Wednesday, March 3, 2010

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!