May van Gent is an independent video journalist who initially put us in touch with the Zanzibits project - of which our web development school project Zanzicode developed.

She is also currently on Zanzibar, shooting at Sauti za Busara (Sounds of Wisdom) East African music festival and creating a short movie of Zanzicode.

On her blog mayworld she frequently publishes videos of her travels, right now:

You can follow the first steps in my life as a video journalist.

The journey starts in Tanzania, East Africa.
Where the road will take me I don’t know yet.

I just arrived in Zanzibar. After Sauti za Busara (Sounds of Wisdom) an international festival celebrating East African music from 11-16 February I will continue the trip. Probably I’ll go from Malawi to Mozambique to be in South Africa for the world cup 2010 .

You can see video’s on different events, people, days, party’s, mornings etc etc. [from May's blog mayworld]

She also has a Flickr account, so if you want to get some impressions on East Africa - and especially of the amazing music festival which just took place in Zanzibar, check her out.

Since yesterday, ICT4D.at’s Zanzibits support project is now browsable at Zanzicode.com.

You can find information and contact data there, and Fritz, our teacher who is currently there shares his experiences on the Zanzicode blog:

• Hello World!
• Improvements
• Preparations, preparations, preparations

There is also a Zanzicode FlickR account with pictures.

So what is Zanzicode actually?

We provide free education in the field of Web Development to a small number of talented and motivated students of poor background in Zanzibar, Tanzania.

Our goal is to help build the personal careers of our graduates as well as to kickstart a local web development community. After getting to know the place and the people during a support project for the Zanzibits School for Film and Multimedia in 2009, we firmly believe that there is both talent and demand for professional web work in Zanzibar.[from the Zanzicode page]

We are currently preparing the second round of classes for 12 more students, starting in January 2010.

If you are interested in getting involved the project - as sponsor or guest lecturer or if you are in the area and just want to say hello - please contact us.

ZIFF is the Zanzibar International Film Festival, and was (almost) in full swing when I arrived here. It is a magnificently (dis)organised event which brings film makers, entrepreneurs, NGOs and chancers from all over East Africa and beyond. Martin (of whom more later), as well as running an NGO which brings sustainable technology to local people, made a film about the growing use of mobile phone technology in Africa. It is well worth watching (will publish the web version sometime). More below. It is an acknowledged fact that in Africa, the mobile phone has leaprfrogged land-line phone technology; almost all people here have a mobile - a SIM card costs £0.50, and calls are cheap. More of this later.

We spent several convivial evenings at ZIFF, which is held in the old fort, a double-chambered structure, open to the air. One chamber has a sort of amphitheatre, where the films are shown; the other is an open area with a stage at which concerts took place into the small hours. There is a well-stocked bar in each. Entry was a problem (”residents” get charged £0.50, foreigners £5 or £10).

The first evening passed pleasantly enough - we finally joined up with a group of Belgian film makers who, like many others here, are involved in the general East African cultural scene, which seems to be thriving. Subsequent evenings were quieter, but we were constantly bumping into Martin’s endless contacts, some local, some European - one who came to Uganda/Kenya/Mozambique 5 years ago, and forgot to leave. All manage to make a living, sometimes precarious, but I’m slowly (quite rapidly, actually) realising that you do not need a lot in the way of material goods. It helps, and I know that I am leaving (I hope not for ever) in a few weeks, so a slightly disingenuous thought.

Apart from a few “big” movies, most of the them were sparsely attended. There was an endless cycle of films about AIDS, mostly well-meaning, but I wonder if they ever reach their target audience. Another cycle with harrowing stories of young women in traditional societies, mainly Moslem, who had a relationship, got pregnant, were abandoned and then had to face the most appalling consequences. (While predominantly Sunni Moslem, Zanzibar does not go in for that sort of thing.) One charming film from Cameroun about a couple of friends who compete for a girl (a beautifully choreographed picture of village life); the father wants to marry the girl off to a corrupt politician; she finally succumbs for the good of her family. Her erstwhile fiancée, meanwhile, is in jail after being stitched up by the politician. In the final scene, reminscent of The Graduate (Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft - remember?), the boy is released from jail by an honest policemen and, reconciled with his friend, they race up to the church just as the bride is about to say “I do”. They charge into the church, the girl runs off with her boy, after they have barred the door of the church with a giant pole through the door handles.

The last evening was a gala event, and we went down with the Zanzibits students, who were in a mood of ebullient effervescence. It is hard to exaggerate this; they were absoultely fizzng with good humour. They had made a short film in their class - a series of folk tales and fables, engagingly animated and making liberal use of local children. Another upload for sometime. Finally, Madame Karoume (the mother of the current president of Zanzibar; his father was the first president after indepence, so she is a double first lady) made an endless speech, in Swahili but, like the actor reading the telephone book, never boring. The guest of honour was Danny Glover (Colour Purple), who had previously been driven through the streets in a convoy of Unicef jeeps with blaring sirens. He was rather the worse for wear (or, as they say, tired and emotional but without the emotion), and made a rather uninspiring speech. Then the winning film was shown (an excellent, if violent, film about modern South Africa) and, true to form, everybody (or at least the bigwigs and a sizeable proportion of the audience) left as it started and migrated to the bars and music for more networking.

As a sort of postscript, there was an extra day on Sunday at which Martin’s film - Hello Africal - a cinema verité film about mobile phone usage in Zanzibar was screened to the normal sparse audience. This will also be posted in due course. The streets are now much quieter, and the nightly street market (inter alia, excellent Zanzibarian Pizza, which is not a pizza at all, for £0.75) has migrated to Africa House, which I have not yet visited.

Dan Hamm, our member on site wrote this wonderful review of ZIFF 2009 here: http://hamm.co.uk/zanziblog

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).

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.

In summer 2009, Daniela Wolf and I will offer a comprehensive IT course (Zanzibits Support) in cooperation with Zanzibits in Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania. In preparation for the course and the stay in Zanzibar we attend a weekly, private Swahili course lead by Elisabeth Zenz who has lived there for over 1 year.

The course is mainly intended to teach us the neccessary skills to be able to get along in everyday life, do small talk, go shopping, etc. Also, Elisabeth has set herself a target to teach us as many cool slang words as possible so we can impress locals

In the first lesson on March 4th we were taught pronounciation, how to greet and say goodbye, how to do basic smalltalk (habari za …), the numbers from 1 - 1000 and the most important persons (mimi = i, wewe = you, kaka = brother, dada = sister, mama = mother, papa = father). During the course we read some small talk conversations in groups of two to improve our articulation.

In the second lesson on March 12th we read some more advanced dialogues in groups of 2 and afterwards analyzed the vocabulary and tenses used. We learned the three most important tenses (present tense, past tense, future tense) which should suffice. After we had learned some more places you can go to (njumbani = home, kazini = to work, shuleni = to school, sokoni = to the marketplace) we simulated shopping at the marketplace:
how to order food (mchate = food, mkate = bread, yai = egg, matunda = fruits, ndizi = bananas), ask for the price, complain that the price is too high (which we were told to do always) and how to bargain.

As soon as we are satisfied with our articulation we are going to record complete dialogues in groups of two and offer these audio files under a Creative Commons licence online. Also, Daniela and I are collaboratively keeping course notes and a vocabulary on Google Docs which we will publish as well at the end of our course in June.

From now on, there will be a blog post about our progress every week.

A little update about our mobile phone documentary from Africa and Zanzibar. A first draft is now finished and can be read in its full context on our webpage. I have outlined the main ideas we want to express, what we have done so far, the characters ans stories we like to present and more. The picture below shows the sewing machine of the local tailor on Hurumzi street who produced 200 awesome DVD covers made out of recycled Kangas (and by the way, we found out that uzi in swahili means “thread”). Next step in the post-production process is the making of a trailer. Stay tuned & read all about it!

Jambiani was the first village in Tanzania that started with seaweed farming. The practice began almost 20 years ago and the harvesting was and is still done almost exclusively by women. This was once one of the only ways for women to earn their own money, giving them a greater independence in the household. Jambiani is considered a good place to farm since the weather and environmental conditions are optimal. Seaweed can be used for the Pharma industry, cosmetics, plastics and a variety of other uses. Sadly, the profit does not make it back to the community. Two main companies run the show, a Tanzanian state and a Japanese company.

We arranged for a private course in Swahili at the Jambiani Primary school. The school is located in the exact center of the village and teaches about 1.200 pupils. For one month, three days per week, we attended school classes; sitting on benches made for 7-year old kids. Mr Faridi was our tutor and mentor- he unlocked the code of Swahili for us. Mr. Faridi even arranged a special class about mobile phones for us. We met and discussed with other teachers as well regarding their views on the possibilities and challenges of mobile phones.

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.