Writing this in Kenya was not my original intention, but time has been pretty tight over the last couple weeks. I feel the trip has been a major success both for me and for the people I have shared my knowledge with.

Over the last two weeks, the main focus has been concluding my direct involvement in the youth training at Kivulini. It was important to me that the students realize John was now the teacher and that he would be there after I was gone. I sat aside in an observation role in order to give John freedom to choosing the content covered in new lessons, as well as his approach to these lessons. He took on the challenge and started to gain confidence in deciding what lessons would be taught as well as his ability to deliver the content. In the final week, he was creating lesson outlines without my assistance and proved that he is a capable replacement.

Another task I have almost completed is a final report for my work and the experience that has come with it. Through writing this report, I have come to some realizations that were not foreseen. These realizations will be written in another post in a few weeks when they have fully matured into ideas I can understand for myself. The report is about 3500 words so it wasn’t a small task, but there was no research required so that helped quite a bit.

I wasn’t able to do a lot of travel, but was glad I did the Serengeti safari. The lack of travel has been because I have been busy with work, as well as I travelled to Tanzania alone. Without another person who hasn’t seen the surroundings, and could make time to do some travelling, it is difficult to convince yourself to travel. This leaves me with the inability to share the moments I have experienced, and that has kept me motivated to write this blog.

I have parted ways with a few pieces of tech that are hard to come by here. Some has been given to Kivulini and another few pieces have been given to an individual who will benefit from the small gift more than anyone at Kivulini would. One piece of tech was more of an entertainment piece than anything, and was sold to a friend for the cost it will be for me to replace it. This piece was a hard drive with about 600 movies which were, of course, all legal backups (*wink). For this same friend I managed to recover almost all of his documents from a crashed hard drive that was badly corrupt. This was a long process because of all the errors, but it worked out pretty well and the most crucial of the documents were all fully recovered.

When leaving Mwanza, the woman at the customs desk gave me a hard time for a couple minutes about my visa being expired. The visa lasts 90 days and I was in Tanzania for 92. I told her I had no control over my flights and she told me I should have renewed my visa with the immigration office in the city. When I heard that I simply said "So what do we do now?" (a question given to me on my way here by a fellow traveller named Gilles...thanks Gilles). After this she smiled and said "well this can cost you $600usd, but just don't do it again. Next time we will make you pay". So me thinking "ha...next time" thanked the women in swahili which got me a smile and I carried on.

I am currently on the 5th hour of waiting in the Nairobi Airport. It isn’t going as slowly as I had expected because I have a place to plug in my computer, and some wifi which had a very cryptic password which I was able to guess on my second try...”dutyfree”, coincidently part of the name of the network. Side note: I just paid $9 for a small sandwich and water. The sandwich claimed to have cheese on it, but I can’t agree.

I will not be making another update for a couple weeks because I will be without a computer for the rest of the week in Amsterdam, and who knows what condition I will be in after final flight, doctor appointment, and all the catching up I will be doing with everyone. I will have seen most of those reading this before my final post is uploaded, but keep an eye out for that.

I have enjoyed most events, people, foods, and all the chances I have gotten to talk to people from home. This blog has been the best way to reach as many people from home who want to hear about what I am up to. Any of those not reading will be found out pretty quickly when they are asking me questions I have already answered here. Thank you very much for reading, and there is still one more coming, so please continue to check the blog or pay attention on facebook when I add a new link to my status.

As the title would suggest, there is nothing overly exciting going on. The trip is coming to a close soon and I am trying to tie up some loose ends.

The first thing to be done is a co-op meeting with a coordinator at Fanshawe, the Director of WHE, and a co-worker from here. This should be cleared up this week, and shouldn’t take long to complete as it is usually a brief meeting. Secondly, I will be visiting a partnered school to drop off some paperwork for an upcoming WHE project starting in September.

One of my previous work duties is no longer in existence because of its own success. The person i trained to carry out training with other local youth has become comfortable doing the work without me, so I am only there to help in the unlikely event that he has a question. Usually it is a case of the trainees accidently removing a toolbar or a button from the toolbars, but other than that I am just observing. This training will be continued long after I have left and is one of the major successes of my trip. My small project with Bugando for remote access to servers is underway and shouldn’t take as long as I expected to finish which is great news.

Most of the excitement at this point of the trip is thinking about travelling to Amsterdam and home shortly after. I have made some further plans for Amsterdam by mapping a route I will be biking.


View Larger Map


This is a 54km route and I have marked a few stops along the way. I’m not looking into the towns too much, just enough to know they are worth the stop. The 3rd stop, Marken, is a popular tourist spot apparently because of the scenery and architecture of the small fishing community. Depending on how long the trip up to Marken takes, I hope to spend a couple hours biking around the island to check it all out. The trip will end with biking down the coast which will likely have me making frequent stops for pictures. The map doesn’t show much in the way of towns along the coast, but I assume there are some along there that I will be stopping at. The bike rental will only be about $60 for 2 days and this will be day 1. The second day will only be half a day and I will probably head west of Amsterdam to a town called Haarlem. I am trying to get my Canadian phone working so I can use the GPS. Without that I will most certainly get lost. In any event, it should be a good trip.

Thanks for reading! Only 3 weeks until I am back in Canada.

Recently, there have been some very slow days. With slow days, a lack of blogging results. The camera was never recovered, so that would have made someone’s day fantastic after they sold it. I think I said it in my previous post, but I will buy a new one at duty free in Amsterdam. I am now using my phone if a picture needs to be done, which isn’t terrible as long as the light is good.

There isn’t much news from the last week, but some things have happened. As I said in my last post, I had malaria again, and have since treated and (hopefully) cleared it up. As with all things in life, there are no guarantees, but if I had to give one it is that I will have Malaria again before I leave. I treated it on the 18th and 19th, so I was pretty sleepy on those days.

On the two days after the malaria treatment I went to the hospital for what I thought were going to be work days. In those two days, I managed to do nothing because my supervisor did not come to the office at any point in the five hours I waited each day. I call this due diligence, and have now waited for a total time that I am not interested in approximating. I will now be changing my project plan for Bugando to a much smaller plan. They are looking for a remote control tool for one of the servers which is attached to a microscope for international doctors to (side note: an advertising truck just went by with Bob Marley cranked) study blood samples and assist the staff or further their own knowledge. This small software deployment will likely be used on all of the computers in the hospital, or at least all of the key computers and servers. There is a lot of testing to do with this to ensure security and privacy of data, but it is something I can't legally work on without my supervisor. I should note that legally may not be the best word because I could likely do anything I wanted without a problem. The problem lies in my discomfort for taking sole responsibility for a catastrophic network failure. I can also work on this project at home because it is not necessarily location and computer specific.

My departure is now worth talking about because of its proximity. I will be leaving Mwanza on August 15th which is only three weeks away. I will go from here to Nairobi, Kenya. The next part of the trip was originally a two hour layover, but has since been delayed to a 16 hour layover. This has me not getting to Amsterdam until a day later than anticipated so that is a bummer. I will be exhausted, but I have a hotel room booked for my first two days, so sleep should be possible. The weekend will be spent at a hostel downtown with a friend who is currently working in Germany. Amsterdam has an international recognition for being a crazy party centre, but I am more excited for a toilet I can sit on, a big greasy cheeseburger, a massive steak, nachos, and a proper beer to wash it down (on tap which is not in existence in Mwanza). I’m not sure how much English to expect in public during my brief stay, but that will also be a welcome stranger to my ears.

That’s all for now! As always, there are other things in the works but I need to have some new material for when I get home so people have a reason to talk to me.

Thanks for reading!

I would say this is equally sad for all of you as is for me. The sad news is that my camera has been misplaced. It fell out of my pocket when I was sitting at Bugando, waiting for my supervisor. The reason this is sad for you is that there will be far less, and perhaps no pictures for the rest of my trip. I plan to buy a new camera when I land in Amsterdam for my 4 day mini adventure there.

I had a bit of concern earlier this week that I may have malaria again. I have since been to the clinic and it has been confirmed. I was feeling better for most of the week, but knew from last time that the symptoms go away and come back worse. The funny part about this development is that it took almost twice as long as the first time I got it. I had malaria within 3 weeks of arriving here, and was taking all kinds of precautions to avoid it. Since then, I have stopped using a mosquito net, and don’t use insect repellent. I am still taking my daily dose of Malarone, but that is all. It is much more relaxing to just deal with things as they come along than worry about what could happen.

If the point of the net is to prevent mosquito bites, it would be required that one be around me all the time and not just when I sleep. I have noticed mosquitoes at all times of the day, not just when I am sleeping. The likely time of infection last time was when I was out eating dinner and there were a lot of mosquitoes around (and had repellent on). The bed net certainly did nothing to prevent malaria the first time. At only 3 weeks, I would have had a similar result using mosquito attractants. If it was only luck that it took 6 weeks this time, I’m fine with trusting luck.

Something strange that happened at Bugando yesterday was that I met an intern from a Tanzanian university who is enrolled in a computer engineering course. I know some readers also won’t understand these things, but it is mostly things I self taught 8 years ago. He didn’t understand that the parts inside a computer are made by different companies, and require different drivers for them to work. This took about 10 minutes of explaining, and also needed to explain that the drivers are linked to both the hardware, and the version of Windows (or whatever else) you are using. He also didn’t know what antivirus to use, and how to get one. I have taught my mom how to get an antivirus, so what kind of computer engineering are they doing over here? I downloaded the program for him, and told him he could come back on Monday for it.

This guy then started a conversation something like this...“We are friends now right? We just met, and now we are friends.” To which I responded “Sure we are.” He then said “You know you should give friends gifts to help strengthen a friendship” Me: “So you want a gift?...well you can have this program on Monday...that is your gift.” Luckily, he gave up hope of getting a gift out of me, and my day resumed as normal.

Back to the aforementioned adventure in Amsterdam...It is starting to take shape, and I have booked a hotel for a couple nights. I will mostly be doing a couple tours and some museum visits for the first 2 days. It will then be the weekend, and will be meeting with a friend to do a little partying and enjoying the night life. The tours I plan to do are a canal tour, and the Heineken brewery tour. Museums will likely be some architecture sights, Anne Frank house, maybe some art museums, and whatever else catches my eye. I also found a solution for my luggage, and will be storing my bags in the lockers at the airport. This will make for a much more relaxing stay, and I won’t have to worry about my luggage being stolen from a hostel.

I have started to purchase gifts for people, but am going to try to limit myself to gifts for family, but that will likely not last. Sorry again for the lack of pictures, I know that is what keeps you coming back so I will do my best to get some pictures for the next post.

Thanks for reading!

There has been a serious lack of excitement in comparison to the Serengeti, but there is excitement at work.


This Picture about sums up last week, do the dew!

Last week was the usual waste of time sitting around with very little work/training to do. I was also unable to go to Bugando due to some scheduling conflicts. This week I was at Kivulini everyday to train youth (former child domestic workers) with an introduction to computers.



The training focuses primarily on Microsoft Word. We have 3 computers (including my personal laptop) available for training purposes, so each session has 6 youths. Each session is 2 – 2.5 hours and consists more specifically of: Turning on and off the computer, desktop and start menu information, opening and closing programs and using Microsoft Word. Within Word we do: each person writes their full name, which gives them an intro to space, enter and backspace if/when they make a mistake; highlighting (before every task) which teaches them to click, hold, and move the mouse to select; change font size, colour, position, bold, underline; Then we do copy and paste which teaches them about the right-click menu and the differences between left and right clicks. After this, we save the work and shutdown the computer. When we start it up again they get to show me they remember how, and then we teach them how to open their saved document. Later they show us they remember how to save and shutdown again.



As you have all been told before, food is a high priority of mine. The above picture is some chipsi mayai that I cooked up for myself one night this week. It was as good, if not better, than the ones from down the street. We also had some epic homemade pizza, and some cakes this week, so I am feeling wonderful.

Watching someone master something that we find simple, like highlighting a few words and changing the size, is very rewarding. Milestones such as that are usually met with a sigh of relief from the students. When they are finished with the training, everyone has shown a huge improvement because they are all highlighting with ease, and most seem to remember where to click to make the changes they are asked to. Most of these kids have basic knowledge of computers from school, but have never used one. We don’t focus on the theory or explanation of how certain things work, but focus entirely on practical use.



There has been some successful capacity building this week as well. One of the students in my first class came with an interest of computers and helped me teach the class for the rest of the week. By day 3 he was carrying out the training with very little assistance. On the final day he managed to train a class with no help at all.

Almost all the students seem to be getting a positive result from the training, and most will only come once for the week, and those who would like more training will sign up for individual training with me at a later date. I have been approached by a few of the youths who are interested in getting more training, so I will be seeing some of them as early as Monday.

This part really didn't fit in naturally to the rest of this post, so here it is at the end. In the middle of this week there was rioting on the street a couple blocks from the apartment. The riots were sparked by some wealthy Indian business owners who paid some police officers to clear the street vendors from in front of some buildings. There was an unfortunate death of one of the vendors, which lead to the other vendors retaliating against police. There was gunfire and explosions that could be heard from the office, and I had walked near the riot area only 30 minutes before it began. This lasted a couple hours, and the streets were back to normal (with some new damages) before the end of the work day. Afterwards it was found that a total of 3 people had been killed in the riots.

Next week I will be continuing my work with Bugando Hospital. There will be a few long shifts to come at the hospital because the current state of the network requires a lot of reconfiguration. As always, thanks for reading and feel free to email me or post in the guestbook.

I always think it’s a good idea to start with something fun. This time there will be fun at the beginning, introduction, middle, half-way, median, conclusion, and end.

All of this fun begins with two facts:
1) “Safari” is the Swahili word for “Trip”
2) “Serengeti” is derived from the native (Masai) word “Serengit”, and it means “Endless Plains”

Now that we have taken care of that business we can get into some animals!

Before getting through the gate, there were baboons in sight. The baboons were funny throughout the trip. I don’t have a good picture of it, but the baby baboons sit on the mom’s back. These animals seem to have it all figured out...lazy right from the start. The older ones are just as lazy, as they proved by sitting around on the road and not move until the only other option was to be run over.


The next thing we saw were wildebeest, which are very common. The wildebeest usually stay in herds with zebras because they cover each other’s weaknesses. Wildebeest are kind of the stupid sidekick to the zebra. They can’t remember things like the migration path, and more specifically where to cross the river to avoid being eaten by crocodiles. The wildebeest will jump into the water and hope for the best, while a zebra will wait for to see if the wildebeest gets eaten. Wildebeest graze on short grass, and zebra on long grass. The one useful thing that wildebeest do is they have the ability to smell water. This sensitive sense of smell can also be used to sniff out predators, while zebras have great sight for the same reason.


This is a migrating herd of a few hundred wildebeest/zebra.

The first spotting of elephants was pretty awesome, and was a surprise. I was looking off to the left of the road and saw one far out...then we turned the corner and there were three elephants making a snack out of a tree. We saw way more elephants than I expected, and have included a couple pictures below of them. They are very protective of their young and will usually have their trunk touching them, or be standing almost overtop of them. They will travel in large migration herds, bachelor herds, or solo. We saw all three occurrences, and it was pretty awesome every time.



We caught these ones as they were crossing the road in front of us. Next time I do any travelling I need to have a proper video camera and something with a little more zoom. Some people in other vehicles had lenses that were about a foot long, which was a little ridiculous...but the pictures are probably awesome.

Next animal...*drum roll*...GIRAFFES! They are the national animal/symbol of Tanzania, and are protected by some pretty serious laws. If you kill a giraffe, you will go to jail. I can’t find the exact number of years, but our guide said it is 25 years in jail, but I think that might be the maximum. We were able to sneak up on a couple giraffes as they were eating, and they didn’t really run away, but didn’t stick around once we drove up to them.


We accidently found these 2 when we were looking for lions.

Another large animal in the park is the Hippo. These guys are righteously fat and lazy. It was nice to see hippos, but they aren’t; much for pictures because you can barely see them. They lay around all day in the water, and try not to get eaten...a wonderful life. Crocodiles were just as showy for the camera, as they usually went under water when we pulled up.


What’s that you say? You want a picture of some lions? Well, you’re in for a treat! We saw lion cubs around sunset the first day. They were jumping around a tree while play fighting amongst the three of them. Their mom wasn’t far away, or I would have taken one home for sure.


At the end of day 2, we went off-road when we were on our way to the gate. We managed to see 5 lions (2 in picture) at no more than 10 feet away. It is illegal to go off-road in the Serengeti, but we had one failed attempt before this, and we were glad it paid off. I was a little upset that they weren’t cold-blooded killers...was a little lame that we could just sneak up on them...but I’m sure if we stepped out of the vehicle we would only have a few seconds to live.


Continuing our exit of the park, we got a flat tire and took the opportunity to eat lunch. We found out that during some times of the year, the location we got a flat is extremely dangerous because of lions. Currently, the wildebeest/zebra migration is in progress, and the lions have a lot of food. Other times of the year when food is low, people go missing in the area we stopped. This was a little unsettling, but the tire was switched, and I am alive to tell the tale.


Not so much fun...

The journey from here was nothing too exciting, as there was just wildebeest and zebra to see. I may be returning to Serengeti, but I am not sure of those plans. For more pictures and a few animals I haven’t mentioned here, check out my Flickr Page. There are ostriches, leopards, more lions, few different gazelles, and some others there to keep you entertained.

As always, any questions or requests can be sent to Tanzania@darryllemon.com or posted in the guestbook. Thanks for reading!

Monday, Monday, Monday...A day this week could have done without, and a day that will not be repeated for the remainder of my trip. I was at Kivulini this day, and I only had one trainee for the whole day, and that wasn’t until 4pm. A few people were missing from the office, and there were no other youths seeking training.  On days like these, when I am just waiting to see if anyone wants training, there are no projects to be worked on, and I am usually found sitting at my desk playing FreeCell. As I am trying to make clear, there has been far too much FreeCell played thus far.

Tuesday was (happily) a different story. I had my interview at Bugando Medical Centre at 10am, and was to meet with my contact (Katie) around 9:45. I asked around a couple days before for how long it would take to walk to Bugando, and heard it would be about 30 minutes from my apartment. With the advice from people who had never walked this exact stretch, I decided to leave myself tons of extra time, and left at 9:15. When I arrived at Bugando, it was indeed 9:45, and my plan had gone swimmingly...up to this point.


Front Entrance and starting line of my first day at Bugando.

The next phase of the plan was to call Katie, have her meet me, and introduce me to my future supervisor Paul. This is the part of the complex, two-phase plan that goes terribly off course. I took a seat, the picture below, out my phone, and failed to contact Katie. It would later be found that I had copied her number down wrong from the email. At this point I was confident that it would be an easy task to find the office section of a hospital. Walking to through the front entrance was simple enough, as I circumvented security simply by being a white and looking like I was allowed to be anywhere I felt inclined to walk. The signs in the building were no help in finding the office I needed. After walking around a little and failing to even see many computers, I headed for the front of the hospital to ask someone for some direction. I asked for Katie and was met by blank stares. When I asked for Paul, I immediately said “computers, I.T....” they said “...Maziku?”, and I of course played along as if I knew his last name. They pointed me in the direction of the University receptionist’s desk, and the question and response surrounding this “Maziku” fellow persisted. She informed me that I needed to go to the back building, and go to floor 4. “Excellent”, I thought. Floor 4 of this building was definitely for sick people, not sick computers.  There actually weren’t any computers on floor 4, so I tried 5, then 6. The helpful women who had computers on floor 6 directed me to the 10th floor to find the illusive Paul. I groaned, looked at the elevator, noticed the dodgy barricade marked “out of order sign” on the other elevator shaft, and decided it was best to take the stairs. Floor 10 was definitely I.T., which was made clear by the Ethernet cables running beside the door. Home free, here’s Paul’s office. I knock and am welcomed in. After asking for Paul they direct me to floor 4, in the front building. The door to this section is locked when coming from anywhere else on floor 4, and it appeared vacant when I went earlier, so didn’t worry about how to get into it. Turns out it is the first staircase on the main floor, maybe 10 steps past the entrance...and his office is another 30 steps from the top of the stairs. At this point I am feeling like the hospital staff saw me coming from a mile away and planed this epic joke.


Paul's office looks kind of like my room in Mitchell...

After finally reaching the finish line, the clock reads 10:30, but we had the rest of the day for discussion. The original intention of my meeting was to update their website. The discussion quickly became about what I am educated in, and Paul saw there was a bigger need for my “expert” help on bigger projects. I never anticipated this opportunity, and the projects are of extremely high interest to me. I will be splitting my schedule so that at least half of my remaining time will be spent at Bugando.

Wednesday was a busy day at Kivulini, but didn’t begin until about 10am because I needed some extra sleep. On Monday, I had told my supervisor about my intentions to split my schedule, and confirmed that in the morning of Wednesday. She was okay with the change, and supported the new plan of having specific days that people could sign up for training hours with me. I will still be doing the youth training, and the week of July 2nd will hopefully remain blocked out for that. The youth training was confirmed to have 25 youths from the Child Domestic Workers group which is supported by Kivulini. In the afternoon, I was very pleased to see the first signs of capacity building as a result of my training. I left a group training session with some youths, and had my most frequent student take over for me while I got my laptop from upstairs. I was delayed, and when I got back she was well into the lesson and I had her carry on with the lesson. She followed most of the same patterns as I had, and only needed my help with a couple minor questions. Her ability to teach in Swahili was a major benefit because the language barrier with youths is massive for me.

Thursday will mostly be discussed at the end of this post in the “Tech Talk” section because there was really nothing that happened outside of technology subject matter. Although, here is a picture of me in the HIV research/testing/treatment lab at the hospital.


The server behind me holds all the important data on test results and on-going research.

Friday! The day had a slow start. Rolled out of bed around 10am, and got moving around 11. This was not without reason, as I knew that there wasn’t a lot to be done at Kivulini, and I was not scheduled to go to Bugando. I had to head to the bank, then a travel company to pay for my trip to Serengeti this weekend. It went relatively smoothly, and I was only lost once because the company sign wasn’t as noticeable as I had been hoping. Getting to Kivulini by 1, and noticing there wasn’t a lot to do...I cut out around 4 to get some other errands run. After all my errands were finished I had probably walked for around for about 2 hours. This day had a lack of working, but no lack of walking



This part is about things that developed at Bugando on Tuesday and Thursday.

We first established what would be the first of 3 projects to be tackled. This would be the domain configuration. There are roughly 50 computers, and we will run them with 1 domain controller. We are undecided how we will structure the domain, but I am leaning towards 1 domain with different security groups. The alternative would be multiple sub-domains, which would be more difficult. The departments will also be on separate VLANs, which will be setup statically. The way the departments are setup is that all the computers are already connected to the same switch local to their office, and that is then connected to the server room switch. There won’t be redundant switches because of a lack of available funds, so the current setup is just being overhauled in the configs. After the DC and VLANs are up and the network is running smoothly, we will be implementing a new firewall which will have much more fine tuning in contrast to the current setup. It is a 6 port firewall, so we will have one port for each VLAN. This will be a gateway firewall on the edge of the network. After all of these things are running wonderfully, we will try to find a home for a transparent firewall and use the 4 port firewall that is currently being used for that project.
In addition to these projects, there is also a WiMAX network that has an approved budget and will be getting looked at before my term is finished. I will be consulted on hardware and implementation, even though I don’t know anything about it at this point.



Admin PC below, switches/firewall/QoS above.

If you have made it this far, thank you for completing the longest post to date, and there will be an exciting post with pictures of animals on Monday to reward you. Due to lack of use, the forum has been removed, and the guestbook will now be your primary means of interaction on the site. I can always be reached at Tanzania@darryllemon.com as well.

This week saw the confirmation of malaria, and a glimpse at “Darryl the optimist” when I completed the medication and headed back out into the world. For the first 2 days of the medication, I stayed in bed for half the day and then sat around on the computer for the rest of the day (except I had malaria...not just being myself). I am not as worried about all the precautions as I was a month ago because there really is no avoiding it. I’m not going to live in a bubble, so I will just do as I have always done and adjust my comfort level to incorporate possible illness. I will continue using the daily anti-malarial, but won’t give it as much credit as it thinks its worth.


It may be a pretty sweet fort...but it didn't protect me.

Wednesday was when I started feeling restless and needed to get out of the apartment. I realized I needed to get some money from the bank. This is a bank I had only been once before, and it was a week before, before I found out I had malaria. Surprisingly, I found the bank without incident and left with a thick stack of cash. The amount is only equivalent to $130 usd, but come on...that’s still pretty impressive for a college student who doesn’t have an income. On the way I also bought a bunch of eggs which would end up being my meal every night for the next 4 days...good thing I like eggs.

Thursday was more productive and I actually managed to get into Kivulini for the afternoon. I have almost completed a Powershell program that will automate the current punch in/out system for tracking hours for employees. This program won’t be implemented for about another month because it is part of a larger project involving databases. Luckily, Kivulini has hired a previous employee to make the databases, and I have been taken off what surely would have been a hellish 2 week project. If anyone out there is nerdy enough to want to see my Powershell program you can email me and I will send you it when it is finished.


8-second exposure of the moon during the eclipse on June 15th.

Wednesday night was also host to the longest total lunar eclipse in over a decade. I watched the moon progress into the eclipse for about an hour and a half. After finding the proper setting on my camera to take pictures of the sky/moon, I was taking far too many. Most of these pictures are almost identical, so I have only shown one here and one other picture on my flickr page. As if I wasn’t nerdy enough with all the computer stuff, now I have revealed my enjoyment of stargazing. Beyond the awesome sight in the sky, I found that my camera has a long exposure setting, so now I have something else to mess around with when taking pictures.

Friday was an awesome news day! I received confirmation for a meeting that will take place on Tuesday at Bugando Medical Centre. I will be meeting with the Program Director, Katie, and the head of I.T., Paul, to see how my skills can be used there too. The primary focus will be to update their website, which looks like it has needed for about 3 years. It will be nice to get some project-oriented work from Bugando so I can have something to work on in my downtime (instead of playing 100 more FreeCell games). Kivulini is a great place for training people, and I will be continuing my efforts there with an up-coming youth training project that was delayed because of my illness. The number of participants for that project has increased from 30 to 50, so who knows where that number will end. I am also continuing private lessons at the apartment with a few friends, so that is always good.


This is Bugando Medical Centre (picture from their website).

I’m not counting down to my re-entry to Canada, but for those that are...that is one month down, and two to go.

A minor detail to share before the bulk of this post is the unfortunate state of my Tanzanian cell phone after Pepe got a hold of it. She is on this new kick of destroying things in the apartment which has also resulted in having to clear the bookshelf off, because she thinks books are toys.


The most recent victim.

As most of you will already know, I have been stricken by the mosquito-borne wonder that is malaria. We were planning on going to a clinic on Friday, but were delayed until Sunday because of some unforeseen scheduling conflicts. It is likely that I have had malaria for about a little over a week, but wasn’t feeling the effects of it until now because it takes time for the parasites to multiply to a point that the effects can be felt.

There isn’t much to the clinic story...but I will tell it anyway (because all of you enjoy it so much when I go on about nothing). When we got to the clinic the most difficult and painful part was watching three people try to unlock the door to the receptionist’s office. It came down to the Indian boss man yelling, being a hero, and getting that door open...he basically saved my life. After that, you can reference the picture below to see the gauntlet of paperwork I was put through to get the ball rolling. It is pretty clear that I didn’t require identification of any sort to get the blood test done, and the only thing they needed from me was my Swahili name and tsh 1500 ($1). A pin prick, minor bloodshed, and several minutes later the results were in...2 rings of malaria! Not really sure what that means, but it has something to do with it not being in my system long, and it gets a lot worse than that.


YAY! Malaria!!!

With no prescription, we headed for the cheaper pharmacy and didn’t really even need the paper saying I had malaria, just more money. After shelling out a whopping tsh 14000 ($9) I had the magical medicine that would cure me.  The medication is only a 3 day treatment and everything should be cleared up!

Money may not buy happiness...but it will cure malaria and that will make me a heck of a lot happier.

As the title has already foretold, this was not an exciting week. It did have its high points, but they did not take long to accomplish, and the mediocrity returned quickly.

Pepe offered a bit of excitement on Tuesday when I was home from work I found she had done a number on the hallway mirror. Apparently she got a little too curious about what she looked like in the morning and knocked it down.


A job well done...

The best part of the week was on Wednesday. The previous I.T. guy came in to start a database project that I was more than happy to give up. I will still be assisting with the design and testing of it, but he is taking over the bulk of work. This works very well for me because it didn’t fit in very nicely with my goals here. I am now able to continue with my capacity building efforts.

The other problem that was solved Wednesday was the internet access in the office. I tried looking at the network but couldn’t figure out how it was setup, and how people were supposed to be getting internet. The current I.T. guy also didn’t really know how it was supposed to work, so I focused on my other daily responsibilities. I will explain how it is setup now...

***If you don’t want to read computer networking info....skip this section***

The things about the network that was obvious to me were: all computers connected via 2 16-port switches, windows file sharing used for documents (with a workgroup), no centralized server or management, no backbone WAN connection on the switches. So those of you who are following along...how does the internet work? The solution came as a bit of a surprise, because of its inefficiency mostly. The way it was supposed to be setup, and the way it is setup now, is that the Executive Director’s computer is used as the default gateway for all other computers, with static addresses on each. The ED computer then has a 3G USB modem that has internet sharing enabled. This means there are about 20 computers sharing a 3.6mbps (max) connection. That is the same internet we use on our phones in Canada, being shared by 20 people. I’m not sure how many towers are up, or if they are also using WiMAX, but these are 3G modems with SIMs in them.

***If you skipped the tech stuff...continue here***

So after getting this setup “properly” we continued with the wireless install. It was easy after we knew what we were pointing it at for internet, and it is just a manual setup with some decent security. Security is a surprising issue here. There isn’t much of it, and the security that is in place isn’t very useful.

On Thursday I sat outside for awhile and did a bit of relaxing. Here’s a picture of some women cooking and selling cobs of corn across from my apartment. I also trained a friend at the apartment on Thursday and Friday on basic use of the computer, and began some Microsoft Word use.


Looks like Cornfest is comin a little early this year.

Beyond the triumph over the internet setup, I have I.T. staff approval for the website project at Bugando Medical Centre, and am just waiting for the executive director to sign off. I was also informed (voluntold) that I will be in charge of training up to 30 youths on the introduction to computers as early as next week. I quickly got the person informing me of this to rethink the way he saw this happening, and restructure the approach to the training. He thought it could be taught the same was as other group training, but I made it clear that we need computers for them to work on, and showing them on a projector will get them nowhere. We will now be holding training of 6 youths per group, with access to 3 computers. This is much more practical and hopefully we will get started in the middle of this coming week.

Friday was boring in the afternoon at Kivulini because there was a big presentation I couldn’t really attend due to the language barrier, so most people were gone. I helped with a few things in the office, but then saw what I was pretty sure are meerkats out the window so I went and snapped some shots of them running around and hiding in the rocks behind the office. They don’t have the same colouring as the ones that Google pops up first, but what else could they be?
edit: ANSWER they are just weasels and they are very pesky critters to the chickens in the area.


The kiswahili name for these are kicheche.

That’s it for this week, and there doesn’t seem to be much going on this weekend. There will be another post very soon, as this one was delayed by very slow and unreliable internet.

So the weekend had come again, and it was time to do something with my free time. On Friday, I worked until about 6pm, and didn’t get up to much that night except finally get around to playing some SC2...which my first impressions of are very positive. Looking forward to finishing it, and then waiting the thousand years it will take for them to put out the next 2 games in the series. I have had time to play a few games since I have been here because of the lack of activities to do on week nights. I have also completed Portal 2 which was hilarious and would recommend to anyone with some time to kill.

This place is safe during the day, but if you want to compare it to anywhere, I would compare it to Dundas Street in London (but worse...) as the closest to “sketchy” some of you will be aware of. Sure I could walk by myself at night, but I would be opening the door to possible dangers, so I am just staying on the safe side and going out when the sun is still out. I don’t follow this rule if I am with a group, in which case I will pretty much go anywhere, anytime.


This is where my apartment is, feel free to zoom out and check out where exactly I am.

So Friday was a bust...but it was a somewhat fun bust. Saturday was pretty good, but didn’t really start until 7pm or so when we went and got some food from downtown. We ordered some mishkaki (beef chunks) which comes with some peppers, cabbage and broth (at this restaurant...everywhere is different). We went back to the apartment and left for Villa Park (a club) around midnight. As we were pulling into the parking lot, we could see a nice new car whose driver must have been drunk. They decided to try going forward out of a parking spot which faced a hill, and there was a significant ditch at the bottom. He had done a great job getting his car stuck, but we weren’t going to stick around to watch. We headed into the club and I immediately noticed how large this club was. There was stuff for everyone here. A few pool tables, huge dance area with the flashing lights and whatnot (in a sunken area of the club), another dancing area that wasn’t so intense, as well as chairs and tables for anyone who just wanted to relax. We voted to relax, and grabbed some seats not far from the bar.

Something that didn’t take long to notice was that what seemed like as many as half of the girls in this place were “working”. This was very off-putting because simply replying to someone who says “hello” could give the wrong impression. We weren’t bothered at all after we had gotten to our seats, so that was awesome. I grabbed a stout and began observing the crowd.

White men, and most men for that matter, are not graceful when it comes to dancing. Most people I saw must have had no clue what they looked like...because it was hilarious. A white guy who has apparently been living here for awhile was dancing on his table and holding onto a pole in front of him. He then proceeded to dance with a girl I had to assume was working...because this guy was a mess. The other really funny observation was what one woman in particular was wearing. She had on a red tshirt that had big block letters exclaiming “Daddy to be”. Some of the people here will wear clothing that they can’t read, and therefore make for quite a bit of humour for me. This was the major entertainment for the night, and after a few stouts, it was 5am and time for some sleep.

On Sunday afternoon, I went around to a few places with Abdalah from Kivulini Kitchen. He first took me out to see his father-in-law’s house about 20 minutes away (by daladala). His father-in-law wasn’t there, but some other family members were so we joined them for a Mountain Dew before heading back down the street to take a daladala back where we came from, then a little further to get some food.
A daladala is a van that is used as public transportation here. It has enough seats for about 16 uncomfortably...as in all “seats” taken. After dinner this night when we were on our way back, I counted 22 in ours with 3 people standing. No such thing as a seat belt in these vans just to add to the fun.


I just got home from work and when to the roof to snap a shot of a daladala. (excuse the power lines)

Yes...all I talk about is food...but just keep reading. Abdalah took me to one of his friend’s restaurants and ordered me a full barbecued fish, with some fried bananas on the side. When I say “whole fish”, I mean it. This one had a tail, fins, head attached...eyes were cooked in as far as I could tell. I began picking apart the fish with my hands, and it was awesome. I have had fried bananas before, but they are quickly becoming one of my favourite foods.

After this, we went to Abdalah’s house and I got my first peak into how some people live here. The house had a room about 15x10 feet, and a very small room off to the left was where he and his family lived. The size of this room was barely big enough for the loveseat to fit, and there was a small TV on the opposite wall. I didn’t see the room they sleep in, but would assume it to be no wider than 6 feet, and maybe 10 feet long. Even with the very little they have, I was welcomed to all of it. His wife took a seat on the floor so I could take part of the couch, and I was welcomed back for dinner any time. He lives with his wife and their 2 kids in these small rooms. I am not sure of who else lives there beyond his family and his mother. You don’t need a lot to make you happy. I have always thought that, but never really seen it.

I know you all like shiny things...so if you need to be reminded again, go check out my other photos at www.flickr.com/photos/darryllemon and send me an email at photos@darryllemon.com for high resolution photo links of my panoramas.

On Tuesday, I began training a couple people on software of their choosing. Solo is an older guy in the office who usually writes his reports on paper, and gets someone else to put it on Excel for him. He is very enthusiastic about learning and is making good progress so far. He had no experience with Excel beyond looking at it, so this is a big step. Seeing Solo progress and gain confidence with the software was a great feeling and I am confident that he will have great success with Excel. His English is good, and can understand anything I tell him. I also began training with a young woman who wanted to learn about using the internet. I got her to create an email address and taught the basics of email use. She was also curious about Facebook, so we got that going and I let her begin building a profile. In this case, the language barrier was a major hindrance on the lesson. With the assistance of Google Translate, and some rephrasing of sentences, we eventually made a decent amount of progress.


Just for fun and to motivate you to keep reading...a classy shot of Pepe taking a nap.

I also received an impromptu lesson in Kiswahili after one of the women from the office began talking to me at my desk. We got my book out and did a lesson for about 15 minutes. I’m not sure I understand any more than I did before, but it was fun.

As always, I continue to look forward to lunch at Kivulini Kitchen. On Wednesday, the fish was served with the tail and fin which meant I have now been served both the head and tail of the fish there. It may sound a little off-putting, but it is great. For 3000 shillings ($2) you get a big chunk of fish, full cup of rice, fresh beans, and some fruit depending on the day. I’m eating a lot of fresh fish, hopefully I don’t get hooked because there is no way I can afford it when I am back in Canada.


Lunch, complete with a tail.


For Wednesday, I didn’t have a lot going on in the morning (as is usually the case), but did some more training in the afternoon. The training on Wednesday (and Friday) had the addition of 2 women from the same group as the one I began training on Tuesday. It became evident very quickly that they also needed some basic training with the functions of the mouse. After locking down some skills in clicking and holding to select things, things were back to software training. It will take a few more lessons for them to get more confident with using the computer, but they are catching on. The unfortunate part of training these women came on Friday. One of the girls stayed later than the other two and asked me to pay her school fees. This was unexpected, and I am worried asking me that was her only reason for being at the two lessons. We will see if she shows up on Monday for more training.


Mail!!!

I received some mail from Selina this week. There is another picture of something that was included in one of the letters, so check the flickr page for that. The mail took about 2.5 weeks, which really isn't that bad. I was half expecting to never see the letters, but here they are, and it didn't take that long.

The wireless routers are also in the office, and we are ready to get to work on securing them and implementing the addition to the current network at Kivulini. Almost no one uses passwords here, and the computers are all linked by a workgroup setting, and MS file sharing is used throughout the office, and centralized on 1 computer. This is a major problem for implementing wireless, so the wifi will be very secure.

There is another update to come very soon about my weekend when I went to a club here for the first time. I also have much higher resolution pictures available for download now, just email me or post on the forum for the links. (I want to keep track of who has them)
photos@darryllemon.com

So I suppose this post begins on Friday, May 29th. I went to work and all that boring stuff, but then it was the weekend. Friday night wasn’t anything too impressive though. We were supposed to go out to a club, but the power was out at the apartment and we got sleepy with the lack of lighting when we were waiting to go out. That meant 5 of us sat around in the apartment with 1 candle lit between us just talking about nothing overly important.


The beach at Tunza.

Saturday was a more eventful day. In the afternoon, we headed for some food at the pizzeria, which is always a good choice. Afterwards, it was time for Tunza. This is a little beach resort/hangout spot that has a bar and all the necessities.  We stayed here for about 2 hours, met up with a fourth member of the group, and headed for Dancing Rock. Dancing Rock is named as such because the locals say that at night the rocks move, and return to their places in the morning. On our way up the hill (about a 15 minute hike) we were met by a boy chasing people around with a dead snake (black mamba). It’s funny how no matter where you are in the world, a creepy bug or animals such as reptiles are used for the same purposes by young boys...scaring girls and getting their attention. So it would appear that no matter the geographical location...boys will be boys.


A look down at part of the trail.

After getting to the top and edge of the rocks, we were welcomed by an incredible view. The other part of this experience that was really cool was that depending on what side of the rocks you were on, you could hear different communities enjoying the weekend. There were 2 small communities that stood out on the sound waves with music and singing. Looking down at these communities, it’s clear that the world is only as complicated as you make it.



Luckily a picture is worth 1000 words, and this post isn’t as long as the others.

Bag checks
After being forced to ditch a few things (hard drive, some RAM, a kiSwahili book), and weighing up everything almost to the exact allowed weight, I thought my problems has passed. Then I had to go through security. I got a bit of a hassle going through security with the 3 laptops and a dozen ink cartridges (which apparently scanned up looking like a cane...) This is where things got interesting, with my bags in the scanner, and the operator giving me googly eye looks back and forth to the screen. A woman steps in to take a look and (of course) my bag is searched. All the electronics are looked at with a big question mark on their faces, and after they rifled through and swept with what must have been an explosive detector, and I gave the correct answers, I’m in the clear. With 3 laptops, 2 photo printers, 15 ink cartridges, 6 hard drives, 2 routers, a bunch of RAM, and assorted cables...I was ready to board the plane.
These checks repeated almost identically in Amsterdam and Kenya.


The carry-on that got me all the funny looks.


What I forgot...
On the way to Toronto I had the realization I had forgotten my power converter/adapter (thanks Nicole). I then realized I had also forgotten my international insurance card and my emergency contacts card. Later in the trip (when I was leaving Amsterdam) I realized that I had also forgotten a document required to get an entry visa for Tanzania, my Yellow Fever Vaccination Certificate. So I am amazing at trip preparation.


In Transit (approx. 36 hours)
I ate before the flight from Toronto to avoid eating any of the airplane food because last time I had airplane food, I got sick. From Toronto to Amsterdam was a terrible flight where I was seated in at the aisle with 2 other people to my right. Anytime I was able to get to sleep, I was promptly bothered by one of the people next to me needing out, or an attendant with a cart hitting my arm or leg.

After arriving in Amsterdam, I wandered around the wrong way for a little bit before stumbling across my gate. After using my computer a bit, it took about 30 minutes to find a plug. Though I did get in a fight with the plastic packaging of my power adapter, I got everything charged. This included my camera which I apparently didn’t charge at all before leaving (smart). This part of my trip also included a nap in a lounge that was clearly marked with a sign stating “Do not sleep in this lounge”...oops. It wasn’t very easy to sleep there either. I was close to the end of a moving walkway which repeated “Mind your step” every time someone triggered a motion sensor. Upon entering the security check they wanted me to give up a carryon to be put under the plane. Somehow this actually turned into me getting a way better seat on the plane, with ample leg room, and may have been for frequent flyers (thanks KLM).


The KLM "no sleeping" lounge.


After landing in Kenya, I checked in with the transfer desk, and apparently my bag is still with me so that is great. The internet didn’t work, but so no one was updated for about 18 hours in the middle of my trip. As mentioned before, it was this point that I realized I had forgotten my yellow fever vaccination certificate. Luckily, the man next to me on the plane, Gilles, knew a thing or two about travelling. He told me that my photocopied certificate should work, and if it doesn’t then $20 will fix any problem that would arise in Mwanza.

Immigration was fine, and the photocopy worked wonderfully. Esther was at the airport waiting for me and we were on our way to the apartment without any problems. I will include pictures of Mwanza airport in a post after I leave because it is not your typical airport and I was very surprised by its appearance when I landed.


View from the corner of the balcony.


First Week
The heat is got to me a little bit, and for what must have been the first time this decade, I couldn’t really eat. The walk around part of the city with Esther was fun, and I have a phone and internet access. I was happy to find that my roommate (Missy) recently rescued a puppy that was going to die in the street. So now I have a puppy to keep me company for my stay here. Her name is Pepe (pay-pay). I have been nicknamed already because my name is difficult for someone who speaks Kiswahili. I am now known as Deo (Day-oh), which is awesome because from all that I can tell right now it means "God" or "godlike"...so that is fitting.


Pepe...the puppy that scares grown men.


We were out of water Tuesday and I didn't know how long to boil it to make it safe...but I know now and our house keeper boiled a bunch up for us. Her name is Margaret and only speaks kiswahili so it is a little difficult, but she is good at helping me understand what she is asking (I hope to be better soon). She seems very nice, but I will know better when I can understand what she is saying to me haha. I also had my first local food called "chipsi mayai" which literally means "chips and eggs". So it’s exactly what it sounds like....an omelette with fried potatoes in it. It cost 1200tsh which is about $1. I didn’t take a picture because it just looks like a plain omelette, so use your imagination. At Tukwamuane Women’s Group (TWG) Kitchen, I met a few of the mamas and they were all really nice. A mama named Joyce is trying to learn English and is getting pretty good, way better than I am at Kiswahili anyway. I also met the headmaster of Mtoni School which is linked with Clarke Road Secondary (London) for fundraising. I was finally called mzungu (foreigner/white man) today, which I had been anticipating since I arrived. Dinner was pizza, and it was delicious. It was Pilipili style which I think is "spicy" style (sweet and hot peppers, onions, cheese, tomatoes, and fresh cracked pepper)...so it was pretty awesome.


View from the front door.


Wednesday morning, I was getting my camera ready to do the apartment pictures, and I hear a knock on the door. So I run out and answer the door to see the landlord, fundi (handyman), and neighbour across the hall. So I open the door and Pepe sniffs out there a little bit and because she is so small they don’t see her for a second. Then the neighbour, who is standing further away, yells something to the landlord, he looks down and then jumped a good 6 feet backwards and held his chest in fear. The dog is about 10 pounds and slightly taller than my knee when she is standing straight up. The dislike of animals as pets is crazy here. Of course, not everyone is this way, but it is not common practice to have pets, unless it is a guard dog. That afternoon, Esther, Missy and I went to Kivulini. Their electricity is currently not proving very reliable, so most people weren't at work. I met about 10 of my future coworkers and everyone was very welcoming. I didn’t bring any equipment with me, but have already picked a spot for the wireless router. Everyone seems eager to having another I.T. guy around and being taught a few new things.


On the way to the farm.


Thursday was a long day. Starting at 9am, we headed for Buswelu with Kulwa driving us. We went to meet the few women working at the kitchen in Buswelu and told them about my goal for their group over the next 3 months. We want to increase food safety and overall cleanliness of the kitchen, by use of shelving and a solution for the door being open all day and keeping dirt out. After using all of my Kiswahili knowledge (my name and where I am from), we visited the rest of the women from the group. They run a program for teaching mothers proper feeding of their babies, as well as helping malnourished babies to become healthy again. This is a great group to be working with and I am looking forward to going again next week. We also met the doctor who runs the local clinic before heading back to the apartment for a break. After my short break we headed to a farm where some of the mamas hope to learn better practices for keeping their own farm running efficiently. The farm was a good 20-30 minute drive away, and gave me a chance to finally see some of the amazing countryside and lake during the day. You can see all of that in the pictures. After approximately 12 hours of going places and meeting new people, I was ready to have Friday off.


Panorama of the lake to end Thursday.


I know this post is long, but if you got through it you are all caught up. If you have any questions please post them in the forum. It is quick to register, and it keeps everything in one place for when other people have the same question. Thanks for reading, there should be posts once per week and pictures are posted as time permits, so stay tuned.

I will be travelling to Tanzania, Africa on May 15th and be staying for three months.

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If you would like a more specific idea of where I will be staying, search for "Mwanza".

During my stay I will be volunteering with Western University's Western Heads East. This organization is dedicated to raising awareness and funds to assist communities in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis. The organization develops a sustainable change by helping establish probiotic yogurt kitchens which continue to strengthen the community's economy and health independent of Western Heads East.

In addition to this, I will be providing general computer and software specific training to many people in the communities I am a part of. I will also be working for an organization called Kivulini in their I.T. department. During my volunteer work with them, I will be assisting in on-going projects as well as performing everyday maintenence and repairs.