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Published: July 24th 2009
The Bureau Data Centre
Paper, not electronic, that is!We arrived in Addis feeling pretty breathless after our English exam shenanighans, yet we still had 60 or so papers to mark as well as a host of other tasks to complete before flying on the Friday.
Allan - the final survivor of the St George Beer Lodge (aka The Gin Palace) - had kindly agreed to put us up for the time. As he is off back to Scotland to start teacher training in early August this would probably be the last time we had the pleasure of one of the plushest volunteer accomodations in Addis (VSOs may get paid very little but - in the main - we get good accomodation).
Addis was suffering as much as the rest of Ethiopia with the current power rationing. One day on, one day off, however this seems to have the knock on effect of killing the telephone network at certain times.
To be frank, I was starting to get a bit frustrated with it all.
Prior to placement all VSO applicants fill in a placement assessment form which includes each volunteer's 'bottom line'. For me I had signed up as an IT guy on
The Machine Room
...all machines welcome the assumption that there would be electricity, at least most of the time. Without electricity there is no IT and without IT I have no work.
Although we have and are enjoying our time here immensely, sitting in the darkness, laptop and iPod batteries discharged, torch batteries depleted trying to read a book by the light of a candle, I have had moments - they are rare - where if someone offered me a seat on the next flight home I would have seriously considered it.
Power games At work we have a generator that performs erratically at best. It cuts outs at random intervals, the guy forgets to add petrol from time to time and it is switched off an hour or so before lunch and before we are due to go home.
This is because much of the work force has left early - women are expected to leave early to make sure the lunch/evening meal is prepared ready for when the man gets home.
Even on power days, the local distribution is having problems in Assosa. The storms have been bringing down power and telephone lines.
No doubt the termites play
Fujitsu PBX (Switchboard thingy)
No sign of Rosemary, I'm afraid... a part in weakening the poles and wood has about a 2 year lifespan out here before they chew through it. If the poles were put in two years ago, they are about due to fall down.
You often get uber-frustrating days where the grid power is on, then it cuts out randomly.
Then there is a gap while people debate if the generator should go on.
The generator goes on...
...and fails.
Then it starts again.
Then the grid power comes back so the generator is cut off.
We wait 5 minutes while the grid power is reconnected.
Two minutes later the grid power cuts out and we wait for the generator to be switched back on...
Of course I have now installed three servers with a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) that provides enough battery power to gracefully shut the servers down within 3, 6 and 9 minutes of a power cut.
What happens therefore is the grid power cuts, so the servers start shutting down.
The power comes back from the generator, so I restart them.
Before they have completed start-up, the generator power cuts again,
so they shut down again.
Then it comes back, so they restart...
Some mornings the servers have started and shut down 5 or 6 times. That's just before lunch.
At least the servers are closing down gracefully. When the power cuts the PCs in the compound just die immediately so people just lose whatever data was open at the time.
Naturally this begins to damage the PCs and to some extent the servers. Power cycling the components in a PC contributes to it's ultimate failure. In my experience, systems might runs for months or years even without a problem, but as soon as the power is cycled unexpectedly, a certain percentage will fail.
I guess constantly flooding electronic circuits with 220V, then nothing, then 220V, heating them up, then cooling them down, then heating them up, then cooling them down, is bound to lead to more failures.
Blown power supplies and blown laptop power adaptors are about the second or third IT biggest problem here after viruses and in our area, dust.
Water, water, everywhere One of the knock-on effects of the power issues for us is access to safe drinking water.
The Corridors of Power
Well, the lightbulbs are on We have to boil the tap water, then pour it into a filter tank, then wait overnight for the water to filter out the bacteria.
Yes, you can drink the tap water, but only if you want to spend the next few days hovering around the bathroom!
Granted the locals drink it, but they are used to it's assorted flora and fauna and many already have chronic stomach problems (probably from eating raw meat - a special Ethiopian dish called Kitfo) that slightly dodgy water is sadly the least of their problems..
There is an Ethiopian saying that 'there is no bad water', which people might say if you asked for a Highland bottled water (like Evian) rather than tap water or turned your nose up at tap water.
I did say to Bekema that if the water gives you dysentry then, um, yes, I'd call that bad water...but I get the point. When you are thirsty then there is no bad water.
Without electricity we can't use the kettle to boil water; and to manually boil 21 litres of water using a small kerosene stove is a tad challenging.
Without electricity cooking
Ouch! At that cabling
Work in Progress I admit becomes a chore. Every cup of tea takes 5 times longer as you have to use the kerosene stove.
The fridge doesn't work so food goes off (see next blog entry on Sara's food poisoning).
At night all of these tasks have to be carried out by blundering around with a head torch. It's just like camping; but indoors.
The reason for the lack of power is the lateness of the rainy season. Ethiopia is reliant on hydro-electric power and although we have plenty of rain at the moment, the lakes or reservoirs that feed the hydro-electric stations are lower than expected.
Realistically the lack of power is just an inconvenience for spoilt Ferengi like us, but the lack of rain has serious consequences for others.
Farmers are worried about the late rain. When it rains there seems to be enough of it, but it has to be at the right time for certain crops to succeed.
We have been told by our friend and neighbour Mustapha that at his worker Desalyn's village just outside of Assosa, the
entire population prayed non-stop for 48 hours last week for rain; without it the harvest would
Front looks a lot better
Our three server data centre is born fail and the village would suffer, if not starve.
Fortunately they only had to pray for 48 hours. The rain came.
Not all doom and gloom There are ongoing issues with a lack of foreign currency in Ethiopia. Without it, it is hard to import goods.
We have had things like Coca-Cola run out for weeks (Pepsi vendors were happy).
The building industry stopped, then started, then stopped again as cement manufacturing has ceased.
Apparently there is a build up of goods at Djibouti - the only port that landlocked Ethiopia has access to. This affects both imports and exports.
Someone told us recently that travellers are not allowed to take any foreign currency out of the airport in Addis and that some diplomat was accosted - with a resulting scuffle - when he had his dollars 'confiscated' by customs officials.
We were OK - as volunteers we only had £25 between us 😊
How true all of this is I can't say.
BUT!
People try and make light of it all.
So in that spirit, here are a couple of Ethiopian jokes that I have been told
Cabling improvement
Sorry, I really am anally-retentive about my cabling are doing the rounds amongst Ethiopians here in Assosa and presumably Ethiopia (translated into English, of course).
***
Man dies and goes to hell where he finds it full of doors with the name of a country above each door.
He looks up and down the row of doors and asks the nearest demon what the doors all mean.
- Well, says the demon, you can choose any door you want and spend the day in the specific hell behind it.
- Ok, what happens if I choose the door with USA on it?
- Ah, USA. You get one hour in the electric chair, followed by one hour on a bed of nails, followed by the rest of the day being tortured by the local Head Torturer.
- Er, hmm. What about the door with the UK on it?
- Oh, the UK? You get one hour in the electric chair, followed by one hour on a bed of nails, followed by the rest of the day being tortured by the local Head Torturer.
- Right. What about China.
- China? That's the same. In fact in every country
Adjoining IT workshop area...
...before I got my hands on it you get one hour in the electric chair, followed by one hour on a bed of nails, followed by the rest of the day being tortured by the local Head Torturer.
The guy thinks that ain't much of a choice. So he walks up and down the row until in the distance he sees a queue of people.
As he gets closer he sees the door says ETHIOPIA above it.
The man approaches the nearest person in the queue and says
- Why is everyone queuing here for the special Ethiopian Hell? Isn't it the same as everywhere else with one hour in the electric chair, followed by one hour on a bed of nails, followed by the rest of the day being tortured by the local Head Torturer?
- Oh yes, says the nearest guy, but at the moment there's no electricity for the electric chair, there's a shortage of foreign currency so they haven't any imported nails for the bed and the Head Torturer is busy working on important administrative projects like BPR (Business Process Re-engineering). He only turns up for 5 minutes in the morning to sign himself in...
***
...and after!
You could eat your dinner off of that table! The motto of the Ethiopian Telecoms Corporation (Tele or ETC) is "Connecting Ethiopia To The Future".
With the current problems of an over-subscribed, unreliable and expensive mobile phone system, someone added the prefix "Error" to the motto on a billboard in Addis so it read "Error Connecting Ethiopia To The Future".
Personally if I had a motto for Tele - which only those who have owned a mobile phone here would understand - it would be, in a mechanised female voice:
"The Future Is Busy Now - Please Try Again Later"... 😊
***
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Julie
non-member comment
Get together?
Hey Al, My husband and I are going to be in Addis (Aug. 8th-21-tentative). I was wondering if you guys would like to go out for a beer or two. E-mail me if you want! Best, Julie http://theeyesofmyeyesareopened.blogspot.com/