 Computer Class at LTC |
No post yesterday. Cathy and I decide to take a night off and watch a DVD movie we brought along. Tonight we had an early dinner at Kidyama Church which I’ll get into later. It’s nice to be writing a bit earlier in the evening today.
Just touching briefly on it, yesterday we spent the morning at Lake Tanganyika Theological College. I still refer to it at the Bible College. It a lot easier to say. I spent a fair amount of time on getting the wireless network working again. Back in February when I helped them reconfigure the network for the new server, the wireless network was disrupted. But it’s back in business again, so the teachers and the LTC office can use their various laptops, tablets or smart phone again through the network. I also ran some testing of the new Mac Mini Server and made some progress there in getting it ready to take over some of the classroom operations. Tomorrow I’m heading back to LTC to work with the staff to integrate the new server into operations.
Today was a day we spent mostly around the Diocese compound. I spent some time in the office getting that wireless network back in good working order. Last year I had installed a wifi amplifier, connecting it to a high output antenna outside on a pole. This allowed much of the surrounding buildings to get some wifi Internet as well as the offices. But as weather would have it in Tanzania, at some point during the last few months a lighting storm blow out the network. Today I was able to determine that the wireless equipment was OK, but only the power supplies had been damaged. Once I replaced those, I was able to get that part of the wireless network working again. In fact it is working well enough to reach our home at the new hostel. I only needed to setup a small wireless repeater in the house to boost the signal and get good connectivity in all the rooms.
 Our home in Kasulu |
Cathy in the mean time went shopping for things like bananas, tomatoes, mango juice (I love mango juice!), a kettle and an assortment of other things for us and the house. I have to say we are really enjoying our time in the new place. At this point it’s furnished well and even has pictures on the walls that we brought with us from the US. They are mostly pictures we cut out and mounted from some of Cathy’s Seirra Club calendars, but they dress up the place nicely.
One of the other things we did yesterday and are continuing to work on is a song we can share during our times of working here. Each time we come we try to take a worship song we are familiar from home and translate the chorus into Swahili so we can sing it together with the congregations and churches we visit with. This year we have chosen “Oh Our Lord” by Paul Baloche. Here is a YouTube link if you’re curious to here it.
 Greetings at Kidyama |
The chorus translated into something that’s works well with the natural rhythm of the song. That is sometimes hard to do because of the differences in the Swahili and English languages.
The English chorus which goes like this:
Oh our Lord, How majestic is your name in all the earth.
Is changed to:
Oh Bwana wetu, Jina lako ni la ajabu sana.
It’s not an exact translation but it conveys the same meaning. We are preparing to sing it this Sunday with the congregation at the cathedral in Kasulu. This time we are planning to do it with full band background tracks along with my guitar and us singing of course.
Late in the afternoon today we went to visit Kidyama Church outside Kasulu along the road to Kibondo. I had visited Kidyama church in the past. During my very first visit in 2005, I saw the church building when it was just a brick shell with no roof. Since then with the help of funds that came from Grace Chruch in Old Saybrook, CT along with funds that came from various grants, the roof was constructed and now they are working to complete the tile floor along with a fresh coat of paint.
 Bible study at Kidyama |
It was great to be there with the congregation today. We sang together and I lead them through a bible study based on Ephesians 2:1-10. It was good to be able to get a chance to share with them from the scriptures. I was speaking in English and Rev. Emmanuel Bwatta translated for me. The interesting thing about speaking publicly like this is that you have to plan the time for the translation. So for instance if you are planning for a 60 minute bible study, you need to put together about 30 minutes of material.
Tonight we are relaxing back at the house writing our blog posts and feeling pretty grateful for our time here so far. I’m going to end today’s post here, but I do want to thank you all for your prayers while we are here. Everything is going well. Each day has been a blessing, especially with the warm weather. It’s a nice break from our cool weather back in Connecticut.
I wish for all of you a great rest of your day and a peaceful sleep tonight.
Yours in Christ,
Bill
 On my way to deliver the tablets |
Wow. It’s 10:20 PM here. Where did the day go? Actually it went along pretty well. We started off with morning chapel at 7am which involves a bible study and prayer, including the Anglican cycle of prayer. After a quick breakfast I got started working at the diocese office delivering the 20 android tablets. I handed them off to Rev Emmanuel Bwatta, the Secretary of the Diocese for safe keeping until they are already to assign them to the various diocesan leaders. Since they are having a 25 year celebration (jubilee!) in June, I expect that they will be very busy up until then with other work and preparations. While I’m here we will probably do a test run of one of the tablets with a new cell data carrier called Halotel. This provider has good pricing and exceptional Internet speed. I’m using a Halotel SIMM card right now and I’m getting around 3.5 megabit up and down speed, which is excellent especially in this area of the country.
Every year I come here the services for communications get better. I’m pleased for them that there have been so many improvements over the 11 years that I’ve been traveling to Kasulu. When I first came 2005, there was very little technology available. I could barely get a cell call through and it was pretty expensive. The only Internet game in town was to setup satellite VSAT access which was slow and over $6000 per year. I had to get grants every year to keep them up and running at the Bible College. Now with so much cellular data network going up all over the country, Internet services are much faster and quite affordable.
After setting up a wireless network repeater they needed in the office and also helping Canon Mafumbi download a couple apps on his iPad, we took lunch and then headed down to the Bible College for the afternoon. I began the setup of a new Mac Mini that we will use as a second server for the computer room / lab. I’ll say more about that tomorrow when I get more time to complete the setup. One thing I’d like to report is how many people were there using the computer systems. Both rooms were full of students working on various assignments. It was perhaps the most active time that I’ve observed since I’ve been involved in supporting their computer and networking needs. I was happy to see that.
For sure there is more to report about this day, but I need to get some rest now. Tomorrow will be another full day, part of which is taking the time to prepare a bible study for Kidyama Church which we’ll be visiting on Friday afternoon.
Bill