Bill Schrull
Sorry for the writing drop out. We had an interesting time the past few days. First was the numerous flight delays by Air Tanzania which started on Saturday and did not end until Sunday afternoon, when we finally got to Kigoma to meet up with our friends from DWT. We were tired for sure, but we were glad to finally get to Kasulu Sunday evening.
Today, I spent a fair amount of time at Lake Tanganyika College. It was good to get there and start working on a list of things they had for me to do. First was getting the Windows 2008 Server working so that the thin clients could communicate with it. Somehow it’s network addressing was changed, so I got that set and it was back in business. Other things included networking a new Canon copier/printer with the servers and then reseting their wireless network. Yup, somehow that got changed as well. Whatever! We got is all working again.
Tomorrow we will be going with a rep from World Vision to the village of a child and family that we support. I think I’ll leave to Cathy to write about that tomorrow, as she is really the one who sponsors them. It just interesting to note that when she asked World Vision to have her sponsor a girl from Tanzania several years back, that it turned out that she lives very close to Kasulu where we have been in partnership with DWT for all these years.
Bill
This morning we departed from Bishop Okullu College. I completed the work I had to do there and will be looking over their setup remotely from the USA from time to time to see that things are running well.
Beatrice, the young lady who manages the computer systems has been trained in trouble shooting connection problems that can occur, especially if a student does something to the thin client settings, so hopefully she will be able to keep all of the stations running well over the next year.
The new printer is also working out well, since it does not require a direct connection to the server computers, but works over the network. That should insure that it keeps printing for them for a long time.
Overall, I’m pleased that I could get back here to BOC and help maintain there computer systems. Many of the students mentioned how much they appreciate having this resource for study and communications with the outside world. (Below is a picture of Professor George the principal of BOC and Lillian, their administrator.)
Right now we are in downtown Kisumu at a hotel called the Jumuia Resort. It’s a very nice establishment that is owned and run by the Council of Churches in the Kisumu area. We had dinner tonight with the Kodia family, which included some traditional East African dishes with some extra spices that really brought out some great flavors. And Annette, their oldest daughter made home made ice cream. It was very good!
Tomorrow morning we will get ready to fly from here to Dar Es Salaam. This involves a flight to first to Nairobi and then on to another fight from there to Dar. Our plan is to meet Joe Bernardo, our friend from St. Paul’s Church, in Dar Es Salaam at the airport. His flight from Dubai gets in about 30 minutes before our flight from Nairobi. From there we will take a taxi into the city to a hotel and stay for one night before we travel on to Kigoma to meet up with our friends from the Kasulu. I’ll be glad to get to Kisulu and settle down for a week without travel, I have to admit.
Blessing to you all and keep coming back. There is much more to come.
Bill