July 10, 2012
As with most stories, there is a
short and a long version of the events of the past week. The short version is that
we got USB modems from Airtel and Vodacom, tested the speed of the Airtel
network at the upper and lower staff houses, and found that the network at the
lower staff house was faster. We then got a 3G router in Arusha that you can
plug a SIM card directly into, since our TP-Link 3G router from the US would
not work with either local ISP’s network. (I’m still not sure why, because the
3G modems themselves seemed to be recognized by the router correctly. But I
decided it was worth buying a compatible router to save myself n days of
possibly fruitless troubleshooting out of my ~7 weeks left here.) We put
together all of the equipment and tested a one-hop link of a few meters down
the road in front of the lower staff house. The broadcast connection was around
0.07 Mbps upload and 0.05 Mbps download on average, and the received connection
was only a bit slower than that (forgot to record numbers). We also tested 2
hops at a short distance; the received speed was 0.03 Mbps upload and 0.01 Mbps
download- still usable! Then we tested both USB modems at the Monduli office
(thanks to J, or I would probably have forgotten about it’s existence), and
with the Voda one found faster speeds than we had ever achieved in Monduli:
0.11 download and 0.9 upload. In summary, we should probably use Voda and
broadcast from the Monduli office.
Meanwhile, new possibilities for overcoming the blocking
hill have been emerging quickly over the past week. Andy and Ming, the super
awesome older couple teaching computer classes at the Orkeeswa Secondary
School, gave us the idea to get Internet to the Orkeeswa Primary School, which
sits right on top of the blocking hill. Unfortunately, it’s not run by IEFT,
and it’s very small and run-down; some of the classrooms have broken windows
because apparently the young, misguided students play by throwing small rocks
at them. :/ But it’s ok, because it turns out the school is at the perfect
location (we can see Monduli town very clearly from there), and definitely more
secure than the surrounding wilderness. We were even able to mark its location
using our GPS units, which should make aiming the antennas really easy- we just
aim in the direction our compass points.
Another thing we found: you can access the circuitry inside
the USB modems really easily by taking off the back cover. I discovered
documentation online of two people who had modified their USB modems by
soldering coax cable straight onto the antenna leads on the circuit board, and
today J and I opened up one of the extra USB modems we have (extra because the
Vodacom modem is the same model, Huawei E173, as the unlocked one we brought
from the US- no coincidences there!) and found what we think are the locations
we’d need to solder our cable onto. Essentially, we’re thinking about attaching
one of our huge antennas straight to the USB modem to make it way more intense
than it was ever meant to be! We’d have to point it directly at the tower for
whatever service provider we’re using, but it’s easy to find out where those
are because they stick out above all the other structures in the landscape. So
there’s another possible backup plan, although an unlikely one.
The long version is kind of crazy, so I’ll try my best to
describe it in a coherent manner.
------
We got an Airtel and a Vodacom USB modem in Arusha sometime
last week, and were only able to register the Airtel SIM card because the network
in the Voda store was down (which certainly boded well for future performance!).
Both Airtel and Voda require a photo ID to photocopy and keep with the SIM card
registration, but our passports were being processed for volunteer permits, so
we were told to come back to the store with them within the next few days. We
came back to Arusha on Saturday, but everything was closed for either the
weekend or a “holiday” that no one outside of Arusha seemed to know about.
(What gives??)
On the dala-dala ride back that day, I sat a tiny little
girl on my lap because the woman next to me had been trying to fit her two
children and some groceries on her lap, and I had only a backpack on mine. I
found out through some broken Swahili conversation as well as J’s much better
Swahili conversation that the tiny little girl’s name was Fausta and she was 3;
her sister Lea, sitting on her mother’s lap, was 7. At some point, Lea decided
that she liked my hair, and therefore I was going to be her bestie and Fausta
could have J as her bestie. Fausta was indignant and wanted to be my bestie too,
but then Lea sold J pretty hard (“But look, this one has a bag!”) and all was
well. When the dala-dala ride was over, the mother explained that the little
girls wanted to invite us home as guests. Lea and Fausta took us by the hands
and led us all the way to their home, which was a room just large enough for
two twin-size beds, a couch, and a TV. They fed us oranges (machungwa), and
afterward the mother charged me to speak more, to improve my Swahili.
>.<;; Then we made arrangements to return for dinner on Monday or Tuesday
evening at our convenience, and took a taxi back home up the Monduli
mountainside (as it had already gotten dark).
Yesterday, J and I went back to Arusha to see if the 3G
router we’d asked about at an electronics store had come in yet, as well as to
go on a grand scavenger hunt for physics materials requested by Simon, the main
physics teacher at Orkeeswa. The materials included arcane objects like a resistance
box and a rheostat- two kinds of variable resistors for classroom demos. They
also included “inextensible string” (which we learned today meant fishing line)
and pendulum bobs (which we haven’t found yet).
After getting our photo IDs added to the SIM card
registration records at Airtel and Vodacom, we stopped for lunch at an
incredibly authentic Japanese restaurant a short way down the road toward
Moshono. (All of their ingredients seemed to be imported from Asia, and there
was even a Japanese toilet! There was a definite sense of homesickness about
the whole setup.) There happened to be free wifi, so we tried it out and found
that it was faster than any Internet connection we had ever encountered in
Arusha! After eating, we asked one of the waitresses how the Internet was set
up, and she showed us a Vodafone (not Vodacom!) 3G modem/router that took a
Vodacom SIM card and created a wireless hotspot; apparently the owner had
gotten it at a Vodacom store for 180,000 Tzsh, or around $120. Expensive, but possibly
worthwhile for that fast an Internet connection. I dragged J around to three
different Vodacom stores, and unfortunately none of them knew remotely what I
was talking about.
Later, after pestering the owner of every store along the
main road in Arusha that seemed remotely relevant, I found out that there were
3G routers at Sound & Vision, a much bigger electronics store that imports
all of its wares from Dubai and sells in dollars. J realized that the 3G
routers with a slot for a SIM card alone would probably have better reception
than regular 3G routers that take a USB modem, so we bought one of the former.
Via further pestering, we also found out about this tiny but very
promising-looking lab supply store hidden away in a building with a lighting
store and an arcade; both the resistance box and rheostat were acquired-
totally unexpectedly! I also haggled on the street for a water heater for the
science lab, and brought down the price from $10 to around $4.50. Ah, the
little things in life.
Today’s testing results with the new router are at the top
of this post. For me, the moral of today is that common knowledge (e.g. that Airtel
works better than Voda) is often wrong, and also that I shouldn’t rule out
possibilities in my head and forget about them until I’m sure that they should
be ruled out right now as opposed to later.
After the work was done, we visited Lea and Fausta’s home,
but no one was there! Instead, there were four very adorable little girls
playing in the yard outside their home. I felt very awkward and intimidated for
a while, as the little girls stared at me expectantly and said things in
Kiswahili that I didn’t understand while J was calling Lea’s mother on the
phone. But then one of them came up to me and took my hands; I took that as an
invitation to play, and picked her up and spun her around! :) Then everyone wanted me to spin them,
which I did until I was completely tired out. Afterward we played a bit of
confused two-ball goalless soccer, and J and I picked the girls up some more
and talked to them as best we could. (Lucky for me that little kids can have
fun without language.) Eventually we left just in time to get home by
nightfall.
J and I have started to sing together on the dala-dala;
we’re currently trying to learn lyrics and harmony parts for songs by Jason Mraz,
Keane, and the Eagles. There’s also this incredibly fun song in Kiswahili about
the benefits of education that we’re trying to learn, but the lyrics for that
will be somewhat harder.
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment