U of N - Kikuyu OCW Installed

I installed a mirror site of MIT's OpenCourseWare at the University of Nairobi - Kikuyu campus today. It mostly went off without a hitch. We lucked out because a gang of armed robbers broke in last week and stole 30 computers. Apparently, they backed a truck up to the fence, sent in seven people to beat up the guard and then nabbed 30 computers in a matter of minutes. This has to be the single most impressive display of coordination and efficiency that I have seen since being in Kenya.

You may wonder why this was a good thing. By some miracle, the Kikuyu campus managed to get brand new replacement computers procured and installed in three days. They now have the nicest equipment I've seen in Kenya. Normally, the procurement process takes months. Getting 30 Pentium 4 machines with flat panel displays to rural Kenya in three days is akin to parting the Red Sea.

Yesterday, Marta and I went with several African Virtual University (AVU) staff members to meet the Kikuyu dean. AVU has been acting as a liaison between MIT's OCW and the U of N. Essentially, all we wanted to do is copy some files to their local computers. However, nothing gets done unless the dean okays it. So, we met with about 10 people in his office before we could set foot in the computer lab. It made us feel like he was the one doing us the favor.

Anyway, they've got a copy of the entire OCW site on their local machines now. The idea was that Kikuyu would then act as a local site where other African universities could connect to better than they could connect to MIT. However, Kikuyu doesn't even have any servers at its campus and has a slow, microwave radio connection to another U of N campus. It's also a liberal arts campus, so they don't have much use for MIT's course material. There is a different campus named (something like) Cheroma that is for IT and computer science students.

We're going to look into installing an OCW mirror there. Unfortunately, each campus has its own bureaucracy, so we'll have to go through the whole business of formally getting the dean's permission to enter his fiefdom.

Octopus

Mombasa
Originally uploaded by sweis.

We stayed at an amazing apartment on Nyali beach in Mombasa for a long weekend. I woke up and ran barefoot the first morning we were there. The hawkers were already lined up outside, willing to stand there the whole day for the chance to sell us a trinket worth 80 cents. On one end of the beach there were six or seven camels standing around waiting to give rides to children and tourists.

The beach was on a bay surrounded by a reef that broke most of the tide. Behind the reef was calm and shallow, but full of seaweed and sea urchins. There was what looked like a large rock out by the reef and I decided to swim out to it.

The water was shallow enough that I could walk part of the way, but the distance was a lot longer than I thought. I swam for a while and had to stop to rest a few times. Closer to the reef, it became shallow enough to walk again.

It was low-tide, and the reef was exposed. There were starfish trapped in tide pools. There was another man on the reef hunting something with a spear and putting it in a sack. I asked him what he was looking for. He reached in the bag to show me. I expected a starfish or a crab, but he pulled out a huge octopus instead.

I could see the rock wasn't really a rock and was actually made of metal. The octopus hunter told me it was the engine block of a Singaporean freighter that ran aground thirty years ago. He asked me how I got to the reef. I said that I swam. He clicked his tongue and said "is good", then went back to hunting octopi.

Mombasa

We went to Mombasa last weekend. The Alliance principal Mr. Khaemba hooked us up with an amazing place on the beach. Pictures are forthcoming.

AITI Ethiopia

It looks like the AITI team will not be going to Ethiopia because of the student riots there. Some of the people killed were actually going to be enrolled in the AITI class. The Ethiopia team might end up going to start a pilot program in Zambia or will come to Kenya after us. I hope they're able to still go teach somewhere this summer.

iLabs

We met Prof. Jesus del Alamo last night and had nyama choma again. Prof. del Alamo is a MIT EECS professor and is part of the MIT iLabs project. He is en route to Uganda, where there is an iLabs pilot project. Basically, iLabs lets you operate real, physical laboratory equipment over the internet. Prof. del Alamo will be visiting us at Strathmore today and meeting with some students.

Earlier in the week, we met with members of the African Virtual University. We are working with AVU, MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW), to install an OCW mirror site at the University of Nairobi. Reaching the MIT via satellite link is very slow, so the idea is to install a local copy. The text and PDF content of the current OCW site is probably usable over a slow internet connection, but the multimedia content is not. Local mirror sites will be able to offer the audio and video of MIT lectures.

Kenyan Blogs

This site has been getting hits from some other Kenya-related blogs and from random countries like Rwanda.

Thinking in Java

Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java" is a free HTML book with example source code that we've been using. We installed local copies of his book on the Alliance machines and on Strathmore's LAN.

Last Seen Entering Hell's Gate

Backpackers
Originally uploaded by sweis.

We took this in case we disappeared and someone had to post missing posters. Fortunately, we didn't need them and made it back alive.

Buffalo

Buffalo
Originally uploaded by sweis.

We saw a herd of buffalo near a watering hole. They stared at us for a while and we thought they might charge. Instead, they ran away from us. Good thing we didn't run, because a masai guide later told us that you're never supposed to run away or else they'll charge.

Hell's Gate

Hell's Gate
Originally uploaded by sweis.

This is steam rising from near the volcano at Hell's Gate. They built a power plant here to harvest geothermal energy.

Overlook

Overlook
Originally uploaded by sweis.

Zahir, Bilha, Mr. Mwanga, and I at an overlook in Uplands, north of Nairobi, en route to Hell's Gate. Mr. Mwanga is the computer teacher at Alliance has driven us all over the place.

Zebra

Zebra
Originally uploaded by sweis.

This is a zebra at Hell's gate. We saw a lot of herds, but they didn't let you get too close. There are a couple gazelle in the background too.

Homeboyz

We had the class break up into entrepreneurship teams and present entrepreneurs they respected. On team discussed Homeboyz, which is a production company and DJ school started by three brothers. We're going to try to get them to come give a guest lecture on entrepreneurship. Our liaison Maryanne happens to know them personally and is going to try to make contact for us.

Hell's Gate

We went camping in Hell's Gate park this weekend and it was fantastic. We did some great hiking and saw wild zebra, gazelle, eland, warthogs, baboons, and buffalo. The entire park is geologically active and has a volcano and geothermal power station. A masai guide took us on a tour of a gorge with hot springs. I will post some pictures soon.

Next week, Mr. Khaemba hooked us up with a place to stay in Mombasa. We're going to take a long weekend on the beach. The rest of our team will arrive on Thursday or Fridays, so will get a nice vacation when they step off the plane. It should be a great weekend.

Midnight Run

We went to the movies last Friday. It's interesting to see the subtle differences. First, you have reserved seating. You pick which seat you want to sit in when you buy your ticket. Second, they have two start times: one for the previews and one for the feature. The movie wasn't on Kenyan time, either. It actually started at the designated time.

They also showed a grainy, circa-1960's clip of the Kenyan flag and national anthem before the movie. Everyone stood at attention while it played. We told some students about it and they said that they had once refused to stand and were kicked out of the theater.

After the movie, we went to catch a cab home. A driver said that he'd take us, but failed to mention that he already had two Kenyan girls as passengers. Regardless, the six of us packed into his car. We were also carrying groceries that we had just bought for our upcoming camping trip.

On the way home, the car started to sputter and eventually died. The driver hopped out, fixed something, and got the car running again. We weren't very worried because it was on a busy, well-lit street in a nicer neighborhood, except the entire car filed with gas vapors and we had to open the windows.

After we turned off the main road the car died again; this time next to an unlit park. The two girls immediately became hysterical and said we were on the worst road in Nairobi. Zahir and I nervously joked about getting stuck there and that at least there were seven of us with the driver. The girls replied "It's not funny! We live here. It does not matter if there are 10 of you. They rape even the men." That shut us up pretty quickly.

We decided to make a run for the nearest building with a guardhouse rather than sitting there in the dark. I grabbed the nearest blunt object, which happened to be a can of beans we bought for camping, and took most of the money and credit cards out of my wallet and distributed it to my pockets. I'm not sure what I intended to do with the can of beans but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Before we left, the driver had the audacity to ask us to pay him for the service of suffocating us with gas fumes and stranding us on the worst street in Nairobi. We told him to go to hell and ran off. We were only about 100 yards from a main road, and made it to safety without further incident.

Computers Arrive

The linux machines we shipped arrived at Alliance high school last Friday. One of the monitors was broken in transit because I didn't pack it well enough. It might be repairable, though. The rest of the shipment arrived intact, except one computer's power supply appears to be DOA. I also blew out another power supply by forgetting to switch it to 230 volt input. It scared the hell out of me when it blew. Fortunately, the computer itself was unharmed and we were able to swap in a new power supply.

I'm glad to get the linux machines in the lab, because their Win98 machines are awful to use. They take a few minutes to compile a "Hello World" program. I especially dislike Win98 because some of the Alliance students know it better than I do and keep locking everyone out of computers or deleting Java. To throw salt in my wounds, a couple of them leave taunting messages like "Don't be messin' with my computer -- Lord-X". These kids are too smart for their own good. At least we can contain their damage better in Linux than Windows.

Good News

We found out that after two months of hassling embassy workers, Robert finally got his visa approved. He'll be here next week. Marta is also likely to return from the states, so we'll have our full team of six people for the rest of the summer.

We're wrapping up the second week of class. Strathmore had its first quiz and has started object-oriented programming. Alliance has covered all of functional programming and will be starting OOP next week.

We've also started the entrepreneurship part of the course at Strathmore. We the students formed into groups and gave a short presentation about an entrepreneur they admired. We learned a lot about local entrepreneurs. We're going to try to get some local speakers to talk to the class.

We also had a very interesting discussion on the entrepreneurial mindset and some of the attitudes and policies that encourage entrepreneurship in America. The students were very interested and asked a lot of good questions.

Alliance Students

Alliance Students
Originally uploaded by sweis.

This is our Alliance class. We've gotten enough machines working that most kids either have their own or are doubled-up.

Mmmmmm. Back.

Mmmmmm. Back.
Originally uploaded by sweis.

Nothing quite hits the spot like a sheep's spine.

Nyama Choma

Nyama Choma
Originally uploaded by sweis.

As requested, here's a picture of myama choma, the national dish of Kenya.

T-Shirt Stand

Curtis and I rode a matatu back home from Strathmore on Tuesday. On the way back, I stopped by a street vendor to buy a cheap t-shirt (for about US$1.30). I was carrying a backpack, my laptop, and a LCD projector for our lectures. While I was looking for my size, someone walking on the sidewalk bumped into my bag. I was carrying so much stuff, it threw me off balance and I grabbed the vendor's table to catch my balance.

Unfortunately, his table was made out of cardboard. I ended up collapsing his entire stand and landing on top of his inventory. After helping him pick up his stand, three guys appeared out of nowhere, grabbed the shirts, folded up the stand, and took off in different directions. I was still holding one of the shirts, but managed to throw it back to one of the guys as he was running away.

Either the white guy crashing into their stand really spooked the vendors or a cop may have simultaneously walked around the corner. The matatu drivers do the same thing and turn down their music when driving by cops.

Hustlers

I am rarely hustled while walking around on the street. I expected to be hassled more by hawkers, scam artists, beggars, and prostitutes. When walking around Nairobi, I am rarely approached by anyone. When I am, it's usually just someone curious about where I'm from.

I met one guy named Martin from Somalia that way and had some tea with him. He was a writer for an opposition newspaper and had to leave Somalia with the rest of the staff when the government cracked down. They fled the country on a spice boat that took a week to get from Mogadishu to Mombasa.

Martin was studying to be a veterinarian and was trying to go to grad school at UCLA, where he had a brother. He had some funny questions about America. He was worried about skinheads and wanted to know if he'd be safe in California. I assured him that Westwood was probably safer than Mogadishu.

He also wanted to know what our national dish was, why each state had its own flag, and what our biggest animals were. He had never heard of bears and I had a hard time explaining what they were. I tried to draw a picture and he asked me if it was a pig.

He was even more confused when I told him that bears were omnivorous, caught fish, sometimes attacked people, and could stand on their back legs. I didn't mention that California is famous for its bears, because then he'd probably worry about being attacked by bears while at UCLA.

Taco Carnivore

We went to a bar/club Friday night named Tacos. They actually ripped off the name and logo of the Taco Bell club, probably not knowing that the Taco Bell club ripped off theirs from the fast food chain. We had a good time dancing to Kenyan music and ran into some of our Strathmore students. As one of them put it, "Java by day. Party by night."

On Saturday, we went to the infamous Carnivore. It's a nyama choma restaurant during the day, and turns into a nightclub at night. The cover is 300 KSh, which is about 4 bucks and makes it one of the most expensive clubs in Nairobi. It was a more touristy/ex-pat crowd.

Giraffe Center

giraffes
Originally uploaded by sweis.

The Giraffe Center is a non-profit reserve for the endangered Rothschild Giraffe. They have a platform that you can feed and pet the giraffes from.

Hello There

hello_there
Originally uploaded by sweis.

This is a friend I made at the Giraffe Center. You have to be careful, because she will headbutt you if she wants food.

Ain't she pretty

warthog
Originally uploaded by sweis.

This is a warthog at the Giraffe Center.

Emergency Door

breakglass
Originally uploaded by sweis.

Someone does not understand the concept of an emergency door.

Dinner

dinner
Originally uploaded by sweis.

Zahir, Bilha, Marta, and myself with Mr. Mwanga, the Alliance computer teacher, and Mr. Khaemba, the Alliance principal.

Hair Salon

hair
Originally uploaded by sweis.

This is a shipping container that someone has turned into a hair salon. These types of kiosks are all over the place.

Roadside

roadside
Originally uploaded by sweis.

Roadside on the way to Alliance.

Phonebooth

phonebooth
Originally uploaded by sweis.

Crammed in a British phone booth. (A little out of order.)

First Week

We've been here for a week now. Marta took off last night, and Curtis arrived this morning. We're still a little understaffed. I taught at Alliance last night and today. It's tough because they have 3-5 people per computer and we dealt with power fluctuations.

They have UPS backup systems, but they all beep loudly whenever the power went out. So, every 30 seconds, 30 UPSs would start beeping at once. We just had to lecture through it.

The kids at Alliance are very motivated and are spending their only free time in our class. It's tough because there are so many people in the class and they have a lot of questions. The machines we shipped should be arriving soon, which will relieve some of the computer issues.

We ate nyama choma last night, with is basically just grilled meat that you order by the animal part. We had a mutton hip and a leg. They slice it into bite-size pieces on your table and you can dip it with your hands in salt or tomato sauce. It was excellent with a local Tusker beer.

First Day of Teaching

We started teaching at Strathmore today and things went well. We made it through three Java lectures and finished the first lab. At this pace, our worry is that we won't be able to prepare the course material fast enough to fill the day. However, the lab assignments may start backing up soon.

Unfortunately, Marta is urgently needed in the US and will be flying back as soon as possible. We all hope she is able to come back later. Curtis is now arriving on Thursday, and Robert is still battling the Kenyan embassy to get his visa approved.

Alliance went well yesterday and we were able to get several more computers up and running. We had to pull out every hack in the book to do it. The lab technician Walter helped us out big time.

Backyard

backyard
Originally uploaded by sweis.

This is our apartment's backyard. The trees are hiding the electric fence.

Matatus

matatu
Originally uploaded by sweis.

This is a matatu, which is like a private bus. They run along designated routes and usually have names. (This one is "Thimba".) I haven't ridden one yet, but they're dirt cheap.

Wheels

After dinner, we all went out to a bar called Wheels. It had a roadhouse atmosphere with pool tables and an outdoor patio. It was pretty much a locals hangout and that played a lot of Kenyan music. We all had a good time dancing. Predictably, Marta and Bilha had to deal with some pushy guys trying to dance with them, while Zahir and I had to politely decline some unsolicited business offers.

Half-liters of beer ran about 100 Kenyan shillings (nicknamed "bobs"), which is about $1.33. That's actually pretty expensive. For perspective, you can buy a large bag of sweet potatoes for 50 bob, or a full cooked meal with drink for 70 bob. Internet access costs a shilling a minute. Cabs have been the biggest expense -- costing about 1000 bob for 20-40 minute rides. Fortunately, most of our rides will be provided by Strathmore and Alliance. I think the average wage here is about 10,000 Ksh a month, which is about $133. That's a bit misleading, because the income distribution is heavily skewed. A few people make a huge amount of money, while the vast majority are extremely poor.

Chinese Dinner

After work today, the Alliance principal Mr. Khaemba took the four of us out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Nairobi. He's an extremely nice man and has a can-do attitude. Zahir spoke with him about extending the hours that we're teaching at Alliance, and he was very open to the idea.

A side-note about Alliance: It was the first high school in Kenya for Africans. Before that, all the high schools were only for white colonists. We're teaching at the boys' school, but there is also an Alliance for girls, which is where Bilha went to high school. Alliance gets about 50,000 applicants each year and only has 700 students ages 13-18. This year, the two schools are sending 4 students to MIT. The students' entire day is structured from about 6am to 9pm at night. They have two hours of "free time" for sports, which is when we're teaching our class. These kids are taking their only free time of the day and voluntarily using it to take more classes. Even then, we only took about half the kids who applied.

Second Day of Work

We started the morning with an early meeting at Strathmore. We were met by an administrative assistant named Rose, who introduced us to the dean of the IT department. Strathmore was founded as a christian school, and the dean stressed that we were expected to abide by their dresscode and that we stay out of the newspaper's scandal page. We had a hard time keeping a straight face.

We were able to use their lab facilities to download some software to use at Alliance. We managed to get a copy of the latest JDK and some anti-spyware software. Zahir and I went to Alliance and worked for the afternoon.

The biggest problem was that some machines simply had no working input devices. Either they had no USB port, or no CD drive, or had no drivers for the USB port. Luckily, we found one machine with some working USB drivers and were able to install the JDK on it. We also copied the driver files onto a floppy disk and figured out how tomanually install them on other computers.

The problem is that the floppy disk got infected with a boot-sector virus. None of their virus scanners were able to remove it, so we just had to ignore it. Unfortunately, this meant that every individual file copied from the floppy triggered each computer's anti-virus monitor (which we couldn't disable). It was very frustrating, but we managed to get it to work.


With the help of a technician named Walter, we started moving aworking CD drive from computer to computer and started installing the JDK on a few machines. This was pretty effective and we were able to get about 12 machines up and running by the end of the day. They're moving some more machines into the lab, we've got two laptops, and 5 linux boxes en route, so I'm pretty confident we can get at least 20-25 machines up with the JDK installed.



It should be noted that the Alliance kids had really hacked the hell out of all these computers. We had to open some machines to reset BIOS passwords and format a few disks because they had hijacked the machines so badly.

Starting Work

We went and visited both Strathmore University and Alliance Highschool today. Strathmore was holding some sort of function, so we weren't able to meet any of the faculty. The facilities looked good and they had a decent internet connection. Plus, their IT staff said that we'd be able to hook up our own laptops to their network, making our job much easier.

Alliance is another story. They have about 30 computers in one lab, but only about half will boot up. Every computer we looked at had driver problems, was infected with viruses, or was riddled with spyware. I have no clue how these machines have spyware on them without being connected to the net.

Zahir and I worked on getting Java and our course material installed on them. The majority have USB ports, so we were using a USB drive toc opy file over. There are several with neither USB ports nor CD drives. None of our laptops has a disk drive, either. We ended up using one of their machines as an intermediary. Unfortunately, our version of the JDK wouldn't install on the only machine we were able to copy it over on.

We're going to go to an internet cafe tomorrow to download different JDK versions, anti-spyware software, USB drivers, and windows bootdisks. Then we're going to try to salvage as many Alliance machines as we can and try to get Java working as many as we can for next week. We shipped five Linux boxes out before we left, but they may not arrive any time soon. We've also got a couple laptops that students can use in the meantime. Alliance is also moving several machines over from another lab, but we don't know the state they're in. We have 45 students and no working machines, so have our work cut out for us before class starts on Tuesday.

Alliance is also a ways outside of the city and we ended up waiting for a cab for a while. Tomorrow we're probably going to try catching amatatu, which is basiscally a private mini-van that runs along set routes. They cost about a tenth of a cab. I'm also going to try to get my cell phone unlocked so that I can use SIM cards for different cellular networks.

Security

Our apartment complex has a 24 hour guard detail, three "guard dogs"who we've named Guinness, Mr. T, and Sadie, and is surrounded by a large wall topped with broken glass and electrified wire. One of the guards named Yousblat (no idea how it's really spelled) is a nice guy.

The other guard looks like a serial killer. He only works at night and neither wears a hooded rain slicker or ski mask, despite it being about 50F degrees out. I half expected him to have a meat hook or severed head in his hand when he came to check out our taxi before letting us in the gate.

Veggie Rebels

We arrived in Kenya after an uneventful flight from London whose onlydistinction was that we shared it with the Nigerian national football team, en route to a game against Rwanda. Fortunately, the Nigerian football team was late getting on the plane, which allowed our ownlate team member Zahir to make the flight after being stuck on aLondon subway. Unfortunately, our Kenyan liasion did not meet us onthe ground and we had to figure out where our apartment was on our own.

We managed without any problems and moved into our two apartments. Each has a nice living room, a kitchen, and a balcony that overlooks the pool. We're in a nice neighborhood close to the Ethopian and Serbian embassies, and not far from the President's house.

Zahir and I went for a run in the area. There's a large park nearbythat was teeming with people. In fact, there are people walking around everywhere at all hours of the day. We came across a crowd of about100 people circled around a man giving a speech on a traffic island. We moved in to get a closer look.

Lined up on the ground, spaced about two or three feet apart, wereseveral varieties of vegetables. Although I didn't understand any ofthe Swahili, it appeared to be a very intense and animated speechabout the merits of vegetables or vegetable products. I'd guess it was a vendor, but no transactions were taking place, sofigured it was some new religious movement based on vegetableparables. Zahir speculated that he was in fact a rebel leader and thatthe vegetables represented different dissident factions. In the eventof a police crackdown, they could simply eat the evidence.

Still Alive Ping

We made it alive and started work. Internet connectivity has been a problem. I
have a few posts and pictures cached and hope to get them up by Monday.