…or, using Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS in Liberia.

I’ve been working for Ushahidi as their technical consultant in Liberia. It’s been fun and I enjoy the work. One of the many features of Ushahidi is that it’s made to work with FrontlineSMS. FrontlineSMS is a program that allows a computer to receive text messages via a cell phone or GSM modem. Once the computer has received the text message FrontlineSMS allows you to do a number of things with it, one of which is forwarding to a web site.

However, in Liberia the internet isn’t so hot, and often a text message will be received when the internet is not working. The problem is that FrontlineSMS still receives the text, but only tries once to forward it on to Ushahidi, and doesn’t know if the message was received or not.

So to overcome this problem I wrote a little Java program that looks into the FrontlineSMS database, finds new messages and then sends them on to Ushahidi. I then used the Windows Task Scheduler to run this java program every 5 minutes to ensure timely transmission. Some of you may wonder why I’m using Windows when everything else I’m using is open source. The simple answer is that many of the organizations we work with in Liberia only use Windows PCs, and so to ask them to switch to something else would be pretty disruptive.

So here’s a .zip file with the source, required libraries, executable .jar file, and a sample config file.

The frontlinesync.jar, h2-1.2.140.jar, and config.txt files need to be in the same directory for the program to work.

The config file specifies where the Frontline database file is, the URL to the Ushahidi instance, and the FrontlineSMS key to the Ushahidi instance. Also included is flsync.bat. This is a batch file that forces the java file to run minimized. Use this file with the Windows Task Scheduler to make the sync program run in the background at regular intervals. Here’s a tutorial on how to use Task Scheduler.

I’ve only been using this for 2 days, so I’m sure bugs will be discovered as time goes on. If you find any please let me know. If you want to see all of this in action check out Liberia Mapped, and try texting something in to +231-88-066-8932. Liberia Mapped is a simple directory of organizations in Liberia.

—————UPDATE—————-

I’ve had some issues with the executable .jar file not working properly when run from the task scheduler. I’m not really sure what causes it but it seems the class path breaks down some where. So I’ve updated the flsync.bat file to say:

java -cp frontlinesync.jar;h2-1.2.140.jar FrontLineSync

instead of just:

frontlinesync.jar

I decided the other day that it’d be nice to evaluate, in a sort of scientific manner, the different ISPs that operate in Liberia. People always seem to be asking for internet recommendations, and so far all I know is my own experience with my ISP. Not that that’s even close to scientific.

So a bit about methodology. Ideally I’d love to test one ISP for a week straight running quantitative tests like download speeds and measure up time. I’d like to look at how the ISP works at 2am vs, 2pm, as most providers seem to get really slow in the middle of the day. Because all ISPs in Liberia are Wireless ISPs (WISPs) I’d also love to test how a provider works in Congo Town verses Mamba Point, since location will effect signal strength and user density. Sadly, I don’t have the resources or time to do such an intensive test of each ISP. Mostly I’m borrowing friend’s USB modems when and where I can to conduct these tests.  Tests were designed to be quick so I could return the borrowed hardware in a reasonable amount of time.

With this in mind, please realize that this won’t be a super accurate view of how the ISPs perform on average. It’ll be more like a one time snapshot than an evaluation of how they perform all month long. And as we know from the recent Cellcom lightning outage, “anomalies” can bring down a whole system for an extended period of time.

So I decided to have 2 tests. I wanted to do another test, but that fell through, more on that later.

1. Large Download Test – A 1.9mb image file is downloaded and timed. The idea here is to see how quickly something can be downloaded that’s large enough to give the network time to get up to speed and stabilize. When a data stream starts up the network has to figure out the best way to route it, also TCP flow control and error checking also work best when a steady stream of data is present. The main goal of this test is to see what the bandwidth is, or how much data can be pushed through over time. The picture downloaded was the sunset from my trip to Harper.
2. Ping Test – Ping is a super simple network diagnostic tool used to check that a message can be sent to, and a reply received from, a device on a network. On my laptop I have ping setup to run all the time so I know when the internet drops out. Ping also tells you how long it took for the reply to be received. This allows us to test latency. Latency is the measure of delay in the network. From the moment you press enter, to the time the first bytes of a web page are received by your computer, that amount of time is measured as latency. Because all of Liberia is connected to the world through VSATs, the latency will never be below 500ms (milliseconds) or half a second. This is why you hear a delay when talking to your friends abroad. The VSAT signal has to go from Liberia, to space, and then back down to Earth, probably Lebanon, Israel, or the UK. Which means the signal travels 70,000km just to reach the internet. The speed of light is roughly 300,000km/sec, so that means that just to reach the internet there’s a delay of .25 seconds, or 250ms. Then the reply has to come back from the internet, which is another .25 seconds. So you get a total minimum delay of .5 seconds or 500ms. For way more info on this VSAT lag see this article.

I wanted to test how long it took to load a medium sized web page, around 100kb with images, CSS, java script and all. But the page that I thought was static that i used for my test somehow changed sizes between tests. So I had to throw that data out, which sucks, but that’s what you get in this age of dynamic content.

Also note that I use thousands of bits per second (kbps), when measure network speeds. This is different than thousands of bytes per second. Network speeds are usually measured in bits and files are usually measured in bytes. One bit is one “off” or “on” signal, one “1″, or “0″ where a byte is 8 bits. For example on a computer the letter ‘A’ is represented by these 8 bits “01000001.” Those 8 bits make up one byte.

So if you have a 128kbps internet connection and you want to download a file that is one megabyte, it’ll take (1,000,000 * 8) / 128,000 = 62.5 seconds to download. Not 1,000,000/128,000 = 7.8 seconds. So just keep that in mind. Also that math is over simplified because it doesn’t account for TCP/IP overhead and rounding in the measure of a megabyte, but it should get the point across about a byte vs a bit.

Comium

At my apartment we pay $150 a month for Comium’s 256kbps connection. Back in February Comium had a two for one deal that if you paid for 3 months of service you’d get twice the speed. So we should really be paying $150 a month for 128kbps or $300 a month for 256kbps. But till July we’ve got 256kbps for only$37.50 per roommate. In this comparison Comium is used as a baseline. Unlike the other ISPs here which use cellular technologies, Comium uses a technology that’s closer to super long range Wi-Fi or Wi-Max. You also have to pay $350 for a special modem that plugs in the wall and makes Comium a stationary source of internet. All the other ISPs in this comparison use cellular technologies like GPRS or CDMA which allow you to take your internet wherever you go, and their modems are quite less costly. Also Comium is only available in Monrovia, where Lonestar and Cellcom will work wherever they have a tower, which is most of the population centers in the country.

I use this at home and it’s been pretty darn fast for Liberia. At night, when the rest of Monrovia sleeps, and isn’t  using the internet, I can almost stream Youtube videos. We have had some issues with the internet randomly dropping out. Usually it’s fixed by resetting the router, which makes me wonder if the problem is Comium or my router.

These numbers were tested between 6:44PM and 6:55PM from my secret lair in the heart of Mamba Point . Here are the numbers

Cellcom

Cellcom offers unlimited use of their cellular EDGE for $60 a month. You can use any EDGE device to access their service. This could include your EDGE cellphone or the USB EDGE modem Cellcom sells for $50. To get on the Cellcom EDGE data network set the following on your device:

Access Point Name (APN): web.cellcomnet.net
Dial Number *99#

Generally people I’ve talked to have had good things to say about Cellcom. They say it’s reliable and fast enough. Most people I talk to do say that Libtelco is faster. This is often attributed to the fact that Libtelco has far less customers and thus their internet connection is split between less people.

Cellcom’s data was collected between 6:05pm and 7:01pm on a roof top bar overlooking mamba point.

Lonestar

Lonestar also lets you have unlimited access of their cellular data network for $60 a month. You can also use it at the rate of $1 an hour. I use the later option all the time when I want to check email and I don’t have any other means. I can check my email in about a minute, and at a $1 that’s way cheaper than paying $60 a month. Lonestar will also sell you a USB modem for $50, or you can use your favorite mobile device instead. My ThinkPad laptop has a built in GSM modem, like a cellphone, the SIM card sits annoyingly right behind the battery, so I use Lonestar on my laptop, again because I don’t want to commit to $60 a month.

Another point of interest is that the Lonestar USB modem sold at the Lonestar office is just a Huawei EG162G modem with some Lonestar branding. Huawei E series GSM modems are supported by FrontlineSMS. So if you want to start using SMS in cool ways with your organization, just go to lonestar, get one of their modems and download FrontlineSMS.

To get Lonestar to work on your mobile device use these settings:

Access Point Name (APN): internetlcc

Lonestar was tested from my base of covert operations in Mamba Point between

I’m hoping to test a friends Libtelco USB modem soon. I also want to apologize for screwing up the web page test. I think having those results would be really helpful. And finally, I want to reiterate that these results are just a snap shot of the performance of each ISP, at a specific time and place. People have reported far different results at different times and places.

Special thanks to Nate and Elie for them letting me borrow their internet devices.

Here’s another update on ICT in Liberia, the progress and the challenges. First of all I had the chance to tour the downtown offices of Libtelco. Libtelco, formerly known as the Liberian Telecommunications Company (LTC), is a state owned telecom operator. Back before the war LTC owned all the land lines in the country. Then the war came, all the lines were looted so the rebels could sell the copper, and then the wireless operators came in. So LTC has been rebranded as Libtelco and is hoping to get a piece of the market. I’ll talk more about that later. But first the cool stuff.

I’m a sucker for redundant power systems in a country with no reliable source of electricity. So on the left is a picture of Libtelco’s massive battery back-up. I wish I could wow you with impressive numbers and words like “mega-watts”, but all I can remember is that it’s big. They have everything in triplicate to ensure zero down time. On the right is a pic of their industrial sized UPSs. They use these when switching between their generator, the Liberian Electric Company, and the battery back-up to ensure a seamless transition.

On the left you see a shot of their gateway with the other operators in the country. All of this is over microwave links and then E1 lines. Sadly, this is a voice only gateway, no data interconnect exists in the country for the time being. I’ll also talk about this more later.  On the right is a shot of their Sun powered billing system. All very impressive for Liberia.

Libtelco has built out a CDMA network in the Monrovia area, it’s interesting that they departed from the usual GSM which is ubiquitous in Liberia, and most of Africa for that matter. They’re hopes are to leverage CDMAs faster data rates (compared to 2G GSM technologies, but not 3G and 4G) to provide ISP services to organizations in Monrovia, and fixed wireless services like faxes and PBXs. Libtelco is also building a data center for hosting servers.

I must admit I’m a bit unsure of the market for these servers. I’ve been told that they sold out of their wireless modems for the ISP service, but that the sales of wireless land lines and faxes haven’t been so hot. I’ve also heard that their ISP service drops out on occasion. I haven’t used it enough to know if it drops out anymore than the other ISPs here, but I hope they get this resolved soon.

A while ago I talked about a project I worked on where PDAs were used to collect data in the field and then send the data back to Monrovia via the cellular GPRS data networks in the country. Again in September I worked to help do another round of data collection. However, this time the VSAT that we had used for a static IP address to host our server was unavailable, so we needed another place for hosting. Our server runs on a 12″ Thinkpad, being so small I knew that all we really needed is someone to let us sit the laptop on their desk, plug it in to a power source, and then give us a couple of ports on a static IP.

So I called a few of the local ISPs. Comium was never able to really give me a straight answer. They said they could do it, but I never talked to anyone who could make that kind of executive decision. The IT staff at Cellcom were all about it. They knew it was a super simple request, then their management got a hold of it.  They said that, “these requests will demand from my engineer some expensive time”, and that they’d charge us $500 a week. Which is about 20 times the cost it would be in the states for one-thousandth the bandwidth. So we didn’t go with them. Then I spoke with Libtelco, and they said since we only needed it for two weeks that they’d do it for free out of good will. Now that’s marketing. Cellcom could learn a thing or two from them. I never got around to calling Lonestar and I don’t have any contacts there. To my knowledge this is the first instance of collation hosting in Liberia.

Libtelco did a great job. I came in with our laptop server, set it on top of their rack, plugged it in, set the IP address info and it worked perfectly. Took all of 15 minutes. As far as I know there was no down time and the connection was fast (for Liberia). There staff was also very professional and competent, which you just don’t get enough of here. So I’m all about Libtelco for hosting, though It’ll be interesting to know what they rates will be for more permanent hosting.

Assuming the rates are good I hope they’ll attract other customers. It’d be cool to see a real data center arise in Monrovia. I know the trend at the moment is for each ministry or business to host their own servers. Which might make sense if you just want a file server, but for someone that needs their box out on the net with five-nines up time, you’re better off letting someone else who has triplicate redundant UPSs and massive battery back-ups handle it for you.

Also on the IT front here in Liberia is the need for more international bandwidth and interconnection. On that note, some unsubstantiated rumors: On the lack of bandwidth front I’ve heard rumors that MTN, the South African telcom giant that owns Lonestar, has expressed interest in paying about $10 million to plug into the SAT-3 fiberoptic cable that runs off the coast of Liberia. As I understand it the Liberian government has yet to OK this. I believe the official line is that the government wants to be sure that this doesn’t give Lonestar an unfair monopoly on bandwidth in the country, and the Liberian Telecom Authority has recently dealt with some internal issues and needs some time to figure out how they’ll handle this. I’ve been told that Libtelco would also like to do this, but being a state run organization of a country that currently has Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) status, they can’t take out a loan to make it happen.

There are also two new cables being laid off the Liberian coast, GLO-1 and Main one. Here’s an article with more info on Main One here. There’s some buzz that Liberia will connect to one of these. Also some people are looking at setting up a microwave station in San Pedro, Cote D’ Ivoire, the closes place fiber optic cable reaches, and beaming some bandwidth over the boarder to Harper, Maryland County and then distribute it to the rest of Liberia.

As I mentioned above there are voice interconnects between the major operators, but nothing for data. So if I want to send a file from my computer using a Comium internet connection to someone using Cellcom, my file goes to Comiums satellite, lands in Lebanon, goes through the internet, then back up through another satellite to Cellcom’s office and then on to its destination. Obviously this is tremendously inefficient. It forces the file to go through the bottle neck of a satellite twice. A more optimal route would be for the file to go through my computer, to Comium’s office, over to Cellcom’s office and then to it’s destination. Already Libtelco, Comium, Cellcom, and probably Lonestar have networks in country that could handle way more bandwidth than their teeny tiny VSAT connections can support. If all the operators were connected content hosted in Liberia could be accessed much faster than is currently possible.

What is needed is a central point for each of the major ISPs in Liberia to link up. This is called a peering point or an IXP. At the moment no one has stepped up to do this. I know Libtelco would like to do this, but the politics of the state owned operator having control of that make it a hard sell. I don’t know why the other operators haven’t moved towards something like this. I imagine they’re probably being a little competitive with each other and focused on other short term gains.  Either way, it’d be cool to see it happen.

Just wanted to update a few things and make some corrections.

I’ve discovered that Libercell has towers in Grand Kru county, and Libercell offers GPRS data service. Not sure if this means that Libercell offers GPRS in Grand Kru, but it would seem so. This would mean that you potentially have a choice between Cellcom and Libercell for GPRS/EDGE in Grand Kru county.

More and more I’ve noticed that my cell phone tells me that EDGE data service is available when I have my Lonestar SIM card in my phone. So I think it’s safe to say they have EDGE now. Scratch that.

I’ve started using a Lonestar SIM card in my laptop for email checking and stuff, and my laptop reports that I’m only getting GPRS out of Lonestar. Cellcom was working great, but at $60 a month it was more than I needed. I just use it to check and send email when in the field, so Lonestar’s $1 an hour rate is more inline with my usage. It seems to be more unreliable than Cellcom, but if I leave it on for 20 minutes i’ll be able to download a few emails and send a couple. That’s all I need so I’m happy. At least till someone thinks a 3MB attachment is a good idea.

Finally, I wanted to talk about Libtelco (AKA: Liberian Telecom Company, AKA LTC). Back in the day LTC ran the few land lines that Liberia had. Then the war came, the phone lines were looted, and LTC fell into disrepair. Now, it’s been brought back and renamed Libtelco. They’ve build up a modern CDMA network across Monrovia. Why you’d use CDMA in a part of the world that is exclusively GSM is beyond me, but that’s what they did. I think part of it may be that they’re targeting businesses who want PBX, fax, and ISP services, and not individuals who want to talk. They have a list of their services here, and a list of prices here.

Libtelco is also government owned, just like it was back in the day. The latest copy of the Liberian ICT policy has Libtelco playing a major role in the country’s ICT development. They’ll get to do things like be an international peering point, build out networks for universal sevice, and hopefully a local peering point so that the other major ISPs can send data around Monrovia directly, rather than up through a VSAT, over to europe, then back up a VSAT, and back to Monrovia. Recently a feasiblity study was conducted to see if Libtelco installing a fiber optic ring around Monrovia would make sense. The study concluded that it would make sense. If it’s done right, and they get buy in from the other major ISPs, businesses, and the government plays along, such a network could be really cool.

For valentines Leah Kaplan and I planned a fundraiser 80’s slow dance party. The funds were to go to a orphanage in Kakata, about an hour or so north of Monrovia. Anyway, it was obviously a lot of fun. We even got a few, not so slow dances in. People even dressed up for it, as evidenced by this photo to the left. We were able to raise well over $400 for the orphanage. To ensure that the money is properly used Orphan Relief and Rescue, a small NGO operating here in Liberia, will oversee the distribution of the money. Regrettably, Leah’s company pulled out of Liberia right before the dance, and she missed it. She was missed

Then the weekend after a few of us went on an exploratory surf trip to Buchanan in Grand Bassa County. Buchanan is about 2 and half hours away from Monrovia. The road there is paved, but it’s so tore up that you have to drive super slow to not hit every pot hole. It’d be better if it wasn’t paved and just smoothed out by the occasional grader or something. I had heard rumors that they fixed the road. These were not true.

We never found the beach were we’re supposed to. The directions we had said go to the end of the road. We had an in car discussion about what constituted the “end of the road”, and whether the people who wrote the directions were as “hardcore” as we were when defining the end of the road. In our quest for the end we took a sweet jungle by-pass to get around a tractor that was stuck in the middle of a one lane trail along the coast. It was sweet; we were literally driving through the jungle. I love moments like that. Sadly, I got my first flat tire in Africa from this little off-road jaunt.

Finally, after trekking for several minutes off the main road, we arrived at this amazing little village next to a river that let out to the ocean, it was beautiful. Unfortunately, the waves weren’t super great. We did have a fair bit of fun riding the class 1 rapids from the river into the ocean and then riding waves back into the river, just to get pushed back again. That was pretty cool, but took a lot of work to time it right.

In some more technical happenings, my crack squad of research assistants (RAs) and I did some major work to rebuild the wooden enclosure of the MObile Story Exchange System, or MOSES. The old enclosure was designed to be bullet proof. It housed our most important project and so needed to be strong. It also weighed 100lbs, took up all the space in the 4Runner, and had to be plugged in. So we redid a few things. The new system now comes in two halves. The bottom half is the power pack that houses two 12 volt 80amp deep cycle batteries hooked up in parallel and a 1500watt inverter/charger.  To date we’ve never run out of juice and have run for over 8 hours, it’s a thing of beauty. The top half contains an audio amplifier, two 6″x9″ speakers, the laptop MOSES runs on and the Plexiglas panel that the 19″ LCD is bolted too. The new system is much lighter (though the batteries weigh a lot) can easily fit in the back of the 4Runner, and doesn’t need power. It’s great. People at the TRC, where we built it, have told me, “Thanks for the hard work.” I think that’s the Liberian way of saying, “Nice work.”  Since I didn’t really do the hard work for them, and secretly, I really liked getting to use power tools again. My favorite part was getting the drill bits out of the drill for my RAs. The drill was made to be tightened and loosened by hand, but the RAs were hesitant to rev the drill and pop out the drill bit. Special thanks to Matt Cramer and Andrew Tyler for loaning me the tools.

Finally I got the first ticket of my life in Monrovia. I was on Broad street heading west at the Randal Street intersection.  I wanted to do a U-turn and as usual there was the normal crazy traffic, in which you wait your turn, edge forward and then either take your turn or wait for someone to let you in. But instead of pulling up past the little, I don’t even know what to call it, the thing the police stand on in the middle of the intersection to direct traffic, and then turning, I just started to turn. I had pulled about a foot forward when I noticed the cop, who had just noticed me and stood up to direct traffic and stop me. Then he realized I was white and waved me forward. He gave me a lecture about how that was illegal, I should have gone past the police stand.

I knew he was right, and that I was just being lazy with my driving. I didn’t want to “compromise” AKA bribe him to not give me a ticket. In fact, we even had a little tift where I was pointing out why compromising isn’t the way to go and he said, “But why this is Africa, you can’t change Africa”, and I looked him straight in the face and said, “I can try.” I don’t think he liked that very mcuh.One of my friends told me next time I get the, “this is Africa” line I should ask if they like their African salary, or African benefit package, if we should keep the 300 LD (5 USD) bribes, and the 100USD a month salaries. Well, I went with the usual call their bluff since they can’t write tickets and insist on a ticket stategy. To my amzement the commanding officer on the scene had a ticket book. This is defenitly a step forward, though still needs a little polish. For instance I was sited for “wreckless driving” and not obey the directing officer, who wasn’t directing anything till he saw a white man. I also got slapped with a $1500 LD, $25 USD. The cop that pulled me over said, “be nice to my friend and give him one thousand-five.” I’m pretty sure he was really saying, “show this guy he can’t change Africa, charge him a lot”. Everyone I talked to, Liberian and expat, said that was too much. Still beats the ticket price in America, though in America I would have just waited for my light to turn green, and we don’t put crap that you have to drive around in the middle of our intersections.

Paying the ticket was surprisingly pleasant. I had to go to the Ministry of Finance, pay the ticket, then take the receipt to the police station. The nice ladies in the ticket department were very helpful and had everything processed in a matter of minutes. To ensure that I paid my ticket the ticketing officer took my dirver’s license, and again I was amazed that they had it there waiting for me. So law and order is, slowly, coming back to Liberia.

It has been a while since I wrote a technical post, and I’ve had a few people ask me about GPRS service in Liberia lately, so I thought it was time to take another look at the Liberian wireless data landscape. Plus I recently bought a Thinkpad X200 with a built in Ericsson  F3507g Mobile Broadband Minicard Modem. So I wana talk about that too, see the picture on the left.

The last time we talked about cellular data Liberia’s two biggest carriers were running free trails of their data services. Cellcom, Liberia’s number 2, took things up a notch with EDGE service. Now those trails are over, and you have to pay. Cellcom offers their EDGE service for $60 USD a month for unlimited usage. Lonestar offers GPRS for $1 USD an hour, or a fixed monthly rate for all you can download. I don’t know what it is, but I assume it’s $60 a month too. I’m not really sure how I feel about charging for data by the time used. This just gives them an incentive to give you a slower connection, not a faster one.

I’ve been using Cellcom in my laptop. So far it’s been really good. I’m able to get enough signal to connect all over Monrovia. It’s usually pretty reliable, though there have been times when the service has dropped out for 30 minutes to an hour. Sometimes I have to shut off the modem and turn it back on to get my connection back. But this is pretty much standard for any ISP in Liberia. The speed is pretty good for Liberia. It’s faster in the mornings and evenings, when the load on the network is lighter. As mentioned above, it does drop out occasionally. If I have to do a lot of uploading or downloading I’ll wait till I’m at a place with wifi connected to Comium’s internet service. I’ve also had trouble sending email in Outlook when I’m using Cellcom. I don’t know if they have the SMTP SSL port blocked or if there’s some DNS weirdness going on with my mail servers, but I won’t be able to send a message all day, and then someone will tell me they got 8 copies of the email. I don’t know if Outlook is screwing up or if it’s the network. Both my gmail and work email accounts seem to have trouble. But when I can send email, it’s super nice to do so from wherever I am. I can always receive email just fine.

Setting up the Ericsson F3507g to work in Liberia was really easy. The F3507g comes unlocked, so I didn’t need to worry about that. I used the Access Connections software that came with my Thinkpad to configure the F3507g to work on Cellcom’s network. The only thing you have to do is set the APN (Access Point) to web.cellcomnet.net. To do this I brought up the Wireless Connection Status window and then went to Wireless WAN tab-> Modify Wireless WAN Settings. Then for Select WAN Settings choose “Custom Settings” and then click Edit Settings to set the APN.

I’ve also been helping a NGO here to do survey work on GPRS enabled smart phones. They have surveyors in each of the 15 counties sending data in to a server in Monrovia sitting behind a VSAT with a static IP address. So we needed to find a carrier for all of this. We first approached Cellcom, but they weren’t terribly helpful. We wanted a list of each cell tower they had that supported GPRS/EDGE and the city, town, or village closest to it. But all they could do was give us a Google earth print out with little bull’s-eyes where they had towers. This was nice to get an idea of where the towers were, but we wanted to know which township to tell the survey teams to head to, to send data. Not, “go towards this red dot that doesn’t have a name on a map.” We asked several times if they had a list and they said no. I found that hard to believe. Do they just sit around at the end of the month wondering where to send the diesel to run the generators at their towers? “Well Joe, you take 500 gallons to this dot somewhere in Sinoe County, and I’ll head to this dot between Gbarnga and Ganta.” I doubt it. This is what happens when there is a disconnect between sales and engineering.

We then went to Lonestar where the lady at the sales department reached under her desk and handed us a list of every town Lonestar had a tower in. How hard was that? We were also won over by their $1 an hour versus $60 a month since we seriously doubted that a little 32kb survey was going to take 60 hours to upload. Though we did end up going with one Cellcom SIM for Grand Kru County since they are the only operator in that county.

So far things have worked well. Though to date I don’t think we were ever able to get data to send from Grand Kru or Maryland counties using Cellcom. We were able to use Lonestar in Harper Maryland County. It seems that every cell tower isn’t running GPRS/EDGE after all despite what we were told by the carriers.

On the whole I think things are moving along very nicely for data in Liberia. Coverage is still limited to major population centers, and the service is still out of the reach of most Liberians, but being able to send data quickly around the country does make it possible for aid organizations, donors, and the Liberian government to make decisions with timely and accurate data. And this is good for everyone.

This is a little out of date, but I finally acquired the mp3 of my appearance with Parker on UNMIL radio talking about the TRC. This was originally broadcast on June 6th, 2008. The mp3 can be downloaded here.

I feel like I sound kinda silly at times. I even let a little Liberian English slip from time to time. I imagine I just sound ridiculous to the average Liberian.

John

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That’s what our Liberian research assistants / interpreters told people we were doing when they explained the purpose of our visit.

This past week Tom Smyth, a computer science PhD student from Georgia Tech, came over to help start up a couple projects. One of these projects being the GTV mobile video story sharing system, and the other is an analysis of the motivations behind cell phone use in Liberia. We started off working on the GTV project.

One of our priorities was setting up a power supply for GTV. So we went to a couple shops down town and bought a 120 amp/hour battery and a 1500 watt inverter/charger. The inverter is pretty awesome. You plug it into the wall and it charges the battery while powering the stuff plugged into it. When the wall power cuts out, the inverter switches to the battery and keeps powering the stuff plugged into it. Basically, it’s allows you to make a huge UPS. You can keep chaining batteries together in parallel to make a system that can run for days. The Carter Center, Jimmy Carter’s rule of law NGO, has a 3000 watt inverter plugged into 4, 200amp batteries to allow their whole office to run for 5 hours when the generator shuts down for a break during the day. I was pretty excited to get to play with electronics. We bought a multi-meter to monitor the battery and diagnose problems. We also started thinking about how to convert watts, volts, and amps to watt hours of burn time for GTV. It was good ole nerdy fun.

We also needed to create a system to provide adequate lighting for GTV. We wanted to make sure that when we’re filming outside the users face isn’t a black silhouette against a super bright background, so we bought two 15 watt compact fluorescent bulbs. We wanted a focused light that would compete with the brightness of the sun. For this Tom had the brilliant idea to make reflectors out of pie pans. So I was testing the pie pan reflectors when one of the pie pans slid down and made contact with the base of the bulbs contact. Instantly both my arms became rigid, I yelled, and fell out of my chair. I needed a second to process what had happened, then had a good laugh. I’ve never shocked myself with 220 volts before.

Another exciting project that Tom and I were tasked with was performing Q-sorts surveys of mobile phone users in rural (non-Monrovia) Liberia. What’s a Q-sort you may ask? I’m glad you asked. It’s a method for determining a person’s position on one issue relative to another. In our incarnation of Q-sort we have a big mat with 31 cards. Each card says something like, “My cell phone lets me get more done in a day”, “I enjoy talking to my friends and family on my cell phone”, “I use my cell phone to stay in touch with my suppliers”, and “My cell phone makes me feel more secure.” The subject takes these cards and then arranges them on the mat from “Most like me” to “Least like me.” To make this task possible we’ve hired two Liberian research assistants, Laye and Aldoph. Both of these guys are great. Some of the best Liberians I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with. The biggest thing they help us with is explaining such an abstract concept as a Q-sort survey to the average Liberian. Laye would relate it to soccer, “Say I prefer Man U to Chelsea, but I prefer Liverpool to Chelsea and Man U. Then I would put Liverpool on the far right, Man U in the middle, and Chelsea on the far left.” We also taught Laye and Aldoph shotgun. Aldoph is now pretty good at riding up front.

Everywhere we went we’d draw a crowd, and people are always super accommodating. We first went to Robertsport and spent the whole day sitting on someone’s front porch. In a market town outside of Kakata we sat in the “offices” of the local lawyer. People want to know what we’re doing and it sometimes takes a while to explain that we aren’t working for a cell phone company or starting a school in Liberia. Oddly enough most Liberians have not met academic researchers on the streets.

For me the best part of this has been the driving. I love driving. The roads to most of the towns are paved for the first 40 miles. After that it can get bumpy. Even the paved roads are bumpy in spots. The road from Tubmanburg to Bapulo was nothing but dust, mud, and rocks. I was in a mild state of euphoria the entire trip. At the end of the trip our 4Runner was covered in dirt. I need to get the road pics and video from Tom, but it’ll be good when I do.

In addition to all this fine research I’ve also replaced all my stolen IDs. I spent a memorable 3 hours getting a new driver’s license. To reduce corruption there are 4 levels of indirection when paying for your license. First you go to the Min. of Transport where they give you a hand written bill. Then you go to the Min. of Finance where you hand the bill to someone who prints out a bill. Then you go to the teller in the Min. of Finance and give them the bill and the money. Forty-five minutes later someone comes out with a stack or receipts and calls out the names on them. Finally you take the receipt back to the Min. of Transport and there you get your license. Luckily, the Min. of Transport is across the street from the Min. of Finance.

While waiting, I met some very cool people. One guy asked if I was getting the license for my bike and I was like, “Yeah I am… How do you know I have a bike?” He said he had seen me driving around town. I still don’t buy it though. I have a helmet on when I ride; even my friends don’t recognize me when I drive by, but whatever. I also had some great conversations with people about coming to America and that you can’t just get off the plane, hail and cab and say, “I’d like to go to college and then a job please.” One guy was sure that he’d get a good job in the States, another guy was like, “No you’ll do labor.” I agreed with the later. Then we had another conversation about how inefficient the whole process of getting a license was. The guy said, “This is Africa” and before I could retort this old lady on the corner went off about how it’s not Africa, it’s them. It was great. It was so cool to be talking politics with the common man, and not just me arguing my western, college educated, think I know it all point, but to see Liberians discussing their differing views.

Also, after several weeks GATECH-1 has her vanity plates. Since the plates have arrived I haven’t been stopped at check points. A few days ago I found a hard spot on my foot where it looked like I had a splinter stuck in that the skin had grown around. I tried digging it out with my knife and all this puss came out. But when I examined it closer it wasn’t puss at all, but little white ovals. Kinda like insect larva. I was ever so slightly disconcerted by this. I went to the doctor and they checked me out, made sure the cut wasn’t infected and told me I was alright. I think I was gotten by a worm at the beach. So far I’m still alive.

This was overheard in Monrovia when one person was talking about a workshop for traditional tribal leaders about the country’s new rape laws:

1. Traditional Leader: “Can woman rape man? If so how?”

2. Traditional Leader: “If a woman is raped in the bush and no one hears it, is it still rape?”

Expat: “Yes.”

In traditional culture, if a man doesn’t force himself on a woman than it is thought that she must not be attractive enough. So a woman asked how many times a woman can refuse her husband before he can force himself on her. When told that a man can’t ever force himself on a woman, the woman was flabbergasted.

Soon Martin Bednar, another GT student, will arrive with the long awaited GTV system. Once that arrives, the real fun will start.

Also, special thanks to Tom for sharing his pictures with me for this post since my camera was stolen.

John
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I’d like to introduce my dear friend Mr. Jonathan Saah. Jonathan is a local Liberian entrepreneur. After the war he saved up enough money to buy a car for use as a taxi. As Jonathan operated the taxi he earned the trust of many in the expat community. So much so, that he began to only drive expats exclusively. This was a big step forward for Jonathan’s taxi service. After a few years Jonathan was able to save up and buy a newer and more reliable car. Because of his hard work, financial wisdom, and respect for the clock, Jonathan is now able to employee another man to drive this car. Currently Jonathan’s day job is working as an IT specialist at Ecobank Liberia. However, still pursues other entrepreneurial ventures.

Jonathan was trained in computer software and networking at Universal Institute of Technology In 2001. Because of this affinity for technology Jonathan opened up an internet café in the back of his home near Newport Street, in Mamba Point, Monrovia in June 2007. The café had a 128Kbps dedicated internet connection, 3 laptops for browsing, a printer, a scanner, and a Vonage voice over IP phone. The internet café attracted many customers, but not enough to recoup the cost of the internet connection and the diesel to run the generator. Jonathan shut down café in November 2007 to prevent any further losses.

Jonathan attributes the businesses lack of success to its location. He was operating the café out of the back of his home. His home is located near the old Ministry of Youth and Sports which is 50 feet from the main road hidden behind other buildings. Thus only people who knew about the café or found out through word of mouth would come by. If the café were on the main road Jonathan believes he would receive far more customers.

To this end, Jonathan has found a vacant store front he can rent to house his café. However, the down payment for the lease is prohibitively expensive for him. Jonathan has looked into taking out a loan from a local bank but has been declined. The local financial institutions in Liberia have yet to take to the micro-lending craze. International micro-finance groups have also yet to move into Liberia. Because of this lack of resources I told Jonathan I’d make a post on my blog about his business and his need for funds. Ideally Jonathan would like a loan of $1,400.00 USD repayable in 12 month with 30% simple interest. So if loaned Jonathan $1,000.00 you’d get $1,300.00 back in 12 months. If anyone would be interested in making a loan towards this amount to Jonathan or is aware of any other options please contact me at john.etherton@gmail.com. I would be happy to be the liaison between Jonathan and any perspective micro-investors. To talk to Jonathan directly email saahjonathan@yahoo.com, jsaah2001@hotmail.com, or jsaah2001@aol.com. With Jonathan’s income from his taxi service, job at Ecobank, and the internet café, he should have no problem paying off such a loan.

Below is a breakdown of the café’s expected costs and the schedule of fees for services:

Onetime costs (USD):

Monthly Costs (USD):

Fee Schedule for services (LD, USD):

Jonathan has 3 laptops for internet browsing and the hours of operation would be 9:00am-12:00pm 7 days a week. So assuming a full house, Jonathan would make 3 laptops x $1.00 x 15 hours x 30 days = $1,350.00 a month from internet browsing alone. This would generate a profit of $680.00USD.

If you have any more questions please ask john.etherton@gmail.com or saahjonathan@yahoo.com

John

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Today the tailor finished up the fabric part of the Liberian tent prototype. I also picked up a shirt and some, “short trousers” too. They all three fit pretty well. Mr. Amsu Am Bility, the tailor, did a pretty good job.

The tent is to be used to protect the users of the GTV mobile video story sharing system from the sun and keep the glare off of the computer screen. Hopefully it’ll also add some visual appeal to the system. As though, a white man and computers isn’t enough.

I set up the tent at the Carter Center with the help of a few of the guards. It was pretty easy to setup, and it looked pretty good. They all thought it was pretty good. I asked them what they thought; two of them thought it was like a palava hut. This is really good. A palava hut is traditionally where people would come to discuss their problems and resolve them. Ideally that’s what would we would like to see happen with our system, but across all of Liberia.

John

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