive and assured me that the program can remain relatively flexible based on my feedback in the field, the project needs, the girls skills and training needs, and how I am feeling during the travel – that means how I well tolerate bug bites, a dodgy stomach, and a potentially very soar rear end from several of the over 12-hour drives across dirt roads. The mention of the heavy rains and potential flood along in the Western district has me a bit concerned. I can swim pretty well, but my crocodile wrestling skills might need some brushing up.

Stop in Cambridge

I met the UK team in Cambridge. All went well and they are a super team. There was a little concern when they told me I would be traveling for 3 weeks straight through rural Zambia! I know the accommodations and food in the sticks will be a challenge for 3 weeks, but I am not sure I have much of a choice. The mentoring program has to take place on a program schedule that is only so flexible and, therefore, the dates I go are only so flexible. I just hope my eating and living standards I am used to back home can be! Cambridge is very nice with beautiful expansive buildings on and around the campus – in the typically grandiose and impressive style of English architecture that I so seldom see back in the states.

Why am I going to Zambia, you ask?

Camfed is a non-for-profit organization that is essentially a “campaign for education” for women across Africa. I am working on the Cama Programme which identifies top-performing young African girls who have completed grade 12 and mentors them in starting up the business of their choice. The programme sponsors the girls during the start-up process, supplies equipment, coaching, training and education to enhance, hone in on and fine tune the girls' business, project management, and IT skills. The girls are mentored through the entire process of starting a business of their choice with 8-12 other Cama members in their area. This teaches the girls very useful skills and gives them the potential for carving out a good means of developing a career for themselves and of earning their own money.

When I first learned that a post that had become available for an IT specialist and project manager in Zambia, I did not expect I would be applying for the post. What's more, I didn't think that I would be chosen for the job let alone that I would go on to seriously consider accepting the assignment. Roughly 3 months later and after many lengthy discussions between Camfed program managers and me, I was offered the position and I accepted the assignment.

Originally the assignment was to volunteer for 3 months in Zambia training African girls between the ages of 18-23 on IT skills and installing and supporting IT infrastructure across Africa. After further discussions with the Camfed team we discussed the possibility of my also assisting with mentoring and training on the project management and business skills side of things, in addition to the IT. This will be my blog about my experiences volunteering in Zambia.

For my mission in Zambia, I was asked to analyze the state of the IT infrastructure and services and to make recommendations for improvement. This will address concerns such as network connectivity problems, power fluctuations and outages, IT security, the state of the servers and workstations, virus protection, and the financial database performance via Citrix.

I will be working with Camfed management and user groups, local suppliers and working with IT staff to address the IT concerns and help to derive a strategy moving forward to improve IT performance, availability, stability and reliability. Where I can fix or improve issues on-site, I will do so. I will report and make recommendations for all other any issues and concerns back to management.

My mission in the districts is to help mentor and train the Cama trainers. I will accompany the trainers and the mentors to the various districts where Camfed has setup or plans to setup resource centers and has installed or plans to install IT equipment in the schools in the districts. There we will be working with girls who are participating in the either the Goldman Sachs Programme or the Credit Suisse Programme to ensure they are properly trained in business skills, project management skills and computer skills including using office applications, email and internet, photo editing and printing and using their mobile telephones for email and internet.

Additionally, I will be installing equipment supplied by Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs including solar panels, batteries, and low-energy consuming computers around the districts. I will assess the state of the equipment already installed and any user requirements that need addressing. Where I can fix or improve issues on-site, I will do so. I will report and make recommendations for all other any issues and concerns back to management.