Music (Re-updated with songs working)

I really like the music here and I’d like to share two items with you.

This is some Cape Verde music that Dany, STeP UP’s director’s driver and employee, shared with us. The artist is Bana and the album is Livro Infinito. The songs are pretty slow but talented and beautiful.



This song is more of a club song but it get’s everyone moving. There is a part where he says something to the effect of, “guys make noise” and then tells the girls to clap three times. It’s really fun to hear this in more of a party environment. The artist is Afroman and I can’t recommend anything else by him. It’s probably best that I don’t know what he’s saying.

Exciting Weekend

We had a very exciting weekend filled with trips to the Blue Lagoon, Neves (Nevish), the beach, and STeP UP’s 5th birthday party. Friday night we went to Pestana, a luxury resort with nightclub and it cost way to much money. I wasn’t excited about going when I heard it was $10 to get in the door. Anyway, we went and it was empty because no locals can afford the entry fee while still having a good time. We want to go again as an end of the trip celebration but it’s just too expensive.

STeP UP's Birthday Cake

Saturday we started nice and easy at the beach before heading to STeP UP’s 5th anniversary party. The Minister of Education was in attendance and there was great food as well as cake. After we headed to a soccer game where security was tighter than the airport; army personnel with guns, police with riot gear and a barbed wire fence surrounding the entire field. The game was calm, thankfully, but it had a lot of energy and I found myself yelling at the officials with the rest of the crowd during a few bad calls.

Fun in the sand. OLPC.

Riot Gear: These Police appeared to be the officials personal guards

Sunday we started bright and early with a trip to Neves to eat crab. Neves is located at the north west end of the island, about an hours drive. We stopped at the Lagoa Azul for a quick photo opportunity. Driving through the country shows a completely different side of Sao Tome. Despite having a much lower quality of life, fish and fruit are abundant year round on the island so no one is going hungry. We ate fantastic fresh crab and took the trip with two other Americans from Seattle who are with the Mobility Project, an international NGO setup to provide wheelchairs to third world countries. Tuesday they will deploy 60 wheelchairs as a trial run for the 200-400 they would like to bring in the future. After eating we left to go to James’ (our local contact) aunt. We had another meal (again, fantastic) and met lots of his cousins and uncle. We were witness to an impromptu dance performance at the house next door and eventually returned home.

Old Tree near the Lagoa Azul

Crab in Neves

This week we will start working with the teachers to get the ready to teach lessons using the XO.


Lots of pictures! YAY!
-XO Mike

TiA

Yesterday was sort of a bust. We had plans to go visit our potential school and meet the headmaster and several classrooms. Our contact at STeP UP told us to meet her at 11am. Paul suggested we arrive around 11:30 because she would be late. At 11:30 we arrived and started waiting for our contact, Roberta, to arrive. At 12:30 we left and went to lunch. It’s 8am the following day and still no word from her.

The plus side is that we’re about to go meet the Minister of Education and let him know what we’re up to. Even more exciting than that is we confirmed a rumor that the Prime Minister received a gift of 500 XOs from Portugal and because he doesn’t know how to deploy them, they are sitting in storage. We are going to push to get to help deploy these laptops. In order to get more time with the Prime Minister we are going to have a meeting as well as invite him to our 4th of July party. This party should be HUGE. Several ambassadors from various countries, several ministers, and many friends Illinois has met over the past three years.

Off to our meeting.
-XO Mike

Daily Life in Sao Tome

So far our day to day life has been much different than expected. The sun rises around 5 and sets at 6. We can accomplish actual work from around 9 until noon and 2 until 3:30 or 4. The rest of the time people are at home.

A lot of our day is spent figuring out what to eat and when to make it. Nearly everything here is imported so to save costs we go to the open markets to get the best prices. There is a general goods market where we can get any produce which is locally grown and there is a fish market to get anything from the sea (we had barracuda last night). Once we go to all the markets and find what we want (we do this everyday because our refrigerator is too small) we need to bring it home and prepare everything: gut the fish, season the fish, chop the vegetables, cook the vegetables, etc. Eating has become a full time job.

To help with the extra time life takes in Sao Tome and to give back to the economy we have hired several people around our house. We have hired a housekeeper who comes on MWF to do laundry, clean around the house and cook (if we’re home). When we moved in our house had been vacant and neglected for a year so we hired someone to clean up the yard, when he was done he asked if he could stay on as our gardener so we agreed. We also hired a night watchman and he is about the scariest person ever. It gets dark around here and with his dark skin it is impossible to see him at night. One of the first nights the power went out and Corey and I were near the front gate and I said, shouldn’t the watchman be here by now? At that time we took another step towards the gate and from inside our walls a man appeared and opened the gate thinking we wanted to leave. He had been there for a while without us knowing and I nearly wet my pants.

At night we have been relaxing playing cards (last night it was hearts and Danielle is going to teach us rummy later) or watching TV episodes and movies we have on our computers. If we want to get online we can walk 3 blocks to the national library and sit out front but the mosquitoes prohibit prolonged usage.

Another bit about African mosquitoes; while they may carry deadly diseases, their bites are way less annoying and I only get a small dot of a bump that goes away by the next night. In the US I get obnoxious bites which itch for days.

-XO Mike

Hospitality

My first full day in Sao Tome started with me going with James and Chika to get some power strips for our house. We went to a Nigerian merchant and James introduced him to Chika who is also Nigerian. They found out that they were from very close towns and they spoke the same language. The man invited us to a party that night.

When we arrived at the party we realized that it was an entire block party, at least a few thousand people spread out over a few blocks including live music, DJs, dancing and lots of vendors. We went to Mr. Cato’s house with about 10 in our group and we quickly outnumbered his seating arrangement. He left and after a minute or two came back and told us to follow him. We walked into a little (two table) restaurant and found the management kicking everyone out to make way for us.

It was a great night and Mr. Cato took care of food (cooked sea snails) and beverages. The way that everyone moved out of the way for visitors and took every step to make sure that we were comfortable was incredible and has really challenged me to better welcome people in the US, particularly foreign exchange students.

-XO Mike

Safe in Sao Tome

After our amazing adventure in Nairobi and safe flights to London and Lisbon, we met Paul at the airport in Lisbon and headed into town for a while. We drove to St. George’s Castle which was the main castle for Portugal and walked around with the rest of our group before we headed over to one of two elevators in the city.

The city is very much like San Francisco and has huge hills in different parts. To help people traverse the hills they built elevators which are part of the city’s mass transit system but because of their construction they offer great views of the city. We walked back to the hotel where the rest of the group stayed before going to the airport to catch our flight to Sao Tome.

We approached the runway only to see people and stray dogs on either side of the runway watching us land. The airport is not entirely fenced in and we would come to find that there are stray dogs everywhere. Our day was filled with running errands: buying groceries, getting cell phones and SIM cards (my number is +239 933 182), picking up 94 laptops at the airport (6 have walked off) and meeting our contacts at STeP UP. We ended the night making dinner back at home and relaxing. This weekend we are going to continue settling in and will start work on Monday.


-XO Mike

Less than two weeks!

Corey and I leave for Kigali two weeks from last Friday. Tomorrow several members of the team and I start a non-credited course at the University to jump start language learning. We will be in class two hours per day M-F with homework (wait, didn't I just finish the semester?!?!). I hope this will help prepare me to be able to better communicate with the locals. I don't expect to be fluent but I think they will be impressed and feel like we are trying to do more than drop off some computers if we can introduce ourselves and communicate a few basic phrases.

Tomorrow we should come close to our final budget and the money from OLPC should be in our account and we will begin purchasing equipment. Our equipment is dependent on the number of sites that we visit which will also be decided tomorrow. We are required to provide additional equipment we will need on site which will include Buffalo router/access points for each site. We chose this type because it features an internal amplifier and powerful antenna to hopefully broadcast beyond the schoolyard.

Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 - The wireless access point which we will use at each site.

Tomorrow should be a big decision day for our group as we select the sites, or at least how we will select the sites once we see the actual conditions. OLPC wants the saturation to be one laptop per child, whereas with our current plan it could be as many as one laptop per 5 children. We are thinking about giving each child a flash drive to allow them to save their work and share the computer to create it but the costs of the flash drive ($6.25 per drive) will likely prohibit this plan.

I'll update with any new details tomorrow.

-XO Mike

Extra Equipment

We are still planning away and have narrowed down our deployment to cover no more than 5 sites. We looked into adding printers for our deployment but have rejected the idea because the XO operating system does not offer print options such as "File>Print".

I was excited to hear about the new equipment we will be receiving in Kigali. We will be receiving an XS which is a server for the XO laptops.

The XS server. It is quite small, about the size of a piece of paper and two inches thick. It weighs only five pounds and uses the case as a heatsink to eliminate fans which can wear out and get dust in the system.

Another tool which we will be using during the trip is a Flip HD camera which OLPC will be providing on loan for the summer. The Flip HD camera is a micro camcorder which records 720p HD video onto digital memory and can be imported to the computer using the onboard USB plug.

The camera is really small but records good quality video. To get a perspective of scall, look at the USB plug in relation to the entire camera. It's a standard USB plug!

That's all for today. We had a meeting with our "boss" at OLPC yesterday and he also thinks we are on a path to success.

-XO Mike