Another Wednesday

On our commute to work today we stopped to admire an avenue of jackaranda trees which not only looked wonderful bt the scent was like nectar:

After the Rewired team left the building team at the new Kumbyah school buildings Chika took us on to Fountain of Hope where the idea was for Roger, Chris & Jon to finish off getting the internet cafe ready while Martyn & I went off with a driver to shop for a vacuum cleaner, an ethernet hub/switch, a couple of keyboards and some mousemats, and to look at the prices of fridges for the clinic that some of the team visited yesterday. Soon after we started up a few PCs it became clear that the internet connection was dire, even when compared to the speed of response with my netbook and the 3G dongle.

In addition to this, when I visited Arthur in his classroom cabin he showed me how the rain had been driven by the wind through the shutters and got into the keyboards and onto the base units (hopefully not into them though) and onto the back of the screens. These are both real wake-up calls to the reality of what we are doing in this developing country and the possible limitations of the infrastructure.

At least Martyn and I had a successful trip, and we came back with a lovely blue vacuum cleaner for Arthur to use in the classroom and Internet Cafe, as well as all the other bits and pieces.

During the traffic light stops on our drive we weren't offered any more ducks, but instead a couple of chest expanders, some sink plungers, lampshades, trousers as well as the usual mobile top-ups, newspapers and Zambia flags, football shirts & caps. Do Zambians make shopping lists knowing that they'll find these items, or are these impulse buys? In among the sellers there were a few beggars, including some that were pitifully disfigured.

We also saw an informal market strung along a railway track that ran alongside a track that is in regular (but thankfully not too frequent) use.

A removal van from Norwich interested us – I wonder who was moving here.

When Martyn & I got back to Fountain of Hope things hadn't got much better – Roger had started to download a new security package only to be told it would take 19 hours to complete! Chris & Jon were also struggling with various aspects. This installation is certainly going to be a learning exercise! However, in the afternoon Chris, Jon & Martyn replaced the Internet Cafe software with a different package (Cyber Cafe Pro) and found that not only did the response times improve drastically but the software also provides more functionality that will be a real help to Arthur.

Roger and I left the others at the Internet Cafe and went by taxi to the current Kumbyah school where the rest of the team were entertaining the children (around 250 to 300 of them!) before distributing the food. 

 I took a lot of photographs of the people there – looking at the photographs now it really strkes me that each of the faces has such a story to tell.

I played a vague variation of the hokey kokey with the children – they especially liked the “Woah” bit with holding hands in a circle and rushing into the middle.

We could see that rain was imminent and so walked quickly through the shanty town back to the new school where Chika was due to collect us. We were each escorted by so many children – I had at least 2 holding on to each hand, as well as the babies some of them were carrying on their backs.

Just as we got to the new school the rain started – it was really heavy and confirms that the rainy season has begun. It's a month early and is worrying people who need to plant maize – the seeds need rain to germinate, but haven't arrived yet. Chika eventually arrived with 2 smaller buses instead of the one he drives – he'd been out trying to get the clutch fixed (reverse and most of the other gears don't exist at the moment).

For us the rain had been slightly entertaining, but as we drove out of the area it was obvious how it had impacted the people in the area with huge puddles outside the houses and the ditches already full to overflowing – I saw a child wallowing in one of them.