Peaceful week

During last seven days we have met Nicki and Thabo few times and discuss about what we have done and what we will do. This week we have mostly worked with Digital Doorway Business Plan. Besides Nicki and Thabo we also had a meeting with Isaac Mohlamme and Sebolelo Nhlapo from Thobologa Sign Language Institution - and of course their interpreter because unfortunately we can’t speak in sign language. We are going to work a lot with them during our last weeks here and we are really glad about that because we felt this project really interesting.

Project with Wireless Africa Alliance has been going well and Mika and Antti have had positive feedback on their work. WAA wikipage has been under boys attention and the sitemap and frame of the business section are coming together. Mika and Antti have also met couple new members of their project. They met Kobus Roux who is the head of WAA in Meraka Institute. Kobus, Mario and Chris will be Mika and Anttis contacts in Meraka for the rest of our time in South Africa since Michael Jenkins left to United Kindom already, when leaving Michael granted boys with two bottles of wine as a Christmas present. Mika and Antti also met Kanye (Mmamakanye Pitse Boshomane) who will arrange a one day trip to some rural town or township next Wednesday where Mika and Antti will talk to local infopreneurs about their micro-services.

The local cinema

Last Friday we met first time our whole class when we had small Christmas parties on our apartment. We bought Christmas lights and decorations to get a little Christmas atmosphere but it felt little strange to barbecue and swim in our pool in the middle of Christmas decorations. It was really nice to hear how’s it going with everybody and what kind of projects other groups have. On Saturday we spent our day with two girls who works in our gym. They showed us Mamelodi (their domicile) and we were able to see and talk with local people. The best thing in this trip was to attend in local wedding - see their traditional weddings and taste their traditional feast meal. On Sunday we went to Pilanesberg National Park. There we took a safari drive and saw lot of African wild animals.

Local weddings

After busy weekend we have had quite quiet in our apartment when other group (6 boys) left to ”tourist tour” into the villages. While they were on their trip we have visited Apartheid Museum, Rosebank Mall, African Craft Market, drove through Johannesburg centre and visited lions park, where we were allowed to pet orphan lion cubs and fed giraffes.

One week behind

This week we got totally in our project. We had a meeting with Nicki and Toby. They told us more about CSIR and Meraka Institute, especially department were we are going to work. We got ten smaller projects. We went together through subjects what we are going to work with, for example open source and dual licensing, business plans and commercialization. We get also familiarize and discuss about deaf technique and how mobile phones are used and could be used in Africa.

Antti and Mika have had a meeting with their project team Michael Jenkins and Mario Marais in the Meraka's meeting room this Tuesday morning. They went throughout the project and it's schedule. Their project is to create Wiki-based guide which contains instructions, glossary and different successful scenarios about business, technology and community development which are targeted to entrepreneurs that provide micro-products and micro-services in different African countries.

Project is a part of larger WAA(Wireless Africa Alliance) project which is lead by Chris Morris from CSIR research center and the biggest funder of the project is Canadian IDRC research center. There are 12 different African countries to participate the project and their goal is to create a network between entrepreneurs in different member countries. The networks main goal is to develop entrepreneurs business by sharing experiences and knowledge with this Wiki-guide.

The project has started as well as planned. Mika and Antti made a project plan and at the moment the project has followed the schedule and the plan. Also they have an opportunity to meet the project team daily if there is any questions that have came up.

Beginning of the week we went to gym and we signed a membership for a month. It was only 450 Rands (something like 33 euros). It was so nice to swot up, not just for sun. People in there were so kind to us and of course like they are used to do here it takes a while when we got our membercards. It happens just now… We were also happy about what we found from there. There was a traditional finnish sauna. We were little shocked when we saw a sign for “Use shower only for 5 minutes to save water” - because it is so easy to manage the showering in 1 minute! And in the country where everybody doesn’t even have water to drink, it sounds a bit harsh.

The group of Safipa

One day we decided to take late morning and went to work a little bit later. We worked a little while outside and boys didn’t use sun cream because legs don’t burn, right! So now in our group we have four people and two crabs! On Thursday morning we made lots of macaroni casserole because in Meraka we had communal lunch. We wanted to make for them something traditional finnish food. We ate some African food and we didn’t even have a clue what was it. At the same time we all celebrated some workers birthdays.

Couple of words that we have learned so far
Yobo = Hi!
Ishnay = No way, suprisingly

Yesterday evening when we were going to sleep, besides killing mosquitoes, Mari saw a nice little animal running through our kitchen. Yep, we had a mouse or a rat in our house!!

First days in South Africa

We arrived to South Africa on Thursday 20th November at 9.45 am. The flight was quite hard experience. Some of us slept only few hours or less but still we had some energy left to manage ourselves to Brummeria where our accommodation is located.

We have a nice cosy apartment only 1km away from CSIR area where we should work. The house consist four bedrooms, living room and kitchen but we still had to find space for four extra beds cause 12 people is sleeping there. In the garden there is a ten meters long pool and the garden itself was pleasant suprise, since it was a large garden which is surrounded by stone fence and of course electric wires to protect us.

On Friday we had our first meeting with people from Meraka institute. We only met Kristiina who is our contact people from Safipa. Other people that we supposed to meet were in some kind of training session. We get through all kinds of stuff that we should know at the beginning of our stay here. We got our work passes and discussed about how our working should be started. On Monday we will get more information about this project and also meet the rest of our contact people, Nicki and Rensie.

On our first day at Meraka Mika and Antti visited WAA's (Wireless Africa Alliance) confrence in Irene wich is Pretorias suburb. Confrence was held in rented guesthouse. In the confrence 12 founding member countries were discussing about WAA's future plans and it also acted as a training event for WAA members. The training they offered was for african entrepreneurs and it consisted of business and technical training.

More information about WAA:

http://www.fmfi.org.za/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Africa_Workshop
http://www.wireless-africa.org/

At the confrence we met our contact persons Michael Jenkins, Chris Morris and Mario Marais who we will meet on tuesday morning. In the meeting we will discuss about our projects details and schedule.

We rented a car so it would be easier to move around, in fact it’s the only way to travel short distances here like getting to work and go shopping. Now few of us is learning to drive on the “wrong” side of the road. It’s frightening but luckily we are quick learners.

First impression of the people in South Africa has been very good. They are friendly and they also want to know everything about us and Finland. The culture is diverse because of this great chasm between the rich and the poor. There is some luxurious shopping malls, but it’s strange and sad that only few blocks away you can see people in very bad conditions and nothing but a piece of sheet metal as a shelter.

These first days in here have been very nice and we are really waiting what it’s going to be after we had settled down even better. The weather is awesome and it’s nice to be here knowing that in Finland it is something different.

Two days to go

Hi,

Only two days to go until we start our trip.

-Antti