Internet at Orkeeswa

We have wireless Internet access at the school!

Yesterday we finished mounting the antenna permanently in the roof of the Laguna Beach House. We drilled a hole in the corrugated metal roof on the side closest to our target tower, and chipped a large hole in the concrete wall against the building for the pole to sit in. Then we secured the cables to the underside of the roof along the side of the building using really cheap but effective flexible metal cable clamps called “Elegant Clips,” which were nailed into the rafters and bent around the cable. We attached the cable along the wall until we reached a convenient flower-shaped vent on the side of the building, which we widened a little bit to thread the cable inside.

Transporting the pole to the school- we tied it to the Land Rover using a bit of twine.

Mounting the antenna on the pole 

Jessica the Riveter (making the hole in the wall for the pole to sit in)

The pole in the hole

We made a small hole in the roof for the pole to stick through. 

Adding the coax cable 

Cable mount (with the nail not fully hammered in)

Cable running into the vent

Me, Elifuraha (the fundi) and J 

Heehee

Since our 40-ft LMR-400 coax cable wasn’t quite long enough to get from the antenna into the office, we were planning to use a 40-ft and a 20-ft cable in series. It turned out really nicely that the first 40-ft cable reached just far enough to go into the vent, so the connection with the 2^nd cable was inside and taped to the ceiling. Even so, I will probably seal up that connection with some gaffe tape and epoxy in case any rain drips in through the vent and decides to take a walk along the cable.

Cable coming into the vent, taped to the ceiling, and entering the office through a hole in the doorframe.

Hoorah!

Then we drilled a hole in the office doorframe, threaded the cable through, and secured it with some more cable clips. The end of our cable will eventually be gaffe-taped discreetly to the bottom of the wall, but first we have to receive the crc9 to N-type pigtail (connector cable) so we can tape everything down as nicely as possible. People tend to appreciate nice-looking things more.

To recap: the free end of our 2^nd cable was attached to a N-type male to stripped wire pigtail, which was plugged into the crc9 antenna port on the circuit board of an Airtel 3G modem stick. The modem is plugged into a wireless router, which sits on the concrete sill of a glassless window between the main administrative office and the main conference room; this successfully gives both rooms wireless Internet access. Later, a cabinet might be installed on that sill that opens into the office; this might weaken the signal to the conference room, but probably not as much as a concrete wall would.

Browsing with one computer- success! 

Browsing with 2 computers- more success! 

When the whole thing was set up, I tried to show Peter Luis how well it worked. The first time J and I had tested the wireless in those two rooms on Tuesday, we had been able to browse quickly on separate computers at the same time; at one point, she was downloading videos while I was on gchat. Of course, it didn’t work the first few times he tried loading gmail on his computer. But it was working fine on mine, and we determined that Peter’s computer was in general really slow. After about 10 minutes and restarting the browser a couple of times, he was able to access non-html gmail and his chat loaded- this doesn’t happen at most Internet cafes, even in Arusha. He was very impressed, until he clicked on a link one of his co-workers in the US had sent him about Snoop Dog claiming to be the reincarnation of Bob Marley. He seemed to get the impression that teachers weren’t going to use the Internet for useful things, and that IEFT wouldn’t be able to afford the data for teacher use. But we’re going to have a meeting about Internet use policy in about two weeks (since Peter will be away next week). Maybe we can set a time limit per teacher per day, to give them an incentive to use their time wisely while not detracting too much from their productivity if they choose not to.

Next Monday we will be driving a grounding rod into the ground, and testing the reception with our big antenna on the roofs above the lower teacher offices.

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J was sick yesterday and most of today; she had a stuffy nose, nausea, and slight fever, and was really tired, so we rescheduled our second enrichment physics lesson for the science-oriented 9^th graders, which was supposed to be on Friday. Today, after eating a ton of delicious potatoes (with rosemary) cooked by Mama for lunch, J feels much better but still not entirely well. If she still feels odd on Monday, we’re going to ask Peter to take her to get checked for malaria at Dr. Danny’s. But apparently people here generally get malaria like once every 5 years; it’s considered equivalent to a really bad cold/flu that requires special medicine. For people who have access to treatment, it’s not that bad, but for Maasai living out in the villages, it often goes untreated.

This morning I went to school on my own to help the Chemistry teacher Bendera with a Form 4 practical on reaction rate. The experiment was to combine a constant amount of HCl with Sodium thiosulfate (Na2S2O3) of various concentrations, all clear solutions, in a conical flask atop a piece of paper with an X drawn on the center, and use a stopwatch to time the progress of the reaction until the solution had become too cloudy for the X to be seen. I had prepared 0.1 M HCl and 0.05 M Na2S2O3 the day before, but on the first demonstration trial that Bendera performed for the kids this morning in class, we found that those concentrations were simply too low. It took 9 minutes for the reaction to occur with the highest concentration of Sodium thiosulfate. So we sent the kids out on break for a few minutes (at which point one of the kids actually went home) and whipped up some new solutions- 1 M HCl, and 0.5 M Na2S2O3. These worked fine; the reaction times ranged from about 10 to 60 seconds each. Nonetheless, it would have been really nice to have tested out this lab beforehand, or at least to have looked up online what appropriate concentrations would be for the reactants. The former might be really hard for a teacher who lives far from school and doesn’t have access to any of the classrooms outside of regular school hours, but the latter could be easy with Internet access, if it is allowed.

Finding bulbs for what are currently the sucking pipettes needs to be a priority; Mbayana, one of the Form 4 students, told me today after the lab that he expected people to be quite likely to accidentally suck liquid into their mouths during the official exam practicals due to anxiety. I am concerned.

I really like working with the Form 4 students; maybe it’s because they are around my age, generally seem to work very hard, and because I sort of like how cheeky they are- they have a lot of character. It’s hard to think that most of them will probably not pass the Form 4 exams with the marks to move on to Forms 5 and 6. But at least they will have the opportunity to repeat the year at Orkeeswa.

There is also a new program at the school starting next week called “Study Camp,” in which Form 4 girls will be staying for a few days each week until the exams in newly converted dormitory rooms at the Laguna Beach House. Girls have much fewer opportunities than boys to study at home because they have so many chores to do, so this could be a huge help to them. J and I are excited to stay a few nights at Study Camp to help tutor and watch over the girls.

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Pole sana! The charger for our huge battery pack burnt out three weeks ago when I unwittingly plugged it into the 220-volt outlet without knowing that it was only rated for 120-volt input. The sad thing is that I didn’t find out until the battery pack ran out a few days ago; we’re going to look for a charger with the same specs in Arusha, but we’re not too optimistic about finding one.

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Alex (our awesome office manager) left for England forever to go propose to his girlfriend. We are so happy for him, but will miss him greatly!

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Last week we went to see a newborn baby! Her name is Swabra, which is a Muslim version of Subira, which means Patience. She is the newest daughter of Jessica’s host family from last year, and was only 14 days old when we went to visit:

J and Swabra 

I also drew a picture of my host brother. (I also did one of J and one of Malkia, but those are unavailable at the moment.) Oddly enough, for the first time I’m finding it easier to draw people from real life than from pictures. I think my drawing style is changing.

Drawing of host brother

Drawing Malkia