Apologies due

First, I would like to apologize for the months of negligence to this blog. I am still suprised people have found it interesting enough to read/follow so I will do my best to keep it up to date again. I have actually found blogging as a great way to record my experiences and due to my handwriting keeping a journal has just never worked.

Geekcorps Mali

The Geekcorps Mali Team

For those who don’t know, I am now in Bamako, Mali. Upon the end of my first term as a volunteer in Senegal with the Geekcorps, I had the opportunity to apply to be the country director/program coordinator for IESC/Geekcorp’s program in Mali and in the end had the great fortune to be selected. It truly is a dream job for me as I will finally get to pursue my passion for blending IT with development to hopefully help make at least a small difference in Africa. In the future, I will try and elaborate on what exactly our program is trying to achieve. For now, our program website: mali.geekcorps.org (make sure to check out the news section) is a great way to see what we do. I have just finished my first two weeks here and despite the constant smell of burning garbage am starting to adjust well. I have a nice home, an incredible staff to work with and can attest that despite the poverty, Mali has a lot of charm. The depth and diversity of its culture and history alone are staggering.

Fete du Ramadan
My arrival coincided with the end of Ramadan, the month where Muslim’s around the world fast for a month as a testament to their committment in their faith. The end of Ramadan is marked with a huge celebration similar to our Christmas where families are visited and kids are given new clothes and if they’re lucky sunglasses. Moussa one of our local tech geniuses was kind of enough to invite him to share the holiday with his family.

new duds

girl in shadows

View rest of photo set »

T-Birds are Crazy
I’ve been in Senegal only 3 1/2 months and already two of my roomates (Toshi and Henry) have already visited. It just comes to show that if you ever invite a T-Bird to come visit, no matter where you are in the world, you better be sure you actually want him to come! In this case, it was great to share the Senegal experience with Toshi-son and the Paum.

Oh my Google
It seems Google is hard at work at spending the 4 billion dollars it has recently raised from stock sales. Yesterday, it just released Google Talk its messaging and voip chat client (interestingly based on the opensource chat protocol Jabber). This in addition to the new Google Desktop Bar tool which I think is its attempt to counter Yahoo’s recent aquisition of the awesome widget tool Konfabulator as both begin to draw battlelines for the upcoming thin-client WebOS war. Despite these two exciting releases, I am most stoked about Gmail’s quite feature addition of Send As. What this basically means is you can now use Gmail to send messages from any of your email accounts (Your college email, work email, etc). It is really only a matter of time before Gmail ousts hotmail as the free webmail king.

BaolBaol.com
With my first term in Senegal winding down (I leave back for the states this upcoming wednesday), progress with Kocc Barma (pronounced “Couch” and formely Leuk) has been going well. A number of African merchants have started to use the system on a regular basis and we are currently in the process of introducing it to large women groups who I think stand to benefit dramatically from this software. If you are curious a working version of the software is up at BaolBaol.com (Wolof slang for crafty merchant). Admittedly, I don’t have any kind of tutorial up so it may be complicated to understand at first. I have found that with a brief 10-20 minute introduction most merchants are able to successfully use it on their own. Anyways, if your interested take a look and let me know what you think keeping in mind this is still very much a work in progress.

 
Scene from the Cape in Dakar

Desert Garden
For the first time in 9 months, Dakar has gotten its first real showers. Even after spending signficant time in Arizona its hard to imagine how an ecosystem survives without water. The transformation water brings to the desert is really amazing. The sand which you grow accustomed to trudging through is replaced almost instanly with green grass. Also gone is the dust, allowing for blue skys, starry nights, and a much needed dust respite for my labtop. On the other hand, the rain has brought excessive heat (it has gotten REALLY hot) and mosquitoes.

Long Lost Friend
Above is a picture of the parrot I had as a kid growing up in Senegal. When we left it was adopted by a family friend and to my utter shock is still alive and I guess is still only in its early to middle ages. I guess if you are sick of having your dogs die get a parrot. It’ll probably live longer then you.

Scenes of downtown Dakar and Sandaga where I work

Digg.com
I just came across a great new site Digg.com where news articles that users find and submit are combined in an aggregrate site. What is really cool is when you “digg” an article the article’s popularity increases and it rises to the top. As a result, most of the featured articles are very current and typically very interesting.

Some recent gems I found from Digg include:

• How to make the best paper airplane in the world
• The Science of Lance Armstrong
• Paper CD Case

Gmail Mail Importer
As I mentioned earlier, I now manage all my mail through Gmail. I continue to be very happy with my decision. However, one thing that bothered me is that all my old email has been popped onto my unreliable, constantly crashing labtop hardrive. Fortunately, there are people like Mark Lyon out there who created a great little app called the Gmail Loader (GML) which has allowed me to export all my important messages to the safekeeping of google.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals

While I have been eagerly awaiting reading the Kite Runners my parent’s also brought over a book called the Sex Lives of Cannibals documenting the author’s experience living in Kiribati “possibly the worst place on earth” a tiny nation sitting periously atop a coral atoll in the middle of the swealtering Equatorial pacific. I personally have found this travelogue ridicolously funny. It may be due to the fact that I can relate to some of his experiences having spent many years visiting and living in developing nations. Regardless, I definetly recommend picking up a copy. It’ll make you never take for granted having clean water or a cold beer ever again.

Here’s is a particularly biting excerpt from this book by Maarten Trost…

It is entirely possible that somehwere on planet Earth there exists food more unpalatable than that found in Kiribati. I accept this possibility like I accept the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. I have never encountered it. I cannot imagine it. I simply accept that there is a statistical probability of its existence. An eensie-weensie tiny little probablity.

Making the switch
After long debating this for a long time, I have made to the decision to store and organize all of my email. The tipping point has come with the fact that I have just had to rebuild my labtop for the third time in the past 4 months. And who did I trust to handle the task, Google’s Gmail with its superior interface and 2.5 gb (and growing of free storage) makes it hard to beat. So anyways, all of my 5+ email accounts now gets forwarded to one spot where I can organize and store for posterity’s sake. If you need a gmail invite let me know. I have 46 left.

Dimanche a Bamako
I just wanted to reiterate how GOOD this album is. I have been listening to it for the past three weeks straight AND I still get excited to hear it AND I have no desire to listen to anything else. Not bad for a blind couple from Mali.

Meeting the President

Last week I had the chance to attend the AGOA conference held in Dakar this year. During the conference, President Wade toured some of the exhibits including where I was working. I even got to show him my work so far on Leuk. What was really kind of neat was one he saw that Leuk he yelled at the national tv to make sure they take a picture of my computer screen since it was in Wolof and thus was “really important”.

My project also got covered in this recent article from the department of state.

Galle Nanondiral
One of the reasons I think I decided to pursue a career in development stems from the pride in the work my father started in Senegal nearly 20 years ago. My father helped establish Galle Nanondiral “the House of Mutual Understanding” in Yeumbel a poor suburb of Dakar. In an area devoid of basic resources we take for granted, Galle Nanondiral has become an extremely important center providing community members access to literacy courses, sports (basketball, ping-pong, fooseball, etc), a computer lab and perhaps most importantly a library. In an area where having your own school books is almost an unthinkable luxury, students old and young come to the the center and wait in long lines to study and get ahead. So popular is the center has been known to get over 700 unique visitors on a given day.

What I am perhaps more impressed by is that fact that the center has flourished despite my father leaving. My father and others in his organization believed in empowering Senegalese with the task of developing and managing the center. The center is now run by a Senegalese co-director and Senegalese staff. While developing local capacity is now a popular trend in development, I think it’s notable the center started doing it 20 years ago.

My parent’s with some of Galle Nanondiral’s Staff

The court where future NBA hopefulMamadou Diene a former school drop-out found basketball and the academic support to now attend Baylor University.

Mamadou Diene: From Yeumbeul to Baylor University Freshman big-man from Senegal… Seven-footer with raw talent and high future potential… Gifted athlete will need to adapt to American game… Coaches plan to utilize shot-blocking ability and inside presence off the bench… Rated top NBA prospect in Africa and sixth-best international prospect in world by NBAdraft.net… Head Coach Scott Drew’s first signee at Baylor. HIGH SCHOOL: Would rank among top 40 high school players nationally if a U.S. player, according to HoopScoop… Top player at Babacar Sy Basketball Camp in summer of 2003.

The Library

Think these don’t get read?

An early innovation: egg cartons on the roof to dampen sound

My father with Asseck and old friend and fellow carpenter

Life at DFI

DFI’s Current Volunteers

Working with these two is certainly a chore

Team Leuk

Goat park - Photo by Raffaele Moles

No I’m not dead
I apologize for not posting in nearly two weeks. A lot has been going on and I have been extremely focused on getting the initial version of Leuk going. The Leuk project is going extremely well and I hope to have the initial version of the software up this weekend. From a programming standpoint, I couldn’t be happier in how it turned out eventhough I have a lot more work to do. The real tests starts next week when real merchants start using it. Their will be a lot more to come on this in the future.

The British
One of the events that occured since my last post was the horrible tragedy in London. Thank god, a number of my close friends who work in London are ok. I wish we all could handle adversity with the grace of the British. You’d be hard pressed to find a tougher people that’s for sure. Proof of point, the day after the bombing the British Embassy opened up their pub (yes they have a pub at their embassy!) to strangers off the street like me to share a couple pints with the British Ambassador. All this while the US embassy was in a complete lockdown.

Live8
Live8 was certainly enjoyable to watch and the G8’s recent news to signficantly increase aid and hopefully move closer to reducing farm subsidies is definetly encouraging. I found it ironic that the concerts where unavailable on Senegalese TV despite the fact that Senegal is one of the countries be targeted for complete debt relief. Either they couldn’t afford the broadcast or someone figured it wasn’t Live 8’s target audience. Luckily, I was able to watch Yousou steal the show in his duet with Dido.

AGOA Conference
Next week, I will be helping to represent DFI at the AGOA Conference (think NAFTA for Africa) in Dakar. it should be quite an interesting experience as economic ministers from all across Africa will be there along with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Celebrating the 4th Senegalese style with two kilos of Djibi

I’m hooked

Amadou and Mariam from Mali just came out with this album with 5 guest tracks from producer Manu Chao. This is truly what the best of world fusion music sounds like. If I had to recommend any album in the last 3 months this would definetly be it.

Cultural insentive maybe? funny yes

Does anyone find it funny, the white guy has a striking resemblence to GW?

I finally got around to creating ThunderBlog.org where I’m trying to capture the essence of the T-bird “Mystique” by making it for T-Birds around the world to share their blog.

Thunderblog.org will serve both as a blog directory and an aggregated collective blog of post summaries which will be automatically created through RSS feeds. Right now my site is the only one listed so its really boring.

If you are a T-Bird with a blog please check out the ThunderBlog about page and follow the instructions to register.

Think your tough?
My friend just sent me the story of a 73 year old Kenyan man who killed a leapord who attacked him by sticking down his hand down the leopards mouth and ripping out his tongue! You really have to read it to believe it.

Mangoes
I think I officially decided to never live anywhere again where mangos aren’t available in abundance. Not only is the fruit ridicously delicious but the places its grows are marked by a warm client and even warmer people. The only possible exception I may make is for Chicago and my beloved Cubbies.

Thank you
Ever since my blog was featured on the Thunderbird’s main site I have received a number of very thoughtful emails which have been very supportive of the work I have been trying to do here. I just wanted to say a sincere thanks. Your kind works and support trully mean a lot. I just feel blessed to have the opportunity to be here.

Thunderblog.org
I’ve been playing around with the idea of creating a small directory site of T-Birds who have blogs. Since we are scattered all over the world, I thought maybe it would be intesting. I’ve already registered Thunderblog.org and will likely try and get something up in the coming month. In the mean time, if you are a T-Bird and have a blog you’d like to share later please let me know.

Book Suggestions?
My parents are coming to visit in 3 weeks. Does anyone have any recommendations for a good book or two I should have them pickup?

Dakar: Through the Lens of Sharon Stark
The following is perhaps the most eloquent description I have found of Senegalese culture so far.

Senegal is a complex, open and generally stable society, less than five
decades after independence from colonialism under France.
Dakar, the capital, is a cosmopolitan city thriving despite struggling
with material want and against the stereotyped notion of Africans as
hopeless basket cases. There is no famine here. There is no AIDs crisis.
No genocide. Dakar is peopled with individuals who are extracting every
last drop of hope and hard-earned profit from a still-difficult economy.
And they do it with a quiet - sometimes fierce - dignity seen in their
eyes; with, perhaps, a graceful hand gesture, or kind word, or bawdy wit;
or with an outfit which may in fact be the only piece of fashionable
clothing a person owns, but impeccably turned out.

Here, then, are a handful of images from modern-day Dakar, balancing
individual dignity, a rich cultural heritage, and desires fueled by
ever-present globalization.

[Thanks, Wayan for the link]