Day 5 pics... Final day of setup...

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." --2 Timothy 4:7

Well the last day of setup has come and gone.  I am very happy with the end result even though the container with the 10 computers we were waiting for never showed up.  We brought 9 screens and 2 computers with us.  So we made due with what we brought with us..

Here is the first workstation 100% ready to go.  W00t!!   Its all set and has the Internet Cafe splash page.  It felt so good to get this done!

 And here is the second one booting Ubuntu of course.  I never did talk a lot about the workstation systems.  I am using the Ubuntu Kiosk based on 10.04.1.
And its working out very well.  Once configured and locked, the system boots, auto logs in an unprivaledged user and starts Firefox in full screen kiosk mode.  There is nothing else.  Its a great internet kiosk and wonderful on this old hardware.





Even though we only had two computers, all the screens have been installed and bolted to the desk.  We were expecting the container Saturday, so we were ready!  But the container did not show up...

I have trained the local IT guru John K on how to use the open-mesh system and how to setup the kiosks, so once the container does show up, he is ready to run the installs.    Both Pastor John and I would have really much preferred to do this ourselves and finish this completely, but this is Zambia and we need to lower our expectations.  :)  I am very confident John K will do the job wonderfully though.  I feel very good about him being the guy who will do the setup in our absence...  
I  know God has a wonderful plan for this place and I am going to trust him on this.  So now let the container show up when it may.

The place does look awesome right now if I do say so myself.  The new tables, all the screens setup.  We even placed the chairs.  John K has enough installs CDs and bootable USB keys to do all the installs at the same time!  All that is missing are the other computers now.

We ended the day with a beautiful meal at Pastor Paul's house with his family.  John has more pics that i will post later.  Here is part of the awesome spread we had:

There was rice, salads, fried chicken,  this really cool tomato sauce, and a few other things that aren't coming to mind right now. 

Everyone seems to have this mango juice.  Its really good...  its more like mango nectar if we were to compare it to something we have in Canada. 

I have an issue with posting my food here...  When I do, I get hungry again.  Buts its past midnight and so even if I had some of these left overs, it would be a bad idea to eat now.  

Last pic for tonight!  Here is his son with one of the toy fold-able frisbee we brought.  He was tossing it around and having a blast!   :)











 The trip is not over yet.  We just had a pretty awesome and full weekend that I will post about another time and we still have a couple days ahead of us.  Tomorrow morning we leave for Livingston!!  WOOHOO!!  Now I get to have a little vacation on my vacation.   

Day 4 photos!

Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land. 

--Proverbs 25:25

News about the container is in!!  John and I had the privilege of having dinner with two wonderful couples tonight.  Ruth and John Kerr received Marie-Josee,  Don, John and I for dinner tonight.  As we sat there, Ruth's phone rang and we learned the container, with the computers we are waiting for, is now through the border and about a full days drive from us.  This means the container should be here by Saturday morning!  Talk about cutting it close!  John and I leave for Livingston on Monday!

Going clockwise starting on the far left: Don, Marie-Josee, Ruth, John, John, me (empty seat... I am taking the picture)

Since I started with the end of the day and I do think this news is the most exciting thing that happened today, I will refrain from doing the play by play tonight.   Here's just a few pics of whats been going on...  Mainly today has been all about painting the tables and writing docs for the people who will be running the cafe..

Watching these two guys paint is really a thing of beauty...

Keep it on the table you guys!

First coat on top of the primer...

Here is moi writing up some docs...

VOILA!!  Two coats and the tables are DONE!

This is Jackson, our electrician..  Thanks to him, we have power! (and lights and fans)  :)

I am having serious internet issues tonight...  its taken me 30min just to upload the few pics that are here so I am stopping for now..  

Last pic...  This is me writing this...  (I'll let you scratch your head about that one for a sec)

Day 2 and 3 pics!! All about the desks!

Do everything without complaining and arguing, --Philippians 2:14

I want to start by thanking Dawn.  She sent me a great little note on FB with a word from Philippians which led me to the above verse.  Its what I needed to get this post started.  I wasn't sure where to start because I just have SO MUCH to say!!   But I also recently heard I should try to keep my posts shorter...  well.. I don't think that's going to happen..  but we'll see!


On day 1, Don's big discovery of the state of the desks was a downer.  John, Don and I all tried to justify and rationalize that it would be OK and they would hold, but we all knew that this was not the case...  The desks are kind of important to hold up the computers and screens so we decided we would fix this ourselves.  All we need is a little plywood and some screws and we're good to go.  OMG!!  This started us on another African/Zambian experience that I will not soon forget.


Before I get into it though, I wanted to give all who are in the know an update on this infamous container with the computers,...  Well..  there is a small chance it will be here this week...  Its somewhere by the border, on the border or past the border right now..  There is even a chance, it will just show up here tomorrow...  or maybe Friday, or maybe Saturday, or maybe Sunday, or maybe not before we leave...  We still have to work without those ten systems and i keep planning for the possibility it will show up at any time... (what will i do if it comes in today is my waking thought.)  On to day 2...


Day 2

The day started with us going back to the college to finish up the wiring and get a good look at the tables and take more precise measurements.  Here is a good look at the tables...  ugghhh...  


After looking closely at everything, we decided (well John decided.. because  I am about as handy with a saw as I am with a battle ax... not very...) that the majority of the tables were solid enough to screw a new top to it.  The brace in the back was mostly good everywhere and the legs were nice and solid too.  So just some plywood sheets bolted on top would be A-OK...  
Had we been in Canada, I would probably have been very lazy about this, called reno-depot, told them what I need and probably even asked them to cut and deliver it...  Okay...  maybe get a friend with a pickup and pick them up.  In Zambia, not so much...

After we left the college, we started by going to a little restaurant cafe called Wimpys that serves a decent cappuccino to plan out the day.  We were still on the spare I installed on Don's car the day before.  As there was a tire place near the hardware store, we started there to see if Don could get a deal on some tires...


Well...   ~ 1 1/2 hours later, we had one new used tire on the car that pretty much matched his existing set, tires rotated, spare back in the trunk and ready to go... All a little wiser as to the inner workings of the Kitwe garage system.

Now off to the hardware store...  The first store we went to did have some plywood, but it was much too thin and that's all they had.  We also looked for the screws and nails we would need, they had screws but no nails.  (This is what they call a hardware store)...  So we were off to the next store..  There they had almost everything, Don was ecstatic that we were going to get everything we needed in one place..  As much as we teased Don in saying its all the same In canada... it really isn't...  we very rarely need to settle on something we don't want because we know we will always find what we want somewhere... here its not about finding what you want... its just about finding anything that may potentially work!  


I don't want to go into too much detail about the whole four step process required to make a purchase or the adventure of loading this up on the roof of the X-trail and driving that insane road (road?!?!?) back to the college with 6 sheets of 4 x 8 plywood on the roof and me hanging off a huge cable in the back seat trying to keep it all from sliding off the car...  Needless to say, it was somewhat of an adventure and we were able to get the wood back to the college!  Thank God!

John with the circular saw... kind of scary...

Yes, I am holding plywood sheets...  I know, crazy action shot, right! 

At some point in all of this, I am sure both john and I thought to ourselves...   "This is not what we signed up for!"  But we never complained, just did what needed to be done!  


I held boards, John did the cutting and Don ran them up to the second floor..


(There are a few pics...  so just scroll... I'm tired of writing right now)

Don as the wood runner!

Last sheet!! W00t!!

Much time passes....

Lots of sweating...

...

..

.

TADA!!!   :)

Look at that new table top!!!  WIN!!

The day ended with dinner at our hosts house.  Marie-josee made some delicious chicken breasts, beats, rice and this crazy fresh avocado salad with feta.  It was awesome!  If I have not said it before, our hosts, Don and marie-josee Mann are two angels!  They have to be the best hosts on earth.  And I am not just saying that because they might read this and i want to keep eating... I really mean it!!!

All in all a wonderfully productive day!

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Now in the interest of time and catching up...  I am going to post Day 3 as well...  I won't go into as much  detail as the other days, so if there is anything you would like to know...  Please ask in the comments, on facebook, G+, twitter or by yelling really really loud and I'll do my best to answer...


Day 3


I am finally caught up...  today was day 3 of the setup...  :)  (well its past midnight over here...  so it was 50 min ago)  And it started with Don coming up with a pretty awesome idea...  "Guys... since we are well underway to getting the new desks finished, why not paint them ourselves too!"  


As I am learning how things get done here in Zambia, I have to agree, this is about the only way it will be done.  My second thought is that I am less handy with a paint brush as I am with a saw...  (see note above)..  This might get ugly...

I am so very lucky and blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful people while I am out here.  I ended up not ever picking up a paint brush.  As Don and John put down the primer, I worked on finishing the router configs and spent some time with MJ talking about maintenance requirements.   John and Don were able to complete the primer before we left for the day...  Have a look below at how things are looking...  

The place is looking amazing!  Tomorrow the painting will continue as I work with someone from the college on training and probably write up a whole lot of documentation...  Or I can paint...  But i think Don and John are happy I am not painting..  :)


Just a couple more pics to close out the evening...  

Dinner at Arabian Nights in Kitwe...  It was delicious!  Roll call...  I am at the top left of the pic, John is next to me on the right, Marie-Josee is across from me and Don is next to her across from John.  

Just as the evening ended with this licorice ice cream with english pudding and a syrup dipped pear... So does this post..

GOOD NIGHT!!  :)

Day 1 setup - Lower your expectations...

In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
--Proverbs 3:6

What an absolutely fantastic few days we have had so far!  The good news is....  the cafe looks nothing like this picture!  :)


Doing work here in Zambia is like nothing I have ever experienced before in my life.  Besides the actual work of setting up the internet cafe, we have had a few "real African experiences" as Don puts it.  Simple things like getting air for a tire is an issue.  We had to change a tire on Don's X-Trail and the spare was low on air.  We were sitting in the parking of a gas station and there was no air available..!  We had to go to three different gas stations (count-em... THREE!) to find a working air machine to get air in the tire!


Over the last two days of setup, with the different wins, successes, failures and challenges, I have heard Don say "Lower your expectations" to John and I over a dozen times.  I am learning you can't rely on the Zambian basic city infrastructure..  I don't mean the tech infrastructure, I means things like air at a gas station, wood and screws at a hardware store, meat at the grocery store...  Even the restaurants don't have everything they have on the menu.  So we need to lower our expectations not to be disappointed or frustrated. 

I have one thing I want to say about that before I talk about the cafe.  (If all you care about is that...  jump down a little..)


I have no issue adapting to where I am.  I understand things are different here and I will do whatever I need to do.  It just got me thinking about my expectations from God.  For this trip, for my life in general.  Even though I am in Zambia, I will not lower my expectations for what God can do (and he has been pretty awesome in the last few days).  I will make sure I keep a very high expectation from God.  I will expect from Him exactly what he has promised! We can move mountains with our faith in Him! (Matthew 21:21-22)  I will expect from God as much as my faith will allow me to.

As for the stores in Zambia though....
:)










OK... now on to the cafe setup!


Internet Cafe setup Day 1

First I have to show you the nice job John did in actually putting a plug on the drill we were using.  When we got there, the drill just had two loose wires that they would stick into the outlet! (This is all 220V)  John took one of our adapter plugs and some duct tape (Thank God for duct tape!) and made a make-shift socket for the drill.

This picture shows both what the place looked like when we walked in and the "extension wires" for the drill! 

The below video is a small walk though of the place before we started.

And the work begins...  Finally unpacking all the stuff we brought.  Our day one goal was to get the connection working, the routers setup and start the wiring.

OUCH!!  Nasty surprise when we took the protective vinyl off the tables.  It had been left there to protect the tables while the painting was going on. The last thing to paint are the tables.  When Don took the vinyl off we found wood that was less then worthy to support computers.  (Remember... lower your expectations... sigh...)  One more thing to deal with...  More on that later..

We did find a great spot for the cell modem and the first open-mesh router.  Its a small locked room on the north side of the floor.  This is where the signal  strength was the best.  WIN!

 And by best.... what I mean is.. the best we can expect for Zambia...  By north american standards, this would totally blow!  But by Kitwe, Zambia standards, its the fastest they have ever had!!  I had read that Zambia ranked 185th out of 185 countries for internet speed.  It seems that I was wrong, Zambia is 167th out of 174 countries!!


Well...  it can only go up from here! 

 I am pretty happy with the progress of Day 1.  We have been able to completely wire the cafe.  John worked very hard at pulling and punching all the cables. (THANKS JOHN!) While I worked with the cell modem, routers and switches and got them all into place.  I think I ended up only crimping about 4 or 5 wire ends.  What you are looking at here is under the desk.  All the wires, switches and open mesh devices are under the desk along the wall.  




It makes for a very clean look, easy to get to for maintenance, but also out of the way.


Here is a different view...








Quick note...  I took all these pics, so I am not in any of them.  I know both John and Don took some that I will get and post soon.  I should be in those...  I really am here, honest..  :)


So in the mean time, here are  a couple of John and Don hard at work.

And lastly... no work day picture set would be complete without one..  This is what my desk looked like during the day...

Day 1 is done!!  And we are ahead of schedule.  All the open-mesh devices are configuring and working.  The cell modem is A-OK and ALL the wiring is done!


P.S.  I know if you look at at the actual day I am posting this (Tuesday night), we actually finished day 2 today so why am I posting all day 1 stuff and no day 2 stuff..?  well...  when I write about it, you will understand..  WHAT A DAY ITS BEEN!!!   :)

Photo essay - getting to Africa

Hello LCA and all my friends and family!

I know everyone loves pictures, so I wanted to post as many as I could and as luck would have it, the connection here is not the greatest right now.  I bought a Zambia Airtel sim card and put a bunch of data on it.  The consistency of a reliable internet connection seems to be a little less then what I am used to. Go figure...  I did have to reduce the size and image quality of the pictures to be able to upload them all...  So I hope all these pictures make it up.. Here goes!!  (For those who saw the video.. this is the blog post I was working on)  :-)

Thursday March 23, 2012

Packing screens, cables, routers and all the other equipment.

This is what it looked like while we were packing up all the stuff we were bringing.

3 done

These bags are each just under 70lbs!!

ugh... now what?!?

ALL DONE!

And we're off!!!

John and I at the airport on our way..  Can you tell I am just a little excited to go..?  

The Air Canada flight that was taking us to London ended up leaving 3 hours late!  It was a long wait at the airport.  We finally took off around midnight.

March 23, 2012

We originally had a 12 hour layover in London...  Now with the delay, we were down to 9 hours...  The plan was to get some breakfast, take advantage of the Air Canada Arrivals lounge (shower and change) and get into London for a bus tour.   John had the very wise idea to first get our British Airways boarding passes before going into London.  And its a good thing or there would have been a serious snafu with the luggage.  Luckily we were able to get all that cleared up.  We ended up with only a few hours to go, but we decided to hop on the Heathrow Express and see London anyways...

 These guys must have such a boring life...

This may sound very corny, but we walked though St-James Park from Buckingham palace to the parliament building (at least that's what we think it was being renovated...  sorry no pic) and it was all really nice.

 Had to get a shot of one of these...  :)

Cool architecture..

I'm sure, had we actually taken a guided tour, someone could have told me what this giant ferris wheel was all about next to the Aquarium...  but we didn't and I feel now like I have no culture, so I am sure one of my brit friends will be happy to enlighten me when I get back.

I would have loved to have more time here at Trafalgar Square to check things out and do some people watching...  but all in all, we did all of the above in a little less then 90min, so no extra time really.  Maybe next time..









Now back to the airport.  And a good thing too...  I thought I was going to be killed every time I crossed the street.  All these people drive on the wrong side!  Some of the more touristy areas like near Buckingham palace, there were signs on the ground in front of the cross walks, LOOK RIGHT...  At first i thought, I will... right after I look left, like I always do..   :-)

We made it back to the airport, picked up our carry-on bags we left in storage there and made the long treck from security to the gate we were at with a whole 10min to spare.  I felt we were cutting it a lot closer then I was used to, but I knew we would make it and God's hand was there all the way.

The flight into Lusaka was a long 10 hour flight.  John and I actually got split up and could not sit next to each other as it was a full flight and we checked in too late to get adjoining seats.

I did get some sleep... I think...   Possibly my brain is trying to forget the experience.

March 24, 2012

As we are landing in Lusaka I see the first signs I am in Africa!  Those trees that are straight out of the Lion King.  I have no idea what they are called and right now could not be bothered to look them up, but they are very Africa looking, tall, flat top, look like they are in the wind when there is no wind at all... trees..  I saw them as we were landing and I just felt WOW!!  We're in Africa!

Got out of the plane on the tarmac, the Lusaka International airport is a small International airport.  The planes don't have gates... they have parking spots.  We got off the plane on the tarmac and made our way into the airport to get our VISAs do immigration, customs and all that good stuff and get our bags.
The relief I felt when I saw one of our bags on the conveyor belt was astounding..  First one of the large black bags, then the blue bag, then another large black bag and finally the large grey bag.. ALL THE BAGS MADE IT!!!  I was very happy!  (I did not get any pictures of all this.  There were signs everywhere not to use our cell phone and there were guards, and a TON of people in a 2x4 space all with huge pieces of luggage.  It was quite insane.  Made it out of there without issue (Thank you again God!) and met up with Don Mann.

Got my airtel sim card and some data for my phone and we were on the road to Kitwe!

View Larger Map

These giant sticky cinnamon rolls were a very welcome breakfast in Kabwe. And the coffee was good.  Short of an arrivals lounge in Lusaka, this was the second best thing.  :-)   (Look up on the map where this is in relation to Lusaka and Kitwe...  we were REALLY looking forward to it!)

The sites i saw on the drive in were pretty shocking.  There were lots of these small roadside villages along the way.  People selling vegetables, airtel pre-paid minutes ans live rats!  (Don't ask... I did and I regret it)

 The country side is something else.

 If you know what I do for a living...  well I just couldn't help myself...  (This needs to go digital... if you look closely enough you will see...  that painted on! if they only knew, it could have been digital!...  )  :)

FINALLY!!!!  WOOT WOOT!!!!

That's about all the pictures I think I can upload safely without having my Zambia ISP bounce me off right now.

One last small note...  :)

We had a wonderful recovery day Saturday and today (Sunday) was really good too.  I am going to save all that for a future post.  I just want to add...  Last night and every night this week... This is what I am sleeping on/in...   :-)


I should add, I am very happy about the guess house we are staying in.  I have just never had to sleep under a mosquito net in a house like this before.  All things considered though... I much prefer the net to the potential of getting bitten by a malaria mosquito!  These things also keep out small lizards right?  <gulp>

As it is now almost 1:00AM local time..  I am off to bed.  The Internet Cafe setup starts tomorrow!  More to come.

Have an awesome day and thanks for reading!
GOD BLESS!