What A Week!

Once again, I’ll preface this update by apologizing for the long wait between updates. The month long “one a day” streak from when I first arrived in Nepal is a speck on the horizon at the moment; I haven’t been taking photos lately and I haven’t had the time to write new updates. Once again, I’ll cover the past week in just one update.

Two weeks remain on this project: today is the 2nd of December, I leave Nepal on the 17th. Since the last update, I’ve taken the time to individually test each motherboard. Out of the box, one didn’t work (jumper cable was incorrectly set) and another seemed to be broken. By chance, it was the second motherboard I was testing, so I had fears that 50% of the boards would be defective. Luckily, it turned out I had just forgot to insert the RAM. Uhh…moving on.

Shyami was intrigued by the boxes. He pointed at asked, "computer?". Smart kid.

The day after testing the motherboards and putting them in antistatic bags, the cases arrived at Tribhuvan International Airport. Great! The components were coming in to Nepal bit by bit, and I would have plenty of time to assemble the computers and get them in to schools. Two days later the monitors arrived, and once again I checked each one bit-by-bit, ensuring they all worked. One monitor inexplicably had no video output: the screen was pure white whenever I turned it on. This was fixed by unplugging the power adapter for ten seconds and reinserting it. Odd…

That was four days ago. After that, unfortunately, things ground to a halt. The RAM hadn’t shipped yet and the HDDs had left Shanghai a week before without any news from the EMS tracking website. Was the plane delayed? Were they sitting in a cargo hold in Beirut? Had they disappeared off the face of the Earth? Thankfully, this morning I check the EMS website again and the Hard Drives had arrived at the Kathmandu General Post Office. Not sure what this means, really — why aren’t they in customs at the airport? Will we be able to pick them up? Will we get charged an exorbitant fee for importing them?

I am currently scheduled to leave Kathmandu and go to Pokhara to distribute five computers each to three rural schools. Waiting for RAM is not an option. I will be diverting the RAM to Hong Kong for the next leg of this project in Ghana, and we will buy RAM locally. Because the RAM is far more expensive locally, this means cutting back from 2GB each to 1GB per computer — and paying an extra $5 USD on top for each unit. Not cheap. The upside of this is that I will still be able to bring fifteen computers to Pokhara on Saturday. This change of plans seems to be the only way that I can stick to the plan — although it means the computers will have less performance at a higher cost.

Today I gave a demonstration to Mr. Mahabir Pun, who was not only keen on using the computers in his schools, but in his servers as a part of his Telemedicine project. Two of the three schools in Pokhara that I will be visiting are part of the Himanchal foundation. Mr. Pun’s work is amazing — in order to provide internet access to rural clinics, he uses high gain antennas and WiFi technology to beam access miles away. And by “miles”, I don’t mean one or two, as in the Mile of Wifi we setup: his longest wireless connection is from Nagarkot to a base station forty seven kilometers away which then connects to a rural health clinic (another few dozen miles away).

His schools are a perfect candidates for this project, for a number of reasons: firstly, they are quite remote — from Kathmandu, I will be taking a seven hour bus ride to Pokhara. From there, I will be taking a four hour bus ride, followed by an eight hour hike. Because of their remote nature, on most days electricity access is shaky at best; often times not being accessible at all. Even with the remoteness of this school, they will have internet access provided by Mr. Pun’s wireless intranet project: the link speed to Pokhara will be in the range of 30mb/s, which is then connected to a central location in Kathmandu via a 2mb/s fiber line that Mr. Pun had installed himself. While the students won’t be using much of this 2mb/s line, they will certainly have the capacity for email and using the internet as an educational resource. I think it is amazing that despite the isolation this school faces, they will have a top-notch computer lab with internet connectivity. With solar energy and wireless internet access, internet-connected computer labs can be built in the most remote of areas, without the need to erect any unsightly towers to carry power cables or telephone lines. I think this is a great step forward for the development of rural areas, whether it is in Nepal or Ghana or anywhere else in the world: the access to information technology is no longer shackled by proximity to a large city or town.

Another update is that I will be selling prints and books. This will be done online, although pick ups on photos up to 8×10″ are available at Walmart, Duane Reade, Meijer, and a host of other stores throughout the US. Shipping is also possible (both the US and international shipping) on prints up to 20×30″. In addition I will be bringing prints to Hong Kong this Christmas. The available photographs are in this Flickr set, although it is entirely possible that I have missed some. If there are any photos from my time in Nepal that you would like to have a print of, please let me know! All proceeds from these prints will go towards funding computers for my trip to Ghana next month. Please email me with your address and the requested photographs (and sizes) and I can send you the prints via UPS. Here are the prices, in USD:

4×6″ : $1.25
5×7″ : $2.50
8×10″ : $5.00
11×14″ : $10.00
12×18″ : $20.00
16×20″ : $35.00
20×30″ : $50.00

Well, I think that just about covers it. I will try and take a number of photographs of my time distributing the computers over the next two weeks to make up for these boring text-centric updates!

That’s all for now.
Charles