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.
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Transporting the pole to the school- we tied it to the Land Rover using a bit of twine. |
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Mounting the antenna on the pole |
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Jessica the Riveter (making the hole in the wall for the pole to sit in) |
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The pole in the hole |
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We made a small hole in the roof for the pole to stick through. |
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Adding the coax cable |
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Cable mount (with the nail not fully hammered in) |
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Cable running into the vent |
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Me, Elifuraha (the fundi) and J |
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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 2nd
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.
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Cable coming into the vent, taped to the ceiling, and entering the office through a hole in the doorframe. |
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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 2nd 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.
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Browsing with one computer- success! |
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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 9th
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:
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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.
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Drawing of host brother |
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Drawing Malkia |