Article 13 Initiative - Blog

New Blog

2007-06-07T00:13:00.000-04:00

Please note that A13I has a new blog, available at http://www.11-55.org/a13iblog/.

Halfway through

2007-01-04T14:16:00.000-05:00

Once again times goes by so quickly we're already more than halfway through the second phase of the A13I. Is it Einstein who said time could be dilated?

Whatever the case be, Rafigui has got it going on here in Bobo-Dioulasso. They have been training 19 people (4 women) from 11 grassroots community associations. Some of them were literaly starting from scratch and are now able to build a website and do graphics design.

I am proud of Rafigui's performance in doing this exercice. I am finding that they have gained a lot of independence in manipulating the software since last year; they have assimilated the material well enough to be able to adequately teach it to others.

We are putting together a CD with the executable files for installing the OSS onto Windows, as well as a collection of resources for learning these software (of course including the A13I guide book!). I am lucky enough to have six months remaining in Burkina Faso, so doing a follow-up on the training will be much more convenient than it was last year. This achievement is in sync with the work I started in the summer.

What I am hearing about the situation in N'Djaména is comforting me in that the executive office of the Rafigui Newspaper is switching around soon, but they have assured their succession (unlike many African presidents, one would say!) by training the rookies in journalism and computing.

Having a few Chadian men around 24/7 is an interesting cultural experience for me, and I am finding it funny to wander about with these "tourists" while I am the one knowing the city, the people, the language, etc. Listening to them, one can obsverb cultural differences in the way of teaching; I am finding the African way more classical, less spontaneous than the North-American style I am used to. It reminds me of my courses in Hong Kong in a way! I am starting to collect pedagogical experiences and am gaining insights for the best way to convey messages to audiences in other contexts.

At the CAI we are using the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, which is based on Debian. Ubuntu is funded by a South-African millionaire and is mostly developed on the continent. Wojciech and I hesistated for a while as to whether to use Fedora Core or Ubuntu as a teaching distribution, and we finally opted for the former. I am nevertheless finding the Rafigui volunteers very enthusiastic about the idea of installing Ubuntu on their computers back home. They are advised by a professional here at the CAI that recommends this as well. It is said that tastes can not be discussed, even when speaking of Linux!

Ironically enough, we are caught this time again with a political stability problem. When we decided to set the current training in Burkina Faso rather than in Chad, it was mostly to escape an imminent coup d'état in that country. Strangely, when the Rafigui people were already on the road for coming here, there has been repeated unrest and military strifes in the capital city, Ouagadougou, that have extended to other cities (Bobo included) since then. Just like last year, there has been shootings on the night of December 31st and it is not advised that participants go back home late, which causes a problem since some of our workshops are scheduled until 22h. So far, there has been no civilian casualties in Bobo, but there are reasons to worry since the military recently freed up over 300 prisonners from the country's central prison, most of them were notorious for pillages and road blocks. People in Bobo are terrified; you can see almost no one at night, and when a military convoy passes on the road, many shop holders will hurry up to close and lock themselves up. Whereas the Chadians trainers find the situation rather funny since they are used to seeing tanks everywhere, from my part I am wondering if and how can a development project like ours affect peace, and whether it is sustainable in the case of a war outbreak.

A few points to raise:

How to balance genders? This is the question I am keeping from Chad. Women in ICTs in general seem to be an issue.
We still have the problem of Internet access; in order to download packages, one needs a connection, and although the price for an hour online in the average café in Burkina four times cheaper than in Chad, it is still largely unaffordable. Although the French Ubuntu forum is complete and user-friendly, there is a lack of offline resources for French speaking Africans to be able to properly work with Linux.

In the field again

2006-12-19T12:14:00.000-05:00

Almost a year day-to-day after Wojciech and I left for Chad, a sample of Rafigui members are taking the car across Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger to reach me in Burkina Faso for the second phase of the A13I's work with them.

After spending the summer working part time on developing the French language resources for teaching OSS to media-oriented associations, FMM thought it was time to see if its training in N'Djaména had an impact on its stakeholders.

The Rafigui members will be spending two weeks in Bobo-Dioulasso for monitoring and evaluation purposes. They will offer a restitution of the OSS training to local members of HIV AIDS associations. This will take place at the Centre d'Accès à l'Information (CAI) of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, who generously let us use their material. This will consist in three four-hours session , two four-hour sessions in each of OpenOffice Writer, GIMP and Scribus. They will also benefit from the expertise of the CAI to strenghten their abilities in Linux as well as an introduction to NVU for Web development. In addition, a four day trip in a neighbouring village is planned to conduct focus groups with a women's rotating savings and credit group, continue the shooting of a promotional video on the association's activities as well as to spend the Tabaski and New Year's Day "Burkina-style" with balafon music!

This is a preview. I think any training need some follow-up to ensure it has been well understood and appropriated. This is especially true in the case of new technologies of information and communications in Africa. There is an enormous need in community associations to be using such technology in an efficient way. I am grateful to the OS OA and Professor Leslie Chan for giving me the chance to do this work. I will be posting updates as time permits. Thanks for your interest.

Going Strong

2006-05-09T22:37:00.000-04:00

After several months of silence, the Article 13 Initiative is going back to life. With new additions to our team and interesting partnerships in perspectives, there will surely be a lot more to blog about! Stay tuned!

Back... For Now

2006-01-21T21:15:00.000-05:00

It's been a week since we returned to Canada, and I am writing this to thank everyone for their support. The trip went extremely well, and we will be wrapping up and debriefing for the next few weeks, so there won't be much news for a while.

In general, I'm extremely hopeful for the future, especially after seeing open source software and cell phones in action. Such technologies have huge potential in developing nations, especially ones having trouble with freedom of expression. Over this past week, Nepal has been in the news a great deal, and I'd just like to mention that the government has shut down the cell phone networks there. There's a good reason for this -- with phones being so prevalent, it's easy for people to use them to organize politically. It's a threat to governments that do not respect human rights. I'm happy to say that Five Minutes to Midnight is now gaining the expertise to use such technologies to help organizations and groups make media and promote human rights.

This was the first of hopefully many international trips for Five Minutes to Midnight, and we will be updating everyone as time goes on. To keep updated, subscribe to the FMM newsletter.

Going strong

2006-01-11T10:01:00.000-05:00

Hi all. I am currently writing from Addis Ababa to give a last account of the A13I events on the field (at least for now!).

I just compiled the results of a survey I gave to the Rafigui members, and I am glad to announce that they all felt as good as we did about the training FMM provided. We are also proud (and bewildered) to announce that we went beyond our expectations by giving more than 40 hours of workshop, writing a 20 page French guide about open source software and leaving Rafigui with 5 computers, a digital camera, a USB key and a printer. I am also glad to announce (!! I am out of vocabulary) that a new issue of Rafigui is on the market starting today! 250 F cfa anyone interested!

Our last week is N Djamena was of the most colourful and the most puzzling. I had the best time just observing people around me and discovering new parts of town. We were splitting our time between hard work and cultural and social events with the Rafigui people, which are amazing folks; they are moved by an uncommon drive.

After talking to several people from the media and hitting the newspapers myself, we became more and more aware of how the conflict is evolving with Sudan. It was so live to witness big political summits going on in the city about that and hearing that the police was making raids at night for sending young unemployed people to war. In a sense, we were shielded in the most quiet neighbourhood of the city and talking about technology that most Chadians will never come close to know, unfortunately... We were not really affected by the events (besides the fact that by 7 pm everybody wanted to go home!), but still. It brought us to reflexion.

Yesterday we had a press conference in which we exchanged attestations, gifts and goodbyes. I was very sad (obviously...) but I was cheered up by the enthusiasm that everybody had to continue being involved with us in the future. In fact, Rafigui will be providing training to other youth newspapers on ICT and the media, and since they are really excited about the open source technology (you would be thrilled to see how everything they do is team and discussion oriented - much more democratic than in Canada!), I am confident that it will take them somewhere unexpected.

We have good threads for the research, and we are looking forwards to look into the future possibilities for open source and the media, a combination that can make terrific positive change.

Internet Woes

2006-01-04T12:52:00.000-05:00

I don't know how the Internet here works, but it's all a bit shadey... Every second time I'm at the cyber cafe here, it's using a proxy server. It doesn't matter when I go to use the computers, either. This is a big problem right now: this "proxy server" makes it difficult, if not impossible, to access FTP, GMail, and other services... Ahh!

Progress Report

2006-01-02T14:47:00.000-05:00

Before we left for this trip, one of the things that we were warned about was that we weere being too ambitious with our goals -- 40 hours of workshops, a newspaper issue, a trip to a village (which we just returned from), among other things... Well, I'm happy to report that we are on our way to meeting our goals, and even surpassing them! Just before our trip to the village, we made a short video clip that will be shown at the local movie theatre to promote a picnic Rafigui is organizing. Below are two screenshots:

Also, here's a photo from the village -- it's a picture of an outdoor church in the village... Pretty eerie, eh?

Bourriquet, biquette, cochonnet et canasson

2006-01-02T14:33:00.000-05:00

We just came back from Kelo, a village in Southern Chad, to relax and enjoy the transition to 2006 far from Linux. As you can see from the pictures, we had a great time on the road rapping to the music of Yeleen and admiring the sceneries and the nature of the savanna. I have vivid memories of walking under the stars on unlit red dirt roads, killing a goat, swimming in cotton and playing gotcha with kids that though my hair was the funniest thing in the world. I don't have a lot of time so I am hoping the images will speak for themselves.

The project is more than half way through now and we are sharpening our research focus. More on that (and on other exciting matters) later... Happy New Year!

Pictures

2005-12-28T13:29:00.000-05:00

You'll notice that we seem to post a few blogs at once when we write... The reason is that we write these blogs on our laptops, where we don't have the Internet, and upload everything at once.

Here are two photos that I thought would interest everyone. The first one is of me washing my clothes (by hand).

The second is just kind of neat -- it's a praying mantis being held by Ouganda, one of the students here.

The workshops are going well -- we've done over 12 hours so far, and going strong. We'll be taking a break in about two days to travel to a small village here, though.

Late Night Linux

2005-12-28T13:25:00.000-05:00

Wow... Talk about unlucky break. We've been battling with a Dell computer here for a few days now. It has been donated by a French organization, and I am installing Fedora Core 4 on it. If it wasn't for the System Restore CD. But now I know it's possible to install -- it's just taking a long time. Why? Well... Last night it didn't work until I fixed a partition problem with the aforementioned CD. This morning, we had no electricity for a few hours (this may be a regular problem). After the electricity returned, we ran workshops, and then I left Fedora Core to install while we went to see a movie (most of it is automatic). When I returned, the computer was turned off (probably an electrical surge). Then I started again. These installations take up to three or four hours, as the computers are old. Sure enough, with 15 minutes left into the installation, we had to pack up to leave. I could have stayed (and am staying there now)... Why? Not because I'm waiting for 15 minutes to pass, but because I pulled out the plug and shut down the computer. Now I'm doing a lighter installation that should be done soon.

Here's another interesting tidbit about cell phones, which I seem to be obsessed about. There is a cell phone ring that sounds like fairy music, and this ring is everywhere, literally. In North America, this ring is heard when people turn off their cell phones (apparently, some phones don't have an option to silence it). I've heard it in economics class, at IBM, and have talked to quite a few people about how annoying it is. Sure enough, it's in N'Djamena as well. We saw a movie today and believe it or not, in a sandy, open-air theatre with a tree growing in the middle, with a large part of the audience standing, and with a smaller part of the audience driving motorcycles inside the actual theatre (it's really just a field with a wall around it), I heard the cell phone tune.

I'll leave it for you to decide if this is globalization at its finest, or a North American pest following me around as I try to install Linux on old computers.

And just to show how well our first workshop went, here is a photo taken and uploaded by Denis, one of the students.

teacher s calling

2005-12-28T13:05:00.000-05:00

We have been more quiet in the past couple of days and have been focusing on delivering the ICT formation to our 15 students. So far there is a lot of enthusiasm; people ask questions, they get involved in their teams and, in fact, many of them do overtime. We needed a little bit of adaptation to deal with Africa time, but overall everybody is learning a lot, myself included. Wojciech and I often stay up late at night to plan for the morning session, an effort that is compensated by the daily afternoon nap.

I have gotten closer to the girls in the group recently. I got to go to the market with them and to prepare certain meals, which was very interesting. We had good discussions about education, which is often hard to complete here due to the frequent and long lasting strikes. It is also fascinating to look at the media here. I find this trip an amazing occasion for consolidating and fostering new interests, and I am looking forwards to our editing session tomorrow and our trip to Kelo for the new year.

Sorry for those who think my writing is too adjective-hungry; all I do is try to give the best account of what is happening here...

Media creation

2005-12-26T14:43:00.000-05:00

Time to talk about work. We have hit the task our second day here, and so far we have been furthering the media aspect of our project.

We had a redaction conference on Saturday. Rafigui is very professional in doing their work, and it is neat to see how they interact in a formal group seetings. It encourages us even more, because we really support what they are doing, especially the aspect interviewing local youth.

We got settled on the task distribution for the writing of the articles for the special 12 page issue of Rafigui, which is planned to be finalized before our departure and published at the beginning of February. I am working on articles on two craftsmen from N’Djaména and on technology and the media. Everybody is writing poems and texts, and we will be editing the bulk of it all together on the 29th.

We also had two nice surprises; before we left, we were hoping to appear on TéléTchad with a friend of Rafigui called Hassane Sila Ben Bakari and to meet with a famous journalist for human rights (Sy Benga Gali) as well as with the fourth most powerful person of the country, the Vice-Secretary of the Assembly, Ms. Loom. To these added up two new small projects, which both aim at promoting a social event that will be held near the Chari River in January. We will be producing a series of posters and a short video clip to invite youth to get involved with Rafigui, the latter which will be played as a previews at the local theater.

The dynamism of the media aspect is setting the scene for the Open Source ICT training starting tomorrow. More on that later...

Cell Phone Networks and Workshops

2005-12-26T14:41:00.000-05:00

Wow... This will be a short blog post because the Cyber Cafe has a slow connection and all I have is 30 minutes (err... 7 minutes left). We ran our first workshop today on digital cameras and a very basic introduction to Linux. People were very positive, and I think we did well. The two of us have to debrief, but I know we learned a lot and I'll report back soon.

In other news, I think I learned how cell phone networks work in Chad. Canada could learn a thing or two about allowing people to share phones through switching SIM cards and giving every phone the possibility to with any carrier. Granted, here the system only has two carriers and the only plan seems to be "pay as you go".

I will write more next time -- my apologies for such a short post.

Cultural Smoothie

2005-12-26T14:30:00.000-05:00

We got here in the right time; while Chadians are complaining of the coldness of the winter, Wojciech and I enjoy the steady sunny 25 C we get every day! This week, N’Djaména was hosting an African festival that featured a large number of local artists and organizations. As we were browsing for new musical and visual discoveries, we got to meet with staff from NGOs who really got us seeing ‘International Development’ in motion. For example, we were lucky enough to discuss of a CARE AIDS project dealing with mobile truck drivers, about a sanitation project by the municipality to encourage the population to compost and recycle, and with a women’s agricultural cooperative that was also offering rotating savings and microcredit.

The first Christmas without snow also held its load of surprises. In opposition to the situation in Canada, Christmas here is much more of a community rather than a family thing (a little bit like New Year’s Eve). So, on the 24th, we got a genuine réveillon with all the Rafigui team, and then we went out in town to try out some local beer (the label of the Gala does not say anything about volume and alcohol concentration) and groove (a lot of souk, coupé-décallé, R&B and hip-hop). Good times...

A bit about N’Djaména. We have been going around in cabs several times so far and we saw as many cell phones ads as we would have in the Toronto subway. The dusty streets are filled with vendors, people carrying large loads of straw or wood, and couples riding bicycles and motorbikes. Youth graffities everywhere, and there is a lot of it related sexual health. The trees are very nice, and there are a lot of public venues, especially for playing soccer. There is a lot of military around, and it was stricking to see a pick-up filled with masqued police holding machine guns going around on Christmas day. We fortunately have yet to experience bad luck (knock on wood).

Today, we went to visit my friend Mini-Mini’s family in the suburbs. They are very welcoming, and we took tons of funny pictures. All in all, we are still in good shape, food is good, visits are enlightening and the future looks bright.

Christmas and anecdotes

2005-12-24T13:06:00.001-05:00

I never thought I would ever go to Newfoundland and double check for myself that the U.S. Military has a base there... But after KLM announced our Boeing 747 had a gas jam and that we would thus have to stop in Gander and in Ireland for refulling, which meant that we were certainly going to miss our transfer to Addis Ababa on Thursday morning.

After using my extensive network of contacts, I realized that there were chances that Wojciech and I were going to be stuck in Amsterdam for a couple of days and maybe even spend Christmas there. This recognition made me understand the importance of flexibility in our field, and I must admit feeling so helpless challenged me to double efforts to make this project even better and that, on its practical, human, technical, ideological and cultural sides.

We were lucky enough to be among the people who were reconnected quickly. Soon we were in Paris, and soon also were we on a luxury Air France flight to N’Djamena, along with a surprisingly high number of Europeans travelling to Chad for a variety of purposes. After watching cartoons on the Klu Klux Klan and watching a beautiful sunset over the Saharan desert, we were among a crowd of husted young Chadian soldiers doing their best to keep people in lines to get their passports stamped and get out of the airport without suffering the wrath of the power-hungry customs agents.

It was very beautiful to see faces of 10 people from Rafigui waiving at us from the stairs on the other side of the big fence that marked the bondary between Chad and international space. We were 14 hours early and had only called some time ago to mention it, and yet they all totally lived up to the reputation of the warmth African welcome.

I was expecting blasts of harmattan in my eyes and children yelling ‘nassara’ at me at all corners. Instead I found hectic traffic, an overpopulation of goats (which I like) and a handful of new friends. We are serious in getting the project doing and yet very sensitive to the goal of getting the most out of this unique set of circumstances that drew us together.

I am glad to announce that we have been through the whole set of administrative procedures that secure our 20-days trip in N’Djamena, and have had our first official fruitful meeting tonight, after which Wojciech and I stayed up very late. Although we are tired and are not looking forwards to 4 am for the typical Muslim prayer, at this point we at FMM and Rafigui are very positive about the outcomes and outreach of the A13I, and we feel we made today the beginning of a life-changing journey.

"Dependency Hell"

2005-12-24T13:06:00.000-05:00

We've spent just over 36 hours in Chad now, and the technical research is well under way. Even before actually leaving for the country, a great deal was learned with regards to installing software packages onto Linux without an Internet connection. Realizing that N'Djamena has little Internet access, we wanted to create a package that will speak to media-based youth NGOs in developing nations, regardless of their ability to access high-bandwidth connections.

The idea of such a package is now more focused, as I am convinced that not only does one need such a package, but one needs to be able to fit it onto one CD that either runs without installation (like a Linux LiveCD) or installs with as little instructions from the user as possible. Luckily, Linuix is already relatively easy to install, but installing custom packages without the ability to connect to the Internet is depressingly difficult. I learned the true meaning of "Dependency Hell" before the trip. The term is used to describe the installation of software that required the multiple downloading of packages and files. APT, YUM, and .package files are all made for Linux, and done so in such a way as to connect to the Internet if a required package is missing. One’s only other option is to compile from the source code or download the packages. AbiWord, for example, a simple text editor required a total of 28 packages to be updated or installed before running properly. Needless to say, I gave up on the installation after downloading two, and being informed that a third was missing. I can't imagine what one would do if the only Internet access one had was through a high-cost cyber cafe, like Rafigui in Chad.

With the above in mind, I'm also reconsidering the value that something like WinLibre has for such a project. We're currently working with five laptops here in N'Djamena, and had the potential to work with two more. In most cases, the laptops were not powerful enough to run Linux and GNOME or KDE, graphics engines for Linux, are too dependent on high end computers to actually run on something previously working with Windows 98. WinLibre, however, or a new package taking into account the idea that most organizations don’t have high-end computers, would be extremely useful. AbiWord, for example, can go a long way if you’re writing a report on an old computer, but the same can’t necessarily be said for OpenOfice.

One major problem that we have yet to really address (and I think this is true for most organizations and businesses) is how to provide cheap and effective technical support without being dependent on the Internet or long-distance calls. As I've learned today, calling Canada isn’t easy and was by far the most expensive thing I’ve done since getting on the plane in Toronto. One cannot expect a grassroots organization to call me when their computer is down. Likewise, it would be difficult for them to use the Internet, due to the slow speed and expensive bandwidth. This is a problem that we may not address in our research, but we’ll definitely be looking into it as time goes on.

Pulling it all together

2005-12-21T08:44:00.000-05:00

Welcome to our blog!

10 more hours to go, and we will be off for our journey in the Atlantic sky. I am more excited than ever, especially after the 3-day steering session that our team had last week. It is amazing to talk on the phone with Rafigui members and know that they are waiting for us.

I am pulling some elements together for our research this morning, and I am looking forwards for the two day plane ride in which we will finalize the aspects of the open-source training.

Quelle aventure!

Welcome

2005-12-21T04:23:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the Article 13 Blog! This blog will follow Emanuele and I through our trip to N'Djamena Chad, where we will be working on a Five Minutes to Midnight project with Rafigui. The project itself will deal with open source software and its use in developing nations and media projects. Learn more about it here.

This blog will contain updates from our trip, both in terms of our research, photos, and even personal experiences. Please feel free to read and post your comments! Normally we would create a blog on our own site, but due to a lack of time (we are preparing the computers for our trip), we've decided to use Blogger instead.