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Post date: Apr 10, 2009 4:34:15 PM
April 10th (Friday) Late
News updates . . . BLOG retractions!!! I ran into Ann, Kate, and Hannah (one of Kate’s roommates) on Wednesday night while I was walking up the steps out of La Fontaine – the establishment is below street level. When I saw them I actually took a step backwards down the steps to be a little more at eye level with the three of them. That is when, ironically, Kate informed that she is 5’2” not “under 5 foot” as I had stated. She also went to Kansas University, not Kansas State. My apologies – it’s difficult to get a good approximation on height when there’s more than a foot difference in eye level. Where is Kansas University anyway? Is that in the state between Missouri and Colorado or the one between Missouri and Texas? Is there a state between Missouri and Colorado? I asked Kate and Hannah if they had read my whole BLOG – I was kind of intrigued that they had found an error. Nope – just the parts about them . . . . they’re Leo’s. I’m sure I’ll be hearing shortly about today’s BLOG – no pun intended.
What else is newsworthy today? I dropped a 500 shilling piece on the floor of a matatu the other day. I was amazed at the reaction. The conductor, standing on the street herding people in, was immediately aware of the situation and began combing the floor near my feet. A woman behind me did likewise, and a woman in front of me handed her phone to the conductor with it open and lit up – to be used as a flashlight. It was a effort of enormous cooperation and in about a minute my 25-cent-equivalent coin was retrieved and placed back in my possession. Amazing – it reminded me of that commercial where there’s a traffic jam in India because of a downed tree and a little boy starts pushing on in. Pretty soon a dozen people are out of their cars pushing the tree out of the way – and it works. I saw a live example of this in my taxi ride from New Delhi to Haridware two years ago. There was a downed tree in the road and at least a dozen people were cutting it up and moving pieces out of the way. People in India don’t wait around for their Government to fix things --- they know better --- hmmm . . . .
My computer has a virus and can’t connect to the web – although it is able to access my Google email (both envoypeace@gmail and kevin@cgpp). Apparently my computer didn’t stock up on vitamins, Emercen-C, and probiotics like I did. It seems McAfee itself was attacked by the whole deal. I first noticed the problem when I plugged in my memory stick with all of the Primary Level Exam data from Kibiri school. The stick had a bunch of weird files and folders on it, and when I tried to bring up McAfee it just opened up and shut back down. So today I downloaded a copy of McAfee at Mango Tree. That was an hour long deal there, partly since the server at work has dozens of its own viruses it seems to be fending off. It is constantly popping up messages about quarantining and fixing corrupted files. When I got the McAfee executable file over to my computer I was blessed to find out that it needs to download another 53MB to complete the download. Luckily that appears to be working. If you’re reading this post it’s because I either fixed my computer or Deb figured out how to post to the site. BTW – thanks to the person that sent me the 6MB video through email. It took two hours to download, but it was worth it. I’ll pass on future versions though, since Outlook isn’t smart enough to pass on the 6MB files and get all of the 50KB ones waiting behind it.
Update on my trip to Lira and Mbale – Dinah and I will be traveling May 6th through the 10th to visit our two secondary schools up North and hand out the peace banners and letters that Tajali and Donna coordinated with the kids in Wisconsin. They’ll be no internet access those days. Dinah and I are still coordinating on when we can meet with our two secondary schools here in Kampala area. I’m not in Kibiri today because it’s Good Friday and the kids are off from school. I’ll see them all on Tuesday.
At Mango Tree things are moving along. Since the Inventory Database wasn’t set up correctly at start of their Fiscal Year in October, Nathan is re-entering the data for the past sixth months. This is giving him practice working with the system and will give us a chance to review the data for any entry errors. I’ve redone the Master Database to add new information they would like to keep on their products and to clean up some of the misinformation that was in there. It’s also got new formatting that I hope Nathan will find easier to work with. The staff wanted to revive the use of a Product Form, great idea, to collect and approve new products and information to be put into the database. I’ll say it again – Great Idea!!! This will make Nathan’s job of maintaining the Master Database much easier. The form (and now the Master Database too) is created with drop down selections to limit errors – goof proofing). Here's a picture from a few weeks back of Nathan counting inventory items with me in the trailer.
Inventory is stored here and 'at least' two other places. We're going to move all of the samples and stencils out of here and turn them over to the Research and Design (R&D) team to track. Then we'll eliminate at least one of the 'other' storage locations by moving the items in the trailer. Maybe someday they'll go back into Inventory - but right now these high demand items cause too much traffic in and out of inventory and it's just a little too much confusion. You can see the stencil box up front on the right in the picture with Nathan. These are the original designs created by R&D and are used whenever more grain sack charts need to be made. Below is a photo of grain sack charts being made by one of the production team members. It says, "Which One Has HIV? You can't tell by looking." Curious? See more products at www.mangotreeuganda.org. BTW -- it's hot and humid here - but everyone dresses like we're operating in air conditioned offices.
Later . . . about 6PM
I left work and took a matatu to La Fontaine – knowing I was going to head straight to Protea from there on a bodda but I only had 500 shillings in my pocket and needed 1000. Ryan was working at La Fontain so I convinced him to loan me 500 shillings and we both caught boddas to Protea. I do have a 20,000 shilling bill in my pocket but that’s worthless for matatu and bodda rides, as well as most taxis. Most drivers don’t have that kind of change. I need to go to Protea because they probably have the fastest public internet, and I need to finish downloading McAfee. Only about 3M of the 53M needed were downloaded after five hours at Mango Tree (~4 to 5KB/sec). The connection is a lot better at Protea (~15 to 20KB/sec). The food here, though, is expensive and it kinda sucks. The Protea Hotel opened up in Nov 07 as one of the many high en hotels that were built for CHOGM. Margot pretty much claimed this as her HQ last year. The internet has been fast (by African standards) food has been bad (by anyone’s standards) since the day they opened.
I told Ryan about the Kate blogging ordeal and he was surprised I was blogging about Kate – and wanted to know if I was blogging about him? Ha – of course I am. I tell everyone that you chase the poor chickens around behind La Fontain you silly nut. I don’t tell them about your other chicken activities though – this is a PG BLOG. New Ryan news -- he's just completing his medication for his Bilharzia --- which I’ve heard is worse pain than having the parasite. (Yes he had Malaria and Bilharzia at the same time.) Bilharzia is nasty stuff – Margot was telling me about it last year. The parasite is found in Lake Victoria and the Nile and can enter your body directly through your skin. It camps out in your vital organs, and for woman it can make you sterile for life. I'm wondering if I get the viruses and spyware cleaned off my computer if it will ever really be the same as it was – or will it be like Ryan and his Biharzia – and never really be as good as it was before. Ryan’s now asking for my BLOG address --- this will crack him up.
Ryan and Ann are going to Chimpanzee Island tomorrow and invited me to go – but I need to spend time with Nathan at Mango Tree. I have Sunday to goof off – and try to work on the Children’s Global Peace Project Business Plan. Tajali needs it soon. Ryan’s hoping it will be a worthwhile trip for $70. I imagine it will. Ann booked at through a friend of hers. On a similar note, Mike’s girlfriend recently got bit by a monkey and the big joke it that she gets really defensive if there are monkeys around --- probably not a bad idea – monkeys are fast and will take whatever you’ve got if you’re not paying attention.
Uggh – the McAfee Installer finishing downloading 53MB – started installing – and now needs to download another 29MB. Unfortunately the connection speed here has dropped down below 5KB/sec. At least Ryan ordered some bad food that he wants to share with me while I drink an almost good beer --- Moonberge. Oh – I have found a good beer from South Africa that is brewed in Tanzania – Castle Milk Stout. You can’t see through it!
Ryan wants me to tell you about NGO Wars. NGOs are Non-Government Organizations – also known in the United States as charities. I won’t name any names here because that could cause a world of hurt – no pun intended (again). At Mango Tree some NGOs come in and Mango Tree works with them to develop educational materials to teach about AIDS or Malaria or Tuberculosis or sanitation or breast feeding or something. Then that NGO claims the materials as proprietary. Yes – proprietary – not to be sold or given to anyone else. Whose money are they using anyway? They’re using donor money to create a product and then they don’t want any other NGOs to have it. Why? Because a lot of NGOs exist to serve themselves – to further their own existence and purpose!!! Somewhere along the way there primary mission shifted from helping the end user to running a business and serving their own end. Why else would they create materials and not share them with other NGOs. This is not uncommon my friends – it is unfortunately the norm. I’ll bet the donors would like to be informed about this.
Ryan’s personal NGO war has to do with one of the school he’s helping in Seria Leone. (This is funny – I’m interviewing Ryan and he’s the one that writes features for the local newspaper.) There’s church in the US, which will remain unnamed, that is threatening legal action against Ryan and his charity, Krew Bay Initiative (KBI, www.kbinitiative.org), for using the name of “their” school among the schools that KBI supports to help with school supplies, teacher salaries, renovations, and student scholarships. This church is claiming that this school is “their” school and KBI cannot work with them or use the school name in any KBI materials. That would be like some organization, which helps or helped Kibiri Elementary School, now claims it as “their” school and brings legal action against Children’s Global Peace Project for mentioning the school name on our website. I can't imagine this ever happening. Edith would just laugh it off. By the way, Kibiri is mentioned on our School Events web page. I have my schedule with Kibiri posted on the same website that this BLOG is posted, and when I have some pictures I hope to find time to post them too. We may even get some video clips up there. Okay – enough of that soapbox. Give often – give lots . . . . and give consciously . . . not all NGOs are created equal.
And --- McAfee is reinstalled and my internet access is working. I’ll post this BLOG and be gone! Stephanie just called. She just moved to Ntinda and wants me to show her around. Ha – I’m not sure what kind of night life is up there – but we’ll have a look around.
Peace and Light
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