Global Technology Academy WWU

Jambo Rafiki!

Much has happend since our last post, but limited internet means we haven’t updated! After Manayara Secondary school, we embarked on our safari (which means journey in Swahili). First was Ngorongoro crater – a GIGANTIC crater full of wildlife and Masaai. We started off big with a lion eating a zebra, followed by seeing lots of other African animals up close. The next safari was at Mayara national park – the big hilight was having an elephant maybe 10 feet behind our car, eating and crossing the street. Overall it was a awe inspiring experience.

After safari it was back to work – mostly at St. Thomas, but some catch up work at Winning Spirit Secondary as well. Late nights were spent, but everything ended up getting finished (phew) before our second vacation to Zanzibar.

Zanzibar was full of hot weather, sandy beaches and warm ocean water. The culture was a mix of islamic influence and rasta life – what a beautiful place. We met some wonderful friends and had an amazingly relaxing time.

Now it is time to say goodbye to our friends here in Arusha as we are off to our other adventures – Kelsey to China, Chris and I to Amsterdam, Zach to Seattle and Tiffany to Portland. We have had such a great experience here and cannot wait to return.

-Linnea

Today we continue work in the little lab of Manyara Secondary School located in the region of Manyara, about 2 hours north of Arusha. Their setup is about 5 dell GX150 computers an a 5 headed linux box setup by Michigan state. Neat stuff, the machine is sponsored by the school and has a tech visit it every 6 months. Internet is provided as well but only works from 8:30am to 3:30pm, I believe by satellite. We are working on repairing the GX150s, reinstalling software and getting some training in as well. Currently power is on and off quite frequently, we were working on getting a generator setup this morning but the power luckily came back on!

Tomorrow is our first full day of vacation since we’ve arrived, we head off on a 2 day Safari, one day at the Ngorogoro and one day in Manyara. We then head back to Arusha to work on a 5th computer lab before the end of our trip (as GTA-WWU, many of us are continuing onward for a few days of personal travel before returning to the states).

Since the internet is so slow pictures are still not a possibility, I think I will come back and edit in pics for each of the posts when I return in October. All for now,

-Chris

Yesterday we were lucky enough to visit the same Masai village that we went to two years ago. This is a village that Terrawatu works with to help them sell some of their crafts to send their kids to school, teaching them about conserving local plants that are used for medicinal purposes and brings people who want to see true Masai life. It is a really wonderful experience. First we had some tea made from various roots that helps with your digestive system while we also ate some bean mixture. After our first meal, they arranged a special blessing ceremony for Linnea as her mom recently passed away. They blessed her by waving a giraffe tail, pouring a milk and beer mixture, and asking god to give her a healthy life and help the cancer to stop at her generation. After the ceremony, we ate some roasted goat which they prepared for us while we heard the story of when Sululu killed a Lion – a training which is part of becoming a man in Masai culture. We then took a walk around the village to see all the plants and trees they grow and heard about all of their purposes. Finally we talked with the men and women about life and saw some of the crafts that we could purchase. As we left they sang and danced – very beautiful. We had such a wonderful experience and enjoyed every minute.

Today was back to work! We fixed up some of the computers at St. Thomas School where we are staying. I think we all learned a ton more!

Tomorrow we will work at the Terrawatu internet cafe, which is a fundraiser for their NGO and also hosts english and computer courses for locals.

Miss everyone but we are having a blast! Tonight is dinner at Sululu’s house.

-Linnea

Lots of work the last few days, we spent last night in Canal Land, about 1 hour south of Arusha (I think) working on a computer lab for a all-girls secondary school. We brought 10 desktops/mice/keyboards and enough cat5 to network everything. Monitors were provided although we had a little snafu where the VGA cables were not provided, still waiting on 8 more but we have 2 desktops all up and running (with the other 8 tested but not functional yet). Had to image one of the machines via clonezilla over the newly installed network, worked like a breeze, only 15 minutes! Currently working out how to share a usb cell modem amongst the computers so they can all have internet access. Service costs about $50 a month (and the stick is $50) so quite expensive for here!

Things are good otherwise, we went on a few walks while we were waiting for the video cables, the whole school is surrounded by corn fields and a few small villages, very rustic indeed! Power is provided by a gas generator (specifically for the lab) and some solar panels although it is quite dark at night.

Hopefully pictures in one of the next posts, I’ve been taking a bunch!

All for now,
-Chris

Hi all! Just a quick post, wanted to update whomever is reading this we’ve all arrived safe and sound with all of our tubs of computers (13x70lbs of them!). We’re touring the sites we’re installing them today and we’ll get down to business tomorrow. Hopefully I can post more soon, until then,

-Chris

Hi All!

As I sit waiting for the the latest clonezilla session to finish copying an image I thought I might post an update. Currently in the final stages of getting everything ready. Ghosting (software installation) is on track, just need to do a few final tests before I can get everything pushed out to the desktops. Luckily these machines have PXE abilities so no need to mess around with boot disks or anything like that, just plug em into the network and go (although I do have to set the boot option to check the NIC first). Everything runs through a Cisco 3524XL switch with a gbic gig ethernet interface heading over to a Dell poweredge 2600 running esxi to a virtual ubuntu server that has a clonezilla session running. Long chain of stuff but everything appears to be working proper, neat stuff and will be very useful in the future. I plan on bringing over the VM so we can do some ghosting stuff in country as necessary. That’s all for now, see below for a pic or two of the mess!

This weekend we began the arduous task of inventorying and triaging our computer equipment for the upcoming project. A group of us worked on desktop computers, determining the level of refurbishing required.

This is Andy checking on a power supply in one of the many stacks of desktops:

Carl was in charge of laptops, and had a great time!

The next work party will be on Sunday, May 1st. More updates to follow.

On December 18, 2010, GTA-WWU hosted a Holiday Party fundraiser at Carl Ostergaard’s house. We were delighted to see that so many community members were supportive of our cause. Thank you to everyone who was able to make this a success – especially to Carl’s parents who made a delicious meal for our guests. We hope to continue this tradition in the years to come!

We will be posting more details for our 2011 plans – stay tuned!

Hello everyone, and welcome to the new members!

We are very excited for the new school year and for the new people who we hope will be involved this year. Today was Day 1 of the AS info fair and we had a lot of positive responses from students interested in being involved. We hope that you will enjoy being involved in GTA-WWU, and with your help we will be able to put together a return trip to Arusha, TZ by next summer, if not sooner!

We will be holding our first fall quarter meeting on Thursday, September 30th at 5:00 PM in AW 410. We plan on having pizza and ice cream sundaes, so come and bring your friends!

One exciting new project that GTA-WWU will be launching this quarter is our new computer workshops. We will be holding trainings once a month or so on basic computer skills such as hardware refurbishing, networking, and operating system basics. These events will be free to both WWU students and community members, whether or not they are club members. We are starting this new program as a way to increase our involvement in the local community and to strengthen our ties with WWU. We will post more information soon!

We will be holding a carwash at the Fairhaven Food Pavillion on Saturday, October 2nd. This is a great opportunity to get involved with the club (and eat some snacks!).

Have a great day!

Hello everyone!

It’s been a long time since we last updated, so here’s what has been going on:

-The auction turned out small but successful. Tanya Pergola, the director of Terrawatu, was able to attend and gave a short presentation on what her organization does. Everyone seemed to have a good time and we were glad that all of you who showed up were able to make it!

-Due to a lack of funds, we will be postponing the Tanzania 2010 trip. We do not know yet when it will happen, but it will probably be either over winter break or next summer. Despite this setback, we are still very excited for this project!

-We have been meeting regularly during summer quarter. The new meeting times are Mondays and Thursdays at 5:00 PM. If any new members are interested in getting involved, we would love to see you at one of our meetings!