Hello again Zambia!

Arrived safely in Lusaka after a long tiring journey. Thanks Ben Mwanza for picking us up from the airport.

After dropping our bags at Kalulu Backpackers, we went to visit our good friends at Muhunya Solar to check out the equipment we had bought from them. As usual they were able to advise us on the three installations we are doing this visit.

Returned to the hostel for a meal and a Mosi and met with a world possible volunteer Peter and an agricultural machinery lecturer Chimangeni. We hope to be able to work with both of them to bring the resources of RACHEL to a wider community.

Wednesday 28^th Feb

Early start for our journey down to Siavonga in the van with the solar equipment, arriving about 12.30 at Siavonga High School. We unloaded batteries and solar panels there, then headed off to Zaninge Guest House to sort the rest of the kit and unpack.

In the evening we met with Chali Mangalesi (Digital Ambassador at SHS) and Geoffrey Phiri of Siavonga Nutrition Group to go over the program.

Thursday 1^st March

Met with the new District Education Board Secretary Ephe in her office. Chali and Geoffrey accompanied us and DEBS also invited her standards officers and Mr Rex Moonga the Resource Centre Head to join the group.

We introduced ourselves and explained the background and aims of Giakonda Solar Schools. Howard outlined our plans for this visit and demonstrated RACHEL on the Raspberry Pi. With her background in adult education, DEBS was keen to use such offline resources to help parents become better educated.

We talked about the proposed project of setting up beekeeping in interested schools and using that to provide better employment than charcoal burning.

Then we held a discussion in the resource centre to firm up dates for training, solar installations and meetings. Mr Moonga will communicate these to teachers and DEBS. We are relying on the three solar schools to pick up the equipment prior to their installation date. Travel to two of them is very challenging this time of year and we are hoping to possibly go by boat.

We spent the afternoon in Siavonga Primary School where there was a problem with their HP server which meant 18 of their PCs were not functioning.

We also managed to buy in the market some 12volt LED strip lights to install in the solar schools.

Welcome new trustees

A big welcome to our two new trustees, Jason and Malcolm. Far from deterring them, their visit with us to Zambia in September made them both keen to get more involved.

We’re delighted to have them on board.

At the moment we’re busy refurbishing laptops and PCs for transport to Zambia in the New Year. Quite a monumental task but it’s all in a great cause!

Schools there have very few resources and so every extra PC counts. We network them together to share offline learning resources.

If you have any hard drives to donate, we’d be very grateful. We can forensically wipe them before installing a new operating system. Contact us on

info@giakonda.org.uk

Thanks Hub Cymru Africa

We are very grateful to Hub Cymru Africa for the award of a further funding grant. Plans are underway for a visit to Zambia in February 2018.

We intend to use the grant to provide solar panels to three more rural schools in the Siavonga District of Southern Zambia. Two of them are particularly remote and accessible only via boat which promises to be an interesting challenge.

We will supply solar panels and deep cycle batteries. Solar power will allow the schools to run LED lighting, laptop computers, a projector and a Raspberry Pi computer acting as a server to provide learning resources to any wifi enabled devices. The learning resources come in the form of a 64GB microsd card loaded with RACHEL (Remote Aea Community Hotspot for Education and Learning).

RACHEL
This includes thousands of works of literature;  African story books;  articles, lesson plans and videos on science and maths; practical advice on health and agriculture for rural communities; wikipedia for schools. It’s a fantastic offline tool for teaching and learning, ideal where internet is unavailable or too expensive. In addition, teachers like the fact that pupils are protected from the dangers of being online.

Read more about our projects so far.

Lusaka National Museum

Statue at Lusaka National Museum

On our last full day in Zambia we paid a visit to Lusaka National Museum.

At the entrance was the imposing statue of AntiRetroviral Man which stands 8m tall and weighs 2000kg.

The ARM statue is made out of old hospice beds on which thousands of people have died of AIDS. It is modelled after Winstone Zulu, Zambia’s late AIDs activist. The statue was unveiled by the widow of Mr. Zulu on World Aids Day 2011 during a 2-week exhibition in the Lusaka National Museum. The exhibition attracted more than 1500 visitors.

HIV remains a major problem in Zambia with 1.2million people living with HIV in 2016.

• The HIV prevalence rate among adults in Zambia has changed little over the last decade despite decreasing infection rates Zambia.
• Despite the county’s high prevalence rate, there are significantly low rates of HIV knowledge among the general population.
• Life expectancy among people living with HIV in Zambia has improved significantly as a result of scaled up treatment programmes.
• Among adults who have been able to access ART in Zambia, over half are now virally suppressed.

History of Zambia

Upstairs were displays of archaeology and history, none of which refelct well on Britain. The prime exhibit of early Homo, a skull of Broken Hill or Kabwe man, was a replica- the original being in the British Museum!

There were exhibits reflecting the slave trade and the struggle of Zambia for independence, plus political changes up to the present day.

Zambian village life was illustrated with models and we have seen most of it for real in our trips to remote schools.

Kariba Secondary School and SNG

Nearly time to head back to Lusaka, but first some final tasks to do at Kariba Secondary School and SNG.

Kariba is a large school and the computer room has twenty stand-alone PCs. Our task was to network these PCs and connect them with the Synology DiskStation we supplied. All pupils will then be able to access RACHEL learning resource as well as printing centrally to a networked printer.

We got members of staff involved making the network cables!

All that remained was a final get-together with the Board of SNG, (Siavonga Nutrition Group our partners). They expressed appreciation for our  project and we talked about we can continue to work together for the benefit of the whole community. They are a useful conduit to the newly appointed District Education Board Secretary.

RACHEL for Resource Centre

Today we set up RACHEL in Siavonga Resource Centre. It’s situated in the grounds of Siavonga Primary School and used for meetings of teachers from around the district. Out of school hours, members of the community are able to bring their own laptops in and study from a small range of books.

The librarian Rex Moonga keeps a log of those who come in and the books they use.

We installed a Raspberry Pi with RACHEL. It will be kept in his office for security, but is accessible via any wireless devices in the Resource Centre and in the nearest classroom.

Mr Moonga will put signs up around the room to show how to log in to RACHEL and will get a new log book to record those who access it, what subjects they look for and any comments they make. This will help us monitor how the general community uses it.

In future we will supply up to five laptops so that learners can enjoy the resource even if they don’t have their own computer.

We are gradually supplying Raspberry Pi with RACHEL to as many schools and community areas as we can. If you would like to support our project, a donation of £80 will purchase one. A donation of £50 will let us refurbish a laptop with a new hard drive.
www.giakonda.org.uk/donations/