Internet at Mungere?

8/12/2012

Today I'm in Mtowambu- the name breaks down to Mto wa mbu (River of Mosquitoes). There is quite a lot of water here; it’s in the Rift Valley, so water flows down from the escarpments on either side, and the water table is high. They even have rice paddies! Thankfully, we have insect repellent and bed nets for the mosquitoes.

Jessica and I are visiting another volunteer-based school in Mtowambu called Mungere, where our host brother works. So far, it seems to not really be built yet; there's only one teacher's office and two classrooms, but no toilets or kitchen or anything else. The first year of students has been chosen- there are like 40 "preform" students, or students who are undergoing crash-course English training for a few months before staring Secondary school in total-immersion English. (In government schools, the preform period is only about 2 weeks; no wonder students generally fail to learn the material. Even the Orkeeswa Form Fours this year can't read their textbooks effectively, and they're the best and brightest from the region.)

A team from Engineers without Borders has come out for two weeks to build a set of composting toilets and make plans for the solar system. Afterward, they will climb Mt. Kilimanjaro for a whopping $1450 per person. Jessica and I are invited, but the price is a bit steep; plus, we've recently been asked by Orkeeswa to install a second Internet setup for the student computer lab, so we’ll have to get on that. In any case, the founder of this school wants us to come back, and one of her lures was to throw us in with all these lovely engineers with different knowledge sets- I must admit it's working pretty well. One of them is Jeni, who used to work in aerospace, has her own solar energy company, and is in charge of setting up the solar system. Ada is a civil engineer who just has a huge amount of energy and always itching to get as many things as possible done right now- she designed the composting latrines, and she and her fellow engineer Valerie are in charge of getting those built within the next 2 weeks. And there's a really cool techy French guy named Anatol who also worked as an aerospace engineer but is now a programmer. I got to introduce him to the Fieldtest app, which allows you to find out details about the Internet connection on an unlocked, jailbroken iPhone. He also has experience designing solar systems, so he and Jeni have somewhat opaque discussions sometimes- but I ask lots of questions so it's not that bad.

It’s really nice to have Junior around again! He's such good company, and always introduces me to people as his littlelest sister (which is slightly annoying, but in a nice way- I like having a sibling for once). I think I might really enjoy coming out here again to work with this school. But I also really miss home.

8/13/2012

Internet at Mungere seems possible:

1. I know where the cell towers are that provide what weak 3G signal there is on the roof of the first classroom block. Although at its best, the 3G signal strength was only -98 dB and around -110 dB on average. The towers are atop the part of the escarpment of the Rift Valley that overlooks Lake Manyara. They are hidden from view at the school behind a portion of the escarpment that juts out between the towers and the school.

2. I observed that there is much better 3G signal (-70s to -80s dB) less than half a kilometer away from the school, where the line of sight to the towers is not blocked. Perhaps just a little more height off the roof would be enough to improve reception to that level; or maybe a building can be built within the campus grounds in a spot with particularly good reception.

3. There will be two decently powerful antennas left over from this project; if I am planning on coming back to implement an Internet system at Mungere, it would be convenient to leave at least one of the antennas with them (and not have to deal with TZ customs again).