One week behind

This week we got totally in our project. We had a meeting with Nicki and Toby. They told us more about CSIR and Meraka Institute, especially department were we are going to work. We got ten smaller projects. We went together through subjects what we are going to work with, for example open source and dual licensing, business plans and commercialization. We get also familiarize and discuss about deaf technique and how mobile phones are used and could be used in Africa.

Antti and Mika have had a meeting with their project team Michael Jenkins and Mario Marais in the Meraka's meeting room this Tuesday morning. They went throughout the project and it's schedule. Their project is to create Wiki-based guide which contains instructions, glossary and different successful scenarios about business, technology and community development which are targeted to entrepreneurs that provide micro-products and micro-services in different African countries.

Project is a part of larger WAA(Wireless Africa Alliance) project which is lead by Chris Morris from CSIR research center and the biggest funder of the project is Canadian IDRC research center. There are 12 different African countries to participate the project and their goal is to create a network between entrepreneurs in different member countries. The networks main goal is to develop entrepreneurs business by sharing experiences and knowledge with this Wiki-guide.

The project has started as well as planned. Mika and Antti made a project plan and at the moment the project has followed the schedule and the plan. Also they have an opportunity to meet the project team daily if there is any questions that have came up.

Beginning of the week we went to gym and we signed a membership for a month. It was only 450 Rands (something like 33 euros). It was so nice to swot up, not just for sun. People in there were so kind to us and of course like they are used to do here it takes a while when we got our membercards. It happens just now… We were also happy about what we found from there. There was a traditional finnish sauna. We were little shocked when we saw a sign for “Use shower only for 5 minutes to save water” - because it is so easy to manage the showering in 1 minute! And in the country where everybody doesn’t even have water to drink, it sounds a bit harsh.

The group of Safipa

One day we decided to take late morning and went to work a little bit later. We worked a little while outside and boys didn’t use sun cream because legs don’t burn, right! So now in our group we have four people and two crabs! On Thursday morning we made lots of macaroni casserole because in Meraka we had communal lunch. We wanted to make for them something traditional finnish food. We ate some African food and we didn’t even have a clue what was it. At the same time we all celebrated some workers birthdays.

Couple of words that we have learned so far
Yobo = Hi!
Ishnay = No way, suprisingly

Yesterday evening when we were going to sleep, besides killing mosquitoes, Mari saw a nice little animal running through our kitchen. Yep, we had a mouse or a rat in our house!!