Today dad and I woke up early to go out and meet Kiran for a tour around two schools. We left the hotel around 8:30AM and went straight to Kiran’s, taking his jeep from his textile shop to two rural schools. One of the schools was on the crest of a hill neighboring the ridge line we hiked two days ago, so we could see the distance almost from start to finish.
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The kids attend an assembly at the start of the school day. What a view!
Dad talking with the vice principal of the school
As we were leaving, the others went on and I stayed with the school’s computer teacher. He had already shown me the laptops HKIS donated while talking with the school’s principal, but he also wanted to show me the school’s existing computer lab, which has a number of computers and monitors already. However, the UPS shown here can only power the computers for ten minutes once the electricity shuts off (the computer draws 350W). During the winter season, they often go weeks without enough electricity to even turn the computers on. One solution would be to either donate or sell ten or so computers to this school and bring these ATX tower computers down from the mountain into Pokhara or Kathmandu where the electricity grids are slightly more reliable. It’s a shame the school can’t make better usage of the computers they already have, considering they have a teacher knowledgeable on basic usage of Windows XP and skills in programming (he teaches students Java and Basic, if I understood correctly).
Click for the full 3778 x 1000 image.
After the visit, we drove back to Pokhara to visit another school before we returned to meet Jagan for the technology demo. In addition to the laptops HKIS left, there was a pamphlet with information about Mr. Friedericks, Ms. Manuel, and all the students from the HKIS interim posted on the wall above the laptops. So surreal to see the News and Views / Broadcast Journalism wall mural … in Nepal. The computers are still working and in use at this school, although one of the batteries is not charging properly, and the 20GB hard drives are nearly full. I’ll see if I can clone all the data from the existing drives onto new ones before I leave Nepal, as I am considering coming back to Pokhara — there is a lot of work to be done here!
After this we returned to Jagan’s workshop for the tech demo, which went very well. The questions were interesting and I received a number of business cards from computer professionals wanting to get in touch with me once the presentation was over.
Thanks to dad for taking this picture, although Ubuntu on the projector would have been more representative of the project: Win7 is only on here to show that it can run.
After the tech demo, dad and I returned to the hotel to prepare for the trek we are going on tomorrow (which reminds me, what am I doing up at 11:00?!). We will be incommunicado throughout tomorrow, arriving back in Pokhara late Thursday night (taking a bus back into Kathmandu Friday morning, bright and early!)
That’s all for now.
Charles
I was born in London, England. At the age of ten, I moved to Hong Kong, which opened up a whole new part of the world: Asia. Since then, I have enjoyed traveling to different locales around the world. Having graduated from High School, I am taking a gap year to work on a computer project in Nepal, and later a cultural immersion trip in Ghana. This is the blog I am using to keep the world notified. 
I am so happy your are having a fun and productive time. By the way, you look very handsome with your new haircut!