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
Today was a work day for me at Bishop Okullu College. It started early at about 7:30 AM where George, the principal of BOC drove into Kisumu, which is about an hour and 15 minutes away. I discovered yesterday that the printer they have for the thin client network just was not configuring well for working with the setup, much because the printer was designed to connect to workstation type computers (Windows 10, 8, 7 and the like) rather than Windows Server. I decided to get them a network based printer which would be compatible with Windows Server.
In Kisumu, we met up with Nick, my friend who I got to know last year during the original network install. Nick is a computer / network savvy person who knows where the computer equipment stores are in Kisumu and specifically which ones would have network printers. We found the type of printer we needed at the second shop we visited and got that one to bring back with us to BOC.
We traveled back to BOC and got to work on setting up the printer. It did not take long and as I expected, worked perfectly with Windows Server. All of the thin clients can now print when they need to.
I’m also working on finishing up the backup server system. I won’t bore you with the details. It should be complete before we shut down for the evening and then tomorrow I’ll just need to help them final setup of the laptop computer we brought for the office.
While doing these things, I’ve been nursing a head cold, which is kind of annoying to have being in the beautiful warm weather in Kenya. A head cold, really! Who knows where I picked it up, but I glad to say that it does seem to be subsiding today.
We continue to be thankful for all of the good wishes we’ve received from friend on Facebook during our travels, and of course your prayers are greatly appreciated. I’m really glad to be here again and I’m looking forward to our continued travels to Tanzania after our visit here in Kenya.
Peace!
Bill