Education Thought you lot would be interested to know...

Hi All

I'm Craig, go under the name of djDEATH (as my drum and bass dj name) and gamertag graigchq on all the racing games i play online. I'm a big geek, having been a PC enthusiast for as long as i have been employed, and i live in Bristol UK.

In January 2011, i am embarking on what will quite possibly be the craziest yet most enthralling journey ever.. i'm leaving my job as support technician for a FTSE 30 company to go and live near Moshi on the southern slopes of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania (eastern Africa) for the duration of next year as the ICT and networks co-ordinator for a vocational training centre and school complex; part of a UK charity called Village Education Project Kilimanjaro (VEPK) http://www.kiliproject.org

Having worked for a range of companies throughout my career, big and small, i have found a very special hatred for modern society which i have always struggled to place properly in my mind and along with my natural geekyness (my father was a weapons and technical officer on board a HMS naval ship) has made finding the right job and vocation to be something of a compromise. Working for the man is fine, but being surrounded by jobsworth idiots who care nothing but for their paychecks is beginning to grain on my intelligence. I know I can achieve more, but this system prevents me from doing so, because i am not cut-throat or greedy enough.

The centre i am going to work at provides education and learning support for not only the pupils of the school, but the pupils and teachers of all the schools in the area, and as well as classrooms, dormitories for volunteers and other buildings for support staff, there is an internet café, craft shop and computer lab, which are used by many in the area for a range of activities.

The Computer Centre manager left for higher climes in 2008, leaving the school practically unsupported since then, and so i am stepping in to pick up where he left off, and inject some much needed fresh thinking and modern experience to bring their systems up to date in the most efficient and cost effective way possible. All the while i hope to learn some of life's most important lessons, from people who rank among the poorest in the world, yet live in one of the happiest communities anywhere. Something about our lives here in Europe doesn't seem right: we have everything we could need, yet few of us are truly happy.

I guess why i am telling you all about this here is twofold...

> Whilst in africa, i will be facing technical challenges without the safety net of a large budget or myriad support contracts with suppliers and retailers like i am used to - your help in resolving things without having to hire experts will be invaluable

> raising awareness of my project, so that it may garner some attention from outside - all help is most welcome.

I am in the process of sending out a bunch of spare computers and laptops i have had donated to me, and perhaps the biggest shock of all, will be when you learn that my gaming rig is being donated to the cause :O :O :O

Yep, that's right, i am taking the BEASTIE out to tanzania to be the central hub of operations for the entire project, and will most likely host a range of virtual machines to carry out the various tasks i have planned for it. I always knew the day i let her go would be a sad one, but i think i have found the most perfect final resting place for her.

So, thanks for reading, I'll post up a link to my photo diary blog thing when it goes live, and i hope that this kind of activity will inspire others to leave their wasteful western lives behind for a while and consider what else the world is about... nobody is stopping you, quite the contrary, the world is OUR oyster

on the scav-chav side, any donations towards this most worthy cause (i have raised over £1200 myself, and donated ALL of my PC hardware towards this) can be sent to the project by visiting the website: http://kiliproject.org

 

2011 update:

So I spent 6 months up on the mountain, and I loved it. Have learnt to speak Swahili, have met and spent time with some of the best people I've ever met, and now I'm heading back out there again this year for another 6-9 months.

This time I have garnered a LOT more support, and I will be taking out and configuring the following:

- 2 x HP Proliant ML350 G4 servers, both dual dual-core, 8GB of ram in each one, and 3x 74GB SAS drives raid 5, plus 2x300GB SCSI in each one.
- 24 P4 and Core2Duo PCs
- 4 reasonable spec laptops with decent (2 hrs +) battery life
- 2 APC 1.5KW UPS
- 2 APC 700W UPS
- 2 Sonicwall firewalls
- 2 x24 port unmanaged switches
- loads of cables, ram, keyboards, mice etc.

It's all been delivered to the holding depot in Essex, where it will go into a container next week, and meet me out in Tanzania in a month or twos time. I can't wait.

On top of the hardware, I've used CTXchange to get some decent cheap licenses, with a 5 seat 2008 R2 Enterprise license for VM hosting, and 30 user cals for TS sessions and office 2010 with user cals for the whole site. I'll be upgrading my PFsense box to a hardware sonicwall, and moving it onto the ESX host for squid and web filtering, and my moodle site is coming along, with basic courses already set up, and loads of ideas to move that forward.

I just gotta hope my APC's hold up and the power cuts don't fry this nice shiny (well, kinda grey and old actually) hardware.

 

I can't believe nobody replied to your original post.
Did you enjoy Africa? Does it call to you when you are not there?

When will you be going back?

Living in a place like that must be beautiful and serene! No BS and corporate crap to deal with.

 

How the hell did this post go unnoticed? That is an amazing undertaking! Good luck with the second trip!

 

It's amazing what you are doing mate. There's more to life than pay checks and money doesn't equal happiness as you have proved. It's inspirational to see what you have done to help a poor community and I wish nothing but the best for you .

 

Did you see Sean Connery's grave over there? Was it empty?

 

thanks for the support guys.

It's been a roller coaster journey, from turning up with my bike and boxes of PCs and laptops, to becoming an honourary member of the trible that lives in the area, speaking the language and learning how to be african in every way i can. Then some bad news and i had to come home early, but going back out there in three weeks, after being back in the UK for just over three months.

The challenges of living life in this kind of community are huge. There is the fact that I am alone: my boss is also british, but spends most of her time fundraising in the UK, so I am the only white guy in the village, you make friends very quickly. Then there are the logistical nightmares: power cuts, DNS servers deciding not to play, hard disks failing because of power cuts... you name it, it's happened! The infrastructure there is so poor, that just getting my own life admin done can sometimes be difficult. I have an android, unlocked, and so have internet access pretty much 24/7, and in some ways is better than the UK, reception is excellent everywhere, which is more than can be said about Bristol, the HQ for Orange, where I've never been able to get a full signal in every room of any house I've lived in. I can however, post a picture of me up swimming in a waterfall, straight to facebook, from 2000m up the mountain!

This time round it's business time. The number of PC's i've had donated overwhelms me, and so I have more than enough to go around, to help some local businesses and start broadening my work from beyond the village I live in and out to the town. I have been thinking about starting my own internet cafe, but that gets political very quickly, and I need to earn some more respect from the local leaders before I even attempt that one.

Pictures and lots of stories from my first stint out there are on my blog:

http://graigchq.wordpress.com

 

Amazing and good on you. One day and wife permitting I want us both to leave our current schools and go teach in Africa.

 

Great, more emails from widows of assasinated african politicians to look forward too.

Seriously though, good work.

 

Sounds great fun and amazing work well done

 

Is there an associated charity that people can donate obsolete hardware to? This may just be the place to let people know about it.

 

I'm so glad to see something like this. My prayers are with you.

Learned to speak !Kung yet?

 

I don't think any Westerner can vocalise the ! correctly.

 

Keep trying, never get it right.

 

This is in no way meant to be an incendiary comment, I am merely playing devil's advocate and asking a question I think is worth asking for the purpose of debate. I am in no way trying to be disparaging about the OP's work.

Is there not a danger that the bounty of technology which you are admirably sourcing and setting up is going to corrupt the elements of their community/society which so attracted you there in the first place?

 

The introduction of technology into a society based on norms that are diametrically opposed to ours is not always a death knell. A culture that fosters a close adherence to one's roots will act as a buffer against Hellenization-plus our OP is attempting to assimilate, not the other way around.

I still hunt and fish, and can do things in the traditional ways-and still do, but I have technology to help extend my life. I don't see it as a rejection of my beliefs but a way to help me to stick around long enough to pass them to my son. (The abovestated beliefs would be those from my Seminole heritage.)

 

can you imagine your a kid for the first time in a internet cafe.. you get on youtube and see fleece johnson

 

From what i've read the introduction of TV and internet to Bhutan in '99 seemed to murder traditional values overnight.

 

Hats off to you fella, Best of luck!

Sam

 

This isn't a first contact with a hidden tribe. This is Kili, and it's been exposed to plenty of technology. What he's doing is more access/information then "look, me white man, Windows ME bad."