Busembatia's Main Street
Alpha's Sign
Rebecca and her Staff outside their shop
Inside the shop
Fred works on a P3 while Rebecca looks on
A fairly common Internet connection: CDMA handset (Mango / UTL)
This.. poor... machine. Typical though. We're fixing this one then teaching them how to take care of their machines...
We brought back the poor broken P2 and Fred took a crack at it. The CDROM was toasted. We replaced it (20,000/= or $10) then added two 64MB memory sticks to the 64MB that was already in there. Rebecca told us that the Jinja repair shops “couldn’t fix this machine”. They suggested she take it to Kampala after taking her for over 100,000/=. Fred fixed it in an afternoon with a handful of parts. He even cleaned the machine inside and out.
I gave the machine to Rebecca today and she asked, “Is this the same machine I gave you? It looks new!”
Needless to say, she was thrilled. We didn’t charge her for the service, although she asked to pay us. The total bill was like $30 worth of parts, had we bought them in town. This is exactly why we need gear. I’d love to set up a shop here where students like Fred can do excellent quality work while learning tech skills that will sustain them. I’m blown away by how much Fred can do. He’s really taking off and runs with every bit of training I throw his way.
But he’s not alone. People here latch onto training and absolutely eat it up. If we had the gear and the training material, we could really grow this thing and amplify it. One step at a time….
P.S. Posted Monday night. Tomorrow I fly to Morocco for a training gig. I’ll be there for three weeks. It’s good money and this one gig could support us for months. I hate leaving for this long, but Jen’s insistant that this is took good an opportunity to pass up. The kids are even behind it, but I hate just leaving things for three weeks. I’ll be posting from Morocco (I WILL get a connection) and I’ll be balancing some projects remotely. Gear is being shipped thanks to Tim and Chris (11 nComputing x550’s) and I hope to hit the ground running when I get back. More later.
