The last keynote was by Prof Thomas Sterling, of Indiana University, where in a
wide-ranging retrospective of HPC technology, he talked at the end about :-
“A brief discussion of early attempts of memory-centric computing
such as SIMD and PIM will motivate revolutionary concepts of the
future. Questions from the audience will be welcome assuming remote
communication technology permits.”
The Centre for High Performance Computing in Cape Town has an annual meeting
to showcase flagship projects and listen to other people’s experiences at
similarcentres around the world.
I am contracting at CHPC, and have
bloggedbefore about
it.
Dr Happy Sithole is director of the Centre for High Performance
Computing (CHPC), an initiative funded by the Departmentof Science and
Technology (DST) and managed by the
Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research(CSIR). He opened the Plenary
session, discussing High Performance Computing and Data curation - the
latter being slipped in as a target for the next big project at CHPC, a
petabyte-scale database facility.
I have recently been contracting at the Centre for High
Performance Computing. This is just an update on how to map the
particular problem I have onto the computing cluster.
First steps
It is an explanation of how to get to the much easier job of splitting
the main task up into bite-sized pieces that can be fed independently via
a job submission system called
MOAB.
Task description
Each day satellites
MODIS(NASA) and
MERIS (ESA) do afew passes
of a polar orbit over our region of interest, African coastal andinland
waters. The (large amounts) of daily data arrive via a
dedicated satellite link - about 1 Gig every day. They are in “swaths”,
about 20 or so files from 10Meg to 800Meg.
I have some history in parallel processing, mostly
with Inmos,
a British microelectronics company that built the
Transputer, a
ground-breaking microprocessor of the 1980s. I had been looking
for an opportunity to work at the CHPC for a while, and took
the chance when an opening arrived via the clug-work mailing
list run by the
Cape Town Linux Users Group.
The last keynote was by Prof Thomas Sterling, of Indiana University, where in a
wide-ranging retrospective of HPC technology, he talked at the end about :-
“A brief discussion of early attempts of memory-centric computing
such as SIMD and PIM will motivate revolutionary concepts of the
future. Questions from the audience will be welcome assuming remote
communication technology permits.”
The last keynote was by Prof Thomas Sterling, of Indiana University, where in a
wide-ranging retrospective of HPC technology, he talked at the end about :-
“A brief discussion of early attempts of memory-centric computing
such as SIMD and PIM will motivate revolutionary concepts of the
future. Questions from the audience will be welcome assuming remote
communication technology permits.”
The last keynote was by Prof Thomas Sterling, of Indiana University, where in a
wide-ranging retrospective of HPC technology, he talked at the end about :-
“A brief discussion of early attempts of memory-centric computing
such as SIMD and PIM will motivate revolutionary concepts of the
future. Questions from the audience will be welcome assuming remote
communication technology permits.”
The last keynote was by Prof Thomas Sterling, of Indiana University, where in a
wide-ranging retrospective of HPC technology, he talked at the end about :-
“A brief discussion of early attempts of memory-centric computing
such as SIMD and PIM will motivate revolutionary concepts of the
future. Questions from the audience will be welcome assuming remote
communication technology permits.”
The last keynote was by Prof Thomas Sterling, of Indiana University, where in a
wide-ranging retrospective of HPC technology, he talked at the end about :-
“A brief discussion of early attempts of memory-centric computing
such as SIMD and PIM will motivate revolutionary concepts of the
future. Questions from the audience will be welcome assuming remote
communication technology permits.”
The last keynote was by Prof Thomas Sterling, of Indiana University, where in a
wide-ranging retrospective of HPC technology, he talked at the end about :-
“A brief discussion of early attempts of memory-centric computing
such as SIMD and PIM will motivate revolutionary concepts of the
future. Questions from the audience will be welcome assuming remote
communication technology permits.”
I work at the Electron Microscope Unit, at the University of Cape Town.
This uses electron microscopes, which are different instruments to
the Xray microscopy gear below.
X-Ray facilities require
Synchrotrons which are
expensive enough to be national facilities. We are using the UK national
facility at Harwell. It was formerly the Atomic Energy Research
Establishment, which was created after the Second World War on the site
of RAF Harwell.
I work at the Electron Microscope Unit, at the University of Cape Town.
This uses electron microscopes, which are different instruments to
the Xray microscopy gear below.
X-Ray facilities require
Synchrotrons which are
expensive enough to be national facilities. We are using the UK national
facility at Harwell. It was formerly the Atomic Energy Research
Establishment, which was created after the Second World War on the site
of RAF Harwell.
I work at the Electron Microscope Unit, at the University of Cape Town.
This uses electron microscopes, which are different instruments to
the Xray microscopy gear below.
X-Ray facilities require
Synchrotrons which are
expensive enough to be national facilities. We are using the UK national
facility at Harwell. It was formerly the Atomic Energy Research
Establishment, which was created after the Second World War on the site
of RAF Harwell.
While backpacking across the Transkei in South Africa, I stayed at
Mdumbi Backpackers close to Coffee Bay,
in the Mankosi Administrative Area, a rural traditional community within the
Nyandeni Local Municipality in the Province of the Eastern Cape.
I had been made aware of an innovative wireless mesh network called
Zenzeleni Community Telecoms by a friend in Cape Town,
Michael Graaf, and took a look around. Zenzeleni translates to “Do it yourself” in isiXhosa.
Two friends of mine recently purchased iPads - Vernon asked me, as a
computer fundi, to help him out on the installation. I always think it is"
useful to document first-time experiences - one adapts and forgets so
easily.
Old timer
I have used Linux pretty much exclusively for the last 20 years. I have
a pragmatic approach to my friends who use Windows - I have followed
Microsoft’s offerings from Windows98 through XP - I have an XP user’s
understanding of the later versions of Windows.
The Centre for High Performance Computing in Cape Town has an annual meeting
to showcase flagship projects and listen to other people’s experiences at
similarcentres around the world.
I am contracting at CHPC, and have
bloggedbefore about
it.
Dr Happy Sithole is director of the Centre for High Performance
Computing (CHPC), an initiative funded by the Departmentof Science and
Technology (DST) and managed by the
Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research(CSIR). He opened the Plenary
session, discussing High Performance Computing and Data curation - the
latter being slipped in as a target for the next big project at CHPC, a
petabyte-scale database facility.
I have recently been contracting at the Centre for High
Performance Computing. This is just an update on how to map the
particular problem I have onto the computing cluster.
First steps
It is an explanation of how to get to the much easier job of splitting
the main task up into bite-sized pieces that can be fed independently via
a job submission system called
MOAB.
Task description
Each day satellites
MODIS(NASA) and
MERIS (ESA) do afew passes
of a polar orbit over our region of interest, African coastal andinland
waters. The (large amounts) of daily data arrive via a
dedicated satellite link - about 1 Gig every day. They are in “swaths”,
about 20 or so files from 10Meg to 800Meg.
I have some history in parallel processing, mostly
with Inmos,
a British microelectronics company that built the
Transputer, a
ground-breaking microprocessor of the 1980s. I had been looking
for an opportunity to work at the CHPC for a while, and took
the chance when an opening arrived via the clug-work mailing
list run by the
Cape Town Linux Users Group.
Associative memory is capable of performing highly parallel
arithmetic computation on large datasets in constant time.
Associative
memory
is a type of computer memory that is accessed by virtue of its
contents, not its location. Rather than saying What is the value
at location 42? it says All memory locations with the value 43 please
stand up.
Why is this useful, and when is it used ?
It is used whenever a fast search must be made through a list of
candidates- for a
CPUcache, or a fast
network switch.
I visited Gabon for the last
two weeks of May 2009 by invitation of Yoan Anguilet, who has a business
and NGO there promoting ICT and Science literacy in schools. We had met
previously when setting up
AUST, a new university in
Nigeria. Yoan had invited me to set up a similar system at two schools in
Gabon, as a precursor to a larger effort later in the year.
Flight
Our flight was delayed for 2 hours, circling over Libreville, as we had
the misfortune of arriving at the same time as the body of the
recently-deceased First Lady, Edith Lucie
Bongo. Edith
featured prominently in the next few days, as most of Libreville was
closed and there was blanket TV coverage of the state funeral. In fact,
we were asked to come to pay respects to the First Lady on the first
evening at the presidential palace - my luggage had not arrived, so I was
in my travelling clothes..
Communication has come a long way in a century - not always at the
customers convenience.
Andy has started a blog. Why blog, when my website is so out of date ?
To answer this, I have to do a review of communication technology of
the last century, starting with the
letter.
I guess I could go back further, but the letter was the first convenient
communication at a distance.
The letter
Greatly enabled by
RowlandHill
and his sender-pays postage stamp, it enabled convenient communication at
a distance. Sender’s convenience - Receiver’s convenience. Latency -
days to a week. Cost - one penny.
While backpacking across the Transkei in South Africa, I stayed at
Mdumbi Backpackers close to Coffee Bay,
in the Mankosi Administrative Area, a rural traditional community within the
Nyandeni Local Municipality in the Province of the Eastern Cape.
I had been made aware of an innovative wireless mesh network called
Zenzeleni Community Telecoms by a friend in Cape Town,
Michael Graaf, and took a look around. Zenzeleni translates to “Do it yourself” in isiXhosa.
Wikimedia projects, including the flagship English Wikipedia, have
been restricted in access to people with internet access.
kiwix is opening that up, via its offline
reader.
I have blogged
before
about kiwix - this article is an effort to tell other people how to do
the same.
Kiwix is a cross-platform reader of zim
files. Zim is an open,
standardised file format to store Wiki content efficiently for offline
usage. It is compressed (LZMA), with fast resolution of inter-article
links. It is simple (one file), and optimised to run on really small
devices like phones.
Kiwix, an offline wikipedia selection, is installed at Kwena Malapo school.
I have blogged before about
creating offline copies of wikipedia for use in school computer labs that
do not have internet access.
Wikimedia, the umbrella organisation behind wikipedia and other
related projects, is also keenly interested in offline uses of wikipedia.
From November through January, the
offline taskforce
had a series of IRC meetings where we attempted to answer questions
relating to the use of these offline copies. We came up with four
recommendations,
one of which addressed schools, and another cellphones.
I visited Gabon for the last
two weeks of May 2009 by invitation of Yoan Anguilet, who has a business
and NGO there promoting ICT and Science literacy in schools. We had met
previously when setting up
AUST, a new university in
Nigeria. Yoan had invited me to set up a similar system at two schools in
Gabon, as a precursor to a larger effort later in the year.
Flight
Our flight was delayed for 2 hours, circling over Libreville, as we had
the misfortune of arriving at the same time as the body of the
recently-deceased First Lady, Edith Lucie
Bongo. Edith
featured prominently in the next few days, as most of Libreville was
closed and there was blanket TV coverage of the state funeral. In fact,
we were asked to come to pay respects to the First Lady on the first
evening at the presidential palace - my luggage had not arrived, so I was
in my travelling clothes..
Abuja, Nigeria, the capital
city, suffers from lack of infrastructure. Potholes, no landlines, power
cuts every day.
Nigeria as a tourist
In 1992 as a tourist on an overland truck, I travelled through
Nigeria from the
Cameroon border in the
north, down through the city of
Kano and its magnificent
central market, to the bustling and wild city of
Lagos. In Nigeria “Benin”
is a western province - the sleepy francophone country to the west is
pronounced differently and must be identified as the republic of
benin.
I have posted about AIMS before.
The bread-and-butter of AIMS is a post-graduate diploma course for
African Mathematicians. This broadens the role of the institute to
include research. AIMS is set by the sea in a lovely location in
Muizenberg, and is the brainchild of Neil
Turok, who last year
won a TED
prize for this
and his work on cosmology. TED listens to wishes from its winners -
Neil’s declared wish is that the next Einstein come from Africa.
Habeni Primary school is in Zululand, and has recently acquired a
computer lab. Courtesy of Kelsey
Wood and Wizzy Digital
Courier, it also has Internet.
Education
In Africa, children walk to school. In South Africa, where I am
based, schools and clinics are the only large buildings in the rural
areas, and are thus easily spotted with their long roofs. The minimum
requirement for a school are rooms, teachers, blackboards, and students.
I have come across many schools that have no more than those basics.
Wikipedia has started its regular fund drive with a video from the
founder, Jimmy Wales. He starts by
expounding the knowledge-for-everyone mantra of wikipedia, and in
particular promoting wikipedias in third world languages like Swahili.
The video finishes up with clips of people around the world talking
about wikipedia, how it has benefited them, and how they contribute,
including people typing articles in on cellphones ..
There is a clip of me, at Lavender Hill Secondary school (at a
township close to Muizenberg more renowned for its gangs) talking about
my placement of a complete copy of wikipedia down at schools that have no
daytime internet access, and also the Lab administrator Shanaaz talking
about her wish for more content on the Afrikaans
wikipedia.
As an update on the Wizzy project, a fair
bit has been happening.
In partnership with Inkululeko
Technologies and Amobia Wireless
Access, Wizzy is providing its email
solution for a number of schools provisioned by Inkululeko and Amobia.
Inkululeko are the spinoff from the
Shuttleworth Foundation and
their efforts to put computer labs down in South African schools, and
Amobia are a local Wireless ISP.
The labs that Inkululeko put down are Thin
Client labs, using old, recycled
computers in front ofthe learners coupled to a large Linux server that
runs the applications and fileserver. Wizzy provides a local mailserver
installation, a squirrelmail
IMAP client useable from a browser, and UUCP connectivity to the main
mail server hosted by Amobia. Authentication is provided by LDAP.
The One Laptop per Child project has
got a lot of attention, has prototype hardware, and a lot of open source
software. What are its prospects in Africa ?
Antoine managed
to get one of these to show off as he is writing
code behind the ‘view source’ button, and
Morgan and Jonathan
of our local Linux uses group have all blogged
about it.
There are a lot of
things to be said about the OLPC project. The first thing to note is that
it is not a new initiative - there have been others, under different
names, for a long time. Seymour
Papert invented
Logo,
a programming language targeted at children, and Alan
Kay was the conceiver of
the Dynabook concept
which defined the basics of the laptop computer.
I just went to a conference last week discussing Internet in
education in South Africa. I went with George Solomon, someone
I met though a foundation in the States that sponsors computers
in schools here, through the African American Foreign Relations Council.
They installed 30 486-class into Esangweni Secondary school, in
Kyalitsha, one of Cape Towns black townships. They all have 16M RAM,
and Windows95. There is also a Server computer, currently unused.
I went down to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, for a few days last
week. Rather than deal with the hassle of vehicle papers, I left my bike
in South Africa (White River, at the house of a motorcycling friend I
met in South Africa a couple of months ago) and headed to Mozambique
by the minibus taxis that all the black people use.
Mozambique has been in civil was for much of the last 20 years, so
the infrastructure is creaky to non-existent. Water is only available in
Maputo for half the day, as they lose too much underground otherwise.
Power cuts are frequent.
A few more impressions after being here a few days -
Even the rural areas seem relatively affluent compared to
rural South Africa. Much, I am sure, because of the low
population here.
Large British influence here - Barclays bank, many ex-pats,
Universal English, little or no Africaanse.
The government is a mess. The King, who did not like the last
constitution, and so summarily dissolved the government and
put together a ’traditional’ system, that basically means he
(and his mother) have complete power. There is a very slow
process right now to design a new constitution - don’t hold
your breath. Political parties are banned.
Yesterday I went to a ’turning of the sod’ for a new High school here in
Eshowe, which will be paid for by a number of Spanish NGOs
(non-government organisation) and managed by the Eshowe Christian
Action group. The ceremony was at a nearby primary school, and included
some good zulu dancing by the kids.
Today there was an opening of the first skills centre / technical college
in zululand, which cost R2.5M for the first stage, funded by AngloAmerican,
a huge mining conglomerate, and a number of smaller donors, like the
British Consulate in Durban, and Rotary International from Eshowe and
Germany.
Zululand is the political stronghold of the Inkatha Freedom Party, and
Buthelezi, its leader. He is related to the King of Zululand, who
owns/administers most of the land, and who is a direct descendent
of Shaka Zulu, the (quite recent) founder of the Zulu nation.
Zululand is a place of rolling hills, with traditional Zulu Kraals dotted
all over it. Ulundi is the capital, but is a small place. I am staying in
Eshowe, the oldest city here, but Eshowe is smaller than Richards
bay, a large seaport that ships more tonnage than Durban, primarily
coal, timber (wattle and Gum) and sugar (which is grown everywhere).
There is also a large, new, aluminium smelting plant there.
While backpacking across the Transkei in South Africa, I stayed at
Mdumbi Backpackers close to Coffee Bay,
in the Mankosi Administrative Area, a rural traditional community within the
Nyandeni Local Municipality in the Province of the Eastern Cape.
I had been made aware of an innovative wireless mesh network called
Zenzeleni Community Telecoms by a friend in Cape Town,
Michael Graaf, and took a look around. Zenzeleni translates to “Do it yourself” in isiXhosa.
Swaziland is landlocked country of a similar flavor to Lesotho,
with small roads, a blanket speed limit of 80Km/hr, which is
completely ignored. There are two big towns, Manzini and the
capital Mbabane, both of which are much nicer than Maseru, the
capital of Lesotho. The road between them is now being upgraded,
but was listed in the Guiness book of records as the most
accident-prone anywhere. It has the Royal residences, all the
big hotels, the (tiny, but good) Mlilwane game reserve, and
the Why Not disco and strip bar. The traffic .. well, allowable
blood alchohol levels are twice anywhere else, and the road is
two, sometimes three lane, and where else do you need to go
in Swaziland ?
I stopped by the home of Rhodes University - a quaint, very
British town in the Eastern cape, originally founded by settlers
who were bought in as a ‘buffer’ between warring factions at
that time.
The University is in the town, and has a beautiful campus.
I had been corresponding with a couple of people who were the
original founders of Internet in South Africa. I saw the lab,
and the FreeBSD machine that originally had a Fidonet connection,
and then a 9600 Baud dialup connection to the States.
They now have their connection through a commercial provider
in Johannesburg, and it is a 128K connection for all South Africas
Universities. That translates to a connection about two orders
of magnitude slower than a comparable US university.
While backpacking across the Transkei in South Africa, I stayed at
Mdumbi Backpackers close to Coffee Bay,
in the Mankosi Administrative Area, a rural traditional community within the
Nyandeni Local Municipality in the Province of the Eastern Cape.
I had been made aware of an innovative wireless mesh network called
Zenzeleni Community Telecoms by a friend in Cape Town,
Michael Graaf, and took a look around. Zenzeleni translates to “Do it yourself” in isiXhosa.
The ANC has no term limits for its president, but South Africa’s constitution
has a two term limit for the president of the country, and to avoid two centres
of power the ANC has kept their president, the de-facto president of the country,
to two terms as well.
I am reminded of Winnie Mandela’s response when asked for comment
about Thabo Mbeki’s re-election bid in 1999 - she said he “deserved
another chance”. I am sorry - “deserve” is a strange modern word like
“it’s not fair!” -creation of a concept that did not exist 100 years
ago. When running for election the more important concept is what the
electorate “deserves”, not the incumbent running for re-election.
The African National Congress has led South Africa since 1994 - the start
of majority rule. Disaffection with Jacob Zuma’s recall of Thabo Mbeki
has set an unwanted ball in motion - a potential split of the party
before the next election.
While it is not a one-party state, the ANC dominates the
political landscape, with over the 2/3rds majority needed to change the
constitution. It has never had a serious challenger since attaining
power. This, and the party list system, which has the unintended
consequence of people chasing hierarchy in the party over winning seats,
means that the ANC in power has been accused of remoteness from the
electorate and autocratic behaviour.
The Polokwane conference was a triumph of process, and a disaster for
results. Much negotiation remains to be done during the last 18 months of
Mbeki’s presidency.
Winston Churchill famously said
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it
has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all
those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Democracy was the winner at Polokwane, but democracy requires
a well-informed and responsible electorate. However, unruly behaviour and
obvious partisan campaigning was the order of the day.
All the indications are
that Jacob Zuma will
be elected as ANC president at the 52nd annual ANC conference in
Polokwane from December
16 through December 20.
Much effort has been put into consulting the grass roots of the party,
and the result is in - the majority of ANC branches around the country
want Zuma to lead the party. This might have been as much to do with the
lack of other candidates - rank and file members were informed of the
process, but many were unfamiliar with many of the names put forward. As
a result, it has shaped up tobe a two horse race - between a
lame-duck
president and .. err .. the other guy.
The next president of South
Africa will be chosen this December at the December ANC conference in
Limpopo. This is a tiny subset of the electorate that make this important
decision.
There have been three Presidential
terms
since the beginning of majority rule in South Africa. The Constitution
of South
Africa
limits each president to two terms - the first term was Nelson
Mandela, who
stepped down after his first term to hand the reins over to Thabo
Mbeki, his deputy
during the first term.
The ANC has no term limits for its president, but South Africa’s constitution
has a two term limit for the president of the country, and to avoid two centres
of power the ANC has kept their president, the de-facto president of the country,
to two terms as well.
I was invited to participate in BBCWorld Service ‘Africa have your
say’
call-in programme to discuss Zuma’s request to Gordon Brown that
sanctions be lifted. I was given 30 seconds very near the end of the
programme, and I handled it poorly. This post is to make up for it :)
I am reminded of Winnie Mandela’s response when asked for comment
about Thabo Mbeki’s re-election bid in 1999 - she said he “deserved
another chance”. I am sorry - “deserve” is a strange modern word like
“it’s not fair!” -creation of a concept that did not exist 100 years
ago. When running for election the more important concept is what the
electorate “deserves”, not the incumbent running for re-election.
The Ministry of Home Affairs, Zimbabwe is
position in the Zimbabwean government is currently subject to a tussle of
control between Zanu-PF and MDC. However it is overshadowed by the
Provincial administration in the communal areas, which largely controls
food distribution.
The Ministry of Home Affairs controls, among others, :-
Zimbabwe Republic Police (responsible for internal security)
Registrar General (Electoral roll)
Immigration
Board of Censors (Newspapers, TV, Radio)
Lotteries and Gaming Board (Income in tourist areas)
Especially because it controls the Police Force, it is a
powerful ministry.
The African National Congress has led South Africa since 1994 - the start
of majority rule. Disaffection with Jacob Zuma’s recall of Thabo Mbeki
has set an unwanted ball in motion - a potential split of the party
before the next election.
While it is not a one-party state, the ANC dominates the
political landscape, with over the 2/3rds majority needed to change the
constitution. It has never had a serious challenger since attaining
power. This, and the party list system, which has the unintended
consequence of people chasing hierarchy in the party over winning seats,
means that the ANC in power has been accused of remoteness from the
electorate and autocratic behaviour.
Since the election itself, we
have watched, in slow motion, the frantic backpedalling of ZanuPF to
steal the elections after the fact.
We have all watched Zimbabwe’s slide from prosperous neighbour to
failed state in the past 8 years. There was much wringing of hands by
western countries - watching another African basket case grow from what
was a functioning economy with educated populous.
Granted - there was a lot of unfinished business from independence
-particularly about transfer of ownership of land to black Zimbabweans.
There were a few attempts to deal with
it, but
it became a political football, and a very convenient scapegoat for
ZanuPF to rally the peasant population when it was convenient to do so.
Zimbabwe went to
elections
last weekend. The Movement for Democratic
Change
use the open hand as a symbol,
ZanuPF
the cockerel. ZanuPF were so bereft
ofideas that their
slogan was “Get behind the fist” - a clear counterpoint to MDC’s open
hand. That makes international opinion the Scissors - unable to conquer
the Rock.
I have watched, aghast, Zimbabwe’s economic slide for 6 years. My
first visit to Southern Africa was in 1999 - and I decided against
visiting Zimbabwe then because my trip would have been too short. I have
met many Zimbabweans in South Africa, both black and white, and they have
all impressed me as intelligent, well-educated, and courteous.
The Polokwane conference was a triumph of process, and a disaster for
results. Much negotiation remains to be done during the last 18 months of
Mbeki’s presidency.
Winston Churchill famously said
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it
has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all
those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Democracy was the winner at Polokwane, but democracy requires
a well-informed and responsible electorate. However, unruly behaviour and
obvious partisan campaigning was the order of the day.
All the indications are
that Jacob Zuma will
be elected as ANC president at the 52nd annual ANC conference in
Polokwane from December
16 through December 20.
Much effort has been put into consulting the grass roots of the party,
and the result is in - the majority of ANC branches around the country
want Zuma to lead the party. This might have been as much to do with the
lack of other candidates - rank and file members were informed of the
process, but many were unfamiliar with many of the names put forward. As
a result, it has shaped up tobe a two horse race - between a
lame-duck
president and .. err .. the other guy.
The next president of South
Africa will be chosen this December at the December ANC conference in
Limpopo. This is a tiny subset of the electorate that make this important
decision.
There have been three Presidential
terms
since the beginning of majority rule in South Africa. The Constitution
of South
Africa
limits each president to two terms - the first term was Nelson
Mandela, who
stepped down after his first term to hand the reins over to Thabo
Mbeki, his deputy
during the first term.
A big turn-around - elections this weekend. The front-runner is an
ex-military ruler - there is no other kind in Nigeria. The good news is
that he is the only military ruler to have voluntarily handed over to a
civilian government in the past.
He is running for president this time.
The bad news - Nigeria has institutionalised corruption - it is
normality. It is a long road back - this weekends elections are the
first step. The hard work however is to persuade the small towns (and
big) that there is an alternative to the style of control that everybody
has grown up to understand.
The ANC has no term limits for its president, but South Africa’s constitution
has a two term limit for the president of the country, and to avoid two centres
of power the ANC has kept their president, the de-facto president of the country,
to two terms as well.
I am reminded of Winnie Mandela’s response when asked for comment
about Thabo Mbeki’s re-election bid in 1999 - she said he “deserved
another chance”. I am sorry - “deserve” is a strange modern word like
“it’s not fair!” -creation of a concept that did not exist 100 years
ago. When running for election the more important concept is what the
electorate “deserves”, not the incumbent running for re-election.
The Polokwane conference was a triumph of process, and a disaster for
results. Much negotiation remains to be done during the last 18 months of
Mbeki’s presidency.
Winston Churchill famously said
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it
has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all
those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Democracy was the winner at Polokwane, but democracy requires
a well-informed and responsible electorate. However, unruly behaviour and
obvious partisan campaigning was the order of the day.
All the indications are
that Jacob Zuma will
be elected as ANC president at the 52nd annual ANC conference in
Polokwane from December
16 through December 20.
Much effort has been put into consulting the grass roots of the party,
and the result is in - the majority of ANC branches around the country
want Zuma to lead the party. This might have been as much to do with the
lack of other candidates - rank and file members were informed of the
process, but many were unfamiliar with many of the names put forward. As
a result, it has shaped up tobe a two horse race - between a
lame-duck
president and .. err .. the other guy.
The next president of South
Africa will be chosen this December at the December ANC conference in
Limpopo. This is a tiny subset of the electorate that make this important
decision.
There have been three Presidential
terms
since the beginning of majority rule in South Africa. The Constitution
of South
Africa
limits each president to two terms - the first term was Nelson
Mandela, who
stepped down after his first term to hand the reins over to Thabo
Mbeki, his deputy
during the first term.
My local Python conference had a talk called
Deep learning - a gentle dive
that had a view on the level of image classification today.
People
The software that is written is ‘soft’ - it does little of the classification
itself - but relies on a large ’training’ database to achieve some remarkabe
stunts - like look at a crowded shop scene and classify people by gender
and age.
My local Python conference had a talk called
Deep learning - a gentle dive
that had a view on the level of image classification today.
People
The software that is written is ‘soft’ - it does little of the classification
itself - but relies on a large ’training’ database to achieve some remarkabe
stunts - like look at a crowded shop scene and classify people by gender
and age.
My board, from Cameroon. On this board players would sit left and right. The pieces are seeds.
I have an Android implementation of this ancient game. The link
will download and offer to install it. Because it is not (yet) on the Play Store,
you will have to enable ‘unapproved’ software installations.
Owari is a bead game played all across Africa. It has many spellings,
more common variants being Awale, and Warri. It is from the Mancala
class of games, which are count and capture bead games, with many
different variations of rules. This variant is the one played by the
old men in market places in Lome, Ghana, and other parts of West
Africa. It is rumoured that it was to be played by kings to prove their
strategic skills on accession to the throne in Ghana.
My board, from Cameroon. On this board players would sit left and right. The pieces are seeds.
I have an Android implementation of this ancient game. The link
will download and offer to install it. Because it is not (yet) on the Play Store,
you will have to enable ‘unapproved’ software installations.
Owari is a bead game played all across Africa. It has many spellings,
more common variants being Awale, and Warri. It is from the Mancala
class of games, which are count and capture bead games, with many
different variations of rules. This variant is the one played by the
old men in market places in Lome, Ghana, and other parts of West
Africa. It is rumoured that it was to be played by kings to prove their
strategic skills on accession to the throne in Ghana.
Here I set about learning the bead game played all across Africa from
east to west - played with a 12 hole board and 48 beads. It is called
various names, the most common being Owali or Owari. There are a number
of different ways of playing, all of which involve the following :- you
have six houses, your opponent has six. You pick up the beads from a
house of your choosing (it must be one of yours) and deposit them one
by one anti- clockwise around the board, and examine the house where
the last bead falls. Depending on the number now in this house, there
are different courses of action.
My board, from Cameroon. On this board players would sit left and right. The pieces are seeds.
I have an Android implementation of this ancient game. The link
will download and offer to install it. Because it is not (yet) on the Play Store,
you will have to enable ‘unapproved’ software installations.
Owari is a bead game played all across Africa. It has many spellings,
more common variants being Awale, and Warri. It is from the Mancala
class of games, which are count and capture bead games, with many
different variations of rules. This variant is the one played by the
old men in market places in Lome, Ghana, and other parts of West
Africa. It is rumoured that it was to be played by kings to prove their
strategic skills on accession to the throne in Ghana.
Here I set about learning the bead game played all across Africa from
east to west - played with a 12 hole board and 48 beads. It is called
various names, the most common being Owali or Owari. There are a number
of different ways of playing, all of which involve the following :- you
have six houses, your opponent has six. You pick up the beads from a
house of your choosing (it must be one of yours) and deposit them one
by one anti- clockwise around the board, and examine the house where
the last bead falls. Depending on the number now in this house, there
are different courses of action.
Richard Stallman visited Cape Town, and gave a talk at the University of
Cape Town titled “A Free Digital Society”
On the 4th September I picked Richard Stallman up from the airport and
we went to dinner with a number of people that had helped organise the
event at Brass Bell, Kalk Bay.
Around Cape Town
He stayed with me and my friend Lerato in Muizenberg, and he is a
gracious and accommodating guest. I took the Thursday off work, and we
had lunch at a little local restaurant in Marina da Gama, and I then took
him for a drive around the peninsula on a beautiful Cape day.
I was met at the airport, and we went straight to the offices of InTouch,
the company I have been in correspondence with. Good thing I had a shower ..
The company have arranged to put me up in a hotel for a week, until I
find another place. Very nice of them ..
The company is very closely associated with Vodacom, a large cell-phone
provider in South Africa. They have a number of products - two voice
applications, running under OS/2, one for dial-a-share-price, the
other for dial-to-get-your-current-bank-balance.
Richard Stallman visited Cape Town, and gave a talk at the University of
Cape Town titled “A Free Digital Society”
On the 4th September I picked Richard Stallman up from the airport and
we went to dinner with a number of people that had helped organise the
event at Brass Bell, Kalk Bay.
Around Cape Town
He stayed with me and my friend Lerato in Muizenberg, and he is a
gracious and accommodating guest. I took the Thursday off work, and we
had lunch at a little local restaurant in Marina da Gama, and I then took
him for a drive around the peninsula on a beautiful Cape day.
Richard Stallman visited Cape Town, and gave a talk at the University of
Cape Town titled “A Free Digital Society”
On the 4th September I picked Richard Stallman up from the airport and
we went to dinner with a number of people that had helped organise the
event at Brass Bell, Kalk Bay.
Around Cape Town
He stayed with me and my friend Lerato in Muizenberg, and he is a
gracious and accommodating guest. I took the Thursday off work, and we
had lunch at a little local restaurant in Marina da Gama, and I then took
him for a drive around the peninsula on a beautiful Cape day.
Richard Stallman visited Cape Town, and gave a talk at the University of
Cape Town titled “A Free Digital Society”
On the 4th September I picked Richard Stallman up from the airport and
we went to dinner with a number of people that had helped organise the
event at Brass Bell, Kalk Bay.
Around Cape Town
He stayed with me and my friend Lerato in Muizenberg, and he is a
gracious and accommodating guest. I took the Thursday off work, and we
had lunch at a little local restaurant in Marina da Gama, and I then took
him for a drive around the peninsula on a beautiful Cape day.
Richard Stallman visited Cape Town, and gave a talk at the University of
Cape Town titled “A Free Digital Society”
On the 4th September I picked Richard Stallman up from the airport and
we went to dinner with a number of people that had helped organise the
event at Brass Bell, Kalk Bay.
Around Cape Town
He stayed with me and my friend Lerato in Muizenberg, and he is a
gracious and accommodating guest. I took the Thursday off work, and we
had lunch at a little local restaurant in Marina da Gama, and I then took
him for a drive around the peninsula on a beautiful Cape day.
Richard Stallman visited Cape Town, and gave a talk at the University of
Cape Town titled “A Free Digital Society”
On the 4th September I picked Richard Stallman up from the airport and
we went to dinner with a number of people that had helped organise the
event at Brass Bell, Kalk Bay.
Around Cape Town
He stayed with me and my friend Lerato in Muizenberg, and he is a
gracious and accommodating guest. I took the Thursday off work, and we
had lunch at a little local restaurant in Marina da Gama, and I then took
him for a drive around the peninsula on a beautiful Cape day.
Richard Stallman visited Cape Town, and gave a talk at the University of
Cape Town titled “A Free Digital Society”
On the 4th September I picked Richard Stallman up from the airport and
we went to dinner with a number of people that had helped organise the
event at Brass Bell, Kalk Bay.
Around Cape Town
He stayed with me and my friend Lerato in Muizenberg, and he is a
gracious and accommodating guest. I took the Thursday off work, and we
had lunch at a little local restaurant in Marina da Gama, and I then took
him for a drive around the peninsula on a beautiful Cape day.
I have some history in parallel processing, mostly
with Inmos,
a British microelectronics company that built the
Transputer, a
ground-breaking microprocessor of the 1980s. I had been looking
for an opportunity to work at the CHPC for a while, and took
the chance when an opening arrived via the clug-work mailing
list run by the
Cape Town Linux Users Group.
Wikimedia projects, including the flagship English Wikipedia, have
been restricted in access to people with internet access.
kiwix is opening that up, via its offline
reader.
I have blogged
before
about kiwix - this article is an effort to tell other people how to do
the same.
Kiwix is a cross-platform reader of zim
files. Zim is an open,
standardised file format to store Wiki content efficiently for offline
usage. It is compressed (LZMA), with fast resolution of inter-article
links. It is simple (one file), and optimised to run on really small
devices like phones.
Kiwix, an offline wikipedia selection, is installed at Kwena Malapo school.
I have blogged before about
creating offline copies of wikipedia for use in school computer labs that
do not have internet access.
Wikimedia, the umbrella organisation behind wikipedia and other
related projects, is also keenly interested in offline uses of wikipedia.
From November through January, the
offline taskforce
had a series of IRC meetings where we attempted to answer questions
relating to the use of these offline copies. We came up with four
recommendations,
one of which addressed schools, and another cellphones.
I have been involved for a number of years with Hilton Theunissen and the
Shuttleworth Foundation and their efforts to bring computers to township
schools. A part of that software suite was an offline copy of wikipedia.
Early attempts
I have blogged before about my own project
Wizzy Digital Courier putting thin client
labs down in South African classrooms. That also included a copy of the
english language wikipedia.
Initially in 2003 I took the whole of the then-existing English
wikipedia, installed a copy of the mediawiki software in conjunction with
mysql and apache as database and webserver respectively. The whole thing
was around 18 Gigabytes- quite a handful.
Wikimedia projects, including the flagship English Wikipedia, have
been restricted in access to people with internet access.
kiwix is opening that up, via its offline
reader.
I have blogged
before
about kiwix - this article is an effort to tell other people how to do
the same.
Kiwix is a cross-platform reader of zim
files. Zim is an open,
standardised file format to store Wiki content efficiently for offline
usage. It is compressed (LZMA), with fast resolution of inter-article
links. It is simple (one file), and optimised to run on really small
devices like phones.
Kiwix, an offline wikipedia selection, is installed at Kwena Malapo school.
I have blogged before about
creating offline copies of wikipedia for use in school computer labs that
do not have internet access.
Wikimedia, the umbrella organisation behind wikipedia and other
related projects, is also keenly interested in offline uses of wikipedia.
From November through January, the
offline taskforce
had a series of IRC meetings where we attempted to answer questions
relating to the use of these offline copies. We came up with four
recommendations,
one of which addressed schools, and another cellphones.
I have been involved for a number of years with Hilton Theunissen and the
Shuttleworth Foundation and their efforts to bring computers to township
schools. A part of that software suite was an offline copy of wikipedia.
Early attempts
I have blogged before about my own project
Wizzy Digital Courier putting thin client
labs down in South African classrooms. That also included a copy of the
english language wikipedia.
Initially in 2003 I took the whole of the then-existing English
wikipedia, installed a copy of the mediawiki software in conjunction with
mysql and apache as database and webserver respectively. The whole thing
was around 18 Gigabytes- quite a handful.
Wikipedia has started its regular fund drive with a video from the
founder, Jimmy Wales. He starts by
expounding the knowledge-for-everyone mantra of wikipedia, and in
particular promoting wikipedias in third world languages like Swahili.
The video finishes up with clips of people around the world talking
about wikipedia, how it has benefited them, and how they contribute,
including people typing articles in on cellphones ..
There is a clip of me, at Lavender Hill Secondary school (at a
township close to Muizenberg more renowned for its gangs) talking about
my placement of a complete copy of wikipedia down at schools that have no
daytime internet access, and also the Lab administrator Shanaaz talking
about her wish for more content on the Afrikaans
wikipedia.
I was invited to participate in BBCWorld Service ‘Africa have your
say’
call-in programme to discuss Zuma’s request to Gordon Brown that
sanctions be lifted. I was given 30 seconds very near the end of the
programme, and I handled it poorly. This post is to make up for it :)
The Ministry of Home Affairs, Zimbabwe is
position in the Zimbabwean government is currently subject to a tussle of
control between Zanu-PF and MDC. However it is overshadowed by the
Provincial administration in the communal areas, which largely controls
food distribution.
The Ministry of Home Affairs controls, among others, :-
Zimbabwe Republic Police (responsible for internal security)
Registrar General (Electoral roll)
Immigration
Board of Censors (Newspapers, TV, Radio)
Lotteries and Gaming Board (Income in tourist areas)
Especially because it controls the Police Force, it is a
powerful ministry.
Since the election itself, we
have watched, in slow motion, the frantic backpedalling of ZanuPF to
steal the elections after the fact.
We have all watched Zimbabwe’s slide from prosperous neighbour to
failed state in the past 8 years. There was much wringing of hands by
western countries - watching another African basket case grow from what
was a functioning economy with educated populous.
Granted - there was a lot of unfinished business from independence
-particularly about transfer of ownership of land to black Zimbabweans.
There were a few attempts to deal with
it, but
it became a political football, and a very convenient scapegoat for
ZanuPF to rally the peasant population when it was convenient to do so.
Zimbabwe went to
elections
last weekend. The Movement for Democratic
Change
use the open hand as a symbol,
ZanuPF
the cockerel. ZanuPF were so bereft
ofideas that their
slogan was “Get behind the fist” - a clear counterpoint to MDC’s open
hand. That makes international opinion the Scissors - unable to conquer
the Rock.
I have watched, aghast, Zimbabwe’s economic slide for 6 years. My
first visit to Southern Africa was in 1999 - and I decided against
visiting Zimbabwe then because my trip would have been too short. I have
met many Zimbabweans in South Africa, both black and white, and they have
all impressed me as intelligent, well-educated, and courteous.
A big turn-around - elections this weekend. The front-runner is an
ex-military ruler - there is no other kind in Nigeria. The good news is
that he is the only military ruler to have voluntarily handed over to a
civilian government in the past.
He is running for president this time.
The bad news - Nigeria has institutionalised corruption - it is
normality. It is a long road back - this weekends elections are the
first step. The hard work however is to persuade the small towns (and
big) that there is an alternative to the style of control that everybody
has grown up to understand.
I have been involved for a number of years with Hilton Theunissen and the
Shuttleworth Foundation and their efforts to bring computers to township
schools. A part of that software suite was an offline copy of wikipedia.
Early attempts
I have blogged before about my own project
Wizzy Digital Courier putting thin client
labs down in South African classrooms. That also included a copy of the
english language wikipedia.
Initially in 2003 I took the whole of the then-existing English
wikipedia, installed a copy of the mediawiki software in conjunction with
mysql and apache as database and webserver respectively. The whole thing
was around 18 Gigabytes- quite a handful.
As an update on the Wizzy project, a fair
bit has been happening.
In partnership with Inkululeko
Technologies and Amobia Wireless
Access, Wizzy is providing its email
solution for a number of schools provisioned by Inkululeko and Amobia.
Inkululeko are the spinoff from the
Shuttleworth Foundation and
their efforts to put computer labs down in South African schools, and
Amobia are a local Wireless ISP.
The labs that Inkululeko put down are Thin
Client labs, using old, recycled
computers in front ofthe learners coupled to a large Linux server that
runs the applications and fileserver. Wizzy provides a local mailserver
installation, a squirrelmail
IMAP client useable from a browser, and UUCP connectivity to the main
mail server hosted by Amobia. Authentication is provided by LDAP.
Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has a number of ceremonies conducted at
his palace in Nongoma, his only traditionally-built palace.
Zulu ceremonies
Zwelithini,
the sixth zulu king since Shaka and his brothers carved out a piece of
South Africa for themselves in the mid-1800’s, is the first one to have
to deal with the modern media and concepts like Human Rights.
He has a bull-killing
ritual,
scheduled this year for December 5. He is being taken to
court
over the perceived cruelty to the animal concerned.
Every year, Sangomas outside Eshowe hold a ceremony to honour their
ancestors and strengthen bonds between those of like professions.
I have written about Sangomas before -
Khekhekhe’s First Fruits ceremony.
I was in Zululand again for two weeks, to attend
the Umgido Umkhulu - a ceremony co-hosted by Mama Cebekhulu, who is a
teacher of a friend of mine Karen.
Karen is doing another stage of her
Sangoma apprenticeship-
as a Twasa (student) of Mama Cebekulu. I was invited to their annual
ceremony- an honour for me. Mama asked me to wear a njita - the
symbolic cloth of her Twasas - a small piece of material tied around the
waist.
Habeni Primary school is in Zululand, and has recently acquired a
computer lab. Courtesy of Kelsey
Wood and Wizzy Digital
Courier, it also has Internet.
Education
In Africa, children walk to school. In South Africa, where I am
based, schools and clinics are the only large buildings in the rural
areas, and are thus easily spotted with their long roofs. The minimum
requirement for a school are rooms, teachers, blackboards, and students.
I have come across many schools that have no more than those basics.
In 1999 I visited Khekhekhe with
Graham, to negotiate a price for National Geographic to do a piece on
him. I wrote up that encounter at
the time. Khekhekhe held a ceremony on the 23rd of Feb every year - which
he called the First Fruits ceremony. It seemed really to be a time for
the old Mthethwa Sangomas to get together, Khekhekhe to show his
prowess with snakes, and some beasts to die for the table.
A traditional Zulu wedding is a step back in time, with cellphone cameras
in strapped next to leopardskin loincloths. The ancestors are remembered,
and the age-old tradion of Lobola is observed.
I am spending christmas in Eshowe with
my friend Graham Chennells. A friend Karen from Muizenberg is here also,
on her own mission to complete her Sangoma
training, staying with a local
minister from a Zionist church as a Twasa - a trainee, for a month or
two.
I hitched back from Swaziland, and got back in time for a visit to
KheKheKe - the Zululand Sangoma near the Tugela river. The
National Geographic film crew had showed up, and we set off
on Tuesday to his Kraal. the film is called “Snakes of Africa”,
and our interest in KheKheKe was his use of snakes during
his rituals.
He had collected several local Sangomas to be a part of the
ceremonies, and after a nice lunch and a beer, and selection of
a site for filming, the action began ..
A British girl came out to Zululand to organise filming of a
National Geographic documentary on snakes in Africa. Specifically,
she was interested in filming a powerful local Sangoma, KheKheKhe,
who incorporates snakes into his ritual. He even puts black and
green mambers, and puff adders, heads in his mouth ..
We (Graham, myself, and Mitch) took (another) gorgeous trip through
rural Zululand in search of this old man, now internationally famous.
This week I went to see Andre Basel, who is the computer science teacher
at Eshowe High school and the local computer ‘fundi’.
We installed Linux on one of his classroom computers, and discussed
what his goals were in computer education.
He also put me in touch with Eshowe college of education, a teacher
training college here, which has a room full of computers, largely
under-used, without a network. I asked them over to the High School,
but only succeeded in scaring them about Linux.
Finally got out of Eshowe - a very nice place, and a rousing sendoff
with the third (now official) shebeen trip. We decided that it took
only three minutes this time to go from closed shop to a rocking party.
This time we took the president of Rotary, who I am sure was very
glad nobody was taking pictures as he danced …
Up the Natal coast, to Amazulu lodge, another backpackers lodge near
St Lucia, a wetlands conservation area on the coast. The golf club
bar had someone there to take me to the Dungeon - a vast underground
disco - mainly, but not exclusively, white. An extraordinary find in
such a remote part of Natal - with no expense spared, and live music,
though it was all cover songs from the seventies - the staple diet
of White South African Music.
Yesterday I went to a ’turning of the sod’ for a new High school here in
Eshowe, which will be paid for by a number of Spanish NGOs
(non-government organisation) and managed by the Eshowe Christian
Action group. The ceremony was at a nearby primary school, and included
some good zulu dancing by the kids.
Today there was an opening of the first skills centre / technical college
in zululand, which cost R2.5M for the first stage, funded by AngloAmerican,
a huge mining conglomerate, and a number of smaller donors, like the
British Consulate in Durban, and Rotary International from Eshowe and
Germany.
Zululand is the political stronghold of the Inkatha Freedom Party, and
Buthelezi, its leader. He is related to the King of Zululand, who
owns/administers most of the land, and who is a direct descendent
of Shaka Zulu, the (quite recent) founder of the Zulu nation.
Zululand is a place of rolling hills, with traditional Zulu Kraals dotted
all over it. Ulundi is the capital, but is a small place. I am staying in
Eshowe, the oldest city here, but Eshowe is smaller than Richards
bay, a large seaport that ships more tonnage than Durban, primarily
coal, timber (wattle and Gum) and sugar (which is grown everywhere).
There is also a large, new, aluminium smelting plant there.
I left Richmond, not a moment too soon, it appears, as there has been
some political trouble there. Briefly, a member of the ANC-controlled
town council, Mr Nkabinde, who were voted in at the last election, was
alleged to be a police informer. The ANC expelled him - without, I
think, a trial, or with reference to ANC membership rules. Mr Nkabinde
resigned, and 9 fellow members of the council resigned in sympathy. Of
the two council members left, one was gunned down outside his home the
following week, for obvious reasons ..
The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences
held the graduation dinner for the class of 2009 at the Muizenberg
Pavilion on June 25, 2009. Present were Vice-Chancellors from three of
Cape Town’s Universities, and the Kenyan Ambassador Tom Amolo.
I was invited to attend this years graduation of the
2009 AIMS postgraduate diploma on what was
forecast to be a stormy day, but it cleared up in time. I
have blogged about AIMS before - on the opening of their
Research Centre.
What is exciting about Cosmology today is how much
we do not know. The observable universe -
baryonic matter
we are fairly sure comprises only a few percent of the total mass of
the universe. The rest is a mystery, but mainstream theories split it
between Dark Matter and Dark
Energy.
I work at the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences
(AIMS), and we are blessed with some great visiting
lecturers, and I have followed the courses on Cosmology and Quantum
Mechanics with interest. I have written about AIMS and
their new research centre before.
Abuja, Nigeria, the capital
city, suffers from lack of infrastructure. Potholes, no landlines, power
cuts every day.
Nigeria as a tourist
In 1992 as a tourist on an overland truck, I travelled through
Nigeria from the
Cameroon border in the
north, down through the city of
Kano and its magnificent
central market, to the bustling and wild city of
Lagos. In Nigeria “Benin”
is a western province - the sleepy francophone country to the west is
pronounced differently and must be identified as the republic of
benin.
I have posted about AIMS before.
The bread-and-butter of AIMS is a post-graduate diploma course for
African Mathematicians. This broadens the role of the institute to
include research. AIMS is set by the sea in a lovely location in
Muizenberg, and is the brainchild of Neil
Turok, who last year
won a TED
prize for this
and his work on cosmology. TED listens to wishes from its winners -
Neil’s declared wish is that the next Einstein come from Africa.
I have been working at the African Institute for Mathematical
Sciences since December 2006. It is a
pleasant work environment, the work I do has direct applicability to the
work I do withWizzy, and I get to
listen to some really great lecturers from universities around the world.
I have taken an interest in Cosmology and Quantum mechanics, a field that
has changed so drastically in the last 10 years that I can happily forget
most of what I knew before ..
The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences
held the graduation dinner for the class of 2009 at the Muizenberg
Pavilion on June 25, 2009. Present were Vice-Chancellors from three of
Cape Town’s Universities, and the Kenyan Ambassador Tom Amolo.
I was invited to attend this years graduation of the
2009 AIMS postgraduate diploma on what was
forecast to be a stormy day, but it cleared up in time. I
have blogged about AIMS before - on the opening of their
Research Centre.
I visited Gabon for the last
two weeks of May 2009 by invitation of Yoan Anguilet, who has a business
and NGO there promoting ICT and Science literacy in schools. We had met
previously when setting up
AUST, a new university in
Nigeria. Yoan had invited me to set up a similar system at two schools in
Gabon, as a precursor to a larger effort later in the year.
Flight
Our flight was delayed for 2 hours, circling over Libreville, as we had
the misfortune of arriving at the same time as the body of the
recently-deceased First Lady, Edith Lucie
Bongo. Edith
featured prominently in the next few days, as most of Libreville was
closed and there was blanket TV coverage of the state funeral. In fact,
we were asked to come to pay respects to the First Lady on the first
evening at the presidential palace - my luggage had not arrived, so I was
in my travelling clothes..
I visited Gabon for the last
two weeks of May 2009 by invitation of Yoan Anguilet, who has a business
and NGO there promoting ICT and Science literacy in schools. We had met
previously when setting up
AUST, a new university in
Nigeria. Yoan had invited me to set up a similar system at two schools in
Gabon, as a precursor to a larger effort later in the year.
Flight
Our flight was delayed for 2 hours, circling over Libreville, as we had
the misfortune of arriving at the same time as the body of the
recently-deceased First Lady, Edith Lucie
Bongo. Edith
featured prominently in the next few days, as most of Libreville was
closed and there was blanket TV coverage of the state funeral. In fact,
we were asked to come to pay respects to the First Lady on the first
evening at the presidential palace - my luggage had not arrived, so I was
in my travelling clothes..
At the end of May in South Africa, a lot of violence erupted,
apparently targeted against other black africans by fellow black South
Africans. Meeting other Nigerians, almost all of them, given a little
time, bring up the subject. I found myself having to apologise for the
violence, and make some explanation of it.
I had left for Nigeria the week before, to install the computer
network at the african
University for Science and Technology.
Today, I visited two schools in Abuja, Nigeria, both of which were
pilot schools for the new low cost laptops targeted at schools
in the third world. One Laptop per Child
started in Galadima Junior school, in Abuja Model Village, and Intel
launched
‘One laptop per teacher and child’ at Jabi Junior Secondary school, in
Jabi district, Abuja.
Nigeria seems to be a testing ground for low cost laptops - pioneered by
Nicholas Negroponte’s
OLPC, but being ambushed these days by other offerings,
like the ASUS EEE PC and the
Intel Classmate.
Abuja, Nigeria, the capital
city, suffers from lack of infrastructure. Potholes, no landlines, power
cuts every day.
Nigeria as a tourist
In 1992 as a tourist on an overland truck, I travelled through
Nigeria from the
Cameroon border in the
north, down through the city of
Kano and its magnificent
central market, to the bustling and wild city of
Lagos. In Nigeria “Benin”
is a western province - the sleepy francophone country to the west is
pronounced differently and must be identified as the republic of
benin.
The One Laptop per Child project has
got a lot of attention, has prototype hardware, and a lot of open source
software. What are its prospects in Africa ?
Antoine managed
to get one of these to show off as he is writing
code behind the ‘view source’ button, and
Morgan and Jonathan
of our local Linux uses group have all blogged
about it.
There are a lot of
things to be said about the OLPC project. The first thing to note is that
it is not a new initiative - there have been others, under different
names, for a long time. Seymour
Papert invented
Logo,
a programming language targeted at children, and Alan
Kay was the conceiver of
the Dynabook concept
which defined the basics of the laptop computer.
Recent elections in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa have
been declared flawed by the country’s own monitoring committee.
I travelled to Nigeria in
1992. For all its faults, I recognised it then as a powerful country,
with a strong role to play in sub-saharan Africa.
It suffers a geographical and religious division between the
northern muslims and the southern christians. I saw desperate poverty,
particularly in the north, with people living in the semi-desert as I
imagine they lived centuries before the white man arrived in africa -
with none of the benefits supposed to accrue from the nation’s oil
wealth.
A big turn-around - elections this weekend. The front-runner is an
ex-military ruler - there is no other kind in Nigeria. The good news is
that he is the only military ruler to have voluntarily handed over to a
civilian government in the past.
He is running for president this time.
The bad news - Nigeria has institutionalised corruption - it is
normality. It is a long road back - this weekends elections are the
first step. The hard work however is to persuade the small towns (and
big) that there is an alternative to the style of control that everybody
has grown up to understand.
We headed north in Cameroon, three of our group unfortunately
contracting malaria on the way (probably caught at the coast). We spent
Christmas at a nice camp at Rumsiki way up north, and then headed west
into Nigeria.
Nigeria ( [2]MAP)
Nigeria is a big, populous, oil-rich, and completely corrupt country,
where everything in officialdom and elsewhere runs on ‘dash’ - their
word for bribes. We were stopped no less than five times within as many
miles from the border by spurious police, customs and immigration check
posts, all of which contrived to find something wrong with our papers,
the truck, or taxes in order to earn their daily dash. Though you have
to pay your way though everything, if you do it is a very efficient
system, where most things work.
All of French West Africa shares a common currency, the CFA, tied at
50:1 to the French Franc. In Paris you can convert unlimited amounts of
Francs to CFA and back, thus giving these countries a hard currency,
and French colonials a place where they can still do business as
always.
The Anglophone countries (Nigeria, Ghana, The Gambia) all have their
own currencies, with a corresponding rate of inflation, but (it seems)
very serviceable. All countries have exchangeable currencies, with
Bureau de Change at every street corner and ‘change money?’ a part of
the greeting exchange with tourists.
The African National Congress has led South Africa since 1994 - the start
of majority rule. Disaffection with Jacob Zuma’s recall of Thabo Mbeki
has set an unwanted ball in motion - a potential split of the party
before the next election.
While it is not a one-party state, the ANC dominates the
political landscape, with over the 2/3rds majority needed to change the
constitution. It has never had a serious challenger since attaining
power. This, and the party list system, which has the unintended
consequence of people chasing hierarchy in the party over winning seats,
means that the ANC in power has been accused of remoteness from the
electorate and autocratic behaviour.
The African National Congress has led South Africa since 1994 - the start
of majority rule. Disaffection with Jacob Zuma’s recall of Thabo Mbeki
has set an unwanted ball in motion - a potential split of the party
before the next election.
While it is not a one-party state, the ANC dominates the
political landscape, with over the 2/3rds majority needed to change the
constitution. It has never had a serious challenger since attaining
power. This, and the party list system, which has the unintended
consequence of people chasing hierarchy in the party over winning seats,
means that the ANC in power has been accused of remoteness from the
electorate and autocratic behaviour.
A big turn-around - elections this weekend. The front-runner is an
ex-military ruler - there is no other kind in Nigeria. The good news is
that he is the only military ruler to have voluntarily handed over to a
civilian government in the past.
He is running for president this time.
The bad news - Nigeria has institutionalised corruption - it is
normality. It is a long road back - this weekends elections are the
first step. The hard work however is to persuade the small towns (and
big) that there is an alternative to the style of control that everybody
has grown up to understand.
Every year, Sangomas outside Eshowe hold a ceremony to honour their
ancestors and strengthen bonds between those of like professions.
I have written about Sangomas before -
Khekhekhe’s First Fruits ceremony.
I was in Zululand again for two weeks, to attend
the Umgido Umkhulu - a ceremony co-hosted by Mama Cebekhulu, who is a
teacher of a friend of mine Karen.
Karen is doing another stage of her
Sangoma apprenticeship-
as a Twasa (student) of Mama Cebekulu. I was invited to their annual
ceremony- an honour for me. Mama asked me to wear a njita - the
symbolic cloth of her Twasas - a small piece of material tied around the
waist.
In 1999 I visited Khekhekhe with
Graham, to negotiate a price for National Geographic to do a piece on
him. I wrote up that encounter at
the time. Khekhekhe held a ceremony on the 23rd of Feb every year - which
he called the First Fruits ceremony. It seemed really to be a time for
the old Mthethwa Sangomas to get together, Khekhekhe to show his
prowess with snakes, and some beasts to die for the table.
The camera-man for National Geographic, with the rest of the crew, spent
that evening in the bar at the George Hotel, where we discussed the
day’s events.
He said that he had been worried on occasion when snakes had been tossed
at his feet - his field of vision was limited by the camera lens, and he
hoped someone else was watching the snakes..
He also mentioned another Sangoma they had met in Johannesburg - who had
defied his teachers and had published a book on what he had learned.
I hitched back from Swaziland, and got back in time for a visit to
KheKheKe - the Zululand Sangoma near the Tugela river. The
National Geographic film crew had showed up, and we set off
on Tuesday to his Kraal. the film is called “Snakes of Africa”,
and our interest in KheKheKe was his use of snakes during
his rituals.
He had collected several local Sangomas to be a part of the
ceremonies, and after a nice lunch and a beer, and selection of
a site for filming, the action began ..
A British girl came out to Zululand to organise filming of a
National Geographic documentary on snakes in Africa. Specifically,
she was interested in filming a powerful local Sangoma, KheKheKhe,
who incorporates snakes into his ritual. He even puts black and
green mambers, and puff adders, heads in his mouth ..
We (Graham, myself, and Mitch) took (another) gorgeous trip through
rural Zululand in search of this old man, now internationally famous.
I spent the last week in the Transkei, the largest of the
old black homelands. It is ‘back to africa’ from the luxuries of RSA, with
most of the people living in round mud huts with thatched roofs.
I spent a night with a Sangoma - one of the Xhosa herbalists, who study for
a long time to gain the knowledge passed down through Sangomas before
them.
Our student Sangoma is a white guy who has lived in the Transkei for
about three years, and has a good command of the language..
What is exciting about Cosmology today is how much
we do not know. The observable universe -
baryonic matter
we are fairly sure comprises only a few percent of the total mass of
the universe. The rest is a mystery, but mainstream theories split it
between Dark Matter and Dark
Energy.
I work at the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences
(AIMS), and we are blessed with some great visiting
lecturers, and I have followed the courses on Cosmology and Quantum
Mechanics with interest. I have written about AIMS and
their new research centre before.
I have posted about AIMS before.
The bread-and-butter of AIMS is a post-graduate diploma course for
African Mathematicians. This broadens the role of the institute to
include research. AIMS is set by the sea in a lovely location in
Muizenberg, and is the brainchild of Neil
Turok, who last year
won a TED
prize for this
and his work on cosmology. TED listens to wishes from its winners -
Neil’s declared wish is that the next Einstein come from Africa.
I have been working at the African Institute for Mathematical
Sciences since December 2006. It is a
pleasant work environment, the work I do has direct applicability to the
work I do withWizzy, and I get to
listen to some really great lecturers from universities around the world.
I have taken an interest in Cosmology and Quantum mechanics, a field that
has changed so drastically in the last 10 years that I can happily forget
most of what I knew before ..
Today, I visited two schools in Abuja, Nigeria, both of which were
pilot schools for the new low cost laptops targeted at schools
in the third world. One Laptop per Child
started in Galadima Junior school, in Abuja Model Village, and Intel
launched
‘One laptop per teacher and child’ at Jabi Junior Secondary school, in
Jabi district, Abuja.
Nigeria seems to be a testing ground for low cost laptops - pioneered by
Nicholas Negroponte’s
OLPC, but being ambushed these days by other offerings,
like the ASUS EEE PC and the
Intel Classmate.
The One Laptop per Child project has
got a lot of attention, has prototype hardware, and a lot of open source
software. What are its prospects in Africa ?
Antoine managed
to get one of these to show off as he is writing
code behind the ‘view source’ button, and
Morgan and Jonathan
of our local Linux uses group have all blogged
about it.
There are a lot of
things to be said about the OLPC project. The first thing to note is that
it is not a new initiative - there have been others, under different
names, for a long time. Seymour
Papert invented
Logo,
a programming language targeted at children, and Alan
Kay was the conceiver of
the Dynabook concept
which defined the basics of the laptop computer.
Since the election itself, we
have watched, in slow motion, the frantic backpedalling of ZanuPF to
steal the elections after the fact.
We have all watched Zimbabwe’s slide from prosperous neighbour to
failed state in the past 8 years. There was much wringing of hands by
western countries - watching another African basket case grow from what
was a functioning economy with educated populous.
Granted - there was a lot of unfinished business from independence
-particularly about transfer of ownership of land to black Zimbabweans.
There were a few attempts to deal with
it, but
it became a political football, and a very convenient scapegoat for
ZanuPF to rally the peasant population when it was convenient to do so.
I recently
had a genetic analysis done to determine my ancestry -
courtesy Ancestry24, theMedical
Research Council, the National Health Laboratory Services and
WITS University. It was a free test, and it came with an informative
booklet to explain the results.
Through the African Institute for Mathematical
Sciences I was given an opportunity to
participate in a free Genealogical DNA
test to
trace my ancestry. They can do two tests for men, and one test for women.
The tests trace you back through your mothers-mothers-mother or your
fathers-fathers-father to the most recent ancestor with a non-coding DNA
mutation.
I recently
had a genetic analysis done to determine my ancestry -
courtesy Ancestry24, theMedical
Research Council, the National Health Laboratory Services and
WITS University. It was a free test, and it came with an informative
booklet to explain the results.
Through the African Institute for Mathematical
Sciences I was given an opportunity to
participate in a free Genealogical DNA
test to
trace my ancestry. They can do two tests for men, and one test for women.
The tests trace you back through your mothers-mothers-mother or your
fathers-fathers-father to the most recent ancestor with a non-coding DNA
mutation.
I recently
had a genetic analysis done to determine my ancestry -
courtesy Ancestry24, theMedical
Research Council, the National Health Laboratory Services and
WITS University. It was a free test, and it came with an informative
booklet to explain the results.
Through the African Institute for Mathematical
Sciences I was given an opportunity to
participate in a free Genealogical DNA
test to
trace my ancestry. They can do two tests for men, and one test for women.
The tests trace you back through your mothers-mothers-mother or your
fathers-fathers-father to the most recent ancestor with a non-coding DNA
mutation.
I have watched the election crisis in Kenya unfold from the beginning,
and am angry at the lack of concern the leaders have for the people they
claim to represent.
Some background - I was born in Kenya, in Nakuru, went to school in
Molo,and then again to school at Kenton College, Nairobi, until I was 12
years old. I have a little swahili - enough to get me around, and tell a
couple of jokes.
I have watched the election crisis in Kenya unfold from the beginning,
and am angry at the lack of concern the leaders have for the people they
claim to represent.
Some background - I was born in Kenya, in Nakuru, went to school in
Molo,and then again to school at Kenton College, Nairobi, until I was 12
years old. I have a little swahili - enough to get me around, and tell a
couple of jokes.
I had an excellent trip, starting off in Kenya, East Africa, with a
visit with my brother to the farm where we grew up. This was in
Timboroa, which was a small village when we were last there 22 years
ago, but is now much bigger - maybe 2000 people now. The farm we sold
to a Co-operative of Kenyans, who worked for 8 years and ran the farm
in the same style we ran it, until the debt borrowed from the
government was paid off. At this point they chose to sub-divide the
farm into plots, one for each of the members of the Co-operative. These
worked out at about three acres each. Here each family could build
their house and farm their own land separately.
A traditional Zulu wedding is a step back in time, with cellphone cameras
in strapped next to leopardskin loincloths. The ancestors are remembered,
and the age-old tradion of Lobola is observed.
I am spending christmas in Eshowe with
my friend Graham Chennells. A friend Karen from Muizenberg is here also,
on her own mission to complete her Sangoma
training, staying with a local
minister from a Zionist church as a Twasa - a trainee, for a month or
two.
A traditional Zulu wedding is a step back in time, with cellphone cameras
in strapped next to leopardskin loincloths. The ancestors are remembered,
and the age-old tradion of Lobola is observed.
I am spending christmas in Eshowe with
my friend Graham Chennells. A friend Karen from Muizenberg is here also,
on her own mission to complete her Sangoma
training, staying with a local
minister from a Zionist church as a Twasa - a trainee, for a month or
two.
As an update on the Wizzy project, a fair
bit has been happening.
In partnership with Inkululeko
Technologies and Amobia Wireless
Access, Wizzy is providing its email
solution for a number of schools provisioned by Inkululeko and Amobia.
Inkululeko are the spinoff from the
Shuttleworth Foundation and
their efforts to put computer labs down in South African schools, and
Amobia are a local Wireless ISP.
The labs that Inkululeko put down are Thin
Client labs, using old, recycled
computers in front ofthe learners coupled to a large Linux server that
runs the applications and fileserver. Wizzy provides a local mailserver
installation, a squirrelmail
IMAP client useable from a browser, and UUCP connectivity to the main
mail server hosted by Amobia. Authentication is provided by LDAP.
Guguletu has a gem of
a restaurant tucked away off Klipfontein Rd. Directions can be a little
tricky inthe townships, so here is a Google Maps
URL
And for those of you with a GPS that translates to**-33.976415 S
18.569694 E**.
Mzoli’s Meat
Directions
Mzoli’s Meat is a butchery just off the main Klipfontein Rd. If you take
the Modderdam Rd exit off the N2 out of Cape Town, turn left when you get
to Klipfontein Rd, Cross the railway line, pass a petrol station on your
left, and look for a cellphone tower disguised as a tree on the right.
The cellphone tower is too far, but not by much (you can see it in the
pictures below). Turn left, and you will see Mzoli’s meat immediately on
your left.
Guguletu has a gem of
a restaurant tucked away off Klipfontein Rd. Directions can be a little
tricky inthe townships, so here is a Google Maps
URL
And for those of you with a GPS that translates to**-33.976415 S
18.569694 E**.
Mzoli’s Meat
Directions
Mzoli’s Meat is a butchery just off the main Klipfontein Rd. If you take
the Modderdam Rd exit off the N2 out of Cape Town, turn left when you get
to Klipfontein Rd, Cross the railway line, pass a petrol station on your
left, and look for a cellphone tower disguised as a tree on the right.
The cellphone tower is too far, but not by much (you can see it in the
pictures below). Turn left, and you will see Mzoli’s meat immediately on
your left.
Recent elections in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa have
been declared flawed by the country’s own monitoring committee.
I travelled to Nigeria in
1992. For all its faults, I recognised it then as a powerful country,
with a strong role to play in sub-saharan Africa.
It suffers a geographical and religious division between the
northern muslims and the southern christians. I saw desperate poverty,
particularly in the north, with people living in the semi-desert as I
imagine they lived centuries before the white man arrived in africa -
with none of the benefits supposed to accrue from the nation’s oil
wealth.
I just went to a conference last week discussing Internet in
education in South Africa. I went with George Solomon, someone
I met though a foundation in the States that sponsors computers
in schools here, through the African American Foreign Relations Council.
They installed 30 486-class into Esangweni Secondary school, in
Kyalitsha, one of Cape Towns black townships. They all have 16M RAM,
and Windows95. There is also a Server computer, currently unused.
The camera-man for National Geographic, with the rest of the crew, spent
that evening in the bar at the George Hotel, where we discussed the
day’s events.
He said that he had been worried on occasion when snakes had been tossed
at his feet - his field of vision was limited by the camera lens, and he
hoped someone else was watching the snakes..
He also mentioned another Sangoma they had met in Johannesburg - who had
defied his teachers and had published a book on what he had learned.
I set off to Spashy Fen, a music festival, last Thursday,
only to have my BMW R80 break a clutch pressure plate
and other things in the gearbox.
After chatting with a motorcycle-owning indian bar-owner, he
offered to take it in his Bakkie (pickup) to Durban, to the
mechanic currently fixing his bike, which we duly did. I then
hitch-hiked to Splashy Fen - even with the help of a sign it
took too long to get a lift .. but the magic ride materialised,
and I got there in time for the evening festivities.
A few more impressions after being here a few days -
Even the rural areas seem relatively affluent compared to
rural South Africa. Much, I am sure, because of the low
population here.
Large British influence here - Barclays bank, many ex-pats,
Universal English, little or no Africaanse.
The government is a mess. The King, who did not like the last
constitution, and so summarily dissolved the government and
put together a ’traditional’ system, that basically means he
(and his mother) have complete power. There is a very slow
process right now to design a new constitution - don’t hold
your breath. Political parties are banned.
Swaziland is landlocked country of a similar flavor to Lesotho,
with small roads, a blanket speed limit of 80Km/hr, which is
completely ignored. There are two big towns, Manzini and the
capital Mbabane, both of which are much nicer than Maseru, the
capital of Lesotho. The road between them is now being upgraded,
but was listed in the Guiness book of records as the most
accident-prone anywhere. It has the Royal residences, all the
big hotels, the (tiny, but good) Mlilwane game reserve, and
the Why Not disco and strip bar. The traffic .. well, allowable
blood alchohol levels are twice anywhere else, and the road is
two, sometimes three lane, and where else do you need to go
in Swaziland ?
This week I went to see Andre Basel, who is the computer science teacher
at Eshowe High school and the local computer ‘fundi’.
We installed Linux on one of his classroom computers, and discussed
what his goals were in computer education.
He also put me in touch with Eshowe college of education, a teacher
training college here, which has a room full of computers, largely
under-used, without a network. I asked them over to the High School,
but only succeeded in scaring them about Linux.
Yesterday I went to a ’turning of the sod’ for a new High school here in
Eshowe, which will be paid for by a number of Spanish NGOs
(non-government organisation) and managed by the Eshowe Christian
Action group. The ceremony was at a nearby primary school, and included
some good zulu dancing by the kids.
Today there was an opening of the first skills centre / technical college
in zululand, which cost R2.5M for the first stage, funded by AngloAmerican,
a huge mining conglomerate, and a number of smaller donors, like the
British Consulate in Durban, and Rotary International from Eshowe and
Germany.
A big turn-around - elections this weekend. The front-runner is an
ex-military ruler - there is no other kind in Nigeria. The good news is
that he is the only military ruler to have voluntarily handed over to a
civilian government in the past.
He is running for president this time.
The bad news - Nigeria has institutionalised corruption - it is
normality. It is a long road back - this weekends elections are the
first step. The hard work however is to persuade the small towns (and
big) that there is an alternative to the style of control that everybody
has grown up to understand.
I was met at the airport, and we went straight to the offices of InTouch,
the company I have been in correspondence with. Good thing I had a shower ..
The company have arranged to put me up in a hotel for a week, until I
find another place. Very nice of them ..
The company is very closely associated with Vodacom, a large cell-phone
provider in South Africa. They have a number of products - two voice
applications, running under OS/2, one for dial-a-share-price, the
other for dial-to-get-your-current-bank-balance.
I was met at the airport, and we went straight to the offices of InTouch,
the company I have been in correspondence with. Good thing I had a shower ..
The company have arranged to put me up in a hotel for a week, until I
find another place. Very nice of them ..
The company is very closely associated with Vodacom, a large cell-phone
provider in South Africa. They have a number of products - two voice
applications, running under OS/2, one for dial-a-share-price, the
other for dial-to-get-your-current-bank-balance.
It seemed fitting that now I am back in England I saw a Zulu
version of Macbeth played at the new Globe theatre in London.
The Globe was the name of the theatre in which Shakespeare made
his name, as resident playwright and director, on the south
bank of the Thames. The original site is now partly covered by
the Southwark bridge, so they have rebuilt it, as far as it
can be determined, in the identical style. It has been the
personal project of an American, Sam —-, and is now the
centrepiece of a new arts development south of the City of London.
It seemed fitting that now I am back in England I saw a Zulu
version of Macbeth played at the new Globe theatre in London.
The Globe was the name of the theatre in which Shakespeare made
his name, as resident playwright and director, on the south
bank of the Thames. The original site is now partly covered by
the Southwark bridge, so they have rebuilt it, as far as it
can be determined, in the identical style. It has been the
personal project of an American, Sam —-, and is now the
centrepiece of a new arts development south of the City of London.
It seemed fitting that now I am back in England I saw a Zulu
version of Macbeth played at the new Globe theatre in London.
The Globe was the name of the theatre in which Shakespeare made
his name, as resident playwright and director, on the south
bank of the Thames. The original site is now partly covered by
the Southwark bridge, so they have rebuilt it, as far as it
can be determined, in the identical style. It has been the
personal project of an American, Sam —-, and is now the
centrepiece of a new arts development south of the City of London.
It seemed fitting that now I am back in England I saw a Zulu
version of Macbeth played at the new Globe theatre in London.
The Globe was the name of the theatre in which Shakespeare made
his name, as resident playwright and director, on the south
bank of the Thames. The original site is now partly covered by
the Southwark bridge, so they have rebuilt it, as far as it
can be determined, in the identical style. It has been the
personal project of an American, Sam —-, and is now the
centrepiece of a new arts development south of the City of London.
I spent a few days in Pretoria, back to the big cities. I can buy
Mitchells Bosuns Bitter again, but I still have not found any other
beer that is rumoured to be brewed here.
I visited the huge Voortrekker monument, built to fulfil a vow
made by the Boer pioneers on the eve of the battle of Boold river,
where it lookefd certain that the few hundred voortrekkers would
be certainly defeated by an army of 5000 Zulus. However, due to
superiour weaponry and good camp placement they survived,
with only a few casualties, while thousands of the enemy filled
the river with blood.
I am in Northern Province, back to SoSutho-speaking locals, towards the
north of south africa. Yesterday I and the managers of the backpacker
lodge where I am staying went to visit the widest baobab tree in the
world (I do not think they have looked very hard for others), in which,
and I mean IN, there is a small pub, that can seat about 12 people. It
is on private property, and we were disappointed to find that beer was
not being served.
I am in Northern Province, back to SoSutho-speaking locals, towards the
north of south africa. Yesterday I and the managers of the backpacker
lodge where I am staying went to visit the widest baobab tree in the
world (I do not think they have looked very hard for others), in which,
and I mean IN, there is a small pub, that can seat about 12 people. It
is on private property, and we were disappointed to find that beer was
not being served.
I went down to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, for a few days last
week. Rather than deal with the hassle of vehicle papers, I left my bike
in South Africa (White River, at the house of a motorcycling friend I
met in South Africa a couple of months ago) and headed to Mozambique
by the minibus taxis that all the black people use.
Mozambique has been in civil was for much of the last 20 years, so
the infrastructure is creaky to non-existent. Water is only available in
Maputo for half the day, as they lose too much underground otherwise.
Power cuts are frequent.
Zululand is the political stronghold of the Inkatha Freedom Party, and
Buthelezi, its leader. He is related to the King of Zululand, who
owns/administers most of the land, and who is a direct descendent
of Shaka Zulu, the (quite recent) founder of the Zulu nation.
Zululand is a place of rolling hills, with traditional Zulu Kraals dotted
all over it. Ulundi is the capital, but is a small place. I am staying in
Eshowe, the oldest city here, but Eshowe is smaller than Richards
bay, a large seaport that ships more tonnage than Durban, primarily
coal, timber (wattle and Gum) and sugar (which is grown everywhere).
There is also a large, new, aluminium smelting plant there.
I stopped by the home of Rhodes University - a quaint, very
British town in the Eastern cape, originally founded by settlers
who were bought in as a ‘buffer’ between warring factions at
that time.
The University is in the town, and has a beautiful campus.
I had been corresponding with a couple of people who were the
original founders of Internet in South Africa. I saw the lab,
and the FreeBSD machine that originally had a Fidonet connection,
and then a 9600 Baud dialup connection to the States.
They now have their connection through a commercial provider
in Johannesburg, and it is a 128K connection for all South Africas
Universities. That translates to a connection about two orders
of magnitude slower than a comparable US university.
I stopped by the home of Rhodes University - a quaint, very
British town in the Eastern cape, originally founded by settlers
who were bought in as a ‘buffer’ between warring factions at
that time.
The University is in the town, and has a beautiful campus.
I had been corresponding with a couple of people who were the
original founders of Internet in South Africa. I saw the lab,
and the FreeBSD machine that originally had a Fidonet connection,
and then a 9600 Baud dialup connection to the States.
They now have their connection through a commercial provider
in Johannesburg, and it is a 128K connection for all South Africas
Universities. That translates to a connection about two orders
of magnitude slower than a comparable US university.
I am in Ladysmith - a rural town in Natal, and the start of the band
Ladysmith Black Mambazo .. I am camping in a superb campground in town,
very cheap, with mostly poor white trash as my neighbours.
Some are out of prison, all are afrikaners, I buy dinner, they cook ..
There is always the acknowledgement that whites and blacks will have to
work together to find a solution, because they need each other.
Folks,
I am sending this mail from National University of Lesotho, as you
can see from the Email address sefika@macs.nul.ls “.ls” is the
toplevel domain for this small African kingdom completely surrounded
by South Africa. It has never been a part of RSA - it is a small
mountainous country that supplies most of the water for RSA. Very
third world, and its fortunes are inextricably linked to South Africa.
I am staying a beautiful lodge 2 Km outside of Roma, the University
town. Yesterday I climbed Thaba Bosiu - Moshoeshoe’s mountain
fortress from which he defended the country - and defined its people -
during the turbulent times at the beginning of this century, when
the Zulu started the internecine wars between the black tribes.
Internet in Namibia is supplied from a number of sources, but
king of the hill is Internet Africa - an offshoot of UUnet based
out of Virginia. They are based in South Africa, and run one,
maybe two, 128K lines from Capetown to Windhoek. I had a barbeque
with Dr Lisse - a German at the Swapokmund medical center who
administers name services for the country.
Performance sucks for interactive work - telnet to RMI was
painfully slow. I imagine WWW services are the same. So, yes,
I skimmed your mail, but no individual replies. An internet
Cafe that set up in Windhoek went out of business. However,
the backpackers lodge in Winhoek has it, the car hire place had it,
my student friend of the bus had it at home. So Email is a
reality, and within the country is fast.
Swakopmund is a resort town on the Swakop river - with a
heavy german influence. Where else could you buy German
memorabilia from the last war ?
The landscape is remarkable for the desert sands that come
fsright down to the sea.
I rode down on the minibuses that all the black folk use -
15 people squashed in for $10US to take you 200Km.
there was an 18 year old University student on the bus,
who could answer all my questions on Namibia. Very aware
of the country’s strengths and limitations. One of a
family of 6, with a computer, and Internet, at home. He
was the only one in higher education.
A group of us at the hostel banded together and rented a car
to go down to see an Oasis in the middle of the Namibian desert.
There has been an uncommon amount of rain in Namibia this year -
so much so that the usual sandy color of the landscape has been
replaced by green.
Rain in the desert is an event that is waited for by an entire
ecosystem - eggs that lie dormant in the hot, dry sand for decades
before exploding in a frenzy of growth, reproduction, and
quiescence again.
Got into the Capital of Namibia Friday AM, and located a
‘Backpackers Lodge’ through someone else on the plane.
It is $8 / night, for a shared dorm room, Lounge, TV,
kitchen - and excellent company of other people that
have travelled through the continent - mostly Australians,
New Zealanders (Kiwis) and Brits here, many of whom are on
extended trips of six months or more.
I organised a trip down to some huge natural sand dunes,
that have had an uncommonly large amount of rain this year.
Water in the desert is unusual, and the fauna adapts to
make best advantage of it for the short time it is around.
Most years there is no rain at all in this place.
Then on to Djenne, Mali, an old walled city constructed entirely of
banco - or mud. Every year all buildings including the huge central
mosque have to be patched, otherwise they gradually wash away. From
here we took a three day pirogue (a long boat punted along with poles)
trip to Mopti. Mali was hot. Its always hot - especially mid-afternoon,
and you constantly have to drink. You sweat all the time, but do not
notice it as it dries immediately.
All of French West Africa shares a common currency, the CFA, tied at
50:1 to the French Franc. In Paris you can convert unlimited amounts of
Francs to CFA and back, thus giving these countries a hard currency,
and French colonials a place where they can still do business as
always.
The Anglophone countries (Nigeria, Ghana, The Gambia) all have their
own currencies, with a corresponding rate of inflation, but (it seems)
very serviceable. All countries have exchangeable currencies, with
Bureau de Change at every street corner and ‘change money?’ a part of
the greeting exchange with tourists.
We progressed though Mwanza via dirt roads to Rwanda - also the main
truck supply route to that country. We were in Rwanda (official
language French) mainly to see the Parc de Volcans - the national park
on the borders of Rwanda, Zaire and Uganda, any two of which seem to be
closed to tourists because of internal troubles. This park is home to
the gorillas popularized by Dian Fossey’s book ‘Gorillas in the mist’,
and was another unforgettable experience - a stiff half-day hike to
find one of the four gorilla families that are habituated to tourist
visits, and an hour of watching the group - the adults spend most of
the time eating (very destructive, as they may eat the tree bark of up
to four trees each per day). The kids however are very curious, and you
can make faces and watch them play with each other in a way that
reminds us of our own childhood.
We headed north in Cameroon, three of our group unfortunately
contracting malaria on the way (probably caught at the coast). We spent
Christmas at a nice camp at Rumsiki way up north, and then headed west
into Nigeria.
Nigeria ( [2]MAP)
Nigeria is a big, populous, oil-rich, and completely corrupt country,
where everything in officialdom and elsewhere runs on ‘dash’ - their
word for bribes. We were stopped no less than five times within as many
miles from the border by spurious police, customs and immigration check
posts, all of which contrived to find something wrong with our papers,
the truck, or taxes in order to earn their daily dash. Though you have
to pay your way though everything, if you do it is a very efficient
system, where most things work.
Here I set about learning the bead game played all across Africa from
east to west - played with a 12 hole board and 48 beads. It is called
various names, the most common being Owali or Owari. There are a number
of different ways of playing, all of which involve the following :- you
have six houses, your opponent has six. You pick up the beads from a
house of your choosing (it must be one of yours) and deposit them one
by one anti- clockwise around the board, and examine the house where
the last bead falls. Depending on the number now in this house, there
are different courses of action.
I had an excellent trip, starting off in Kenya, East Africa, with a
visit with my brother to the farm where we grew up. This was in
Timboroa, which was a small village when we were last there 22 years
ago, but is now much bigger - maybe 2000 people now. The farm we sold
to a Co-operative of Kenyans, who worked for 8 years and ran the farm
in the same style we ran it, until the debt borrowed from the
government was paid off. At this point they chose to sub-divide the
farm into plots, one for each of the members of the Co-operative. These
worked out at about three acres each. Here each family could build
their house and farm their own land separately.
Here I set about learning the bead game played all across Africa from
east to west - played with a 12 hole board and 48 beads. It is called
various names, the most common being Owali or Owari. There are a number
of different ways of playing, all of which involve the following :- you
have six houses, your opponent has six. You pick up the beads from a
house of your choosing (it must be one of yours) and deposit them one
by one anti- clockwise around the board, and examine the house where
the last bead falls. Depending on the number now in this house, there
are different courses of action.
Then on to Djenne, Mali, an old walled city constructed entirely of
banco - or mud. Every year all buildings including the huge central
mosque have to be patched, otherwise they gradually wash away. From
here we took a three day pirogue (a long boat punted along with poles)
trip to Mopti. Mali was hot. Its always hot - especially mid-afternoon,
and you constantly have to drink. You sweat all the time, but do not
notice it as it dries immediately.
Then on to Djenne, Mali, an old walled city constructed entirely of
banco - or mud. Every year all buildings including the huge central
mosque have to be patched, otherwise they gradually wash away. From
here we took a three day pirogue (a long boat punted along with poles)
trip to Mopti. Mali was hot. Its always hot - especially mid-afternoon,
and you constantly have to drink. You sweat all the time, but do not
notice it as it dries immediately.
Here I set about learning the bead game played all across Africa from
east to west - played with a 12 hole board and 48 beads. It is called
various names, the most common being Owali or Owari. There are a number
of different ways of playing, all of which involve the following :- you
have six houses, your opponent has six. You pick up the beads from a
house of your choosing (it must be one of yours) and deposit them one
by one anti- clockwise around the board, and examine the house where
the last bead falls. Depending on the number now in this house, there
are different courses of action.
I had an excellent trip, starting off in Kenya, East Africa, with a
visit with my brother to the farm where we grew up. This was in
Timboroa, which was a small village when we were last there 22 years
ago, but is now much bigger - maybe 2000 people now. The farm we sold
to a Co-operative of Kenyans, who worked for 8 years and ran the farm
in the same style we ran it, until the debt borrowed from the
government was paid off. At this point they chose to sub-divide the
farm into plots, one for each of the members of the Co-operative. These
worked out at about three acres each. Here each family could build
their house and farm their own land separately.
All of French West Africa shares a common currency, the CFA, tied at
50:1 to the French Franc. In Paris you can convert unlimited amounts of
Francs to CFA and back, thus giving these countries a hard currency,
and French colonials a place where they can still do business as
always.
The Anglophone countries (Nigeria, Ghana, The Gambia) all have their
own currencies, with a corresponding rate of inflation, but (it seems)
very serviceable. All countries have exchangeable currencies, with
Bureau de Change at every street corner and ‘change money?’ a part of
the greeting exchange with tourists.
All of French West Africa shares a common currency, the CFA, tied at
50:1 to the French Franc. In Paris you can convert unlimited amounts of
Francs to CFA and back, thus giving these countries a hard currency,
and French colonials a place where they can still do business as
always.
The Anglophone countries (Nigeria, Ghana, The Gambia) all have their
own currencies, with a corresponding rate of inflation, but (it seems)
very serviceable. All countries have exchangeable currencies, with
Bureau de Change at every street corner and ‘change money?’ a part of
the greeting exchange with tourists.
Then on to Djenne, Mali, an old walled city constructed entirely of
banco - or mud. Every year all buildings including the huge central
mosque have to be patched, otherwise they gradually wash away. From
here we took a three day pirogue (a long boat punted along with poles)
trip to Mopti. Mali was hot. Its always hot - especially mid-afternoon,
and you constantly have to drink. You sweat all the time, but do not
notice it as it dries immediately.
Here I set about learning the bead game played all across Africa from
east to west - played with a 12 hole board and 48 beads. It is called
various names, the most common being Owali or Owari. There are a number
of different ways of playing, all of which involve the following :- you
have six houses, your opponent has six. You pick up the beads from a
house of your choosing (it must be one of yours) and deposit them one
by one anti- clockwise around the board, and examine the house where
the last bead falls. Depending on the number now in this house, there
are different courses of action.
We progressed though Mwanza via dirt roads to Rwanda - also the main
truck supply route to that country. We were in Rwanda (official
language French) mainly to see the Parc de Volcans - the national park
on the borders of Rwanda, Zaire and Uganda, any two of which seem to be
closed to tourists because of internal troubles. This park is home to
the gorillas popularized by Dian Fossey’s book ‘Gorillas in the mist’,
and was another unforgettable experience - a stiff half-day hike to
find one of the four gorilla families that are habituated to tourist
visits, and an hour of watching the group - the adults spend most of
the time eating (very destructive, as they may eat the tree bark of up
to four trees each per day). The kids however are very curious, and you
can make faces and watch them play with each other in a way that
reminds us of our own childhood.
The train trip to Dakar is a 36 hour trip through some very remote
areas of Mali. As those on the truck found out, there really is no road
through this area - the railway, two trains a week in each direction,
is their link to Bamako or Senegal. On our train when we started,
though there were plenty of seats, I noticed plenty of women sitting on
their bags around the door area of the train. Actually, soon after we
had started a couple of women the other end of the carriage started
fighting over this space - big women really going at it, with lots of
other people joining in! It soon became apparent what they were
fighting over - luggage space. Once out of Bamako these women started
buying things off people in the stations - boxes of mangoes, and as we
got into the rural areas, cola nuts. Cola nuts are reddish nuts you can
chew as a mild drug - very popular with muslims as there is nothing
against it in the Koran. I am told they are a stimulant, I tried them
but couldn’t get over the taste and texture.
All of French West Africa shares a common currency, the CFA, tied at
50:1 to the French Franc. In Paris you can convert unlimited amounts of
Francs to CFA and back, thus giving these countries a hard currency,
and French colonials a place where they can still do business as
always.
The Anglophone countries (Nigeria, Ghana, The Gambia) all have their
own currencies, with a corresponding rate of inflation, but (it seems)
very serviceable. All countries have exchangeable currencies, with
Bureau de Change at every street corner and ‘change money?’ a part of
the greeting exchange with tourists.
