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

One of the biggest changes I noticed when arriving this time was that Mittal Steel, the company that currently owns the iron concession that includes Mount Nimba had put up new check points and gates. The security guards were all very friendly and helpful. We had to go from the check point, to the security office, to the main office to finally get permission from a gentleman named Mark Wynn to camp on the mountain. It was a bit of a hassle, but better that they knew we were up there and that they wouldn’t come kick us out. Plus there’s a gate and guard post on the road up the mountain so we needed their help.

We set up camp late Friday afternoon and the best part of it all was that it got cold. Like so cold that I had to wear a jacket. Not just that, I’m sweating in Monrovia, so lets turn the AC down and pretend to be cold, cold that expats some times think they feel, but like real 50 degree cold. I didn’t really have a thermometer, but it felt around high 50s or low 60s. It was awesome.

When we woke up the next morning we were in the clouds. It wasn’t just fog, but at 4000+ feet we had hit the clouds and had about 50 yards worth of visibility. Not to mention 15mph winds and some rain. All this further kept the temperature down. It was so nice to hike in Liberia and not sweat.

After waiting till 10am we headed out despite the lack of visibility. We were hoping to summit the nearest peak we could see from our camp, and to also hike along the mountain ridge. But with visibility so short we just blindly followed the road until it ended, and then just kept climbing up slippery slopes, holding onto rocks and vegetation, until we reached the top of the closest peak. Going up was easier than following the ridge we found.

At one point the clouds cleared and we saw how far up we were. This was awesome. We could also see some mining equipment and a large lake left behind from previous mining efforts in Yekepa.

Around noon we found our way to the top of the peak. The clouds finally lifted and we could see camp a little over a kilometer away.

After lunch Carrie and I took a lower road that we saw from the first peak and followed along the ridge. We didn’t leave till 2pm, so we turned around at 4pm so we could make it back before dark, but it seems that this would lead along the base of the ridge. If you look at the Google Earth file of our hike this

route is in red. I checked our route on Google Earth and it seems that were were just two and a half miles from the intersection of the Liberian, Guinean, and Ivorian borders. I’d love to go back and reach that point.

We spent that night on the mountain and then headed back to Monrovia the next day. We stopped for lunch in Gbanga at some Bangladeshi restaurant.  Unlike the Bangladeshi restaurant in Monrovia, B-First, 13th Street, Sinkor, Which is awesome, this place sucked. It took them an hour to serve our order and even then the chicken was still raw. So don’t eat there.

Road condition were good on the trip. Ellen will be heading up country for the July 26th celebration and so they’ve begun fixing the road from Kakata to Gbanga. And the road from Ganta to Yekepa was great. It seemed to be newly grated. No need for 4×4.

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.

We set out from downtown Monrovia towards Bushrod Island. We weren’t exactly sure how to get there. We crossed over the St. Paul River and turned down the first road. After going for a little while we stopped and asked for directions, and were told we were on the wrong road. We double backed and then continued west on the Bomi Highway to the next major intersection where there’s a yellow church. We turned right (north) here and continued on. We were told to go to Arthington. Unfortunately, the auto tracking feature of my GPS was turned off on this trip, so I don’t have a track to share. But it was pretty easy to find we pretty much kept going straight. Every few miles we’d stop and ask if we were on the right track.

Once we got to Arthington (N06.50402, W010.67418) we found two old churches that were really pretty. We hopped out and took some pictures. We even found a plaque dedicating the remodeling of one of the churches, commissioned by Mr. Charles Taylor. Both churches were obviously super nice back in their day, so it was cool to see a reminder of how nice Liberia once was. Even with out their roofs, the churches were still being used by the faithful.

We also ran into some other expats who were mountain biking on the roads. It made me wish I had my mountain bike here. While we weren’t on paved roads the roads were pretty good and we never needed 4×4. The roads did seem to be pretty good for some casual mountain biking.

The mountain bikers confirmed that we were on the right road to the dam and so we pressed on. As I remember we took a right in Arthington, and then kept going straight. To get to the dam we had to cut across a football field at one point. After another 15 minutes we made it to the dam (N06.51046, W10.65098).  Again, it was another run down monument to what Liberia once was. All the dynos, transformers, and other electrical equipment had been looted, but the spill ways and the dam itself were all still intact. About half of the spill ways were closed and half open, making some rapids in an otherwise calm St. Paul River. We saw a fishrman with a net standing in a pocket of still water between an open and closed spill way.  He climbed down there from the dam. I don’t think it was an OSHA approved work environment.

There were a few Liberians on the dam and we talked to them for a minute. They told that there is a road from Caldwell to the dam, but a bridge had gone out and that it was no longer passable.

Both the dam and the churches were really cool to see and made for a great day trip. A strong recommendation for a “touristy, get out of Monrovia” activity.

A while back Keith Chapman, Kent Bubbs, and I were surfing at Kenedja  when President Sirleaf was there. Ellen brought along her all female Indian peace keepers to maintain law and order. They were taking pictures of us surfing, so Kent got this awesome shot of Keith and I with them.

I sent it in to Surfer’s Journal and they published it on their blog here:

http://www.surfersjournal.com/journal_entry/what-kind-men-read-tsj

For this particular trip I recruited Carrie Stanley(right) as my Co-pilot and in vehicle DJ. She also did a wonderful job coordinating logistics for the trip. We flew into Little Rock on Tuesday April 13th. One of Adam’s co-workers picked us up at the airport and took us to Big Red. We gassed-up, cleaned the windows, and hit the road.

We first stopped for lunch where we had fried fish, shrimp, and sweet ice tea at the Flying Fish in Little Rock along the river front. It was delicious. I love fried seafood and sweet tea. It felt good to be back in the south. If you’re ever in Little Rock I highly recommend the place. We had decided to avoid interstates when possible and enjoy back roads, so we took off on high way 10 heading West.

We ended up stopping in Fort Smith, AR where we stayed at the Beland Manor bed and breakfast (right). The place was super nice. The room was comfortable, we had our own TV and DVD player and shower. I suppose this sounds a bit trite, but to me, it was heaven. Beland is run by Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Mr. Smith let me have one of his home brewed IPAs while his wife cooked an amazing breakfast. Then Mr. Smith gave us the run down of all our options for getting to Denver and things to do a long the way. He informed me of salt flats in OK. I asked if we could drive on them, and he said yes, so I was there.

We hit the interstate for a while to make good time. We had some wonderful hot dogs at Jim’s Coney Island in Tulsa, Mr. and Mrs. Smith both recommended it. While on the interstate in OK we stopped at a gas station poorly named Kum ‘n Go. Where we found this assortment of t-shirts on sale. I was particularly found of the Facebook rip off. This was another, “Ahh, I’m back in America,” moment. I had also just bought the book Stuff Christians Like by Jonathan Acuff. In the book he mentions Christians’ propensity for trademark infringement.

Around 4pm on Wednesday we made it to the Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge. It was awesome. You could just bend down and taste the saltiness. I was super excited to drive on the salt flats, and may have even lost static friction on my rear tires. I was a bit disappointed that, unlike the Bonnavile flats, I couldn’t achieve any land world speed records. But it was till way cool.

After that we drove on to Dodge City, KS. Dodge was a nice little town. We went all out and stayed at the nicest hotel in town… the Best Western. I know. We did have two rooms each with 30″ flat screens. I thought it was cool. Other than that there wasn’t much to see in Dodge, so we got out.

Then we were in CO, where the landscape quickly changed and became really pretty. It was so nice to drive through all these small high ways and roads. While in Colorado we visited Great Sand Dunes National Park. This place was super cool as well. It was like we walked out of the mountains and into the Sahara. The picture at the top of Big Red was taken here. We walked around for a bit, but the wind was super intense and cold. We weren’t prepared for the cold, and being sand blasted, so after walking around for a bit and then left. I’d like to come back some day and camp up there. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

Another highlight of this trip was the people. We went through a lot of small towns and met some wonderful people. When traveling on this road we stopped and helped a lady change a flat tire. A few hours later we drove by ADX Florence. In OK we met some lovely ladies that ran a small restaurant. When I jokingly asked if I could have my milk shake with pineapple, coconut and a shot of rum, the grandmother of the two looked and me and with a straight face said, “No, I drank it all last night.” In CO we were in another small restaurant and asked how many people lived in the town, “I don’t know… 80. There are more cows than people in this town.” was the response. All in all a great trip.

Harper was one of the original cities founded by freed American slaves and has a lot of lovely southern United States influenced architecture. That along with some lovely beaches, and a point or two makes Harper a wonderful destination for a few in-country tourists. We were hoping to just relax in the city, and hopefully discover some new surf spots.

The road to Harper is notorious for being a huge muddy mess. It often becomes completely impassible in the rainy season. But we thought we’d come in the middle of dry season and miss all of that. Boy we’re we wrong.

The problem is a lack of drainage. A puddle of mud forms on the road and then a big 20 ton transport truck drives over it and pushes it down. This makes a little rut. Then another and another. Then after a while the little mud spot is now 6 feet deep “rutt” and even more water and mud have collected in the bottom of it. Then it gets so bad that someone cuts a bypass around that, but then the same thing happens, and the bypass turns into mud and water. As you can see from the picture on the right. These ruts got pretty deep. Here we’re digging out my 4Runner, code named Midnight. The tire ruts were so deep that my suspension was scraping the middle of the “road” and with the low traction I wasn’t able to move forward.

Things started off pretty easy. At first we just encountered low spots in the road with lots of water. Hear on the right you can see Andrew navigating his Xterra, code named Lorma Girl, through a small puddle. However things quickly escalated to 100 yard long ruts full of mud the consistency of oatmeal. On the left is Lorma Girl stuck in a massive rut. On this rut, I had opted to take the incredibly steep bypass to get around it. I’m still kicking myself for not taking a picture of my car scrambling up a 60 degree incline. Andrew opted for the slightly more traditional route and we eventually pushed and pulled him out.

All was well for us until we got about 40 miles south of Kanweaken That’s when we encountered this transport truck stuck in the mud. The truck had been stuck there for over 2 days. What’s more mind numbing is that this vehicle had succeeded in blocking all other traffic on the road. As we pulled up 3 transport trucks and a pick-up were waiting to continue south, and another pick-up was waiting to head north. As we walked up the drivers and passengers in the other vehicles told us to “get out your mats” and take a nap, because it would be a while. The pick-up truck heading north, had been stuck behind the transport truck for a day and a half. A day and a half! Thankfully we were North Americans (Andrew and Elena are Canadian) with a “if it’s not the way you want it, change it” attitude. So we changed it.

We surveyed the situation, decided that the West side of the road was best for a bypass and set to work filling in the mud with dirt, rocks, and bamboo we had cut down. This inspired the captain of the north bound pick-up, who sent his men over to help us dig. Then this inspired the other crews to start building their own road on the other side. After and hour or so of digging and chopping, armed only with two shovels, 3 machetes, and a pick axe, we were across. That was it, that’s all it took, unbelievable. These people had just been sitting there for a day and half. We worked for an hour.

At the risk of being ever so slightly politically incorrect, I’d like to say that this little incident perfectly illustrates what’s wrong with Africa. A problem arises and everyone stops, pulls out their mats and takes a nap. Then some white people show up. These good intentioned, underfunded folks fix the problem just enough to last for them to use it twice, and then leave. Meanwhile, an equally underfunded and unsustainable effort is underway, completely duplicating the other project. I’m not saying why it is this way, or how it got to be such a problem, I’m just saying, that’s the problem. I suppose for this to be a completely accurate analogy I’d have to work in a corruption angle. Anyway…

After that things only got worse and worse. We went through several unbelievably long and muddy ruts. You can see from this picture at the left how deep some of them were. This picture was taken as I stood on the side of the road.  I could literally just walk straight across the top of the car to the other side.

For me the worst part came when after 6 hours of plowing through mud we came to a spot we would later dub “The Triple Header” since it was three amazingly muddy sections all in a row. On the 2nd section Matt Cramer, who scouted out the sections and then relayed his findings back to the drivers via walkie talkies, informed me that I needed to back-up and shoot for the middle entrance to the section. It was pitch black, my windows and mirrors were all covered in mud. I knew Andrew was behind me so I backed up keeping an eye on him over my right shoulder, then BAM. I didn’t even know what I had hit. It was dark and I thought there was just road behind me. Turns out it was a abandoned transport truck. Thankfully, I did no damage to it at all. Sadly, I did total deform the rear drivers side of Midnight, and I busted out two of her windows. It did put a damper on things after that.

Minus smashing up my car, the driving was a lot of fun. The progression went from, “Awesome, some mud.” To, “seriously, the road is still getting worse.” And finally, “Bring it on!” By the end of it I had my technique down. 4 low, cause there’s no point in given it less than all you’ve got and getting stuck in 4 high. Gently, yet quickly, depress the gas peddle till the engine soars to 4000RPMs, then your off. Pretty much keep the wheels pointed in the direction of the rut, when you start to slide steer in the direction of the slide, but then back off when you start to straighten out. When you have to jump from one rut to another over steer into it and then quickly correct. Perhaps one of the best compliments I received on the trip was from an elderly Liberian gentlemen we had picked up outside of Fishtown. After I took the high revving, mud slinging, car bouncing, inaugural drive through our newly constructed road he came up to me with a huge smile on his face and said, “Ahh, you good driver.”

We arrived in Harper, 12 hours after departing, tired, very dirty, but safe, and happy. The good people at the Carter Center were kind enough to let us stay at their incredibly accommodating compound in Harper. I hope Laurie, their Harper office manager, is enjoying the bottle of Champagne we left for her in the fridge. We spent a lot of time, sleeping, reading, and relaxing in hammocks on the back porch. It was a great place to just hang out and enjoy having nothing to do.

Like I said we, or at least Matt and I, were hoping to find some new waves to surf. Unfortunately, the waves just weren’t there. We found some wonderful looking spots, but the swell just wasn’t happening. However, we did find some unbelievably lovely beaches. Like Fish Town beach, shown on the left. This is the first beach I’ve been to in Liberia where the water was calm and shallow 100′ out. Usually in Liberia you take 3 steps in and the water is up to your neck. The beaches are normally very steep, but this was anything but. It was also very pristine, as far as you could see there were no buildings, villages, clearings, anything, just water, sand, and palm trees.

Also at Fish Town was Skeleton Island. A few hundred feet from the beach is a small little island, maybe an acre or so big, where they put their dead. But they just leave the coffins above ground on the island. This makes for some rather macabre sites when you arrive on shore. Someone told me that they used to put the bodies there during the war, but I’m not sure why they still do it, and what really started it.

We also took advantage of being so close to Cote D’ Ivoire and popped over on market day. We didn’t have visas but decided to give it a try. The Liberian immigration officer was very nice to us. He asked us what we wanted to do, looked us over, and told us, “sure, just leave the cars.” He even let us park the cars close to his office so they’d be safe. Which was good since I was missing a couple of windows. So we hired a canoe and paddled across the river. Then the Ivorian immigration guys cared even less. He seemed totally uninterested in us white people. Which is strange, usually boarder crossings are a pain, and we didn’t even have the right papers. Anyway. We hung out for a while. The market wasn’t much but we did drink some Ivorian beer which was a nice change of pace. Cramer, met some nice Liberian ladies who were also there for market day and quickly made friends.

The trip back was pretty good. We took the advice of some locals and took the Karloken to Kanweaken bypass. We still had to go through the Triple Header again, but after that we missed a lot of nastiness, and the road was even a little shorter. Don’t ask why we didn’t do this the first time. Here is a little video montage of our 4WD exploits with some cometary.

I’d also like to take this time to talk about what worked and what didn’t work on the trip. Consider this a little product review of must haves, and must leave behinds for intense off-roading, on roads in developing countries. What broke: My expensive off roading Old Man Emu shock absorber. The bolt on the top where the shock attaches to the frame totally sheared off. This made for a very bouncy ride home. I had to be gentle with Midnight over those bumpy roads or else her back end would just swing out. Also we had a fair bit of over heating. Here Matt and I are pouring more water into the radiator. It seemed that caked on mud had a lot to do with it, but the problem persisted even after a few good cleanings. The 4WD system on the 4Runner. I got stuck in a really small bit of mud coming back from Fish Town and realized my front wheels weren’t spinning. After some Googling on my phone using Lonestar’s GPRS service we figured that the 4Runner had a pneumatically actuated front differential that engaged the front wheels and that, that was the problem.  But Googling on my phone wasn’t super fast or fun, so I called my dad in the states who Googled around some more and then based on his research suggested we switch the suction lines on the pneumatic actuator. Much to my surprise this worked. We just left 4×4 engaged from Harper to Zwedru. No point in taking chances. The brakes also took some intense wear. It seems the 4Runner has a metal plate around the front disc brakes to protect them, instead this just trapped rocks and mud in there and tore up the brake pads. Midnight is currently at No Lemon. Right now I’m just hoping the bill is under a thousand, cause I still have to pay for the body work.

We had 4 Midland GXT1050 walkie talkies with us. They were great for inter car communication, and coordinating our assaults on the rutts, but the chargers didn’t seem to hold the walkie talks tight enough for charging while on the road. I had a pair of Hela spot lights mounted to the front bumper, they were donated by Nick Conway, a friend back in the states. They were absolutely great for the night driving that we shouldn’t have done, but had no choice to do. I was also impressed with my Asolo boots. They were totally covered in mud, but my feet and socks were dry and clean. Also the wicking north face pants, and REI shirt I had were great. Depsite the heat, I recommend long pants for such trips, you’re gonna get dirty. Also the generic tow rope, shovels, machetes, bottles of water, and 2.5 million candle power flashlight were must haves. Andrew had a Wern winch that was super handy for pulling out other people, though we never needed it on our own cars.

And that’s about it,

John.

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.

Yekepa is a mining town. Back before the war it was run by the Liberian American Swedish Mining Company (LAMCO) , so Yekepa’s infrastructure is very nice, paved roads, street lights, and such. The sorts of luxuries you just don’t see in many other parts of the country. Now Yekepa is run by Arcelor Mittal. This was evident by all the private security guards we met, and the total lack of any Liberian National Police officers in the town. Thanks to LAMCO the road to Mount Nimba is paved to all but the very top. Which was a little anti-climatic. But the last quarter mile or so required a little four wheeling so that was fun.

None of us could get over how beautiful Mount Nimba was. It didn’t really feel like Liberia.  Not that Liberia isn’t beautiful, it is, but Mount Nimba was so different. The air was cool and dry, and the vegetation was different. granted Yekepa is about 2000 feet above sea level and Mount Nimba is nearly 5000 feet up so that’s kinda what you’d expect. It’s kinda hard to explain, and I imagine part of it is that I’ve been in Monrovia for so long that to see something new is super cool. I like how Meredith put it when we were driving up. As we came out of the jungle into some grassy areas she noted that it was like  Scottish highlands and then as we came to the top and saw the stepped sides of Mount Nimba she said you get a bit of “Machu Picchu action.” Just check out the picture on the right. As you can see there were some pretty incredible vistas and somehow we were lucky enough to have absolutely perfect weather. Not too bad. The guys we met in Yekepa said it snows some times in January. I’ll be back up to check out that claim. Also here’s a short video showing our drive down from Mount Nimba.

Finally I wanted to end with another antidote about driving around Liberia. I was coming back from Robertsport, Grand Cape Mount county with a few friends in the car when I was stopped at a check point. The Liberian National Police officer that stopped me, just looked plain mean. He had a scowl on his face, and appeared a bit rough around the edges. Everyone in the car saw it coming. I noticed that he wasn’t wearing his cap, badge, or ID card. I had just that week been told by a US Embassy person that my tax dollars paid for these items. So I decided that the moment he gave me a hard time I’d tear into him about his sorry state of dress and demand to see his superior.

He walked up, I said “Hi”, he said “Hello”, and as his eyes scanned the car I saw him stop at the front passenger seat. His lips slowly moved and he spoke under his breath, “Don’t bribe a police.” He was reading my Carter Center sticker that I had just put on the dash board. He looked up and waved me on. Didn’t say a word. As soon as we pulled away the car erupted in laughter and we called the Carter Center country director to thank him. Apparently to stop corruption we just need more stickers.