Providing Lesotho's Children with Keys to the World

This is the story of our efforts to end the vicious cycle of poverty, disease, inadequate education, and early death
in a remote rural community in Lesotho, Africa, by providing quality education and life skills
to the young children there. Join us on our journey ...

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Difficulties Communicating with Africa Continue

We're still experiencing problems with email and internet connections at Ketane. Apparently, the GSM modem (USB stick/dongle) Janissa sent isn't working. We're not sure what the problem is yet, so Mapesh, Matlabe, and Aaron can only communicate by email when they travel away from Ketane. We may have to wait until we get an I.T. person on the ground in Ketane to fix the problem.

We also haven't heard from Shaun, in Durban, for several months. He hasn't responded to emails. We're trying to track down the problem there too.

This is very frustrating and slows our progress somewhat, but it's not unexpected in the early stages of a project like this, and it's not insurmountable.


- Janissa

3 comments:

  1. I just found a Shaun Ilderton on Facebook. Hopefully that's our guy and he'll send me a reply. - Janissa

    ReplyDelete
  2. I got an email from Aaron yesterday with an update on the internet status in Ketane. Here's an excerpt:

    "All the USB internet dongles are having problems. Mapesh took the one
    you sent to the vodacom store and they couldn't get it to work. I
    can't get service with either one on my computer. It -could- be the
    SIM card but I don't think it is. I'll be in Maseru at the end of the
    month and will just buy a new one and have vodacom hook it up there to
    make sure it works. I need one in good working order and with a lot of
    data to begin internet classes when all the teachers are back in
    August. I'll just fund it myself.

    I've had a few computer classes with Me Mahlafane and she's getting it
    down. At this point, it's all about practice. I'm going to make up
    random assignments for them to practice typing, copying, pasting, the
    ABCs of computers. Hopefully Me Mahlafane can assist me with teaching
    the other teachers. From what Andrew had said, she was the star pupil
    and the one most excited to work with the computers."

    - Janissa

    ReplyDelete
  3. Still no word from Shaun despite emails to his personal email address, old employer Des-ign, and his Facebook account. I did find out that he's now working for an engineering company in Durban. I haven't found contact information for his new employer yet, but I will write them when I do. Shaun owes us two laptops.

    - Janissa

    ReplyDelete

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