So let’s see how I did on my goals:

Get internet access at Thalana High School

I would like to call this a success, but it’s a bit premature. Though I did everything I could, the ISP has not actually hooked up the DSL line yet. We were told at the outset it could take four weeks and it will be four weeks tomorrow. I doubt they’ll have it installed tomorrow either (or I might have delayed my trip!) but I do believe they’ll have it in the next couple weeks.

Despite the lack of internet access, we did manage to create a working LAN, complete with network printing file sharing. We linked the computer lab to the office too, so that when the ISP does hook up the DSL they should be good to go. And we got the school to sign the contract with the ISP.

Though I’d like to be there for the ribbon cutting, I trust Lucky and Andre to see it through.

Get Hlubi School back up and running post hurricane

Nope. The new principal there doesn’t see a point in having a CAT class. Simangaliso said he’ll be lucky if he can convince them to set up a single computer for library-like use. A shame, being that they have quite a bit of decent if slightly soggy hardware. I suggested they sell them on the cheap to another school that wants them, but I think they will probably just sit in storage for now.

Get Celimpilo, a young lady I sponsor, back to university

Debt cleared! Passion re-ignited! She seemed very excited to be going back to university in July. She spent her whole life growing up in a rural area, but now that she’s spent some time in the city she finds her hometown too small for her dreams. I’m really hoping she can make it work.

Sort of related: with the help of an anonymous donor friend, I’ve picked up another four university students. Including Alan & Donna’s five, that brings the total for the program to ten.

Get the Khan Academy videos installed all over.

Unqualified success. After struggling to install the original videos – a whopping 42GB – for the first couple weeks, I realized I could re-compress them to a much more manageable 9.7GB without making them any less watchable. Once I did that I could install them in 15 minutes (instead of an hour!) and burn them to a three DVD set (instead of ten!) to hand out. The smaller size also allowed me to put them on machines with smaller hard drives, and even slower machines that couldn’t play the HD videos were able to play these new versions as well.

I’ll be putting this set up on BitTorrent when I get home in case any other people can use them. It did take a day of experimentation and another two or three days of compressing to chew through all 2000 videos.

Avoid athlete’s foot this year.

I did not get athlete’s foot this year. Yay.

Bonus Round: New School!

Last year I met Nqobile, and collaborated on some music with him and his friends. This year he graduated from Ethangeni combined school and he is now working at the local market. He’s planning to go to university next January to become a teacher.

On his day off he came with me to Thalana and helped me seal the holes where our cable had gone through the walls. We mixed up epoxy and slathered it on the pipes. He seemed a bit shocked at how unruly Thalana was.

On the way home he asked why I never went to his school, Ethangeni. Truth be told it was near the town center and looked well enough I never thought they might need help. He said he thought maybe they did, and said he really liked his school and wanted me to check it out, so I agreed to talk with the principal.

Turns out they had a bunch of old but decent computers they had recently acquired and were just waiting to have set up. The principal was very excited to have my help, so I agreed to get things running. With Alan’s help I got 18 machines set up and loaded with good software – including Khan Academy, of course. I gave the teachers a presentation and they seemed very excited. We’re talking about networking them next year.

The principal also gave me some awesome schwag: a shoulder bag, folio, tee and polo shirts, and a letter of thanks.

Ladies and gentleman, it is all about the schwag.

So we pulled the trigger on the wiring for the internet!

I had mentioned rat-infested crawl spaces in my last post, and I have to admit that never came to pass. We didn’t encounter a single rodent. I feel I was misled by the copious chewed cables I found in the old abandoned lab room. I’ll spare you a photo of the shit filled server cabinet we pulled the switch out of. Still, it seems the rats or whatever are in hiding at the moment. Perhaps trying to lull us into complacency.

We ended up running nearly all the wire on the exterior of the buildings and using conduit to protect it from the elements and latent pests. This bumped up the difficulty quite a bit… having to thread each pipe segment over some 100m of cable as we went. I also hadn’t considered this when estimating the cost – though in the end it only came out to another $70 or so. If the school can’t reimburse me for that I’ll just eat it.

I suppose this is the modern age and I can just cut to the chase and point you to the annotated pictures. Well, here you go.

So I’ve done all I can do at this point – we’re waiting on Telkom to hook up the DSL. With only a week left I’m sweating that a bit, but I’m keeping the faith.

I’ll post some neat-o nature pictures from the past two weeks soon.

The good news is they went for it. Now we have to actually make it happen. I’m fairly confident we can pull it off, but there are some challenges – namely running 150 meters of CAT-5 cable across three buildings. Rat infested crawl spaces here I come!

The CAT teacher and I are pretty excited. We got right on it and started hammering out cables for the lab, installing drivers, and configuring shit. By the time we left we had nine of the 16 computers talking to each other seamlessly – sharing files and network printing and all that good stuff. Not sure when we’ll do the long cable run, but we’ll get to that. We also got all the paperwork submitted to the local ISP, but that’s just a waiting game. Did I mention everything has to be in place in under three weeks?

I visited one of my other schools, Hlubi, that had a small disaster this past year. After Eric, Simangaliso, and I set up a slick little networked lab in 2010, things went quite well. They had a CAT pass rate of 76% last year – a big improvement for them, and a favorable comparison to another school I know of with a CAT pass rate of just 16%.

However a storm came through in January and tore the roof off the lab. Simangaliso managed to get there pretty quickly and move all the computers to safety, but not after they got rained on. I don’t have any pictures of the damage, but here’s the repaired roof – you can see the shiny new tin that has yet to be painted. And here is what’s left of the old roof.

So there’s got to be a over a hundred square meters of roof on the whole school. If any other part of the roof was ripped off, the storm would have found only a few desks to rain on, and very little of value to damage. However the only portion of the roof that was in fact ripped off was the eight or so square meters directly over the computers. Thanks, storm. Good one.

In any case, there’s some question of whether we’ll set up the lab again. The school has a new principal who is not convinced they need a computer course. Maybe that will change. Maybe we’ll convince them to set a few up at least as a sort of library with Wikipedia for Schools and Khan Academy to start. But for now the Hlubi lab is on hold.

Despite the commitments and untold random adventures of the week, there is still time for leisure; particularly the enjoyment of food. I’ll leave it to my Facebook photo album to document our key lime pie.

Until next week!

It’s Easter Sunday, the biggest holiday over here, and so everyone is off at church. Meanwhile I’m catching up on some programming tasks and making myself a nice solo lunch – entirely leftovers. And not entirely my leftovers, mind you. People come and go from the hostel and leave behind lovely food items. Is it weird that I just add them to my collection? I inherited some nice fresh lettuce and tomatoes, and the aforementioned jar of pesto.

I chopped up the greens and reds, then added some roasted chicken I had left over from the other day, and topped it off with a dressing made from the pesto, a little extra oil, salt, and pepper. Now that was a damn good lunch salad. Add a bottle of local beer and we’re talking a nearly religious celebration right here.

The past week has been low-key. It was the vacation week leading into Easter, so the schools are mostly closed and people are a little harder to get in touch with. Still, I was hoping to get a bit more done than I did. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to re-engage. With a shorter trip this year I was thinking things would be tighter – but so far because of my timing it’s been fairly quiet!

We did meet with a bunch of the kids we’re helping with university. Here’s the group of young ladies we met with. They were all top high-school graduates that got into university, but can use some financial help. From left to right they’re studying medicine, medicine, pharmacy, accounting, accounting, and biochem. The two on the right have been in the program for a couple years, the three on the left we just met this year.

These are inspiring kids – raised in very rural areas but engaged at school and with big dreams. There’s another five we’re working with that aren’t pictured here. It’s hard to know whether we have more effect helping with a high-school computer lab accessible by many, where you can’t really trace the results, or direct help with individuals like these, where you can. We continue to do both.

Had dinner with the Pakistani kid who runs the local Hindi DVD & chiken tikka shop, and an old Indian guy who has taken him in. He calls the Indian guy his dad and the Indian guy calls him his son. It wasn’t always so sweet: when his wife first invited the kid to stay with them, the Indian guy refused used some more derogatory terms of endearment. Eventually they grew to be family, though, and when the wife passed away a few years back these two guys separated by age and culture remain close.

The Indian guy has been a policeman in Dundee for something like 30 years. Man, he had some stories, I can tell you. Or actually I can’t tell you. The stories were that good.

The Pakistani kid, whom I’ve known for several years now, continues to amaze me. He just came to South Africa on his own without even knowing a local language and a few years later he’s a successful businessman. He has many great stories too – including, as I learned over dinner, time in a Turkish prison while trying to sneak into Greece. He’s 22 and has experienced more real adventure than anyone else I know personally.

I wrote 19 postcards! All in one morning. I bought 19 cards because the shop was closing and I didn’t have time to choose, so I grabbed everything that looked good. Didn’t think I’d use even half. Then when I was writing them out I kept on thinking of people. In the end I ran out of cards, but I decided to let it go at that. If you don’t get a postcard, please give me hell about it upon my return.
I’m about to head over to a friend’s place to wash my car. It’s a muddy mess, which I sort of like, but the locals don’t find it nearly as romantic. One of the kids I was helping with his computer offered to wash it as a return favor. I’ll join in – I haven’t washed a car by hand since I was a teenager. I’ll have to dig out my Daisy Dukes.

Tomorrow I get back to my intended work. Just four weeks now and there’s more than I can possible do on my todo list!

Overall I’d say that such encounters are rare here, but this lovely female did hang out quietly in their kitchen for a couple days. Alan & Donna are the type to name it rather than kill it, so feel free to say “hi” to Pilly the rain spider. Relax, those legs are only about two and a half inches each.

But back to school…

I was pleasantly surprised when I got to Thalana High School. The computer lab I helped set up last year was still working and in use. I don’t take that kind of thing for granted, so the fact that it didn’t disappear or disintigrate exites me to try taking another step forward this year.

Some of the things that set Thalana apart from other schools in the area are its large size, the fact that they charge no fees (many public schools here charge a small – or even not so small – amount), and the fact that they have no acedemic requirements: they will take in any kid that walks through the door. That may not seem like a big deal, but in a community with as many deeply disadvantaged and broken families as Sibongile, it brings with it serious challenges. This school ends up collecting a lot of kids who simply can’t go anywhere else.

I wrote a bit more detail Thalana last year. It’s the same password as before – if you want it, just email me.

There was an article in the local paper recently about the school’s distressing pregnancy rate. There’s a short and sloppy blurb on the topic at their blog. The full length article was written better but had the same salacious tone. Unfortunately they didn’t blog the well written rebuttal by one of the teachers that was printed in the paper a few days later.

So we’ll start with the bad news: despite getting the lab up and running, the computer course had a dismal pass rate of only 16%. That is an improvement over the 8% that passed the year before (without the benefit of actually having computers) but is still quite disappointing. I never thought computers alone would ensure success, but I admit I was hoping for a bit more improvement than that. I won’t lay blame, but suffice it to say that the principal hired a new computer teacher this year.

And it so happens I know this new teacher! In fact I jammed with him in 2007. Since then he’s been travelling the world and performing, though it appears now he may settle in Dundee to give a little back to the community. He is the guy who started the local pirate radio station, for example, and he still DJ’s there. I’d go so far as to say he’s a bit of a local celebrity: Mr. Lucky Mathambo.

He is also the one who authored the impassioned response about the Thalana teen pregnancy rate I mentioned above. I can’t reproduce the whole thing here, but I particularly love his last line: “Let us not gossip about children but rather ask ourselves every time we hear of something disturbing: ‘What did I do to stop it? What can I do now?’” Tell it brother!

And so the process begins: I’ve got paperwork from the local ISP submitted to the principal. He’s going to try to get the governing body to sign off on it next week. Lucky put together a proposal to get more computers from the municipality. Together we went to speak with the mayor’s office and it turns out the lady in charge is the principal from Hlubi, the first PC-based school we helped back in 2010. She’s the one in the striped top in the second to last picture. Now she manages the Mayor’s office in Dundee. Small world!

When she ran the computer classes at her school the pass rate was around 80%, so she knows how to make things work. She also understands the value of getting the lab networked, which was the main thing we her helped with. She also knows that I will make it happen if we can get the resources. I think we have a good chance.

Making friends and influencing people? Tentative check!

Other than getting those things rolling, I met up with a few old friends. Raza, who runs the local Pakistani DVD shop and does a mean chicken tikka, made us lunch as we discussed life and a little religion. I find it pleasantly counter-stereotype that talking openly about my beliefs with this Muslim kid often feels lighter than discussing it with some Christians back home.

I reconnected with the kids who made the movie last year. They haven’t done anything as ambitious this year, but I’m trying to inspire them with some new ideas. More on that in the coming weeks.

Finally, we went to Tugela Ferry for the weekend to spend a couple days with Andile’s family there. I’ve mentioned before that South Africa is considered “Africa for Beginners”. That is certainly true of Dundee, and maybe even the neighboring township of Sibongile. However I think Tugela Ferry might be level 2.

Here’s last year’s writeup with lots of pictures. Email me if you need the password; it’s the same as before.

This year I felt a bit more like family there and a bit less like a tourist. To that end I took far fewer pictures. But here’s one of Alan and pretty much all the kids. I did get video of them playing in front of my webcam, but it’s not as compelling as the dance number I caught last year.

Andile is helping her family build a new larger house. Here’s a picture of it in progress. Check out those cool twisty-brick columns! And her cousin Sphilele striking a JC Penny pose!

I’m already back in Dundee, and about to head out to get my Monday started. Until next week…

I arrived in the evening and was met at the airport by my good friend Andile. We stayed at a nearby guest house. I originally found this place in a brochure at the airport in 2007, and it’s become my tradition to stay here my first night ever since. It’s a bit overpriced, but comfortable enough and they serve a good breakfast. It’s also around the corner from the airport, which seems no small benefit on the ugly end of all that travel.

I haven’t really spent any time in Joburg before. I had the notion that it was a run-down city, but didn’t want to make the judgement prematurely. After a couple days, I now feel fairly comfortable saying that it is a run-down city.

We looked around the central business district and went to the tallest building in Africa, which is the Carlton Centre. The downtown is busy, but it’s not pretty. It looks like it’s been in decline since the fall of apartheid, which would be a sad statement. I have read that they are working hard to renovate it, and the crime levels have been on the decline. Without a comparison point, though, this would not be a visitor’s first guess.

Much nicer was the nearby Origins Centre at Wits University. It’s a very well put together museum on the ancient history of South Africa. It covers evolution from the “cradle of humankind” through to the original inhabitants of the area, the Khoisan, and their culture. There was a wonderfully passionate Sotho man working there that we had a good conversation with about education and how he promotes it through the museum.

I also had the pleasure of visiting some of Andile’s family in the suburbs. We drove down with two of her sisters from Hillbrow. Getting to know the locals is my favorite part. We met up with a cousin of hers in Vosloorus that seemed to be doing very well. He’s a firefighter and EMT and had a nice place with his family in a relatively upscale township. They hadn’t seen each other in many years, so we looked at family photo albums from the old days. Having just done the Origins Centre, Andile joked we were now visiting her family’s museum.

Latere we zipped over to Soweto, an enormous township to the southwest. We visited the house where Andile’s father grew up. Some aunts and cousins still live there.

Soweto has a reputation of being a bit rough. As we drove in I saw a car by the side of the road with a group of young guys around it. Someone who had just got out of the car was being bear-hugged by another guy. At first I thought it was a friendly if overbearing greeting. Then I noticed that the guy being hugged had a gun holstered under his arm and was trying to get to it, and the guy doing the hugging was trying to stop him from drawing the weapon. They struggled a bit as we drove by. I told myself that the chances of a stray bullet coming our direction were infinitesimal. In any case, I heard no shot.

There was a group of young men drinking and smoking outside the family house. They ran a small tuck shop; little more than a room with a street-facing window, barred-up, that sells snacks and drinks. Out back were a few ladies caring for a few kids. After greeting the folks, Andile and I walked to a nearby shop that sold “kotas” – a cheap, filling ghetto food that is made from a hollowed out quarter (kota) of white bread, filled with greasy fries, ketchup, hot balogna, “cheese food” slices, spicy sauce, and optionally fried eggs and other random luncheon meats for a few extra rand. As I watched them prepare the kotas, I was shocked and delighted to see that they deep fried the balogna.

We bought eight of these for less than a dollar a piece and brought them back to share with the kids at the house. Terribly unhealthy by American standards but absolutely delicious, I also imagine the calorie/cost ratio is off the charts.

Even though Soweto is the old township, and has many problem areas, I found our visit here it to be more pleasant than much of Joburg.

Later that evening we drove up to Pretoria and spent the rest of the weekend there. Pretoria, in contrast, is a lovely city. We stayed in the Hatfield area alongside the University of Pretoria. There were many bars, restaurants, and cafe’s in walking distance, including a place that poured latte art for breakfast.

We stopped by the Union Buildings and enjoyed the lovely park and gardens out front. We went to the Pretoria Zoo, which was large and well maintained. We ate at a fine restaurant, Cynthia’s, where we tried springbok carpaccio, as well as some less excotic food.

Though it lacks the coastal beauty of Cape Town, I’d put Pretoria up there as an equally nice city in South Africa. Clean, lively, and fun. Of course there are slums in and around any decent sized city – but the overall feel of Joburg is run-down and the overall feel of Pretoria is lively and upbeat. It’s inspiring to see places here where improvement efforts clearly outpace decay.

Finally on Sunday we drove down to lovely old Dundee. After saying “hi” to Alan and Donna I dropped Andile off at the Taxi Rank to head back to Durban. I settled myself into my comfy old lodgings, and planned my goals. Among them:

• Get internet access at Thalana High School where I helped with the PC lab last year
• Get Hlubi School back up and running – a hurricane tore the roof off their computer lab a few months ago.
• Get Celimpilo, a young lady I sponsor, back to university
• Get the Khan Academy videos installed all over.
• Avoid athlete’s foot this year.

Ok, time to get started!

• The world is complex, but this does not justify inaction.

  Yes, there are many sides to every story and people will not always agree on a problem’s causes and solutions. After some finite amount of research, discussion, and hand wringing, you still have to act.

• Mistakes get made, but this does not justify condemnation.

  Any significant effort to improve the world will result in some mistakes. It is important to recognize these and adapt, but condemning a whole project over mistakes is counterproductive.

• Fundraising is not evil.

  If you can get $2 for the cause for every $1 you spend fundraising, then fundraising is not greedy self-preservation but part of the solution. Bringing 50% of $1M to a project is more effective than bringing 70% of $500K. There is a balance to this, but it’s not to eschew fundraising.

• It costs money to run an organization well.

  You need good people if you want to be efficient and effective. Compassionate or not, good people will be harder to find and keep if you pay poorly. Better people make sure the funds are used more efficiently. There is a balance to this, but it’s not to pay significantly under market.

• Raising awareness is meaningful.

  Most projects that matter are too large for one person. This means large groups have to be mobilized. Raising awareness is part of this process. It is not a waste of time or money.

• Good presentation does not mean inauthenticity.

  For good or ill, style can trump substance. Ignoring this would be detrimental to an organization. Being able to present things to a broad audience in an effective way doesn’t make one a charlatan.

• Emotions are not the opponents of facts.

  Emotions based on accurate facts give meaning to those facts. Without emotion there is little reason to concern oneself with numbers or words on a page. Being made to feel compassion over a real issue is not manipulation, it’s communication.

• Criticism without an alternative suggestion is useless.

  The easiest thing in the world is to dismiss someone else’s good efforts. It allows you to avoid guilt and feel superior at no cost. If you see a better way, bring it to the table and help. If you’re not willing to, ask yourself why not.

There is an endless list of things one can do to make the world a better place. If one doesn’t move you, pick another and help. There’s no need to disparage how others choose to help. The world has come a long way because of good people undaunted by the magnitude of need, the difficulty in helping, and unafraid of the criticism it can bring.

Yes, Hurricane Irene blasted into town right as things started. The amazing thing is, not only did it not ruin the wedding, it only seemed to make it better.

They decided to have the ceremony right where they planned it anyway. And thanks to the wonderful spirits of everyone there, it didn’t seem at all forced: huddled under umbrellas around the wedding party as rain came down, we laughed and choked up as they exchanged their vows. It seemed the harder it rained, the broader the smiles became and the louder we cheered.

Back at the tent, wet and wild, a mariachi band played, we sipped drinks from the open bar, stocked with local spirits, and even engaged in a little croquet when the rain turned misty between downpours.

The ground beneath the tent slowly flooded, and the dance floor became a muddy mess. Unperturbed, my cousin had us grab some bales of hay that had earlier been used to lay home sawn pine planks across for benches. We cut them open and spread the dense dry grass over the puddles. Pretty soon we were good again, dancing in our saturday best over the spongey hay.

The party continued until well after midnight at which point people started heading to nearby hotels and such. Originally many had planned to stay overnight in tents, but in the end only one couple did that – and stayed dry despite Irene’s howling rain. A few of us, including myself, slept in the farmhouse.

The next morning people came back for a relaxing breakfast of eggs, bacon, flatbreads, croissants, muffins, and coffee. We spent a few hours cleaning up the worst of the mess, and then just enjoyed the freshly washed world.

I found the whole thing super inspiring.

Christa put up some pictures of Scotland. What a beautiful country, fascinating history, and friendly people. I highly recommend a visit.

Also moving forward: I closed on my new house in Henderson – very excited about that. Should be moving in soon. Also managed to get an offer in on another house for my mom. With any luck that will close by the end of September.

And then I can chill for a bit.

We discovered an issue with the septic system that required a $12K repair. The seller was unwilling to adjust the price, and in fact demanded more money for the house after we discovered the flaw. Some might call that “crazy”. We gave them a few days to come to their senses, but to no avail. So we’re moving on to another place. Oh well.

None of that got in the way of a lovely 10 days in Scotland, though. Had a great time with two friends checking out Edinburgh, Inverness, Loch Ness, and Invergarry. Man, what a gorgeous and charming country. I’d done Edinburgh six years ago with Sophie, along with Glasgow and the Orkneys. There’s really so much to see.

This trip we focused on castles. Saw seven in all (if I’m remembering correctly) and that’s not counting the castle-like place we stayed in last few nights. They varied from military outposts to luxurious mansions, currently used to crumbled remains. We also went to some Highland Games and watched strong men throw heavy things around.

I’m back in the US now, and after a brief stay near Lake Champlain in Vermont I’m driving down to Rhode Island to hopefully wrap up housing for my mom. Then it’s back to Las Vegas where I can start settling into my own new place.

Here’s the RI house, and here’s a video tour that my sister and I made for the family. We made videos of five houses in all, but this one ended up the clear winner.

And here’s the place I’m getting. I ended up choosing a condo unit so there’s less to worry about when I’m out of town. Which was nearly 50% of the time last year, and about 60% so far this year.

Both places need a little sprucin’ up, but that’s part of the fun of owning a home! Now I’m off to Scotland for a couple weeks, but after that it’ll be all about sprucin’ and movin’. I’m excited to settle in, and to see my mom and Tim do the same. I think I’m sleeping a bit better, too.