First days in South Africa

We arrived to South Africa on Thursday 20th November at 9.45 am. The flight was quite hard experience. Some of us slept only few hours or less but still we had some energy left to manage ourselves to Brummeria where our accommodation is located.

We have a nice cosy apartment only 1km away from CSIR area where we should work. The house consist four bedrooms, living room and kitchen but we still had to find space for four extra beds cause 12 people is sleeping there. In the garden there is a ten meters long pool and the garden itself was pleasant suprise, since it was a large garden which is surrounded by stone fence and of course electric wires to protect us.

On Friday we had our first meeting with people from Meraka institute. We only met Kristiina who is our contact people from Safipa. Other people that we supposed to meet were in some kind of training session. We get through all kinds of stuff that we should know at the beginning of our stay here. We got our work passes and discussed about how our working should be started. On Monday we will get more information about this project and also meet the rest of our contact people, Nicki and Rensie.

On our first day at Meraka Mika and Antti visited WAA's (Wireless Africa Alliance) confrence in Irene wich is Pretorias suburb. Confrence was held in rented guesthouse. In the confrence 12 founding member countries were discussing about WAA's future plans and it also acted as a training event for WAA members. The training they offered was for african entrepreneurs and it consisted of business and technical training.

More information about WAA:

http://www.fmfi.org.za/wiki/index.php/Wireless_Africa_Workshop
http://www.wireless-africa.org/

At the confrence we met our contact persons Michael Jenkins, Chris Morris and Mario Marais who we will meet on tuesday morning. In the meeting we will discuss about our projects details and schedule.

We rented a car so it would be easier to move around, in fact it’s the only way to travel short distances here like getting to work and go shopping. Now few of us is learning to drive on the “wrong” side of the road. It’s frightening but luckily we are quick learners.

First impression of the people in South Africa has been very good. They are friendly and they also want to know everything about us and Finland. The culture is diverse because of this great chasm between the rich and the poor. There is some luxurious shopping malls, but it’s strange and sad that only few blocks away you can see people in very bad conditions and nothing but a piece of sheet metal as a shelter.

These first days in here have been very nice and we are really waiting what it’s going to be after we had settled down even better. The weather is awesome and it’s nice to be here knowing that in Finland it is something different.