Today I took off to another adventure to East Africa and I am really glad about that. It was quite a stress to jump out of day to day business in Austria, but actually I am not out at all, since I have perfect internet connection here at Doha International Airport in Qatar and I am addicted and feel guilty when I am not connect to my Java team. But everything is fine so far. I have to kill 10 hours before I can board the aircraft to Dar es Salaam and I took the solution not taking a hotel room for USD 100,- plus the taxi ride there USD 30.- and a visa for another USD 30.- … instead I just stay inside the airport and jumped into the ‘Oryx Lounge’ which is USD 40.- for 6 hours and a really cozy place. It is kind of a all inclusive concept, where basic food (sandwiches, hot soup, Arabic sweets, nuts etc) and drinks (soft drinks, fruit juices, tea, coffee = filter coffee; for real coffee just jump outside) are just to take away as self service. They even give you a cold can of Heineken if you ask for it. Free WIFI is all over and you just spend the time in soft armchairs and wait and sleep and wait while your hand luggage is locked up in a safe. The smokers room is also very nice designed. Also a shower is available.

Qatar Airways turned out to be a very reliable carrier so far, but the pre-check in procedure was kind weird. About 3 days before I got an auto generated e-mail saying that i have to check in online within 36 hours before 3 hours of departure in Vienna. In the same e-mail they kind of said that this online check in has to be finished within 36 hours before departure. So i just tried to do this online and the application spit out errors. Web applications do this some times, so I just called the local Qatar Airways office and the guy there told me that I should forget everything from the e-mail and just show up at the airport !3! hours before departure. I managed to do this online check in stuff AND made sure I was there 3 hours before, normally used to be there 30min before when moving around inside EU! The folks at the counter then told me there that both, the e-mail and the guy on the phone are wrong, and that I just should stick to the “normal” rules of intercontinental flights. Great food, pleasant service staff, but the Boeing was a bit old-fashioned in terms of in-flight entertainment.

So at this point I want to continue what our fellow ground worker Erik Hersman started in one of his recent blog posts: Aggregating Travel Tips for Africa . I will try to make up 2 right now, not necessarly new ones, but giving 2 cents from my experience. Over the next three weeks I will hopefully come up with more tips, then I will add them to this post as comments. So if your are interested, just subscribe to our comments RSS feed.

So here you are:

# Don’t stress yourself when you get an auto-generated e-mail from the airline company! … Which tells you to do some weird stuff on their web page, unless it is clearly stated in your booking confirmation. Just follow “the rule”, that when you go for a flight from Europe to Africa: showing up with check in luggage 1.5 hours before take off is OK. I can confirm this with Emirates, Qatar airways, swiss, SAA, KLM … Since I am delivering 4 linux notebooks to the Zanzibits students, I had to check in a bag. Everything I need fits in a blue 30 liter Mammut backpack (the only one I have, I use it for ice climbing also) which goes as hand luggage.

# Wear socks! So you are heading for Africa and you think about footwear? The only thing I wear on my feet are trekking sandals. They provide fresh air to for your toes, dry fast when you have have to walk tru a stream our you are on the beach and are really solid with a good sole (I stick to Teva, since the Israel army model terribly failed). But to come to the point: Wearing socks within such sandals would be a really style-no-go, at least in European capitals; I don’t like them at all. But take a pair of socks in your hand luggage, cause when you fall asleep during the flight, you will wake up angry when they turn on the air condition. So just put up the socks before you go for a nap. (@Jason … waiting for your comment on that one :-))

So as mentioned before, the next tips will show up in the comments section, so STAY TUNED …

As Daniela Wolf unfortunately quit the entire Zanzibits Support project, I attended the Swahili course lesson 5 alone today. Elisabeth taught me how to negate verbs and we practiced all possible tenses and persons.
In Swahili, negation is somewhat tricky as some verbs’ negations are radically shortened and have very little in common with the original form. Here are two very drastic examples:

• ninakuja = I come; siji = I don’t come
• ninakula = I eat; sili = I don’t eat

Afterwards we read and translated some dialouges Elisabeth had prepared:

ICT4D.at is organizing a comprehensive IT course in Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania, from the beginning of July until the end of September 2009.
The basic idea is to teach a group of 3 – 5 students with basic skills in web design to build solid web applications using PHP and Java as well as setting up diverse Web applications like wiki (MediaWiki), CMS (Joomla!) and blog software (Wordpress). Also, basic Linux (Ubuntu) skills should be mediated, not only by using Linux throughout the whole course.
For complete information on the course itself please refer to the project wiki page.

Unfortunately, the teacher that intended to go there for the first six weeks, so from beginning of July until mid of August, quit completely so we are currently searching for someone who is interested and fulfills the requirements stated below.

ICT4D.at supports possible teachers as follows:

• 50% of the airfare to Zanzibar and retour is paid (so approx. € 400 are to be paid by yourself).
• The visa is paid.
• Accommodation near the location of the IT course is provided (single bed room).
• Spending money to cover expenses for victuals is provided.
• A Swahili course with altogether 15 units to 1,5 hours each held weekly in Vienna is paid.
• Martin Konzett who has been in Stone Town several times will travel to Stone Town with you and introduce you to the local habits and culture as well as to the students and anyone you need to know in Zanzibar.

What we require from a possible teacher:

• Necessary skills: PHP (object oriented and using a framework like CodeIgniter or equal), Linux basics & administration (Ubuntu), Java basics (OOP basics).
• Skills in setting up wiki, CMS or blog software are advantageous but not required.
• The ability to teach a group of 3 - 5 people around 20 years old 3 hours a day, 5 times a week, 6 weeks altogether and to prepare for the course independently (which can be done on-site in Stone Town every day for the following day’s lesson, of course).
• The motivation to learn Swahili as well as possible before departure and to lead the course in English and Swahili.
• The ability to tailor the education in the course to the student’s needs individually as student’s education and skills may vary.

Anyone interested please contact Martin Konzett or Stefan Asseg (see here).

In this week’s video interview Jacob Mtalitinya from the University of Dar Es Salaam gives us some insights into the usage and research of mobile technologies in Tanzania. He explains how the introduction of mobile phones has changed the way people in Tanzania communicate and why M-Pesa has become so popular. At the University of Dar Es Salaam Jacob Mtalitinya investigates the social impacts of mobile technologies. His group is also working together with international partners to push forward research in this area.

This is the 19th interview from our MobileActive08 video podcast series, shot at the conference in Johannesburg (organized by MobileActive and sangonet).

During the last two Swahili lessons we focussed on reading dialogues to improve our articulation and learn to talk more fluently. These dialogues covered the situations “meet & greet”, “at the market”, “food”, “love / like” and the basics on on how tenses.

Here are some dialogues:

Bariki: Vipi Mzee
Aisack: Salama tu mzee
Bariki: Nipe habari! Mambo vipi.
Aisack: Mambo bomba tu. Vipi, za kazi?
Bariki: Shuari. Inatulia bwana.
Aisack: Safi. Mimi nakwenda shuleni bwana.
Bariki: Haya, kasome vizuri mzee.
Aisack: Issue sawa bwana. Tutaonana badaye.
Bariki: Haya, badaye.

P: Sema.
H: Bomba.
P: Inatulia je?
H: Ndyio hakuna noma bwana.
P: Upo?
H: Nipo.
P: Haya, bayaye
H: Badaye

Vene: Vipi, ulikuwa sokoni jana?
Vingi: Hapana, nilikuwa nyumbani.
Vene: Utakuwa sokoni leo?
Vingi: Hapana, leo nitakuwa nyumbani pia kufanya kazi.
Vene: Mimi nitakwenda sokoni kesho, je utakuja?
Vingi: Sawa, nitakuja.
Vene: Haya, kesho.
Vingi: Kesho, usiku mwema

Anna: Karibu Rafiki yangu.
Neema. Ahsante. Nafurahi. Njaa inaumwa.
Anna: Ndiyo. Umekuwa na kazi nyingi…
Neema: Ndyio, ni kweli.
Anna: Unapenda kinwaji gani?
Neema: Napenda soda.
Anna: Soda gani?
Neema: Naomba…..sprite.
Anna: Sina sprite, samahani.
Neema: Coka?
Anna: Hakuna.
Neema: Sawa, nipe fanta.
Anna: Karibu.
Neema: Unapenda chakula gani?
Anna: Umepika nini?
Neema: Chakula unachopenda.
Anna: Je umepika Pilao?
Neema: Ndyio. Kweli. Karibu Pilao.
Anna: Ahsante.

C: Unajua Kiswahili?
B: Kidogokidogo.
C: Hamna Shida. Utajua badaye.
B: Ndyio najifunza Kiswahili.
C: Unajitahidi sana, hongera.

Recently I wrote a short piece about the emerging mobile banking systems in Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar. The article was published in the bi-monthly Swedish eco- and lifestyle mag Camino. This issue’s theme was about “smarter money”, and I mention here the advantages of simple SMS-based services like the Z-Pesa, a credit-transfer service from Zantel, one of the main telecom operators in Tanzania/Zanzibar. You can send ‘hard cash’ if you get a Z-pesa account, but more common is to send SMS with ‘airtime’ (cellphone credits) to anybody with a cellphone (requires no fixed account).

The text is also about how the fast growth of mobile technology are changing the economical infrastructure in these countries, the difference it has made for people and the myriad of small businesses which has been generated around mobile phones. Also worth noting is, the embarassing fact that these simple yet great services still are not available in Sweden or Europe (at least not to my knowledge).

Check out the piece here (yes, in Swedish, but neat pictures to look at), or even better, get your own, shiny copy straight from Camino.

Due to the load of field work we have been busy with, and the lack of decent internet connection, we have not been able to post as frequently as we would have liked. So we give you here a wrap-up of the recent weeks activities so you get a glimpse of the many stories we have documented so far. Next week we will have free wi-fi in our apartment so we can also post some good shots.

We want to mention that the output of our misson is to shoot a movie and we will publish all the raw material of the Nikon D90 HD-ready video and H2 Zoom WAV audio as Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike and provide download or mail delivery service. (You should attribute “ICT4D.at” and link to http://ict4d.at)

The champion

We had a very interesting meeting with a guy called Juma Lukondya. We met him in Jambiani while we were staying at a local kitchen and he introduced himself to us as the bicycle champion of Zanzibar. It turned out that he is sponsored by the Austrian bike team Cyclopia. He is using his mobile phone to keep in contact with his family in a remote part of the mainland. He also get updates in his phone from upcoming bike competitions, it also keeps him in touch with the Austrian team. We have footage of him training on the beach, riding his bike and using his phone.

Massais at Paje Ndame

We had a very successful day meeting traditional Massais working in Paje. We interviewed Faraja who shared his experiences with mobile phones. He introduced us to his friends who were very cheerful and avid mobile users. We have lots of film material with them chatting and telling their stories and opinions of network operators. One guy was all the time dancing to his favourite mobile tune on his Nokia. Later they all gathered to play a traditional game called Bao, and all the time the phones are ringing while they are playing.

Fishermen

As the tide was good we decided to go out fishing with captain Mohamed and his crew on a traditional sailing boat. The weather was stable but as we left Jambiani there was heavy rain all time we were on the boat. Everything got wet and everybody jumped into the water to have a swim. So no mobile phone acitvity on the boat. The fishermen left the phones at home charging. As we got back to their house on the beach they started using the phones and we did some interviews while they were repairing the fish traps and the nets and peeling the fish.

Local wedding

We were invited to a local wedding ceremony. It was a very nice experience and we were allowed to catch everything on film. It started outside and there was a big gathering of families and friends of the couple. There was a lot of people taking pictures with their cellphones and also DV cameras around. We brought a gift for the bride therefore we were invited in to their house where they had already set up a scene with lightning gear and filming equipment. Afterwards we were offered traditional spicy Pilau rice dish outside. All people were sitting on the ground between the village houses together with goats and chicken and eating the food with the hands from big plates.

Sound recording

We met a cool guy in Stone Town, Akhran Mohammed. He makes his living in town as a shopkeeper but his real passion is recording songs with his friends. He showed us to the basic studio they have and we filmed them while they recorded a new song. The sound producer provides a cool beat on his  Macbook while Akhran is rehearsing a catchy lovesong. When they are finished recording the producer converts the new song into a mp3 file and transfers it via bluetooth to Akhrans mobile phone. Later Akhran plays the song for his impressed friends on the phone in town.

What else do we have?

We cover the school in Jambiani where we are having Swahili lessons. Our teacher Mr. Faridi is holding a special class about mobile phones in his secondary school class. We interviewed the teachers and got a lot of opinions about mobiles. We have a lot of night life shots here and there. most of them in local bars and people having party.

We cover Zanzibits, a Dutch project, which is a multimedia school where they teach programming and handling complex software for editing media. We have a local band called Dwumbaki. They are playing Ngoma, traditional Zanzibarian music. We cover a local kitchen where potatoes are fried and we see randomly shots of customers coming in and out. We have the Jambiani town councellor and we follow him around in his duties. We feature the seaweed women harvesting and drying seaweed.

We follow the student Muhammed when he is playing football and taking photos with his phone. We film a fundi in town repairing and hacking phones. We join an engineer which is building up a new lodge. AND we went to another wedding (!).

We want to mention that we are using a 3 year old Nokia Communicator 9300i and we share it (2 people). It is very useful to write SMS on the keyboard and manage contents in folders. it is also a great notebook where you just enter rich text, format it with RTF editor and then bluetooth it to the Macbook, transfer it to a USB stick and then post this blog Also, people we meet love to play with it and pretend doing phonecalls with it.

That’s all for now, stay tuned.

We wrote this blog post about our trip from Zambia to Tanzania already a while ago, but as said earlier Internet connections in Africa are sparse and I forgot to bring the text with me. That’s why we only post it now.

After a 30 hours bus drive starting in Lusaka, we arrived in Dar Es Salam on Sunday 19 October. The bus ride was quite an experience. It was overcrowded, both with passengers and luggage, since they were shipping some goods in strange boxes. The bus was old and dodgy and so was the street, especially closer towards Dar Es Salaam. We were also constantly stopped by the police at check points. At the first check point they took one of the conductors into custody (for whichever reason, we couldn’t find that out), after which more than half of the passengers exited the bus to demonstrate (successfully).

Crossing the border was also quite interesting. We arrived before 6am and had to wait until the gates were opened. There were many locals selling SIM cards and airtime, which seems to be the big border business (besides changing any currency into Tanzanian Shillings).

We only stayed one night in Dar Es Salam and took a speedboat to Zanzibar the following morning, where we checked into some private accommodation in the middle of Stone Town. Quite nice. Simple, but very authentic.

We did many interviews with locals in Stone Town the following days. More about that in another blog post.