intocontext

Kiva Light

2006-11-06T16:40:00.000-08:00

Big news! Kiva was featured in a PBS Frontline special on October 31st. Interest from the show was so great that it brought the site to its knees. Kiva regrouped and is now running a reduced content site that channels visitors to a limited number of actions. Its kind of like what we suggested they do with their site in East Africa during the project, to avoid lengthy wait times for their partners. We called it 'Kiva light'.

Although I haven’t seen the program other than Kiva's 16 minutes I would say that they steal the show. The full program will be available tomorrow here, http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/uganda601/video
_index.html. For now though you can see the Kiva segment at,
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=d49a36dd0a9
e20af1bd2ec7a53c56abd.1100479. Lucky for us the Miracle Mobile Solution that came out of this project has a bit part. Matt is shown using the phone right towards the end as the program segues into a short celebration of Matt's commitment to technology.

Other than news of the show to fill in the blank since we last posted the final report was completed and will be available as soon as the site receives a makeover. We are hoping to leave the site as a stand alone representation of the project from beginning to end and continue to use the blog as a place to report any developments. For now those developments include my graduation and one conference paper submitted and another in the works. The first paper concentrates on the collaborative aspects of our project including the role of the user and developer in defining the ultimate solution.

Although the project is over and Jon and I have moved on to other work we find ourselves still hovering quite close to many of the themes of this project. We would like to continue to add some content to the blog including news of any developments or stories that are related to the project but the blog feels like its run over a tack. I guess that is the nature of a project blog when the project winds down. Must be hard to be a full time blogger.

Field testing Mobile Miracle Solution

2006-08-28T04:33:00.000-07:00


One video paints thousands of pictures.

Back to the bush

2006-08-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

Jon and I had been waiting for the day when we could get back out to the bush with David from WEEC in Kenya and test the MMS with him. He was the test case for journal updating from the field. More than just being the credit officer operating in the most remote location he was also one of the least familiar with the digital camera and the computer. His two room office in Isinya has no technology.

He advised against a trip back out to the same clients that we had visited on our first trip because of the distance and cost of a cab and instead we went only as far as what might be considered peri-rural.

Beyond a few interface questions that whole process was very easy for him to complete and the time to find coverage was around 10 minutes in some cases. What is nice is that once he had pressed send we could leave to the visit the next client while the phone searched for coverage.

By the third visit to one of his clients he had sent a journal successfully without even notifying us so that we could capture it on video. We have some excellent video of the post in action. Between sentences he is batting away a pesky cow trying to get to the water faucet that he is seated on. All this under a vast Kenyan sky. Our access to the internet was once again poor in Kenya and we will try to post that video soon to the website.

As far as the ease of use and the coverage are concerned David was a milestone.

We celebrated a successful testing phase with few days in Mombasa.

Testing seriously

2006-08-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

The response to the tests couldnt be better. Uninterrupted use of the phone and journal updates with everybody. Teopista (the woman on the left) is sending a journal communicating that the borrower has received the money while I'm taking the picture. Tomorrow we test with WEEC, but the response was positive already. Martha (credit officer) learned how to use it in a few minutes and send ... and send ... and send testing pictures to her own mail.

5 in one blow

2006-08-10T01:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a bit like Christmas, gifts for all. Jon and I got confirmation that the MMS can indeed deliver journal updates to the Kiva site directly. So that means its all downhill from here. Kiva got lots of journal updates from the LiA credit officers and the lenders received those updates as well.

During the entire 7 weeks that we spent during our previous visits to the organizations that we have been working with there was not a single instance where we were able to witness the entire process of updating a journal entry from beginning to end. No matter how hard we pushed to see the entire sequence uninterrupted there was always some complication that stood in our way. Power and connectivity were by far the biggest impediments. Yesterday we saw the entire process five times in two hours.

I gotta say it was a good day.

intocontext invites you to join their new 'hotblog'

2006-08-09T06:19:00.000-07:00

So in the same way that the multi-media message service (MMS) is supposed to help the Kiva partners post journals to the Kiva site without power and connectivity issues, we are going to try it ourselves with this blog. We will continue to post when the conditions are favorable but when they aren't we have created a new blog format. Blogger is allowing posts to be made via MMS but the service doesnt extend outside of the US so I established a new hotmail account and access to the account is listed below. We will be sending blog entries to this email where you will be able to read them.

username: intocontext
password: hotblog

When we left East Africa at the end of July one of the service providers was charging 300 Uganda shillings for the service, about 15 cents. Now that we are back we learned that another provider seems to be running a bit of a pilot on the service and is offering to send the messages FREE of charge. To Jon and I that sounds like a dare. I haven't run a check on this new blog system but I will send the first blog soon. I'm hoping to fill up that account. We will see with what consistency they actually arrive to the address.

We are back

2006-08-07T07:51:00.000-07:00

We arrived back to Kampala, somehow to our home within our homeless project. Mzungu party was going on in our garden but we didn't have much energy for it. I took Kelsey out yesterday in Kampala, Cale had to work fir the graduation report. We couldn't fit in the matatu in our way back, Kelsey got excited with the vegetables in the market and I would not stop her, so we decorated our kitchen with all kind of fruit and vegetables.

Today we had our first visit to Life in Africa. Extremely warm welcome and a comment: Jon! You are bigger! ABE (American Burrito Effect). But they also had new items. Peter and Monica (LiA credit officers) have new phones: Nokia with camera and MMS capabilities. They were faster than us. We can already try to test tomorrow with Peter our first: Miracle Mobile Solution. Anyhow some things haven’t changed. We expected to have a meeting today with everybody to explain our plan. Monica left to the bank 7 hours ago and still hasn’t come back. We are waiting (and Kelsey experiencing her nothing to do feeling for first time), will try to explain our plan when she comes back.

What about storing SIM cards?

2006-08-03T20:26:00.000-07:00

We have had several lost items along the project and the SIM cards have big chance for it. We have one for each country visited (plus the personal ones). Our project might require the exchange of those cards from user to user while the phone is shared in the organization. I was wondering where they will keep their cards when they are not used in the phone. For now we are using paper as solution. Let's see the African creativity.

1,2,3

2006-07-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

Friday was a big one. We hustled down to Palo Alto to meet up with Meg Lee at the D school at Stanford for a chat. It looks like a model that I expect to see more of. Bring multidisciplinary groups together from different departments on campus introduce them to design methods and take on interesting problems that have some interest for all. For Jon and I this struck a chord with us considering that after a few days, of presentations and reporting on project developments, the Microsoft conference concluded with a call for a more human centered approach to technology in ICT for development projects. I wasn't there but I feel like the comment identifies the dichotomy between those projects that go with an answer and those that go with a question.

We presented our question to IDEO over lunch for a crowd of 20+. So happy Aaron could reschedule our presentation after a minor communications mishap on Wednesday. It was good to a see that there were plenty of folks interested in the topic. It feels like the design committed are always interested to see how design performs in new contexts.

Christina from Life in Africa was already at home in the Kiva office by the time we arrived. We discussed our plans for testing when we get back in August. She will be out of town until the 10th which will give us a good chance to work directly with her staff. Before leaving Premal let us all know that the phones we were hoping to secure were confirmed. So Christina found out that we will pilot our project with her and she stood up and waved her arms. She is a great ally and continues to support our work with her. I cant wait to run this thing with the LiA folks they respond quite freely, and Christina would have it no other way. We should be able to get plenty of results from our time with them.

#20 Jeremy Frazao

2006-07-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

Jon picked up a book from the Microsoft conference that featured the greatest programmers of all time. I think that it is a bit biased but nevertheless we are doing our best to confirm Jeremy the #20 spot. He is developing an application based on the results of our research that will allow the credit officers to send journal updates from the field after they make visits to the borrowers. We are calling it the Miracle Mobile Solution. Blogger is already allowing its users to do this but only from within the US. Although that feature is very exciting for the avid on the go blogger the feature seems custom made for the needs of the credit officer who needs to overcome crippling infrastructure issues. The phones that we saw were always powered, which was a sharp contrast from the one day off one day on power situation. Secondly, access to the internet can be an all day affair. What the MMS does is create a channel for uploading content to the web through the mobile phone without paying to go to the internet, which is roughly 10 times as expensive.

Jeremy will go down as the guy who opened up Multimedia messaging (MMS) to the masses. From the little I understand about coding it looks like its a job of rearranging existing chunks of code that are built to accomplish certain tasks into a new permutation that accomplishes a new task. All that is done within an architecture that puts certain additional constraints on the arrangement. Jeremy?

The MMS consists of two parts, the text and a second medium; audio, photo, video. At the moment the text has been resolved but the image is being a bit stubborn. Whether we get the image to appear in the journal space or not we can still test and gather plenty of results during August. So now its time to create the plan for testing so that we can prove without a doubt that what we have developed is more than just a Mediocre Mobile Solution.

Kiva on ABC news

2006-07-26T18:23:00.000-07:00

We landed in San Francisco coming from Portland and received a call from Matt asking for our Africa footage to be shown on one of the US news channels. They wanted them sent overnight so edited down some videos and sent them. Today was a big day at Kiva headquarters in San Francisco. Matt and Premal were featured on ABC news. Some of the videos created in Uganda and Kenya were featured.

Have a look to the news

Human focus?

2006-07-19T18:01:00.001-07:00

I arrived in Seattle and wanted to be supportive with the passport loss of Cale so I lost my digital camera (or it was stolen I would prefer to say). After a nice walk in the city I took a bus to the Microsoft paradise in Redmond and got surprised with all the TUDelft crew that was there. Some students had participated in another design competition and we enjoyed some delicious beers in one of the Microsoft's gardens.

Today we had our conference day at Microsoft. Hardcore technical stuff: .Net application, Windows mobile and lots of programming tips for it but we also had the chance to give a fast presentation of our result and had feedback "could you put the presentation in this flash disk?" JC also arranged a meeting with one Daniel Makoski who is responsible for Windows emerging markets and one of the (few) designers in Microsoft. We shared presentations and he showed some of the work they have done on the topic with a well known Dutch company (the world is small).

After the technical presentation, an open discussion was held and the issue of how to bridge social issues with technology was raised. "We need multidisciplinary groups that combine different expertise", "technology push is not the only answer to solve social problems", "we need a bridge between engineers and ethnographers". My brain couldn't stop with the word: design, design, design... I was glad to see that we still have tons of work to do.

The meeting

2006-07-17T00:12:00.000-07:00

I suppose this is what happens when you are working as a consultant for free and the person paying the bills stays quiet until the end of the project. You can’t go wrong, or rather everything seems to go right.
Kiva is an organization that is understaffed and underfunded as many non profits are. They have a to-do list a mile long and the prioritization seems to shift depending on where the fire breaks out. Fortunately Jon and I had some fireworks and were able to draw plenty of attention to ourselves while here and we got the entire Kiva crew locked down for a day long into(context) extravaganza. There were 6 Kivans and 2 interns present.

We confirmed our suspicion that the blog is an excellent design tool for communicating the results of design research by providing a connection between the context research team, the design group as well as the client. In our case we represent the first two teams. The Kiva members present had been following us since we arrived in East Africa and they were familiar with both our approach and some of our initial findings. The result was informed questions and an obvious involvement. They were familiar with quite a lot of the details that we would highlight in the presentation and it left us to concentrate on weaving those elements together to create a cohesive whole and justify our conclusions.

We set things up so that the first half of the day was a pretty much a “sit and listen.” There was quite a bit of material to go through and for us the difficulty was to narrow it all down, as almost all of it is of interest to Kiva. Jon had the presentation running of his computer and midway it went on standby and shut down so we got to have a very fitting East Africa electricity failure moment. Before we broke for lunch we covered our final conclusions. This took the shape of a set of briefs for designing an appropriate solution for the MFI’s.

We decided that with the amount of time that we have with Kiva our best bet was to present those ideas that we had been steadily creating over the past few weeks rather than start from scratch with brainstorming. The briefs were reiterated after lunch and helped the Kiva crew to critique the ideas that we presented. As hoped they helped to create a set of principles for designing an “appropriate” technology solution. Our ideas built upon or confirmed points raised in the ongoing dialog that occurs at the Kiva office and the briefs, as well as limited Kiva capacity, helped us to quickly decide on which ideas to pursue. I was particularly happy to see Jeremy defend the choice of one idea over another by using the briefs list that was projected on the wall during our discussion.

We were very much on the same page with Kiva and quickly nailed down a plan of attack for the month. Jon and I can use our time to develop a Kiva manual while the Kiva staff creates the software to support the idea of a Kiva Miracle Mobile Solution (Kiva MMS). This will be a mobile based journal updating solution for the credit officers who operate in the field with the beneficiaries. Together they may take the form of a mail out kit that can be delivered to the individual MFIs.

After the presentation we got some nice feedback on the critical side as well as the celebratory side. Whether he was joking or not CEO “Matt Flannery” tagged our presentation as “unimprovable” and said “guys before you realize someone (at Kiva) will work overnight and develop (programming) those ideas”

By the way intocontext website has been updated with the context research results have a look!

Dame mas...Give me more

2006-07-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

(For English scroll down...) Hay algo Americano en hacer todo mas fuerte. Todo lo que pruebo aqui transmite lo que deberia pero mas fuerte. Que quieres un sandwich? Pues doble con extra salsa, un batido? Pues triple con sabor extra a fresa, una bebida: Bloody Marie, una moto bio-diesel? La mas rapida del mundo. Pero no nos podemos quejar, SAn Francisco es una ciudad donde se vive bien (si te lo puedes permitir): buen clima, gente abierta, mucho movimiento y actividades por todas partes. Y no es que vivamos mal. Vivimos en Portola Valley encima de Palo Alto mirando a la bahia y esta manana he desayunado con unos animales parcidos a Bambi en la terraza. Estamos en el norte de California y algunos coches llevan pegatinas que dicen: North Cal. Algo asi como el toro en Espana (o burro en Catalunia). Cale esta contento porque me estamos conociendo la mejor parte de Estados Unidos. " No esta tan mal no?" Yo sigue cantando la de Americanos...

There is something American about doing it strong. Eveything that I've tried here delivers what it is supposed to and much stronger than anywhere else. Sandwich: double size with extra sauce and super plate of salsa, milkshake: triple with extra strawberry taste, drink: try a stiff Bloody Marie and then there was the bio-diesel motorcycle: trying to break the world land speed record. But in the meantime San Francisco looks like a nice place to live (if you can afford it): nice climate, open people, lot's of activities and things moving... We couldn't have been hosted any better. I already saw some kind of proudness in some cars with the tag: Nor*Cal. Cale is happy I get to know the best parts of US. "Not so bad, right?" Americanos...

We are moving

2006-07-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

We have spent a week already working with Kiva and we realized that our experiences in East Africa don't differ so much from our experiences in the US. First we are getting charged too much for fruit. In Africa it was because we are white and here there is no explanation. We are hosted like royalty (I'm blogging looking to the San Francisco bay and I had a visit from some deer while eating my breakfast this morning). Workshops are delayed (first trial with Kiva yesterday but the projector was not working). Spartan office environments. Kiva just moved in to their new office so not much clutter at the moment. Despite being so close to a Wifi empowered city we are having connectivity problems but we have grown quite used to it. I tried to upload photos here but it didnt work.

Things are moving along, we hope to have our first workshop tomorrow with all the Kiva crew. Power point, pictures, videos and some African experiences to share. We hope to define what to do until the 2nd of August in order to be tested when back in Africa. We have already begun dialog with staff and judging from their response thus far we are looking forward to giving them everything we've got tomorrow.

Americanos...os recibimos con alegria!

2006-07-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

Lleamos ayer a San Francisco y me di cuenta que todo el mundo me entiende en Espanol (influencia Mexicana) y como en casa se han conectado al Blog (y se me esta olvidando bastante) he decidido continuar en Spanish (sorry English speaking people) Llegamos ayer hacia las 14.00 hora local y 22.00 hora de Amsterdam. Primera experiencia con el "jet lag". Nos metimos a la cama a las 22.00 de la noche algo asi como 7 de la manana hora Amsterdam y nos despertamos a las cuatro de la tarde hora Amsterdam, se ve que estamos acostumbrados a hacer "gaupasa".

Nos recibio Matt el fundador de Kiva y nos condujo a una casa de un trabajador de Kiva (que tambien trabaja para Yahoo!) que esta de vacaciones: el piso de mis suenos cuando empiece a trabajar (lo de ahora es casi trabajo) creo que es algo como esto lo que me imagino. Equipazo de musica conectado a Mac, cocina clasica pero de calidad, futbolin, mega-cama etc. para el solito. Y nos dice Matt que la proxima semana nos vamos a una mansion... (yo creia que esto ya era la mansion pero parece ser que no...).

Bueno pues la llegada a USA tampoco fue tan problematica, aparte de las tipicas preguntas tipo: es usted terrorista? o Tuvo alguna relacion con el movimiento Nazi durante los anos 1932 y 1945? No me preguntaron nada raro. Hoy es dia 4 de Julio fiesta nacional Americana, Matt nos dijo que haremos barbacoa en su casa tranquilamente. Cale se ha ido a hacer las compras para desayunar, dice que algo "typical American" miedo me da...

Por cierto ya tenemos telefono Americano: 0014156453431

Twin Tea

2006-06-28T16:15:00.000-07:00

Before leaving London for Entebbe we discussed our project with Robin Murray from Twin Trading at a BBQ and he invited us to give a presentation on our return. With only a small group in attendance the discussion the followed left me with a lot to think about.

Robin was interested in investigating the role that ICT can play in connecting them with the farmers that they deal with around the globe, including Uganda. Two Twin staff with E. Africa experience contributed some nice comments on the potential of the future exchange between the lender and the borrower. Jenny and Chris, two designers from the Design Council with plenty of user research experience, suggested the further investigation of appropriate social technologies that may help to ensure the success of our final solution. It was also suggested that the opportunity to connect natural communities within the Kiva ecosystem of stakeholders (lenders, borrowers etc) had the potential to create additional untapped exchanges of value.

Between their comments and those of the rest in attendance including Kelsey, her mom, Jared and Chika I filled up a page of notes in an attempt to capture the results of the discussion. I think that Kiva has proven to be is a concept strong enough to stimulate thinking from people across disciplines who can apply feature of the model to what they do. The idea of drawing value from an individual story and increasing transparency along the value chain seemed to be enough for this group to chew over for quite a while.

I have been thinking in a relatively closed loop while concentrating on getting the best results our of the context research phase in Africa and it was very exciting to see that loop torn open and plugged into a number of new loops of thinking. Thanks to all those at the table.

Maite ditut maite gure bazterrak lanbroak izkutatzen dizkidanean

2006-06-26T07:29:00.000-07:00

Eating, drinking, sleeping, cleaning, talking and shopping. New laptop at home, my parents are getting excited with technology and I realized that some things are similar here and in Africa. When choosing the laptop to buy at home which is the appropriate? El mas caro, of course. I had to continue with the IT education role started in Africa and I can ensure that the speed of learning here is slower and is more difficult to teach to your father than any one else. I think I will have to change to Spanish in the blog entries; the blog address is already next to the increasing list of telephones at home.

1 (GBP) = 3,406 (UGX)

2006-06-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

Feels good to be home an back in the land of leisure.
Upon boarding a bus Jon an I didn't attract the usual handful of looks that we have grown accustomed to. That doesn't bother me at all. Its nice to pay established prices and avoid the standard haggling that we have been forced to do for all of our travel needs.

Speaking of money, I carried back some Ugandan shillings and had them in my pocket when I added some British pound coinage to the same pocket. When I pulled out the collection I noticed that the Ugandan 500 shilling piece looks an awful lot like the 1 pound coin without close inspection. Sure wouldn't want to confuse those two when you pay considering that one is roughly 1/10th the value of the other, or would you?

Budgeting in Uganda was a breeze but a few days in London will remind you what a budget is all about.

Landing in London...

2006-06-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

We landed in London yesterday, back to asfalt, fast train and fast internet connection. We had a hard time choosing between our dirty clothes in our bag to go to Kelsey's graduation presentation at Central St. Martins. And we even had a harder time today when we had to present at IDEO. But it was worth it to be there. Cale's friend, Kate invited us to give a presentation there today, it was a good opportunity to put a presentation together (Power Point made our life difficult again just 30 minutes before the presentation) but it was good to have a bunch of smart people listening and asking questions togeter with some beer and nuts. And now to Spain, hogar dulce hogar and the first time without Cale for more than some hours. Maybe I'll miss him. Maybe.

4 days and a wakeup

2006-06-16T07:09:00.000-07:00

It’s the end of the week here with Life in Africa www.lifeinafrica.com and as much as we look for similarities among the organizations the more we are faced with the fact that they are very unlike each other. Sometimes it’s the structure of the organization or the lending model and sometimes its one character that defines the group. With LiA its Christina Jordan, the director, as well as the lending model. The community model operating here is very unique. She likes to term it a “physical and virtual space.” It’s worth taking a look at on the web to see what she has built up.

With a primary interest in hearing about Kiva a journalist from Reuters visited yesterday to have a chat with her. We were invited to attend as well and responded to some questions about Microsoft’s intentions in Uganda. No idea whether to expect to see an article or not but it would be great for LiA. Christina has been more than happy to let Kiva take over the marketing role for the community’s borrowers and mentioned that advertising expenditures typically require an excessive amount of her time.

Today Carl arrived at LiA to sit it with us as the community served as a jury for 9 loan proposals. There must have been about 30 people sitting to listen to 9 proposals. All were supported and should appear on Kiva soon.

Earlier in the week we visited one of the businesses that was funded by Kiva. Its located in an Internally Displaced Persons camp in the Acholi quarter here. A sharp guy from the community asked for enough money to fund the installation of a water tap in his area. We showed up and found a structure just big enough to house a tap and a queue out the door. From what I saw the tap never stops. The proprietor is clearly making a good profit represented by the fact that he smokes cigarettes. Here you don’t smoke unless you have some surplus cash. Of all the loans posted by LiA his was the one that was funded first. One of the loan agents mentioned that he is sure that those loans with a social benefit are the ones that get funded fastest.

Its our last weekend in Kampala and as the Lonely Planet recommends, I think we will stay out all night in one of the safest capital cities in the world. Tomorrow morning I have an appointment to take photos of boxers from another gym in the area. Back to London on Wednesday.

Invisible children

2006-06-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

Being Mzungu and being invisible is something impossible. I was walking yesterday around the center of Kampala looking for a "fast" internet cafe. I asked a Ugandan with a tie about a suggestion and he helped me till one in town. He started asking me the typical questions like what are you doing here and so on... After a short brief on Kiva and the "woman willing to buy a cow" example he presented himself and invited me for a chat that night. He happened to work in the parliament.

I asked Cale what chances do I have when I go to US to meet someone in the parliament if I'm not shaved, wear old sandals and some bracelets, I guess none the same as Spain. It looks like Uganda is a coutry with opportunities being Mzungu.

We also met some people from the "invisible children" documentary this week. Life in Africa is making some (thousands) of bracelets for the DVD. It looks like a nice story sells. Kiva, Inv. Children... Is all about nice stories isn't it?

Time for reflexion

2006-06-13T00:40:00.000-07:00

We have been relaxing and working at the same time in lake Bunyoini south-east part of Uganda (6 hours bus if the driver doesnt stop for every person in the road+some vegetable shopping that make the trip 8 and a half hours).

Lake Bunyoni is the deepest lake in Uganda and for some reason it has no mosquitoes which makes it even nicer. We have been putting all the research in a report working with our laptops in front of the lake. Some kind of idyllic working situation. Between chapter and chapter we decided to take a canoe (or a tree with a hole) and test our team building capabilities. Cale! Right, Cale right!! Caaaaaaaaale... Joder. We said we were going there no?

Anyhow, we arrived to some of the nicest places we have visited in East Africa. Beautiful islands with nice local people. We got even a tour to one of the mountains which was done by "hello my friend" Roger who asked for "one thousand" after the walk. We decided to test friendship next time before we get in a guided walk: - Ei Cale I forgot the money, do you have money? Oh, no! Ok it doesnt matter...

We have started to work with Life in Africa already and things are rolling. We have kind of "automatic pilot" context research process already and we are testing new tools with the group. We bought some disposable cammeras to ask them to take their own pictures of their context. Let's see how it goes.

Ah, and we bet who was going further in the World Cup Spain or US. What do you think? Je,je...

eeeeeaaauuuuoooooo......

2006-06-12T08:43:00.000-07:00

that is the sound that you hear when the power goes off when you are putting the final touches on a blog entry at an internet cafe in Kampala. This is a place holder for a blog that will be added later. i dont have the steam to retype it.

Houston?

2006-06-06T23:13:00.000-07:00

I was in charge of dinner last night and on the way home from town I stopped off to pick up vegetables and chicken. I had only seen large sides of beef in the stalls nearby so I asked about chicken and they pointed to a stack of cages. I chose one of the chickens and then waited 5 minutes for it to be prepared. Not much meat on a Ugandan chicken once its all said and done. It was the freshest chicken Ive ever had in my life but something went wrong. I made teriyaki chicken with the parts and when it hit the table the fight began to pull the meat off of the bone. it was extremely tough meat. Tougher than usual. I dont know whether you need to let the meat sit for a few hours or a day before cooking it or whether I just botched the job.

It reminded me of having a fresh presentation of a fresh idea for the crowd at Uganda Martyrs University and after serving it up getting torn limb from limb. Some of our other recent meetings have been equally tough. Tough love in some cases.

Microcredit is a contentious issue and we are hearing about the larger issues that are being faced in the industry. One contact very adamantly pushed for the integration of other banking services into the offering of many microcredit institutions. There is quite a lot of profit being made of loans that is not leading to more stable economic situations for those who are loaning. A cultural of financial planning needs to be encouraged. A second contact gave us some the confirmation we needed to test out a concept that we have been thinking about.

We went to the MTN business solutions office and had our phone equipped to handle sending MMS and then sent a file with 1000 characters and a photo to Carl’s email address . We are still waiting to get confirmation that he received it and hear about the quality of the image. It may be a reliable solution for sending in Kiva profiles and journals from the field in order to save on travel costs and time.

Any Questions?

2006-06-05T07:59:00.002-07:00

We were at the grand imperial at 10 in the morning waiting for Martin O Reily to pick us up and drive us 82km away to Uganda Martyrs University to give a talk about our project. We stopped at the equator where for $2.50 a few guys on the side of the road would show you that water does not spin in either direction when a basin of water is emptied at the equator.

We weren’t exactly sure about the details of the presentation until we were in the car. Our talk wasnt until 5:30 so we took advantage of Martin’s suggestion to create a survey to be filled out by the audience. I presented the powerpoint on time which meant that half the room filled up after I had begun. The presentation was split half and half between an explanation of Kiva and intocontext. My playful presentation jokes fell on 80 or so sets of deaf ears. I finished with a recap for late arrivals.

When I opened it up for questions we got slaughtered. Actually, there were no comments on our project. The response was very critical with very pointed remarks about the failures of Kiva even in a large sense about what their intentions were. They brought up issues we had never considered like what if people use Kiva to launder money. What measures had Kiva taken to protects the MFIs. We dealt quite particularly with a number of individuals who had lots of comments. The presentation lasted 15 minutes and the discussion for an hour and a half. Jon and I were shocked and collectively were able to put together a response but clearly our presentation had holes. When I wrapped up and thanked everyone that is when it all came clear. The most critical people were the most interested.

I handed out tons of business cards and fielded questions for another hour. We didnt realize that these people who hold upper level positions in MFIs think that Kiva is a threat to them. They suspect that Kiva is offering a great product in order to build up a base of clients that they can then access directly and cut out the MFI's. It was all new to us. We aren’t Kiva veterans so we don’t have all the details to defend some of the moves or intentions of Kiva other than to say "come on this is my friend Matt Flannery not a criminal."

People were very excited about the idea and see the potential, that is for sure, but they also recognize the threat. It was very interesting for us. We have lots of surveys filled out and that should help us understand further what hurdles exist for Kiva.

We left the auditorium after it was already dark and it was very clear that we had been abandoned. We hadnt seen Martin since he left us at the dining hall for lunch. After poking around a bit and asking some questions and calling Martin we realized that we were not going to get back to Kampala that evening so we settled for a room on campus. We visited the campus bar and watched a nature program about the wildebeest migration. The peace and quiet of campus life felt good.

Hakuna matata = No problem

2006-05-31T01:59:00.000-07:00

We wrapped up work with WEEC on Monday with a long brainstorm that was quite taxing. It is the second time that we have run the final brainstorm and after modifications made since the first time we tried it we feel like the results were much stronger. Better phrased questions and a clearer target helped us out considerably, but a much larger group than the first time prolonged each stage. Afterwards Jon used the Spanish phrase for third time is a charm, "la tercera bala vencida" so apparently its universally accepted that brainstorming with Life in Africa is going to be the "just right" bowl of porriage for us.

We woke up Tuesday at 5am to make the 7:30am bus out of Nairobi but didn't leave until 8:30am. Jon pushed for a stop in Nakuru to take a short trip through the national park there and break up the day long bus trip. We hired a taxi to take us through and just 10 minutes outside of the town we were within dying distance of a rhino and a cape buffalo. I'm sure that a wildboar, zebra, gazelle, antelope, baboon, flock of flamingos, etc could have also killed us but there wasn't quite as much fear in the car upon seeing those. The taxi was a Datsun 120y from the early 70's. Our driver claimed "old is gold" and wasn't worried about blazing his own trail across the plains. We laughed that there was going to be quite a fight between the three of us for the one loose window crank in the car when we spotted a lion and tried to roll up the windows.

Rowland picked us up in Kisumu after the second leg of the journey. EasyCoach is the preferred company to use for this trip. Their motto is, "Experience dignity!" By the time we arrived we were so dignified it hurt. We don't hold Easycoach responsible though because there can be no smooth passage over this road. Making fresh tracks across the park in the Datsun was comparibly much smoother.

Today we are training Rowland on the Kiva website and have already clocked an hour with only one journal entry and two repayments made thus far, and Rowland types quite fast!

We will be in Kampala by sunset. It feels like going home.

Masai field visit

2006-05-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

if you can't see it click here: see video

A video can paint several pictures...

The Bush

2006-05-26T06:04:00.000-07:00

When Kiva said they wanted to work in rural areas that must have been only an initial roll out because they have pushed out beyond the rural areas into the bush. ICT projects often refer to reaching the last mile and even the last meter. Kiva has achieved last millimeter. We are outside of Nairobi working with the womens economic empowermen consort WEEC and had the opportunity yesterday to visit some of their Kiva businesses. From the main office we (Jedidah, Moses, Carl, Jon, Cale, David, Daniel) drove 40km away in a small van out into Maasai territory. We drove until the paved road ended and then continued on a dirt road until it ended then we got out and began walking. We walked along an existing trail until the trail ended and then we just followed David (a WEEC microfinance officer) into the bush. We trusted that he knew where he was going although we could not see any establishment on the horizon. We collectively decided that this was certainly not rural because in the rural areas children run towards the car and what we experienced were children running away from our car.

A horrendous drought last year in Kenya devastated the Maasai who lost large numbers of cattle and Kiva loans are allowing them to rebuild their herds. David told us that his fathers stock went from 100 to 3. One Maasai Kiva loan recipient told us that her business was doing very well and that two of her daughters were currently attending university, studying medicine, and not married. Jedidah was particularly thrilled with this news as Maasai girls are often married off very early and are not able to attend school.

Those of us with cameras politely asked to take pictures and at one point when I pulled out my camera Joyce, a Maasai woman, pulled out a cellphone. She had full coverage. Hopefully the video will tell the tale of the tape.

We saw the earliest wildebeest visitors to the area who will continue to arrive and push into Tanzania. Beautiful animals. The trip really made clear some of the struggles that MFI's are facing in terms of reporting the details of the businesses to the web. David typically does this visit from his office 17km away by bicycle and stores the update material on paper until it he make a trip to the head office on Mondays to deliver it where it can then be posted by Herbert to the web if there is a connection. Otherwise the story is transferred to a flashdisk and taken into Nairobi an hour away where it is uploaded at an internet cafe where the connection is fast enough to upload larger photo files without an unnecessarily long wait.

Cellphones are emerging as an appropriate tool to facilitate the MFI's work with Kiva and distances and decentralized operations are hurdles that we will have to tackle in order to create a reliable and affordable solution.

Rowland for MP

2006-05-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

Eregi is a small village outside of Kakamega in Kenya. There is no electricity and no connectivity excluding Rowland’s pub. Fortunately we were his guests while we were there, unfortunately his connections was 16k. So although there was plenty to report we had to wait until Nairobi to post.

Rowland is a consummate host, and an incredible asset to the Kiva family. We woke up no later than 6:30am each day and were kept busy for 4 days straight. He managed to weave us accomplishing our research goals in between a schedule of pub visits, funerals, recently ordained catholic priest celebration, bullfight (bull vs. bull), bullfight afterparty, trips to the Southern hemisphere, meals with friends, meals with Kiva beneficiaries, a trip to his farm house, Champions league final, checkers, bean harvest, and I am sure I am forgetting a few things. Oh yeah this was all accomplished while Rowland campaigned for an MP position with the Orange Democratic Movement. We will know by Friday if he dethroned the Banana party incumbent.

Because Rowland is managing only five businesses, on his own, he is a unique case for us in terms of what technology is necessary to facilitate Kiva at that scale and in that location. Rowland only thinks big and this in combination with his background as marketing director for Kenya Brewing Company meant that he was an excellent collaborator during the creative session that we held with him. Outside of any scheduled project discussions the conversation drifted to Kiva several times to discuss interesting possibilities or challenges to be met in the future.

Rowland was a nice break from Africa. He mentioned several times that he was not a traditional African. With only two children how could he be. He had a progressive and worldly perspective drawn from his travels and studies abroad in India, 20 years ago! A Kenyan in India! Our time was well spent. We only hope that we reciprocated soe value for all that we gained.

When we make visits to the Kiva sponsored businesses we are met with deep gratitude although we have done nothing yet to contribute to Kiva. We represent and idea that we now see first hand is changing lives. It feels good.

Jon Cale friendship report: STABLE

African music lessons

2006-05-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

We left Soroti one week ago and with that Soroti's children. We received some music lessons though...

if you cant se video click here

Bonestorm

2006-05-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

This morning Rogers (Carl's life support system) wanted to show me something outside. I stepped out and found a chicken. He asked if I wanted it roasted or fried for dinner.

Jon and I ran one of the first brainstorming sessions that Soroti, Uganda has ever seen. I ran into town with Helen on the back of my bicycle (Alfred's bicycle) to find a big flipover pad of paper and some twine to hang it up on the wall. We armed everybody with a pad of post its, a pen, colored sticker dots and cookies. I'm not sure what I expected. I've participated in many a brainstorm and run a few myself but typically with other designers who know the routine.

We started by giving an introduction to what designers are here for. We are problem solvers. Our training involves learning methods to identify problems, which explained the incessant videotaping this week, and skills for creating solutions. We showed them the short video clips that we had edited down from hours of video to explain where we had identified problems. In some cases the solutions were pretty straightforward and in others not so clear. We had them identify the problem and propose solutions. Everybody contributed. That was the rule and we enforced it. We had 12 problems identified and although it was a long session the Kiva staff here in Soroti stayed tuned in and I think they understood what we are here to do and they helped us to do it. There were nine of us in a small hot room with no fan because we turned off the generator in order to be able to hear the sound of the videos playing on a laptop. By the end of the session the wind had started to blow in through the window cooling us down and signaling a storm and shortly thereafter it poured. I claimed that our storm begat a storm.

Moses called me late last night to tell me how happy he was with the session. He said that the staff stayed after chatting about it after we went home. Jon and I chatted excitedly about it on the way home and planned for another short session tomorrow.

We came home to find Rogers roasting chicken and bananas. We ate well.

Running on fumes

2006-05-14T13:06:00.000-07:00

We are living our lives around batteries and chargers here. It takes our collective foresight to plan for enough battery power to battle with the grid power inconsistencies. Although its time that Jon and I start to consider all of our gadgets as team items we are still more than happy to blame each other for failing to keep cameras, cellphones and laptops well charged. Its hard to adapt to planning well in advance. The cell phone may have a days charge left but if we let it run out we often enter a 24 hour period without power. We have quite a stockpile of rechargable batteries which helps to power cameras but its the internal batteries that kill us. I'm going to be the guy who wont listen to your battery complaints when I get back, if you have them. I will tell you think about the children in Uganda who own cellphones and what they face on a daily basis.
On another note yesterday I ate a chipati and bean lunch before our hike for 20 cents. Which is cheap by Ugandan standards. I took a photo of the meal with my $200+ camera. It crossed my mind that I could print out the photo 1000 times and hand them out as meal tickets and then sell the phone to pay for the food, but then i had to consider the blog content. For each picture I post I save 1000 words.
I wrote this originally in gmail and sent it to myself then copied it here and anticipated adding a beans photo but I realize that I havent downloaded the photo from my camera so for now just imagine. I added this part by lantern light and now its time for bed.

Kiva site in context...

2006-05-14T09:37:00.000-07:00

We have been going through several hours and hours of video tape observing the Kiva site in context. Tomorrow we expect to go through the issues that have been detected together with all the team in order to look for improvements.We hope to make it clear what we have been doing and make them part of the solution finding process.We will try to push the idea that technology should follow their natural thinking and not them being transformed to fit technology. Let's see how it works.

Buzzing

2006-05-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

Jon and I spent a crashcourse month preparing the trip and developing materials and this past week was our first experiment with real subjects. The purpose of the week was to gather as much information about the organization as possible in terms of their vision, number of members, roles, hardware, software, day to day activities, hierarchy, company culture etc. We learned very quickly that the structure of the materials we created was hopeless and flexibility would be our greatest ally.
I likened our experience with context research this week to trying to dress an excited child. We came with all of the clothes and assumed that we would begin with the underwear and finish with tying shoe laces but in the end we were most efficient when we kept a shoe in one hand and a hat in the other to fit them on whenever the chance arose.
Kiva's Soroti office has been very gracious in hosting us and it has been our challenge to learn as quickly as possible how we can best take advantage of our time here. Some of the culutral differences within the organization have kept us busy trying to understand and respond to. Our behavior has also been a subject of discussion. Alfred asked candidly, "why do you drink (so much) coffee?"
Me and Jon finished the week with lots of good material to review although that sometimes brought us very close to tackling the child to tie the laces.

Children

2006-05-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

Today was a tour day. We visited Sipi falls (behind the child) with Carl's new car. We had a local 15 year old guide named Martin show us around and in the end he offered to bring us to the "less touristic" waterfall which required an exciting walk back through a small village and plantation. We even had a short shower in one of the falls.
I was left behind playing with some local children but I realized they were not really playing (but acting) when after some time they said: "give me something" .

In the meantime the guide told that if I like children so much I should get one: "is easy for you..." he said.

more pictures from the day at CBA.

Business name: Boda Jon

2006-05-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

Today we followed Helen and Alfred as they did fieldwork. They made visits to four Kiva loan beneficiaries to check on their development. We tried to shadow their activities to get a better understanding of this part of the process of updating the information about businesses that is later posted to the Kiva website. We are the only white people I have seen in Soroti since our arrival so I can imagine that it was difficult for Helen to imagine that we were invisible, as I asked her to do, but by the fourth stop on our route I felt like she understood.

Because all the processes related to Kiva working with entrepreneurs in and around Soroti may not happen in an average week we suggested to role play some of them. Jon and I dreamed up a business idea and then ran through the application, acceptance and uploading processes with Helen and Alfred. Their willingness to submit to the taping and performing of the tasks was really exciting.

Jon and I decided on a transport business. In Kampala the boda bodas operated on motorcycles but here in Soroti they use Jupiter bicycles from India. They are well maintained, well decorated, all steel and extremely handsome. I thought the Dutch bikes were nice but one of these would cut right through a Dutch bike in a head on collision. Our loan money will be used to buy a bicycle trailer that will allow us to transport large items like furniture and machinery. We think there is a market for these services as car hire is too expensive.

Alfred thinks we may be on to something. He mentioned that there is an annual bike race that happens between Mbale and Soroti and the winner receives a new bicycle. It is about 100km between the two cities. Our plan is to win it with the trailer behind the bike. We think the publicity will be great for business.

Training

2006-05-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

We are already "all in" on our project. 23.30 and still typing. Yesterday we had computer training in the Soroti office of Kiva. We learned (and taught) how to post and update a journal on the new Kiva website. It is difficult to understand the computer familiarity of users until you don't observe the screen for some time while they are w....r......i.......t.......ing an e-mail. We went for a couple of beers to the guest house down the road after work. Ugandan soap-opera on TV: a complete ethnographic experience.

NO doesn’t exist in Uganda…

2006-05-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

Ugandan’s are reluctant to say no. If you take a Boda-Boda (moto-taxi) and you ask for a place they will first get you on the motorcycle then they will figure out if they know where they are going. Last time we asked carpaccio as starter in a restaurant, they brought us mozzarella. We said that we didn’t order that: they answered that electricity was gone and they couldn’t use the machine to cut the carpaccio. But they brought mozzarella. You can take it or you can leave it. We also went to make business cards at a print shop. We had the illustrator file and the pdf file. We entered a really tiny shop and against the back wall there was a person surrounded by another 4 people in front of a computer. We ask if they could make business cards. We gave them the usb and the guy opens the folder. They invite us to pass behind the counter because someone wanted to eat his lunch on the counter. The computer doesn’t have illustrator so they basically can’t work with it. Anyhow the guy continues opening and closing the file, open, close, refresh, close, open, right button open with… The guy next to him looked like the boss, and he looked confident in his employee. We could have stayed there for hours if we didn't suggest to the guy that we come back with the Microsoft Publisher file he needed.

It is difficult to do research and get the real context and user information we want to know. They partly will answer what you want to hear or what they think you want to hear. We are trying to find creative ways to discover the real thoughts and real struggles of the people. We have a lot to learn in the process.

Meeting the neighbors

2006-05-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

We came home to Carl's house after a day of work with KIVA Africa in Soroti and we sat outside on the porch waiting for the power to come on. The neighbor kids gathered together in groups to sit and stare at the three white guys. It was a bit too much for me and Jon. We had to go shake some hands.

In this corner of Kampala

2006-05-09T13:50:00.000-07:00

The first question that Sebbie (top left) asked me was, "Where are you from?" The second question was, "Are you fit?"
After I found out that he was a boxer I asked him where he trained and if I could come watch. He told me to meet him where we were standing at 10:00am the following day and he would take me. I showed up and together with his friend Obie Twice we walked across town through the labyrinth of Oweno market then outside of town out past the scrap sellers. There was a nasty looking dark cloud in the sky and I asked if we would make it without getting caught in the rain. He assured me that we would. When we finally cut back between two small woodplank shacks into an open courtyard with a long one story concrete church the cloud was above us. The steps were filled with a dozen guys who headed inside when Sebbie arrived into a large room with a stage. Once we were just inside the rain came down hard for an hour. Training went on just as long before Obie came over to tell me that he was in terrible shape and he had a fight soon. I thought I would get a picture of him and asked the trainer ("the iron bomber") if he would mind. I told him it would be good to have for the poster. Once I had taken Obie's photo the other members of the club trickled over to pose as well and in the end I had shot everyone. The trainer then introduced me to another club's trainer who asked me about my availabiltiy the following day. Jon and I were leaving but I set up an appointment for the end of the month. Sebbie invited me to attend a big fight in Kampala with his club once when we get back. Can't wait.

Trip to Soroti 5 hours...

2006-05-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

We headed towards Soroti on Monday. 5 hours of bus drive from Kampala if everything goes well. We jumped on to the bus and waited, and waited, and waited till the 73 seats were full (+ some additional children). Before the bus started a woman approached us and asked if we were Jon and Cale. Moses, our contact in Soroti had sent her to take care of us. The bus started and the shaking also. Some bumps in the road put our ass up in the air. Food was offered in every stop through the window: fried chicken, beef, corn, water, coke… After around 3 hours of driving the bus stopped: mechanical problems. We got out of the bus and the conversation starts around the “muzungus” (us). People are very eager to talk to us and we like it. The bus never started and we took a “matatu” (shared taxi) to Soroti. Total drive: 9 hours. Moses was waiting for us.

Floating around the source of the Nile...

2006-05-09T11:36:00.001-07:00

We went rafting on the source of the Nile on Sunday. Floating on such amount of water feels just like being nothing. 6 hours of going down one of the biggest (and hottest) rivers in the world. If you want to have a feeling of what rafting is this is a good place. During the calm parts of the river we just let our bodies float in the immensity and while doing this a huge amount of water started pouring from the sky and we just continued floating, the water in the river was hotter than the rain.

It feels kind of strange though to go in such a boat and watch local people cleaning their clothes in the same water. We were wondering what crosses their mind when watching “muzungus” floating in the raft...

There is no power... where are you from?

2006-05-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

We visited the Ugandan Cleaner Production Centre today. Marcel was visiting them from TU Delft and did a presentation of the Design for Sustainability program of our faculty. We presented our project and received some interesting feed-back. We also talked about ecodesign projects they are working on in different industries around Uganda. On our way back we walked around Kampala looking for an internet cafe. The first one we asked answered: "we are having technical problems..." the second one:"there is no power, where are you from". Power shortages are becoming a common issue, no surprised face anymore.

Joder Jon!!!!!

2006-05-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody! Sorry if you tried to call us last night and couldn't reach us.
Jon and I shared a boda boda to head across town to have dinner with Brita and Ian. We got split up from them in transit and found them waiting for us in the parking lot. Jon realized then that his cellphone was missing. OUR cellphone! This is the phone number that we had just printed on 100 business cards earlier that day, and the phone where Jon had his Dutch and Spanish SIM cards stored. We gave the phone a call and reached Alex who told us that he found the phone on the road when he stepped on it and would keep it for us until tomorrow. He was busy with chores at home and told us to meet him at the hotel where he was a security guard. Jon met him early and they agreed on a reward, half of his tuition fees for the year. After the meeting Jon went over to the textiles district not far away and had zippers added to the pockets of his jacket.

This is my life! Kampala life! Uganda life!

2006-05-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

Last night there was a full bill hip hop extravaganza. The hip hop ambassador of Uganda performed before we saw the main event, GAZZA from Namibia, a five guy troupe with dance routines, two flava flavs, and a power outage. We danced until we were sticky.
Today is a full work day. Business cards are being printed as I type. The technology that we bought is working out well. The printer was very impressed with the external hard drive and wanted to make an order with us. My Mp\P3 Player is working out very well for interviews. No one seems to mind being recorded which is great because it frees mean Jon up from having to madly scribble down notes.
Mulo had mentioned that Martin would be a great contact here in Kampala and indeed he was. Our contact list doubled in size and he brought along Edwin and Julius from Voyage Online Limited. I think these contact will help us to fill up the empty period in our schedule for early June. Today marks the day when we have thus far met with one member from the government, academia, the private business sector and a KIVA partner. If the response thus far is an indication of what we can expect during our time here then me and Jon are going to be busy and well supported.
Arsenal vs. Barcelona May 17th. Arsenal supporters and paraphernalia are everywhere here so Jon and I are going to have to represent a tope!

Networking

2006-05-04T02:59:00.000-07:00

We had an interesting conversation today with Martin O'Really a professor in Microfinance from Martyrs Univeresity. The value of Kiva was easily perceived and he gave us lots of contacts to work on. We were invited to a summer-programme in the end of the month where we will present our project to some interesting microfinance people. Networking level is growing, we will have to figure out how to answer to all this in an efficient way.

Taxi?

2006-05-04T02:54:00.000-07:00

There are several ways of transport here. Matatu is the one shown in the picture, cheap compact taxi wherever you are whenever you want. Anyhow the most flexible way is the boda-boda a motorbike taxi that takes you anywhere, even within an inch of your life. The Matatus are rented daily and will stop for anyone along the road while the driver and money collector work in tandem soliciting riders, one with the horn and the other hollering. They are very gracious in delivering musongus (white people) to their final destination. 5 guys collaborated to help ensure that we arrived at Life in Africa across town.

Cinema?

2006-05-04T02:39:00.000-07:00

We went out from Life in Africa and we found a cinema on the street. Today's movie: Gladiator. They even have a over dubbing in the local dialect: one guy with a microphone translates all the movie... Enjoy!

Life in Africa

2006-05-04T02:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a first working day. Great deep intocontext introduction. We visited Life in Africa which gave us a great view on what is a community based organization. We talked about their operations and issues with technology and micro-finance. We had a tour on some of their other projects and we experienced the great atmosphere of the group. During the tour Cale was helping with some bracelet manufacturing, his design background allowed him to pass the quality control. We will visit them again in around a month and spend a whole week following their day to day operations. We hope to get a hands on understanding of the most important issues they handle.

The IKEA of Uganda

2006-05-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.veoh.com/videoDetails.html?v=e60860YfK6cggt

intouganda

2006-05-02T07:15:00.000-07:00

My jaw was open the entire ride from Entebbe airport to Kampala. Videos and pictures can only help so much to paint a picture. The woodstove smoke is strong and the birds are loud. Jon's role play tools need some more development to adequately prepare visitors. It was very exciting to have a place to go immediately upon arrival and catch up on some missed sleep. Before we could call Brita we got poured on and that was at the point where we had just been dropped off without a clue where to find a phone to call her. We paid a passerby to use his mobile to get in touch with Jon’s friend Brita.
We are staying in Malenga, an area where every aid organization on the planet has a post. If you are white you are either with an NGO or doing missionary work or a combination of both. The weather is hardly weather at all. It’s just perfect with a nice layer of humidity to help our skin recuperate from the dry Dutch climate. They tell us that the daily rain is welcome here because it tames the dust that would otherwise be floating everywhere.
We are in touch with several of our contacts here and have already postponed our first meeting with Martin O’Reilly from the microfinance program at Martyrs University. Its for the better however because he is going to bring along an IT colleague to join us when we meet.
When Jon sees something notable he taps me on the shoulder and says “blog.” We are planning to share as much as we can here, but we have already experienced the limitations of the internet. Jon got halfway through uploading a video to post and the electricity went off in Kampala. I saved my text to the desktop and we went across town to the market. When we saw the signs were illuminated again we came back and now I’m ready to try again. We are both excited to communicate so we will try to post as often as is Ugandanly possible.

A day in Kanpala

2006-05-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

We had some walking around today in Kanpala. We had lunch in a place were 10 people were working while 5 were eating. Rice, smashed banana and beef. Cola for Cale milk for me all for 2 dollars. Not much talking during lunch, just observe what is going on around. The girl serving us is excited with her mobile phone, together with other girls around (each with their mobile). There is not much difference on this compared to Europe, mobile phone is the teenager toy everywhere. But here you can recharge it easier, there are recharging booths every 50 meters. And we go to the market: mango, passion fruit, banana...

No words no pictures

2006-05-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday first day of trip, we landed at 5 in the morning. Humid and hot temperature, clothes are too much. While waiting for the visa we see the biggest insect we have ever seen in our life. The body starts getting used to the humidity and feeling good. We got our visa and looked for transport to Kanpala. First choice Taxi, second choice Matatu (shared bus taxi with other 15 people). The Matatu stops on every corner to take people and leave people. A really flexible way of transport. And the documentary starts, 1 hour of Matatu from Entebbe to Kanpala: Cale can't close his mouth (I can't close mine either) and we stay attached to the window looking to the reality in front of us. Everything is changing its definition: is that a car? Was that a house? Is that a... And we just smile

London: design defined

2006-04-30T04:46:00.000-07:00

We had some interesting (networking) talks yesterday, BBQ with IDEO, Design Council folks. It feels good to have such a business card that includes a project in Africa, microfinance, peer to peer, Microsoft... Interest was raised and presentation possibilities discussed when back in London after context research. It feels like London has a pretty developed design community, strategic designer, interaction designer, experience designer, narrative interaction designer...everybody tags its own field with the appropiate words. We should create our own: intocontext designer.

Slow travel...enjoy

2006-04-30T04:43:00.000-07:00

Our first transportation choice: Ferry to London before we take the plane to Entebbe (Uganda). It feels good to travel by boat, a more natural speed. Soul and body arrive together. Cinema included. Goodbye Holland...welcome adventure!

2006-04-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

We met with Kin Kaliisa Ibrahim the special presidential assistant in charge of information and communication technology for the Republic of Uganda. He is currently a PhD student in the Security of Systems group at Radboud University Nijmegen.

Our discussion was concentrated on gaining a better understanding of the factors and forces influencing the diffusion of ICT in Uganda. He provided us with an image of the future roadmap for development, specifically in the rural areas of Uganda. A sound file of the interview can be found at the link below.

http://media.putfile.com/Interview-57

2006-04-25T03:04:00.000-07:00

While arranging some meetings in some ICT university people in Uganda we receive this e-mail answer "With Microsoft in the backyard, I am wondering how will this research benefitTHE PEOPLE!!!!!"

It looks like having the Microsoft label doesn't give a positive image everywhere. Microsoft might be too big to evaluate as good or bad, we are happy to have benefited by the Digital Inclusion Awards, and we feel the freedom to use it in a manner that might benefit several people working with Kiva. We hope it does.

2006-04-20T15:50:00.000-07:00

2006-03-28T06:09:00.000-08:00

First contact with Ugandan person today. Was nice to talk to an Ugandan student in Netherlands. It kind of gave a nice feeling talking to him. Felt relaxed, felt good, gave nice tips and comprehensive picture of what is going to be like to be there. He kind of made clear we are going to have a nice time there. Furthermore, some nice contacts on people working in ICT and microfinance. This is just the beginning...

2006-03-22T07:10:00.000-08:00

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