84-Year-Old Volunteer Rebuilds and Sends Linux Laptops to Africa | Hacker News Reader

84-Year-Old Volunteer Rebuilds and Sends Linux Laptops to Africa

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107 pointsnotsony36 comments

I worked at a high school in a relatively small (electrified) village in West Africa. After some months of working there I was telling my principal that I would keep in touch with my family by email, usually at a cyber cafe in a nearby city. To my surprise he told me I could just use the school computers, which I had never seen or heard of.

"But don't tell any of the other teachers I let you do this."

So he gave me the key to the one building in the school that was locked, which contained six (!) working computers that had been donated by some European organization, all with dial-up internet access. The room was also full of brand new textbooks, which the children didn't have access to. In fact, the room's only real purpose seemed to be as a home for a large colony of bats.

When I asked the obvious question "why aren't you using any of this?!" the answer was that no one knew how to use the computers, and that they were waiting for an IT teacher to get transferred to the school.

Eventually the students were given access to the books, though this seems to have been looked upon very skeptically because the administration wasn't sure how they were going to let the students use them in a way that they wouldn't end up ruining them (by getting them wet, writing in them, etc).

It's important to understand that scenarios like this do occur and also how they work, if you're giving away free stuff to developing nations. My rule of thumb is that if you don't want to put any thought into how your donation is making the world a better place, it's probable that it either won't be used at all, or it will just be resold. The latter possibility at least in my mind is not so bad, but others may not be so happy about that outcome.

Take a listen [1].You'll be amazed at the ingenuity. No teacher required!

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educa...

The point stands that the administration is likely to get in the way of donated equipment being put to proper use by the children though.

This is common in India as well. Almost every village in India has a government school which provides free education. However, most of these schools have "less than stellar" facilities & infrastructure.

However, some of the larger government schools, have computer & labs.

But...

Just as you mentioned, most of them are unused because they don't have a IT technician/lab instructor.

I spoke to hundreds of government teachers & asked them the question of- why don't you just open the lab & let the students figure it out, the smarter/more responsive kids to tech can become the IT/Lab instructors?

Almost- all of their response was about trust, if the kids will break it etc. I think it boiled down to control & trust.

Almost- all of their response was about trust, if the kids will break it etc. I think it boiled down to control & trust

sounds more like fear to me.

Having worked in a first world school I was surprised by the lack of vandalism and theft.

It did exist but was very minor. But this is still enough for a large body of students to destroy a small lab over a few years.

But the main issue was game playing and entertainment. Kids will do what kids do everywhere, just play games when left to their own devices.

If you're taking away from other time this becomes detrimental time.

Here's a negative review on the hole in a wall scheme for instance - http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mitra

Not to say you can't design a system for kids to actually learn in unsupervised at a reasonable cost, just it's yet to happen.

I wonder about doing this with older Android phones. Once rooted they are powerful platforms with multi-core processors and every wireless tech imaginable pre-integrated. They are insanely power efficient as well. I guess the point is to get children access to full on business platforms so this is not the same thing. But still, many have USB/Bluetooth keyboard/mouse support. So, it's still very similar.

I gave a big box of G1's that way to a guy in Zambia (rooted, and custom kernel that enabled the serial port on the extra UsbExt wires).

I was told that they didn't need any more after that. This was in 2012ish.

Were the devices still running Android? Or are there "real" Linux distros with Android device deivers?

Android.

Android does have keyboard and mouse support. An Android device can in theory make a decent Linux-ish device -- some even have monitor out.

Desktop-like apps (along with browsers):

* https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andropenof...

* https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.octave

* https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.icecoldapp...

* https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jackpal.androi...

* https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=stericson.busy...

* https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hipipal.qp...

I haven't tried all these (never needed to), but I can see some scenarios where these might make a passable desktop alternative.

I keep seeing people making this wrong assumption that an Android device makes a linux-ish device.

Android is a component-based linux. It can't play the role of a full-fledged OS that the diff. flavours of linux play.

hence the "-ish"

Not only that, but if the modem is compatible they can theoretically be used as actual cell phones as well. They are multi-dimensional in function. And finally, if a budget can be acquired for education, a simple Bluetooth IO device can give them micro-controller like abilities for educational purposes. And above all, the hardware is recycled for a damn good cause and not dumped in a landfill.

I don't think it is that similar, in this case Linux distro model of distributing software makes much more sense.

You can get pretty much all you need in a desktop install of any Linux distribution, or you can ship a DVD or an USB dongle and anything else can be installed afterwards with no problems.

The way I see Android is a platform for consumers (essentially the apps distribution model), and in this case the result is not as good as "have everything you can out of the box".

EDIT: I assumed Internet connection may be limited, but I understand now that it may not be the case. I think my comment stands anyway.

The problem is being worked on: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/linux/how-install-ubuntu-t...

Ubuntu touch. Apparently only works on Nexus 4, 10, and 7 for now.

Free Geek is a great organization. Like this guy, I knew very little about Linux or programming before volunteering there. Fast forward five years and I spend all day monkeying with Linux boxes at work. Free Geek was a perfect introduction to this wonderful world.

The best volunteering opportunities are those where one can learn something new and/or interact with those people which normally they wouldn't. I've washed dishes, worked in a warehouse, written code etc - they were all fun, but the dishwashing became boring after a few weeks. If every volunteering opportunity mentioned what people would learn, they might increase participation.

This is amazing. You won't like to hear this, but this guy is probably doing more important work (literally world-changing) than about 95% of Silicon Valley startup employees reading hackernews.

I hope the laptops make it to the kids in schools and not harvested by traders looking to flog them in the local market.

Unless you could make an app for that ... then get it funded.

Even if kids somehow got the laptops, there would be overwhelming pressure in a lot of families to sell them (not just because it could earn one or two month's salary, but you'd also shed the risk of having it destroyed or stolen, and the neighbors might otherwise assume you have more money than you really do because you seem to be able to afford expensive electronics).

An actual African here, I apologise in advance for the rant.

Your comment is an amazing over-generalization of 1.1 billion people in 54 countries, Africa is a very diverse place, but you only see the worst of it ("feed these sorry kids for only a dollar a day")

The article itself was rather vague on where exactly the laptops are sent (to schools? NGOs? families?), not even the country (or region) are mentioned. No sir, 'computers are being sent to Africa'.

I think you're projecting western values (strong individualism) to the African context, and your conclusion "neighbours jealous of expensive electronics". How about "neighbours kids also share in using the expensive electronics"? In rural areas, residential clusters are typically made of extended family, so that neighbour is probably a sister or cousin.

I have lived in 3 countries in southern (small 's') Africa, I can assure you that education is seen as more important that "2 months salary", some parents pay way more than that in annual school fees.

You're definitely right, I should have added more qualifiers to that comment. I didn't want to paint the entire continent with a broad brush, but rather caution against blind giving with the expectation that things will go right.

The mentality that I described is absolutely prevalent in Benin, where I lived for several years. So what I should have said was, there's at least one example of counter-intuitive social dynamics in one African country, so it would make sense to explore those in the place where you intend to make a donation.

I smile thinking these guys will be as productive and probably use these laptops longer than most people in the 'developed' world.

Only drawback, power consumption; something that may matter more for them than for us.

The power consumption of most laptops, outside of "gaming laptops", tends to be pretty reasonable. They're designed to be battery powered, after all. :)

If someone is rich enough that selling the laptop wouldn't be the best option, they can probably already afford the electricity.

At the risk of sounding cliche, I thought regular access wasn't guaranteed everywhere.

Sure, but you only need a few hours of electricity to keep them on all day. If the battery is at the end of its life cycle, you can always buy a UPS.

I am on freecycle.org. I keep seeing request from this one guy that request for any old computers that are being "recycled" because it is too old. He rebuilds them, and then, donates it to families that are not able to afford a computer. Occasionally, he would put the rebuilt computers back into freecycle.org as a "freecycled" item.

Very nice story. FreeGeek has been a fixture here in Portland for many years doing great work in the community, promoting open-source long before gaining wide acceptance enjoyed today.

FreeGeek sells stuff to the general public--I have several laptops I bought there for my business. A real asset is the steady volume of old components on hand, things like floppy disk and optical drives, controllers, IDE and SCSI cables, the kinds of items that are needed to keep equipment running, or necessary for reading old archives.

I keep thinking, one of these days, when I have the time, I'll volunteer at the Geek. I anticipate it will be a very rewarding experience.

Linux? Don't you think that's cruel - they have suffered enough!

Uh, when was the last time you used it?

Quote from OA

"The ThinkPads, which run on Intel Pentium M single core, 32-bit processors and hold less than 2 Gigabytes of RAM, were state-of-the-art 10 years ago but are far outdated by today's standards."

What OS would you suggest as an alternative? Just in case you meant OpenBSD or something...

You should try Xubuntu 15.04, and look at it from the perspective of someone who's never used a computer before. It's got a simple, clean interface that any kid can figure out. And when the computer crashes (which it will) you don't have to pay for a pirated copy of Windows.

my brain saw: "84-year-old rebuilds [himself] and sends linux laptops to africa", and was confused how he was able to fix his old body

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