Alex Little

The week before the opening of our labs by the Spanish Ambassador we had run a full week of training with about 25 teachers from the Health Sciences and Engineering Colleges. Simultaneously with the training we were also trying to get the labs complete – so quite difficult to coordinate with everything done right at the very last minute.

The training went far better than we had hoped, with the teachers being very keen, even to the extent where when we suggested a coffee break, it was hard to get people away from the computers. We also had many requests from other staff who would like to join the training. The next two challenges are to get the labs open and available for students and not to lose the momentum we’ve built up with the recent training. We’re continuing with weekly half day workshop/tutorial sessions and will be opening the labs for a very select group of students so they can test out the labs for us and help to identify any possible problems. This also gives the ICT team the opportunity to learn and deal with issues.

So much has happened over the last 2-3 weeks so it’s impossible for me to note (or remember) everything that’s happened, although there were a couple of notable exceptions.

Firstly, the tables that we ordered from the agricultural college in Wukro finally arrived. I mentioned in a recent posting about the delivery over the weekend, well, the other half of the order arrived on Friday morning, only the varnishing hadn’t been finished, so the college sent a technician to complete the tables as they were being unloaded from the truck. Despite the delays, I’m very pleased with the tables and how they look in the labs, I was slightly worried that I’d miscalculated and the tables would be too big for the lab or too small for the computers, but fortunately this wasn’t the case and everyone tells me how good the labs look.

The other event which stuck in my mind was organising the ribbon for the ambassador to cut. At about 5pm the day before his visit, I was given a copy of the schedule, one section read ‘cutting the ribbon’. I then made the mistake of saying that I was going into town after work, only to be asked if I could by some ribbon as they uni didn’t have any. I mistakenly assumed this would be a relatively easy task given that all tailors and fabric shops are down the same street. This was not the case, after visiting too many shops, the only red ribbon I could find was about 1cm wide. we had to settle for a strip of edged red fabric and hoe that it would be wide enough for the door and wouldn’t look too bad. On the day I also took pair of scissors with me, just in case.

As a surprise for us and the trainers, the University had arranged a meal at the Axum hotel on the last evening of the training, so we finally had chance to wind down a little…

Last Wednesday, Roman, Jaime and Mike all arrived from various parts of the world to run the first training week for the Digital Campus project and to get the servers and labs labs set up.

Everything for the rest of the week was rather stressful as we were chasing up where equipment was and arranging to get it moved into the right place. The bureaucracy of getting all the items logged into the store, plus the lack of communication or any sense of urgency has been quite astounding. To get the items into the labs, they first must be moved into the main store, I then write a letter confirming that the items match the specification, then they are registered with the main university store manager, only then can the equipment be signed out and transferred to the college, which then has the responsibility of moving the items from the main store into the lab. With many different items, arriving at different times, to different university sites, then being distributed to two different labs, for different colleges creates rather a huge scope for mistakes, inaction and buck passing.

One reason we were given that the monitors hadn’t been moved into the labs was that the terminals hadn’t been moved and there was no point moving the monitors until the terminals were in place. Sure, the monitors are quite useless without terminals, but vice versa is also true, leading to a ridiculous catch-22 situation.

On Saturday, we went up to Wukro for a bit of what should have been relaxation. The tables for the labs are being built by the agricultural and we’ve been waiting a little while for these to be completed and delivered. When we called in the morning to ask about the tables, we were told, rather ominously, ‘you’d better come and see them’. We arrived at about 6pm to be told that the tables had just left on a truck bound for Mekelle Uni. As it was highly unlikely that any of the University store managers would at work at 7pm on Saturday evening, Father Angelo set off in his truck to catch up with them to stop them but they’d had too much of a head start. I’m unsure where the tables spent the night, but I was then called at 7am Sunday morning to say they were at the University, is someone around to receive them? I was still in Wukro and again, unlikely that anyone else would be available at the Uni at that time on a Sunday. after a few phone calls back and forth, the guards at the Uni allowed the tables to let left there for us to collect, check and sign for on Monday. The tables were actually finally located on Wednesday morning.

On top of all this we also had the training course and associated arrangements to finish off ready for the 5 day training course to start tomorrow (Monday). The following Tuesday the Spanish Ambassador is due to visit the project. As the Spanish Cooperation (AECID) organisation is funding the project, it’s important we have something to show in terms of labs/servers etc – so keeping many fingers crossed that next week is less stressful than the last, though I have major doubts about this!

We did manage to fit in a little relaxation by visiting a rock church near Wurko on the Sunday morning. We were accompanied by two researchers who have already written a couple of books about Tigrayan rock churches, who were also allowed to take photos of every page of the churches old prayer book.

On Friday, I finally rebuilt our Moodle server, following the power supply failure of the old server. The site is now running on the same server as the main Mekelle University website and so can be accessed off campus (another big achievement) at:

http://www.mu.edu.et/elearning

Initially, we’ll use this Moodle installation as the place where the Engineering and Health Sciences tutors can upload their courses for the Digital Campus pilot project, but any other college or department is welcome to use this server for hosting their courses.

The building of the labs for the Digital Campus project is all coming together at once, the servers and terminals are on their way up from Addis as I write, the tables are almost completed and will be delivered by the end of the week, plus the other networking and electrical work is almost finished. All of this is on top of organising the training week (16th to 20th November) for tutors, followed by week of training for th ICT staff. This training is being run by the Digital Campus project team, with the others arriving from around the world during this week.

Given how busy I’ll be over the coming 2-3 weeks, I’m unlikely to be checking email much or updating my blog, so be prepared for a long catch up post in a month

On Wednesday last week (21st Oct) we held the introductory workshop for the Digital Campus elearning project (project website). All seemed to go well, but we still have some difficulties with the schedule and tutor selection. The problem is that we’re looking for staff who will be available to train fellow staff next year (i.e. they won’t be leaving for masters at the end of this year) and these tend to be more senior staff who already have high workloads. Those staff who do have the time (generally the new staff who graduated with their first degree last year) are highly likely to leave at the end of this academic year. Bit of a catch-22 in knowing what to do for the best. The amount of training required for the certification is also going to be difficult to fit into the coming semester. Approximately 20 days will be needed which, ideally, needs to be completed by the end of the first semester, less than 3 months away and unsurprisingly the teachers will be spending much of their time teaching.

As I’m sure many of you will be aware, it is 25 years since the reports of famine in Ethiopia appeared on the BBC. But a quarter of a century later (and who knows how many millions in aid) there are new reports about potential famine in these same areas affected all those years ago. The BBC has recently broadcast from Mekelle about the situation (here and here), and Oxfam are again raising money to try to prevent famine occurring again across east Africa. There’s also a report on the Guardian website about the impact of the images sent back from Ethiopia 25 years ago.

From my point of view, working at the Uni in a well-off regional capital, I see little or no sign of the food shortages which are being reported back in the UK. I’m certainly not saying that problems don’t exist, I know that I’m in a privileged position, given my location, job and income – but for me, it’s hard to know how bad the situation is, or is becoming. It’s also likely to be affecting more remote rural areas far worse than where I’m based. There are no reports in the local media about the situation (in either the local language or English language newspapers), so my main sources of information about the problems are from outside Ethiopia, usually BBC & UK newspaper websites or from those I know who work with medical organisations/NGOs and spend more time out in the rural areas. As far as I’m aware the situation at the moment is certainly just about potential famine, and the number of people needing extra food aid (on top of the food aid normally given out) is 6.2 million – which is actually the same as last year.

Since coming to Ethiopia last year, I’ve always been wary about bringing up the subject of the 1984/85 famine. Most people I meet or work with are under 30 and so either weren’t born or were extremely young at the time. Also, those Ethiopians who have been abroad say that all anybody else in the world seems to know about Ethiopia is famine and long distance running and I don’t want to perpetuate the feeling that that’s all anyone knows or cares about Ethiopia.

Yesterday, Martin and I met up with Mike Wooldridge, the BBC journalist who has been sending back the recent reports, but was also one of the reporters here in Ethiopia reporting on the 1984/85 famine. He’s an ex VSO volunteer and his daughter was a VSO volunteer at the Teacher Training College here in Mekelle a few years ago. It was really interesting getting the chance to meet Mike, finding out about the changes that have taken place in Mekelle and Ethiopia generally over the last 25 years and also being able to show him around the University to demonstrate the work that VSO is currently doing.

Yesterday the monitors, keyboards and mice I’d ordered last week arrived. In order to get them accepted by the store, all the items needed to be checked that they met the specification and also that they work. The items have just spent 2 days in the back of a truck from Addis, so there was a chance that some had broken route.

Checking the monitors worked was quite a time consuming affair, especially after the store manager told me that the electricity was ‘slow today’. I soon found out what she actually meant – that the electricity wasn’t running at the normal voltage. I returned later in the afternoon to find the electricity had resumed it’s normal speed.

Fortunately the only problem was that the monitors were supplied with a 3 round pin plug, rather than two pin – the shop which supplied them happily took them back and exchanged them, although I had to get a gate pass – signed and stamped by both my line manager and the stores manager to be allowed to take the incorrect items off the campus and return with the correct ones – all of which is quite time consuming.

Now I’m waiting to get a ‘receiving voucher’ from the store to prove that the equipment really was delivered – especially important for Alcala Uni who are providing the funding and I’m sure will want to know that their money hasn’t just disappeared!

What I did find a little odd was that in the store was a small boat and Yamaha outboard motor, given there are few streams, let alone rivers or lakes around here, I’m not sure exactly what this is for. I later found out that it’s for the agriculture dept – although I’m still unclear in which body of water it ever gets used.

On Wednesday we will be holding the orientation workshop for the Digital Campus project, so there is much to be getting on with in preparation for this. The workshop is just to introduce the selected teachers to the training course, answer their queries and, most importantly, arrange the schedule for the training over the coming semester.

All seems to be progressing well, with a few minor hiccups. We had some banner made and put up around the campuses to promote the workshop (see photo). I also wanted to get the syllabus/brochure colour copied, but then I found out how much this was going to cost – 25 copies of 12 page brochure at 5 birr per page – makes 1500 birr (approx 150 USD), so not exactly good use of money.

Speaking of money, a transfer arrived into my bank from Alcala Uni, so I’m now able to purchase the monitors, keyboards etc and also pay the first installment for the tables we’re having made. Understandably, the university was a little wary about transferring money into a personal bank account of some random person in Africa – I’ve been told they thought the money may end up with Somalian pirates!

The networking of the lab is almost complete, we just need the electrical work completed so the switches etc can be tested properly. We also need to find someone who can sign for the switches from the store and take ongoing responsibility for them – this isn’t as easy as it may first sound. ICT think the colleges should sign and take responsibility, then the colleges think it should be ICT’s job – bit of a catch 22.

We did have a minor disaster this week with one of the servers – a power supply failure. On Wednesday morning it looked as if ETC had completed the work on the DNS server, to make our elearning server available off campus using the domain name. But just as i was checking this, there was a power fluctuation and although the server is plugged into a UPS, the server power supply failed. I was a little unsure that the power supply was the only problem, until we tested with the supply from another (identical) server. It will now be out of action for a long time, until new one can be purchased (imported) – no 24/7 callout cover contracts here. So I’m now in the process of moving the site over to another server so it’s available until the server is fixed.

Fingers crossed that all will go well at the orientation workshop.

Tomorrow (11th September) is the first day in 2002 in the Ethiopian Calendar. Just in time for the new, we have now launched our project website: http://digital-campus.org, designed to give an insight into the work that we’re doing, providing details of the course “Certificate in Online Education” which we’re writing and delivering to staff in Health Sciences and Engineering Colleges. The website also provides technical information regarding the new labs that we are building, the servers, terminals, software etc. We’d be very grateful for any feedback about the site, especially if there’s anything you’d like to know about the project that’s missing.

Also just in time for the New Year, I have a new office. My computer and desk were finally moved yesterday to the main University campus. My desk is temporarily located in the ICT department and I’ll move back to Computer Science once the network is installed and the building is connected to the rest of the University network.

I’ve just come to the end of probably the busiest week I’ve had in nearly a year in Ethiopia, most of which has been involving chasing paperwork and bureaucracy.

Firstly, I finally managed to get the Moodle server moved from one campus to the main ICT data centre at another campus. Originally the server was in the Computer Science department, but the erratic power supply and lack of working generator meant the server was often off. Moving to the main data centre means the there is a more reliable power supply and generator. However, moving the server is not quite as simple as you may think. Several different letters and stamped pieces of paper were needed to allow me to move the server, mainly so the guards would allow me to take the server off campus. It took almost a week to get the paperwork done, but it’s finally moved. There’s now just the small issue of configuring it properly on the network, this was started today but not finished as the guy with the one of the necessary passwords isn’t in the office.

This week work started on the networking for one of the new computer labs (the photo shows the channels being cut in the floor for the cabling). I was at the Health Sciences campus a few days ago when I was called to go up to the Arid campus to show them where the channel should be cut as the labourers had arrived. Arid campus is two bus journeys away from Health Sciences, so I was told that I could get a University car to take me to save time. Unfortunately a drill also needed to be taken, so we had over an hour getting the paperwork sorted out, again, so we’d be allowed to take the drill off one campus and onto another.

The car we were then given was actually an ambulance, but we were prevented from leaving the campus as the papers we had to allow the car off campus didn’t cover the ambulance, so we couldn’t leave, and I ended up taking the 2 buses.

So , having received the call at about 9am to go to Arid, I finally arrived just before 12, all for a 4km journey. I later found out that the ambulance must have the proper paperwork to leave the hospital grounds even if it is on an emergency call-out. Hopefully I’ll never need an ambulance in a hurry.

I’ve finally started to receive post again this week. I had been expecting several letters, none of which had arrived over 3 weeks after posting. I manage to persuade the new lady at the post office to let me go and have a look in the other PO boxes, and found most of my letters (to box no 3060) had been put in the wrong PO boxes, some in box 3006, some in 3070 and some more in a cupboard. I’ve still yet to find a parcel my parents sent over 3 weeks ago, so suspect it’s just gone missing. All of which is quite annoying as last year we had no problems at all with the post, but I think they now know how irritated I was by it all, so the post should be fine now. Please don’t let it put you off sending me anything, just label it clearly and let me know you’ve sent something so I can look out for it.

The final saga of the week is that I’m currently office-less. Although over the last week many of computer labs have moved over to our new building, my office has yet to move, not that with everything else going on I would have spent much time this week in the office anyway.

As I’ve probably mentioned before, the Computer Science dept is moving over to the main University campus on the other side of town. This has been planned since October or November last year and is now finally beginning to happen. What I didn’t expect was that we’d end up using tractor as transport:

As it’ll be my final few days on this campus, I took a few more photos of the campus (although I’m sure I’ll be back again). The staff lounge where I buy my machiatos and have ful for breakfast/brunch:

The inside of one of the other office and lecture hall blocks. It appears to have been modeled on a Victorian prison layout.