Mpumalanga Mesh:Stories

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These are stories from the field, many heartwarming tales of how people embraced technology. Stories that challenge our perception of the use of technology and stories that make you laugh.


The making of the cantenna

In the Peebles project our cantena has become quite famous, in some ways it became a symbol for empowering communities. A little bit of background as to how this accident happened and the results from the cantena are both a lesson in DIY technology and marketing.

The local office of AFP wanted to do a piece on the Peebles Valley work. We had planned to put up an antenna on Agnus' house. All the equipment was ready. But Dwayne was in a meeting in Nelspruit. We had planned to do work on a cantenna but some parts where missing so to buy time David went ahead and built the cantenna for the TV crew.

The cantenna met none of the requirements for a Jam Tin based cantenna.

  1. It was the wrong size - we had a Ricofy coffee can
  2. We didn't have a hole cutter - so the hole for the collector was made by hand very roughly
  3. There was no solder - we simply used Prestik to join the collector and can together

The rational was simple, the can was only a prop for the TV, we wouldn't actually use it.

The show then moved to Agnus' house. All the work was done to prepare the mast and get the mesh box mounted. We had both the cantenna and a proper omni. Dwayne asked the crew if they wanted the Can or the shiny proper antenna. The film crew of course chose the can.

Meanwhile inside the laptop was readied, the network connected. And to the shock and horror of David and Dwayne the mesh connected. It was only 400-500 metres to the next node at the school. But still this was a Prestik driven, oversized can. The mesh worked, the can worked and the TV crew had some amazing footage.

During the filming a shot was taken of Lassy, our antenna installation assistant, as he put the final holding straps in place. This picture appeared at WSIS, on numerous flyers, or videos and more. In fact this picture was key for the CSIR to take a more proactive position on these technologies. Our feeling is that this picture conveys the power of what we do and has been critical in creating an image able to influence policy.

But the story continues. We decided to simple leave the can running, it was too late to change it and we would change it on a later visit. More then three months later we returned, the can was rusted, it had turned 180°, it was pointing towards the ground and it was working! Better yet, now that it was pointing in the wrong direction it was actually pointing towards a node on a distant farm, approximately 4km away, and it had established a link with the farm! The connection to the school was still operation and now Agnus' node had become a redundant node in the mesh, able to keep the clinic connected to the hospice if the school went offline.

On many visits we've inspected our can and noted that it becomes more rusty but still works. One theory about why we get such good signals from a badly designed can is that Agnus' house is made of zinc sheets, creating a large reflector that makes up for the shortcomings of the can design.

In a recent BBC TV filming session Lassy replaced the old can with a new one. It was sad to see the can go but we hope the new one will stand us in good stead. This new can TV episode resulted in a visit from SABC, local newspapers and finally the Department of Communications. The fantastic thing was that on many of these the original mesh team of Dwayne and David were not present, the clinic staff hosted these people and talked knowledgeably about the can the mesh and what had been achieved.

The can is indeed a symbol of low technology mesh networks and all that they could mean to communities providing their own connectivity at low cost.

The coming of the Internet means Yahoo jobs

With the installation of Internet at the school we witnessed something very interesting. We had just got the Internet working after a long time offline. Sadly this was a simple matter of starting the computer and trying google.com. While we where talking to the head of the computer lab a young teacher walked in and headed to a computer. We noticed later that he was working on his webmail.

This was rather interesting and Dwayne began talking to him. When asked how often he surfed here he said that this was the first time. he had simply walked in, seen Google up on the webbrowser and realised that the Internet was up. he was lucky to choose a computer that worked but apart from that he put two and two together and began surfing. The tragedy was that as they talked Dwayne noticed the website that was being visited; Yahoo jobs. This teacher was looking for a new job. How sad, probably the person best skilled to run the lab was heading elsewhere.

We talked a bit about the Internet and how much it cost. This teacher was willing to visit an Internet cafe in town and pay a certain amount but was not interested in paying for the same at the school.

We trust that his use continues and that pupils at the school will see this and start connecting themselves.

Google is the computer

After installing the cantenna we began to test the connection within Agnus' house. Here daughter Portia was with us and we decided to introduce her to a computer. She new absolutely nothing and that was evident as windows got closed and opened and the desktop was placed into a state of disarray.

Taking a different approach David fired up Firefox which went straight to Google. Still no luck as Portia and her friend didn't know what to do. Type in something that you want to search for... still no comprehension. Then Dacid asked, "Who is your favourite singer?". "Alecia Keys", replied the two of them. David pointed to the text entry widget and go them to type in the name of the music god. Still stuck we showed them how to click on Search. Then how to select one of the results.

And that was all the training we gave. The two of them disappeared into Alecia's fan site for half and hour. Within minutes of course they had begun to download music. We had to warn them about this, not because of piracy, but because bandwidth is scarce on the mesh.

In visiting a few months later the search engine showed that Portia was a keen talkshow and soapie watcher. Everyone was there from Oprah to Isidingo.

Now whenever you hear people talking about analysing user requirements, understanding the needs of the user, training people how to use computers, etc. You might want to pause, think of Portia and wonder, how much training do we need to give? The truth might be that low cost access and technology is all that is needed, the users will train themselves. The reason why we talk about the first things is that traditionally these interventions are expensive and instead of making them cheap and thus able to absorb failures we became so scared of failing that we decided we needed to analyse the user. Lets rather make access cheap and affordable, the rest will sort itself out.

The computer club

Portia is an avid user. She Skypes, chats on Google Talk and much more. Within a few weeks she had started a computer club. Portia staying one week ahead of her peers she gave instruction to others on how ot use the computer and the Internet. So there is a growing number of people using the Internet for email and chat. Sadly her request to use the school computers to run her computer club was denied.

The early naivete of Portia brought many laughs. In a chat with Dwayne she asked if he new someone who she was chatting to on Skype. Assuming that this was someone from the FMFI project Dwayne thought a bit then said no. Portia it seems had just starting chatting to this person out of the blue. In a way to try and get the message to Portia that there where many people on the Internet and that he couldn't know all of them Dwayne said, "There are over 6 million people on Skype at the moment". Without a pause Portia responded, "How do I meet them?".

Portia is now employed in Port Elizabeth. She got the job by writing her CV on the computer, searching on the Internet to find jobs and applying. When she is home and often from Internet cafes she will send messages to David and Dwayne.

Lassy is hired

Lassy was firstly hired to assist the mesh team in working with the community and secondly to install mesh nodes. There where funny times when the ladder was bolted to the building as we installed a new node. But he learnt a lot and is the star in the AFP film where he installed the node on Agnus' house almost single handedly.

Lassy had only done a Microsoft Word course when he was hired, but was the best skilled person in the community that we could source. He was great at setting up mesh nodes but the operation of the mesh was a little over his head. Which to the team was a simple indication that drop in mesh boxes are in many ways the correct approach in communities, if they can simply be installed, connect and work, then much of the effort to configure them is removed.

When the initial deployment was finished Lassy was unemployed. But he managed to make himself available and was employed at the clinic as a labourer. This lasted a few months until the clinics IT support company needed someone to assist with their cabling needs. Lassy is now employed to manage cable installations and is slowly learning more about computers.

Computer games and other bandwidth drains

When we finally managed to connect the hospice to the clinic we installed a computer at the hospice. Our first user was the son of one of the sisters. He spent most of the first day downloading a number of computer games and playing flash games. The computer, being an Ubuntu Linux machine, couldn't run Windows games. But he perceived. So much so that within a few days all bandwidth on the network for the month had been used up.

Although we had placed bandwidth caps on all of the nodes, we had placed no cap on the clinic itself. Reasoning that since this was their bandwidth there was no need for them to be restricted. We didn't anticipate that outside users at the hospice would also be consuming bandwidth.

For us it is a simple tragedy that people are limited simply because bandwidth is expensive. The team spent more time managing bandwidth then optimising the mesh experience. It is a shame that in South Africa there is such a limit put on the potential of rural children.

Computers are distracting

In the same hospice the word on the street was that computers where distracting. The head sister didn't like the computer in the hospice as at night when the nurses should be attending to patients they where playing on the computer. The main reason to connect to the hospice was to provide telephone access. Subsequently a SIP phone has been installed and the computer removed.

So the clinic and hospice are connected, which was one of our core aims.