Kenya Report #7

Dear All,

In this last report I will describe the some of the details of our work in
Meru.  Recall that it took us five days to get the computers through
customs.  Tom Schultz and Helen Lakatos visited numerous government officials
in Nairobi trying to get approval for the release of the computers.  An
interesting "catch-22" about the process had to do with the daily
accumulation of demurrage fees for storage of the computers in customs.
These fees were accumulating so rapidly that it could soon cost more than the
computers were worth to retrieve them.  Luckily the process stopped fairly
quickly.

While Tom and Helen were chasing around Nairobi, the rest of us were in Meru.
Our hosts had the problem of keeping us occupied while we marked time.  One
day, everyone but me (who spent the day at Kenya Methodist University, where
I met with various officials and installed free software on their computers)
did some sightseeing.  I don't know all of the details, but the group visited
a tea plantation and its processing plant and also visited some historic
buildings.  Another day, we spent part of the day at a meeting of all the
headmasters and mistresses as they tried to thrash out the details of how
they would pay for import duties and for computer peripherals which we were
not providing, surge protectors, power strips, transformers, and the like.
I am not sure whether the Lehigh students understood how lucky they were to
see how decisionmaking is carried out in Kenya.  I found it fascinating to
watch them struggle, in a democratic fashion, with the difficult problem of
deciding how much (scarce) money each school would provide and how much of
the equipment each school would get.  The crux of the problem was the need
to have all of the 30 or so schools provide the money in order to spread
the financial burden, but to have only about 15 schools get the benefit of
the computers, because only that many were in the position to take advantage
of our largesse.  The remaining schools hoped that they would benefit in
subsequent rounds of this project.

On another day, while the Lehigh students were spending time at the schools
of their respective hosts, I visited about eight schools to assess how well
the computers donated last year were functioning.  In a sense, I was
conducting an inventory.  In another sense, I was determining how well the
schools were taking advantage of the resources the project had brought them
last year.  For me it was a quick education in how well or how poorly a
school could be run.  The better schools were better in every way.  They
were neater, cleaner, better maintained, and the students appeared to be
getting a better education.  For example, I mentioned previously that Kaaga
Girls' was exceptionally well maintained.  At the same time, they gave clear
evidence they were making good use of their computers.  Their computer room
was spotless.  We walked in unannounced and found a bunch of students busily
working.  At the other end of the scale was a school which, from the outside,
looked poorly maintained.  Their computers were locked in a dusty room, and
their was scant evidence they had ever been used.

When the computers finally arrived Friday evening, we unloaded them all in
the Chugu High School Library, which had been emptied of all its books and
shelving.  I think we had about 140 monitors, cpu's, keyboards, mice, etc.,
but few of any systems were intact.  So, we took one of each, component
assembled a system, tested it out, checked its software, added some of the
free software we brought with us, and graded each assembled system as A,
B, or C in quality.  Of course, we started to collect various malfunctioning
components which either were donated damaged or were damaged on the flight
to Nairobi or in the school bus which transported them over very rough
roads; Chugu is about 5 Km from the nearest paved road.  Each functioning
system was then put back in boxes and labeled.  We also had perhaps ten
printers of various vintages, some dot-matrix, some inkject, some laserjet.
We tested them as well and developed procedures for installing them on
the computers, realizing it made more sense to install a given printer on
a given computer when we brought the computers to specific schools.

Saturday morning we continued assembling systems, stopping around noon.
Then we all drove to the lodge at the base of Mt. Kenya for our outing on
the mountain.

We returned to Meru Monday evening.  Tuesday morning we continued to
assemble computers, load software, test printers, etc.  Around midday, we
formed a team consisting of myself and about half the group.  We loaded
about 30 systems onto a school bus and then headed down barely passable
dirt roads to various schools on the outskirts of Meru. The first school
was getting computers for the first time.  Our team of 7 descended on the
room where the computers would go, had the school's students unload four
systems, and then attacked the boxes in pairs.  Each pair assembled a
system, got it running, while I ran around from pair to pair to help them
in any way I could.  Once a few systems were running, we started showing
the students and staff, who crowded around, how to use the computers.
While all this was going on a reporter and cameraman from Reuters were
filming the flurry of activity and interviewing some of the participants.
It took perhaps half an hour to get all the computers running, along with
a printer.  We spent another half hour or so instructing, but then we tried
to leave for the next school.  Good manners dictated otherwise.  The school
had prepared a meal for us, so we had to stay for a (quick) meal.  This
scene was replayed at four other schools that day, er, day and night.  We
tried to nicely turn down offers of food and drink at each school, but were
not always successful.  At our last stop, Nkubu, around 8:30 in the evening
(a few miles from the equator, it had been dark from 6:30) we unloaded our
treasure in the dark and had some difficulty finding our way to where they
wanted us to set up the computers.  The room was quite long, with windows
on both sides.  On one side, where the view was good, about 400 students
gathered outside to noisily watch us do our work.


Meanwhile, the group left behind at Chugu High School had pretty much
assembled and tested most of the systems.  The remaining systems were
constructed out of cannibalized parts, a process which went much more
slowly and was handled by a technician and a school teacher from Chugu
High School.  On Wendesday, we spent the early part of the day at the
"launching," a ceremony where we officially gave the computers to the
schools of Meru.  Afterward, the various schools brought vehicles to
Chugu high school, where the rest of the systems were distributed.  Then
we formed two teams and headed in different directions to install the
systems at the various schools.  My team, at least, saw the same kind of
frenetic activity as we had seen on Tuesday.  On Thursday, we finished
installing systems and instructing in their use.  Early Friday morning
we all tearfully bid our hosts farewell, took a bus to Nairobi, and then
flew to Meru.

A final note.  The reporter and cameraman from Reuters produced a five
minute segment on our project.  They sold the segment to the national
TV in Kenya, and we all appeared on the national news.  As far as I know,
no one was able to get a tape of our doubtless stellar performance.