Trip to SA

Yes, I am getting ready for the trip to South Africa (SA), and is quite exciting!! You cannot imagine how many things I have to do there; many friends are passing me requests, from watches to repair to computers (!) because SA sounds like a muzungu paradise with shops and everything that you cannot find here. I am not even sure if I am ready for an overdose of “western civilization” after living in Malawi for the last 8 months now, but I am ready for the test.

 

It will be one week of hard work; we have loads of seminars and poster presentations. I hope my poster is going to be ok, because I have done an awful lot of work! The meeting is about infectious diseases, I mentioned it before, and is going to happen in Hermanus, a town by the sea that is supposed to be a paradise for whale-watching, but is not the right time of the year.. Just to make you jealous http://www.advancedsummerschool.org.za/

 

We are also planning to do some sightseeing, I have delayed my flight a couple of days and Eliya, a local participant, has kindly organized a complete tour of Cape Town.

But of course, there will be tension until the last moment, the college was going to provide me transport to Lilongwe airport but I just talked to the transport officer and he had not received any notifications yet… Malawian communications at its best.

 

revolution in the public transport of Malawi!

Yes, you are reading well. There are many changes in the public transport system. You may have read my entry about the minibuses http://antuaninmalawi.blogspot.com/2008/01/special-entry-about-travelling-by.html how there were 4 people sitting in a row and you were all squashed.. Well, the government has introduced new laws and it looks as if now is only possible to sit three people in a row. The result is amazing, is so nice to jump in the minibuses, even with all your shopping from the market! but the price has increased to compensate for the decrease in passengers and even less people can afford a minibus ride.

Computers for africa

I never realized of how difficult is to get (or repair) a computer in Africa until the laptop that I brought from home died suddenly. How did that happen I am not sure, probably a storm cooked my hard disk, but it doesn’t start anymore. It would not bother me that much if I was in Europe, since it was a quite old machine and needed a replacement, but here, even old crappy laptops are precious, luxurious items. I looked in the few stores that sell laptops in Blantyre and the prices were ridiculous, at least double that in Europe!! If you consider that our salaries are probably 10 times lower here, you can guess that laptops are not accessible at all. And yet laptops are really useful for teaching and research. Books are too expensive but you can find everything in the net!

 

I started to search in internet the different ways to obtain computers in Africa and I found several projects that talk about building cheap computers for developing countries. One of them is computer-aid, that refurbishes and sends cheap computers www.computer-aid.org their service is quite good I think, most of the computers at work come from them.

 

Other interesting projects try to provide cheap laptops. One of them is the one laptop per child (OLPC) http://laptop.org/ that with the help of the MIT has designed a USD100 laptop (although the price is still much higher than that) that could be distributed in the schools of developing countries

 

There are now several competitors of the original low cost laptop, and there are juicy gossips in the net about Intel splitting up from the OLPC project, and creating his own product http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/cheap-notebook-battle/intel-classmate-reviewed-verdict-olpc-killer-334261.php

 

Another laptop that is getting much attention is the cute Asus eee pc http://eeepc.asus.com/ , a mini laptop equipped with a 7” screen for about 300-400$.. This kind of product would be very useful here, but God knows when it will be distributed in Africa, and at what price. I am lucky I am going to South Africa in a couple of weeks and I hope to find something affordable there, I don’t think I am going to wait for the OLPC to arrive…

 

 

 

a break from the rain..

It has not rained in the last 4 days and that is really nice because we were about to develop interdigital membranes. Now the sun is shinning and everything looks wonderful, but is starting to get so hot that soon we will miss the rainy days…

 

I have not stopped in the last weeks, many things going on at work with the start of the lectures and my summer school in South Africa. I have to prepare a poster, and may be also an oral presentation. I was not sure what to talk about so I had to do a lot of reading and research to find a topic. No I hope to meet some people in Cape Town and get a small research project going on, we’ll see if everything goes well.

 

With the stop of the rains we start again the outdoor activities too. Last week end we went to Zomba Mountain for a hike, and we are going to Mvuu camp to see the hippos next week end. Is low season now in the game parks, and there is a discount for residents in Malawi!! Probably the grass is very high and he animals are difficult to spot. Access to the park is not possible by car (not even 4wd) and we must take a boat along the Shire river, I’m looking forward!!

 

Have you seen the pictures from Zambia (and other things) in my flickr site?? Follow the link on the right!