trips.schrull.us

Yesterday, Friday (I’m writing this Saturday morning) was spent once again at the Kasulu Bible college.

We have discovered over the last few days that the internet speed that we have been getting from TTCL (Tanzanian Telephone Company Limited) DSL line is NOT what we have been paying for.  When we had DSL installed at KBC two and a half years ago, it was much faster than satellite-based internet (the only form of internet available eight years ago) and a sixth the cost. Last year we upgraded the speed to twice as fast, at twice the cost.  Although we are still paying for that faster speed, the current download speed is as slow or slower than it was over the satellite link.

In the mean-time, cellular based data has really improved, and the signal down at KBC is escpecially good.  Allister and Helen Sammons have a little celular based “hot-spot” device called a “Mi-Fi” which only costs  a fifth of what we are paying TTLC for a month of unlimited data.  They let us borrow it to try out at the Bibile College.  Not only did we want to check the speed at KBC, we also needed to do a “proof of concept” at how we would configure the device with the network to make internet accessible to all of the workstations and over the KBC wireless network.  The device works like a charm!

The next issue is how to procure such a device for KBC.  As you can imagine, it is not readily avaialble in a village such as Kasulu.  It is not even available Kigoma, a fairly large town.  Alister had gotten his in Kenya and it looked as if it would have to come from Dar es Salaam, a two-day (each way) via bus or $300.00 round-trip airfare away.  The local Vodocom shop (the cellular carrier that provides 3-G access in Kasulu) is not able to ship a device in so Bill and Daudi tried a work-around, and it works quite well:  a cellular modem plugged into the server.  It is not the optimum solution as thin-clients have to be turned on before starting the modem, or they knock the device off-line, but it works.

But there is God’s provision:  Bill and Daudi went to talk to the Bishop to ask if there was anyway to procure the “Mi-Fi” in Dar and get it back to Kasulu.  The “Mi-Fi” solution will also save the DWT offices a lot of money (they are also getting very bad speed from TTLC), although the office will probably need an antenna for the device because of all of the trees between the compound and the nearest cell “towers”.  As it turns out, one of the staff is currently in Dar and scheduled to fly back to Kigoma on Monday!  He has been contacted, given instructions and wired funds.  He has even been instructed to delay his flight a day if he is unable to buy the devices today (a Saturday).

In other excitement, a laptop in one of the other houses in the compound was stolen late yesterday morning.  This really upset the Bishop as his desire is for the compound always to be a safe and welcoming place.  Through God’s provision and excellent detective work on the part of various members of the diocese, a mid-night trip to Kigoma (with police escort, as traveling through the countryside of Tanzania at night for long distances is not safe–there are bandits out there), the laptop has been found and returned to it’s owner.  The laptop owner has willingly compensated all involved for expenses and their trouble (standard practice here – and cheap at the price, especially considering the value of irreplaceable data on the laptop) and the diocese will be reviewing their security practices and making some changes.

We always feel very safe here in a personal sense.  On the other hand, we also recognize that there is a lot of tempation and it is very easy someone to see something and just take it.  The assumption is that we Westerners are so rich that we will not really miss what is taken.  We recognize this and are carefull to keep things locked when we are not around or are asleep.

 On our way back from dinner at Cannon Mafumbi’s house (he is in charge of the diocese’s finances) we saw lots of people in town…what was catching their attention is that one of the little shops on the main road was on fire. There are so many little shops there. I don’t know how they put the fire out. I hope that we don’t find many shops burnt this morning. I don’t think that there is any thing like property insurance in Kasulu. Or fire departments for that matter.

When we got up to the compound we found that the power is out. It was out only on this side of town and may have been related to the fire.

So we sat in our room, using our ipads and cellular data. Fortunately I brought three small LED lamps with us: a small mini-lamp camp lantern that I bought three years ago, a head-band lamp that Bill got me from LL Bean a few years back and another lamp with many LED’s that we picked up for all of $3.00 from Harbor Frieght. (I think that one of the reasons it was so inexpensive was that you have to take a screw driver to it to change the batteries.)  Never go to Tanzania without being prepared for the power to go out!

Normally on a Friday night there would be a lot of loud music blaring. Last night, with the power out, we heard a lot of insect noise near-by which would normally be drowned out, a far amount of traffic and a lot of un-amplifed crowd noise from down-town. It’s actually kind of peaceful, if you didn’t know about the fire. 

We discovered that the power was back on about 45 minutes later.  Actually, it had come back on about 10 minutes after we had returned to our room, but we hadn’t left a light on and didn’t discover it until I happened to peer out the window and see lights elsewhere in the compound!

This morning, Bill is back at KBC finishing up installaing printer drivers.  I’ll let him blog (http://tzblog.schrull.us) about this diconnect between this model of printer and the current version of the server operating system.  God provides and Bill is clever:  he will find a work-around.  As there is nothing I can do to help him, except get in the way, I am spending the morning relaxing in the compound, reading and catching up on my blogging.  

I hope that you all at home are starting a gorgeous Memorial Day weekend!

[Note:  I’ll try to add a few pictures later to break up this long entry.]