For almost two years now I have been working on a project we have been calling Open. This project started off as a dream to *really* introduce open source applications to African health systems. From its inception in which a few of us were sitting around a table in Open Eye cafe till now there have been many changes and many ideas on how big of a scale it should all be. Despite it all though, the dream to raise money to bring open source health apps to African health workers, while taking time to let African IT students join in on the development of those apps has remained. In addition we hope to take the ideals of open source and apply it to all areas of our work, from open information to gender equality – you name it, and we will be transparent about it.
How we are raising money makes my heart warm too – we have been generously been given a song by Youssou N’Dour (who has been wonderful to us) which is now being released under Creative Commons. We then asked a bunch of other stars to remix the song and we are releasing these remixes on every music distributor who said yes. Isn’t that excellent! The songs are free, but we do ask you for a donation to help our cause out. I think its a pretty fair trade.
So I’d like to officially let all you, my friends, know that today we are finally releasing IntraHealth’s Open.
Please do me a big favor and check out the songs, then donate whatever you can afford to to help us with this dream. If you would like a recommendation – I think the remix by Toubab Krewe is amazingly good and it features one of the original “Last Poets” – plus, their from Asheville, NC! who knew?
By the way, a few of you friends helped me out a great deal by either giving me advices, connecting me to others, or joining the Open Council. To you I am most grateful. Thankyou.
mah points out a headline in today’s New Times here in Rwanda: Frw44b goes to consultancy each year. That’s $80 million in money asking other people (mostly Westerners) to provide answers. That’s $80 million going to countries other than Rwanda… the country that needs the economic stimulus.
This goes right back to what I mentioned the other day about being asked point-blank about developing in open source. The reasoning there is that someone locally can learn to continue developing the system if the code is available. Of course we are taking it that one step further by hiring a local developer to join the team. Still, you get the point I hope.
Now in almost completely separate news, today I read about a solar cell phone charger that only costs $20! That’s only 10,000frw. Not much at all. The other day when I met the volunteer health workers who are going to use our systems to collect data I asked specifically where they charged their phones (all three had phones already) when they don’t have power. They told me they go to friends houses who have power. Sometimes they would charge them there at the health center too since they were affiliated with it now. Hell, for $20 we could hook them up!
I spent the morning talking with the folks who have developed the system and all of the paper forms we are trying to replace with ‘lectronics. It was amazingly useful and made me think about what I have to do a bit differently. No reason to go into the details of that here of course.
One thing that really surprised me in the meeting was that I was very directly asked if we would develop our software in open source. They asked because two other systems they have had to deal with are proprietary and they are tired of having to fly in “experts” to fix or change the code. Brilliant. Of course, I proudly said it would be free/open and that we’d also hire a local developer. Smiles all around.
After a lunch at the “Bourbon St. Cafe” (I shit you not) we headed out to a health center about 30 – 40 minutes outside of Kigali. That’s 30 – 40 minutes on a dirt road with giant potholes. If one were to stay in the center of Kigali too long they might assume that Rwanda is a wealthy country and wonder why so many aid agencies are here. Once you drive a few hundred meters past the airport you immediately know the real story. This is a poor country – monetarily, not poor of spirit.
We went to the health center to meet with the “community health workers” who are volunteers from the villages who go door to door to collect health data from the people. They tend to be more than data collectors as the people in the village will come to them when they are ill and ask what they should do (visit the health center, of course!) One thing I learned which really impressed me was that the program allows the villages to “elect” the people who will be going door to door. In this way, the volunteers want to participate because it is a position of honor and the villagers might trust them more. In fact, their peers trust them enough to give them their personal health information. The workers we met did point out that most folks are reluctant to give HIV information though – perhaps we can make the system so that the workers can hand a phone to the people who can more privately enter that information?
I truly enjoyed sitting with these folks despite the three-way translation (Kinyarwandan to French to English for me – ugh). Still, the folks we met were wonderful (including Pascal who is a fellow-fan of Chelsea – Go you Blues!). I want so much now to make the system easy for these three people to use. Its going to be difficult… but doable.
I’m currently sitting in the lobby of the Sirena Hotel Kigali – I’m pretty sure that Kenny G is what they are playing, though I’m not entirely sure I can identify his music from anything other than the abdominal pains it produces. Nonetheless, here I am – in Central Africa. My first impressions are totally clouded by jetlag but this is a beautiful place – and CLEAN. I think a few of my friends imagine Rwanda as some dusty, desolate place and that’s not true at all. Pull out your relief map and take a look. Rwanda is hilly, volcanic, and lush. The city of Kigali is in very good shape – lots of construction going on. It reminds me some of Central American cities – though much cleaner. Economically one can tell that it is on the rise – though from what depths, I am personally unsure. At the same time, the majority of office buildings I’ve seen so far are filled with relief and aid agencies, but that could be a result of my current location. There are guards everywhere – in front of most buildings. I am told, though, that that has more to do with people doing their civic duty and giving those less fortunate a job more than some greater security problem.
The people are beautiful and kind. Big smiles for anyone. The kids in the street give out a smiling “Bonjour!” to us. We went to an outstanding Indian restaurant last night with some more coworkers and had a grand time despite the jetlag.
We’ve had the luxury of taking Sunday off to recover before starting work today. I’ve got a very busy week ahead of me but hopefully this coming weekend I’ll get the opportunity to go visit the Gorillas who live in the volcano region. If not, perhaps a visit to the monkeys who live elsewhere.
I’ll be working out of the offices for our Twubakane project as well as working in conjunction with them for my small project. Luckily its a block away from my hotel (which has very good wireless access, I might add – spending my evenings IMing with all you lot!). The woman in charge of the project is a good person who knows the ropes. I’m lucky we have so many folks like her or I’d feel a bit overwhelmed.
What’s striking to me is that this place is so beautiful, and its on the verge of being a brilliant,and very modern place. At the same time, the shots I had to get to come here – the medication for malaria I have to take gives me the stark reality of health in Africa. Would we take these things more seriously if we had diseases like malaria in the US and Europe? I think that we would. Wouldn’t it be amazing to be able to come here without taking Malarone?
Since my malaria medicine seems to make me a little melancholy, I’ll say that 60-some years ago my uncle (half uncle, if you’re astounded by that timeline) came to Africa to teach people how to grow new types of crops in impossible situations. The continent moved him deeply – it always showed. I remember getting him to come talk to my fourth grade class about “Africa” which I probably thought was one big country. He brought all sorts of crafts and traditional items from Portuguese West Africa (Angola) and my classmates and I were glued to his every word. I always wanted to be like him. I’m not like him, he would have said kind things about Kenny G even if he didn’t like his music – I can’t do that. Nonetheless, I’ve at least made it to Africa and I’m hoping to do some good like he did.
You know, a lot has been said about the OLPC – good and bad. Many folks have tried to make some controversy out of the project (most expectedly, Microsoft but also some non-MS techy folks). But when you see the photos of the first kids to get the computers I find it baffling that anyone could be against such a thing.
I was lucky enough today to play with an OLPC. It was very very cute. Seriously. I dig the interface even though the one I played with was having some stability problems (don’t we all?) It has the tiniest little keyboard on it – which is only obvious if you are designing it for children… but still, tiny. The music app kicked some serious butt and I’m told the browser part does too… but that was part of the stability problem with the one I was using.
I’m hoping we will be able to use them on one of our projects – we’ll have to see.
Oh, by the way – that’s the first piece of hardware I have ever seen Open Firmware on – go figure.
