Despite the complications with taking the bus to travel around the country, we are more than game to continue voyaging along the bumpy roads for our work. Thus, it was fairly surprising when we were invited to an Alliance One training seminar in Urambo and were told that we would be flying there! The reason for flying is simple; less time spent travelling means more time in the communities. So off we went to Urambo to see Chris and Alfa (two Alliance One staffers) put on presentations for two primary societies on how to improve their farming practices.
The experience was enlightening for a plethora of reasons. For example, it was great to see how many members of the community were able to attend – a clear sign that help is well received. It was, however, particularly troublesome to get things started because the buildings which we had the presentations in, did not have electricity and used natural light through thin spots on the ceiling for lighting. Normally this isn’t an issue but in this case it made seeing the PowerPoint presentation extremely difficult. Eventually, some brave souls shimmied up 
the wall and threw tarps over the top and as I sat there I couldn’t help but be amazed at how we take the simplest things for granted. In this case, it was a dark room.
Our main reason for attending was to simply see how things go down since our plan is to attend many more of these sessions (Alliance travels to every community) in the near future and survey the attendees on their knowledge and comfort level with ICTs. This primary research will be instrumental in helping us determine what culturally-sensitive recommendations we can make in terms of ICT integration. Furthermore, attending these seminars will provide us with a great opportunity to get people enthused for ICTs. It’s hardly profound to say that getting people ICTs is one thing but in no way ensures that they will adopt them, so slowly increasing enthusiasm is paramount to our plans.
One thing that I haven’t mentioned yet is that a group of us volunteers have been taking Swahili classes twice a week which have been a great help when communicating with people here. In addition, the classes provided us with a great contact – our Mwalimu (teacher) – that brought us to his school to meet with the headmaster last week. You see, over here you simply cannot arrange a meeting with someone without a proper introduction from an intermediate source. So Christansos brought us to his school – Kazima Secondary – and we had a great conversation with them about their computer education ideas and plans. As it turns out, they haven’t provided classes yet and their one computer was recently stolen. Accordingly, the school is beefing up in security and it certainly seems that the interest is there to offer computer education in the near future.
This Friday is one of the largest national holidays, Nane Nane and its purpose is specifically to provide a day of rest and celebration for farmers. I’m not exactly sure of all the activities happening but I do know that we will be going to the equivalent of some ‘fairgrounds’ to see various farming outfits provide exhibits and examples of their operations. As always, I’ll be sure to report back with details.
Adil
