Frank In Uganda: Part 3
A friend of mine, Frank Ordway, has been working with the U of Washington and a few volunteers to help AIDS clinics in Africa migrate from paper-based systems to electronic ones. This series is made up of emails from Frank during his trip.
Parts: 1 2 3 4 5.
Well the impending visit has the whole nation in a tizzy. US troops have taken over the airport (luckily I fly out the day before Bush arrives), security is everywhere and the local papers are full of editorials about the visit. Savior or showman?
Debika, Frank and I are a great team and we made excellent progress here yesterday. The network has a 2000 server and 9 workstations ranging from new to 10 years old. They do not have ANY operating system disks so working on Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP without them has been a little trying. However, we fixed a DHCP and RCP issue on the server LATE last night and completed some other major network hygiene issues. I am training one of the clinic staff, Clyde Muhoumza, to be “The Administrator” (his new nickname).
Their database issues are complex, but we feel we have a good handle on what we need to accomplish both here and after our return. They are using a product called EPI info Version 6, a database distributed by the CDC, and it has been a good first step for them. Unfortunately they chose to use the old DOS based version and it is definitely hampering their ability to accomplish some things.
Over the next two days I will be teaching computer classes to the staff, wrapping up documentation, and completing work on their system. Their back-up approach is the next thing to tackle.
We had dinner at Edith Mukisa’s house last night with the whole staff. It was a wonderful evening of thanks and gifts.
I met a gentlemen yesterday, Lawrence Eamu, whom I was going to travel “up-country” with until the rebel activity in the area nixed the trip. It was both a great and wrenching meeting. Great in terms of the work some Seattleites are doing in his village and how I might contribute some tech planning assistance to their efforts; wrenching in that his niece was one of the girls kidnapped and they have not heard of her since. Combine that with the fact that he BUILT A HOUSE in honor of our visit (there was going to be some kind of celebration and ceremony. And he wanted us to have a nice place to stay). You can imagine how overwhelmed I felt.
Hope all is well, see some of you in a week!
