Curse You Telecom

Urp. I’ve just been away for the best part of two weeks, first to Windhoek and then to Swakopmund.

On my return from Windhoek I discovered my phone line was out (not even a dial tone) and had taken my lovely ADSL with it.

Apparently they had “upgraded” my line and in the process turned it off. Nice.

Many phone calls last week assuring me it was fixed (it wasn’t) and then again while I was away this week; “no you still can’t get into my house but there is no problem in my house – you switched me off at the exchange, remember?!?” with the eventual certainty it was all now fixed.

Back late last night and… can you guess what’s next? That’s right – it wasn’t.

Argh!

Apologies to anyone I haven’t emailed back but on flaky GRPS it’s enough trouble to read mail let alone reply. I’m off down to the telecom office with some sort of sharpened stick tomorrow though so hopefully normal service will be resumed shortly.

Chances of getting a discount from the bill this month? Hmm. Somewhere between zero and zero point zero zero zero one I reckon.

I Give Up

This morning I knew I had a professional services meeting at 8:30 but I also knew that meetings here never start on time. Never. Never ever.

So I knew it would be ok to swing by a couple of other offices, do a few bits and bobs and turn up a bit after 8:30. I turned up at 8:45 to find the meeting well underway and having to suffer the indignity of coming in late and shuffling through people, apologising, to try and find a seat.

Measles outbreak response meeting at 10:00. Not wishing to suffer the same shame and embarrassment I was outside the appointed room at 9:55. On my own.

Meeting started around 10:45.

Hmpf.

Murphy’s Law of Namibian Meetings.

Water

As I might have previously mentioned the water in the hospital is massively unreliable. Most mornings it will be off and in a normal week it will probably be off completely for at least three out of seven days.

Living in the hospital this is very annoying to say the least but you get used to showering when you can rather than when you want and stockpiling a strategic reserve of 5 ltr bottles filled from the fire hoses.

For patients in the hospital it can be worse than just annoying. The same water supply goes to the wards, operating theatre, pharmacy and so on.

This has recently come to a bit of a head. For the last three weeks it’s been pretty solidly off (thankfully I was away for the first two) with just a sixteen hour quick appearance in the middle (the first eight hours of which were muddy and rancid). As a result there have been a couple of newspaper pieces and the Namibian’s SMS pages have been full of angry comments.

There are a wide range of theories on why the water problem keeps happening. A few days ago I drove one of our artisans to the Regional Council offices and we went with a NamWater guy up to the reservoir and then up our water tower so he could show us the problem.

So… exclusively to Dave’s Boring Blog here is the cause of the water problem:

Water Supply Pipe

The above picture shows how the hospital water supply is connected up above us at the NamWater reservoirs.

The big pipe comes from the reservoir down to the Regional Council offices (from the top of the picture to the bottom). Our feed pipe is the one joined to the top of this pipe.

Now I’m no hydro-engineer but logic tells me that, especially in a gravity powered system near the head (i.e. little pressure), the water flowing down a big pipe will continue to flow down that pipe and not decide to jump upwards and through a smaller pipe.

In fact as the NamWater engineer was keen to point out, although the big pipe should be full, lack of pressure means it often isn’t quite full so there is an air gap. At the top. Where our pipe comes out.

When the valve you can see is shut (cutting off the Regional Council) water backs up and then starts to go down to the hospital. When the valve is re-opened flow is actually backward through the hospital pipe.

We have now reached agreement with the Regional Council to have their supply turned off at various times. Also there is an ongoing discussion about having our supply pipe taken directly from the reservoir and not piggy-backed onto the Regional Council supply (all possible and easy but the question is now who will pay for the work).

But the story doesn’t quite end there, oh no.

The Regional Council supply had, by the time I got a look, been shut off (and so feeding the hospital) for three days yet still no water came from our taps.

This problem is related to our water tower that I then got to climb via a rusty sectional ladder missing many rungs and covered in guano (who says the life of an IT Advisor is all glamour).

Inside the Hospital Water Tower

Here you can see the water going into the tank and the massive ballcock (snigger I said b**l and c**k).

On the central pillar just peeking out from behind the water you can see the outlet for the tap supply.

The water tank has three pipes at three different levels. The feed pipe comes in (naturally) from the top of the tank. Halfway up the tank is the outlet pipe to our normal plumbing (taps, toilets etc). At the very bottom of the tank (where you would expect the normal outlet to be) is in fact the outlet for the fire hoses.

You can see this more clearly on this picture of the middle of the tower:

Central Well of Water Tower

On the right of the picture – the top pipe is the water inlet and the bottom pipe is the standard outlet. On the left you can just see the fire hose output from the bottom of the tank.

In normal operation this makes sense – the tank is full (and kept full, as soon as the level drops the ballcock opens and the water fills up). If the water supply fails then we always have half a tank of water (the top half) in reserve which is probably enough to last a day or two (or maybe even longer).

Once that runs out then we still have half a tank available for the fire hoses and maybe some other emergency needs.

Fine for intended operation.

What’s just happened though is this; the water supply failed (lack of pressure from the Regional Council supply), the top half of the tank was used up and then, through people using the fire hoses for water, the bottom half was totally emptied.

When the supply was turned back on this meant it took over three days to fill up to the half-way mark and give us precious water back to our taps, showers and (importantly) toilets.

We do now have water and have for 48 hours. We also have a solution to the problem (why this has taken eight plus years I shan’t wonder about) and maybe, just maybe, will get it permanently fixed with forty feet of two-inch plastic hose and a T-junction (all that is required).

Travels in Namibia

Over the last couple of weeks (and then again for the next couple of weeks – whoopie) I’ve been travelling around Namibia.

Epupa

First I went off to Epupa with Anne and Andy for a night. We got up there on Friday evening and as I had to be back for early Sunday morning to get a lift in a Ministry car down to Windhoek asked around to find a “hike” back on the Saturday.

In this I was successful – found a nice guy who owns the campsite was coming to Opuwo but leaving Epupa at five AM on Saturday morning so it was up at four-thirty and dismantling of tent in the dark (talking of tents – I had arranged to go camping and then realised I didn’t have one so many thanks to Edith in Khorixas for lending me one).

Epupa was pretty impressive even in the dry season. Apparently in or after the rains it’s truly spectacular so I’ll have to come back.

The 5am hike was actually a good thing as it gave me time to laze around and sleep do some washing on the Saturday.

We also some some fires up on the mountains that, in the day, are just grey smoke but during the darkness were very impressive orange flares stretching miles and miles.

Windhoek

Got down to Windhoek late on Sunday and spent a few days prattling about buying some camping bits and picking up the car I have bought from Mark and Alice.

A friend of mine from Khorixas was also down for a few days earlier in the week and so we spent time bimbling around and shops and going out to fancy designer flash bars where all the trendy young things (and us) hang out.

Also fixed (or at least pretended to) some IT issues for the VSO office who are always worth keeping sweet wherever possible (“Emergency evacuation? No, I don’t think we do have any volunteers that far North“).

On Thursday drove out to the airport to pick up my Dad who had arrived to see what scrapes I’ve got myself into and tour Namibia with me.

Hardap Dam

First stop was the Hardap Dam Park which is a known element having been there with VSO on our second in-country training. As before the camping was good and the whole place (and especially the Bond Baddie Hideout restaurant) spookily empty.

The game park is still shut but, treating closed gates with the contempt they deserved, we walked over the dam and into the park. Saw a few of some type of small deer type creature (no matter how many times people talk of Gemsboch, Springboch, Oryx, Kudu etc I remain convinced they are all just the same species of some type of deer at different ages).

Luckily no attacking rhinos or mambas though. Various signs said “make sure you read your permit” which we didn’t actually have. No doubt it said “don’t leave your vehicle and whatever you do, definitely don’t go walking through the park“. Well, what you don’t know can’t hurt you. I think.

Sossusvlei

The next day we headed to Sesriem (where we camped at such great expense it hurts me to even think about it) and saw/climbed (partly at least) the dunes of sossusvlei (the massive ones).

In the park for both sunset and sunrise which was all pretty cool. There are staggeringly big sand dunes to be sure.

The dot on the top is my Dad – here is another more zoomed image:

Note the sand blowing off the top. It was all pretty impressive but after a while, to my philistine eyes, sand is just sand. And gets everywhere. And sticks.

The Coast: Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, Mile 108 and the Skeleton Coast

Turning North we headed up to Walvis Bay and Swakopmund. The plan was to find a decent campsite around there and stay for a couple of days exploring the area and maybe going on a boat trip. That was the plan.

The weather was nice and skies were blue in Walvis Bay. Pressing on Swakopmund was a bit grey and we failed to find a campsite (probably through lack of observation more than anything). There were however a great number marked going up the coast towards the Skeleton Coast National Park so we pressed on. North, ever north.

Well the weather got greyer, colder and more miserable. It actually started to rain. As we were driving up the coast road (200m or so from the sea) under grey cloud we could actually see it break inland and the very hint of blue skies in the distance.

It turns out that the campsites marked were either non-existant (presumably washed away) or closed. This is the winter and in Namibia it means the coast is for the most part cold, miserable and wet. People come here in the summer not the winter. Doh.

Refusing to turn back we kept pressing on. And on. And on.

Eventually, having resigned ourselves to pitching a tent by the side of the road we camp to a camp at Mile 108 where, miraculously, someone was actually there. He was as surprised to see us as we were him but he was happy to let us crazy English dogs camp.

I am not lying when I say it could have been one of the bleaker sections of the east coast of England, in UK winter, on a bad day.

Anyway we managed to get a fire going and sat stoically (though not that stoically – I did put long trousers on).

The next morning we headed up into the Skeleton Coast national park. And I thought the previous day had been bleak. It’s miles upon miles upon miles of nothing apart from the occasional wreck and piece of terrain that wouldn’t be out of place on mars. To be shipwrecked must be pretty bad, to be shipwrecked here? Even worse.

Okiklippe (Outjo)

Falling back inland (with one impressively shredded tyre) we were met with sunshine and blue skies that, in just 24 hours, I had forgotten existed.

Spent the night at a very nice campsite called Okiklippe which is 4km south of Outjo (on the main road to Otjiwarongo) and is a really beatiful and quiet spot.

Windhoek (Again)

Needing a new tyre, facing two new mechanical failures (handbrake and speedo) as well as to get my keys we then fell back to Windhoek.

Keys collected, tyre purchased and car repaired (well until the speedo failed again two days later) we then pressed back North and spent another night at Okiklippe where the howling of baboons and crashings in the undergrowth didn’t keep me awake. Too much.

Etosha

Etosha is the biggest wildlife park in Namibia and is, frankly, huge. We spent two nights there and saw just about everything from elephants to rhino and giraffe.

The highlight for me was on the second day when we came upon about 50 plus elephants (young, old and in the middle) at a waterhole near the east end of the park.

Opuwo and Home

After that it was back to Opuwo and home for a week at work before taking off for another two weeks up to the Caprivi strip and beyond!

And of course getting the speedo fixed, again.

CSI Opuwo

It’s finally happened – today I was helping police with their enquiries in Opuwo.

Previously on CSI Opuwo…

A few months ago a spate of burglaries took place in Opuwo which resulted in, among other things, a number of laptops being stolen.

Some of these were from the Peace Corps house and one was from the house of the Chief Accountant here in the hospital.

The police later raided an address and recovered numerous items including several laptops.

The Peace Corps, with their serial numbers all written down, were able to identify and reclaim theirs straight away. Unfortunately our accountant didn’t have a record of the serial number and when he inspected the laptop the username had been changed and his files deleted.

As such the police weren’t willing to return the laptop to him without proof of ownership.

In This Exciting Episode of CSI Opuwo…

Having been watching some quality crime-related stuff recently (Ronin, the Sopranos, the Wire and a few CSIs) I was naturally expecting to get issued with a gun (or two) and then take to the streets hunting for the perps before getting a confession from them at all costs.

Failing that at the very least my examination of the laptop should turn up some darker conspiracy, perhaps involving the Vatican or the President (“but it says here the date for the assassination is… my god… tomorrow morning at 9am”) whereupon I’d get a gun (or two) and then take to the streets squealing cars round corners, shouting into radio mikes and hunting for the perps before resolving the situation at all costs.

I would play by no rules but my own twisted ethics, barging aside all who stood in my way and corrupting those necessary to get to the sordid truth of the matter. Stopping at nothing. Stopped by no-one. A law unto myself.

Absolute worst case I figured that I’d get a gun (or two) and then take to the streets looking for clues and patterns in the tangle of evidence, rolling my way up the chain one perp at a time, fighting against my own departments inaction and the bureaucracy that always seems to work on the side of the bad guys, until finally nailing Mr Big with a stunning piece of courtroom double-cross.

Oh yeah.

Of course what actually happened was I went to the police station, discovered the laptop had no power, went back to the office to fetch a suitable power supply (luckily had one). Switched the laptop on. Logged in and immediately found the accountant’s surname in a folder.

“Good enough for me” said the Detective.

Case closed. Well rather 30 seconds of examination, 30 minutes of written statement and then case closed.

I did offer my services for any future computer forensics work they might need but I think in Opwuo this doesn’t arise very often.

On the Technical Side

If you’re not a tecchie you can stop reading now (unless you have already of course)

I got involved after the accountant and another chap from the hospital had already been to the police station to try and identify the laptop. I was told that his “files had been deleted” and the “username changed” so there was no obvious proof of ownership.

I prepared myself with a number of freely available (and seemingly quite good – in my trials they found all of my, ahem, cached and then deleted items).

At home obviously das Babylon would do it themselves and if I needed to do something similar would go about it very differently probably whipping the drive out and imaging or some such but TIN and I have no money or access to connection converters etc.

My plan was to fire up, first have a look at the user structure seeing if there was anything obvious, failing that run a deleted files recovery and poke around the registry with a search for the chaps name (no doubt endless pieces of software would be installed storing install locations and registered users in that black hole of sin).

On finally finding a suitable power supply and booting up I was met with a user called “C-Pax” or something bizarre which was password protected and a guest user.

Alas I thought I’m now going to have to hack Vista which though I’ve never done I’m sure is a google search away.

Tried the guest user and, unsurprisingly, can’t access C-Pax’s documents.

However sitting in C:\Users are two directories – one for the guest and one in the exact name of the accountant (user renaming obviously doesn’t change the user directory name).

Bosh. 30 seconds.

I was quite disappointed in a way, was looking forward to hacking my way into the admin account and then running file recovery utilities. I would, by law, have had to change the colour scheme so the terminals were green-on-black. Oh, I’d also have needed a wall of TFT monitors and been listening to thrash metal whilst typing simultaneously like a nutter on six keyboards.

So probably a bit of luck.

It does raise an interesting point though – password protection.

The accountant’s user had not been password protected. I would normally have said “you fool” but… consider this;

The laptop wasn’t stolen for his files or data. If his user had been password protected (along with no open admin account) then in all probability the thieves would have just reinstalled a fresh vista (with nice legit licence key from the bottom) or XP wiping the hard drive (much easier than hacking your way in and then going about renaming the account etc).

Because his account wasn’t locked it was easily accessed, files deleted and renamed.

Leaving the evidence behind that enabled it to be identified by the Opuwo Computer Forensic Investigation Team (me).

So I suppose he was kind of lucky for that.

Not as “lucky” as he would have been if he’d recorded the serial number or marked the laptop with a UV pen of course.

The Big City

This week I’ve been in Windhoek the capital of Namibia.

My time here has mainly consisted of driving around, screaming in sheer fear and horror at the four and five lane monstrosities, getting lost (many times over) and managing upwards of 20 minutes in a shopping mall before having to go and sit in a darkened room and recover from over-stimulation.

I’ve also been “orienting” myself at the Ministry of Health and Social Services head office so meeting and chatting with various IT bods. It’s good to see life is the same the world over, offices full of semi-functional kit only the technician knows the status of, servers that nobody dares reboot and having to take circuitous routes around the office avoiding certain hot spots where the inevitable shrill cry of “eyeee-teeee” will go out as users stampede complaining of “go slow”.

In between I have also been transporting various (much more senior than me) people here and there (getting lost many times over in the process) and calling into the VSO office (where I am now in a secluded corner leeching their internet).

It turns out here in the big city people don’t always greet each other walking along and you’re regarded as a bit strange if you stop and say “Hello, how are you?” to nearly everyone you pass on the street. Tsk these city folk.

Back to donkey carts and dust on Friday. I’m also looking forward to being back somewhere there the direction “the green house” really is enough as you can just climb the hill and look for a green house (small hint to my colleagues – in Windhoek it is not enough to just give me the colour of the house, I need turn-by-turn directions and ideally someone standing on the roof with a flare or signal rocket).

Did get a chance to see a couple of local vols though and catch up with my good friend H who is settling in nicely at Katatura and loving every minute (“What do you mean you can buy fruit every day? What witchcraft is this!”). We also (thanks to the Namibian approach to Health and Safety) climbed up onto the roof of Katatura Hospital last night and saw electric lights stretching to the horizon. Crazy.

Oh and also caught up with VSO staff and received a parcel from home – the very first one sent back in February, dated through customs this month – which I had given up on.

Some Pictures

Some random pictures to keep you occupied while I try to think of something to blog that’s not hugely depressing (HIV/AIDS related) or hugely scary (Swine Flu is HERE).

A Village Near Opuwo

The "road" I Drove to Get to the Village Above

A Fire at Night in a Kunene Village About 60km From Opuwo

Sunset in Kunene... and a Donkey

A Couple of Kids Outside the Etoto Clinic

A Giraffe Near Outjo

Survival of the Most Stubborn

VSO vols are falling fast in the Great Kunene Region.

First M and A are off back to Canada from Khorixas for a variety of reasons to do with all sorts of stuff. Although they arrived earlier than me we did our second in-country training together and I’ve seen them a fair few times since when I’ve managed to blag myself down to Khorixas on some tenuous excuse.

They will be sorely missed by their VSO colleagues (as well as, I’m sure, the MoHSS and their patients). One of my abiding memories of ICT2 was drinking the bar dry of Tafel lager with M. Good luck guys! I look forward to crashing on your hospitality in Canada in the future much as I have here

Secondly H has gone from Opuwo. He was the Regional Occupational Therapist and shared an office with me.

Simply put he, along with one or two others, have been the reason I landed so “softly” here and have been able to cope and enjoy my time.

When I arrived late at night, dazed and confused, at the casualty (less than 6 days in-country at the time) it was he who turned up with my key, welcomed me, settled me in and then gave me my first tour around the next day.

Since then he has been nothing other than an excellent friend helping my feckless self out with everything from finding someone to do my washing to the joys of daytime drinking in the various shebeens (in moderation and only at weekends of course).

He is off to a “proper job” at the Katatura Hospital in the capital. I dropped him down there on Sunday (the place is massive, I mean, seriously, big). Like the others he’ll be sorely missed by me, the ministry and his patients but I wish him the best of luck for the future.

Actually at this precise moment (with the other two vols away on hols) I am the only VSO in Opuwo District. This of course means it is on my shoulders to uphold all the finest traditions of VSO and the United Kingdom generally and conduct myself in an upright and sober manner. So it’s down the bar later then.

Having had my Placement Review yesterday (more on that later, perhaps) I also now know for sure that there is nobody coming up here in the next (September) VSO intake so it’ll be March 2010 at the earliest.

Luckily I am dealing with this relative isolation well by (a) rocking back and forth and (b) encouraging the voices to speak more. Dribble.

This lettuce tastes funny

When I told people I’d signed up for VSO in addition to the usual what/why/when/how questions I heard, from numerous sources, something along the lines of “but you will surely die without a Dominos or McDonalds” such was their confidence in my culinary skills.

Fellow vols in Opuwo would I’m sure confirm that my skills certainly haven’t improved in this department but so far I get by on tins of stuff, sandwiches and the generosity of others.

So it was the other day I happened to be at the Ok in a MoHSS vehicle as someone needed to pop into the bank so I ran in to get some shopping. Grabbed some tomatoes, ham, bread and a lettuce.

Imagine my surprise and disappointment to get home and find instead of a lettuce I’d bought a cabbage.

In my defence they are both green and both in the vegetable section of the supermarket. Turns out it’s not quite as nice in a cheese and tomato sandwich though.

From Tiny Acorns

A couple of weeks have passed since I mentioned two new projects one of which (VSO Journals) was impeccably timed as just the very next day another VSO blogger wrote a post about social media and NGOs which amongst other points bemoaned a lack of just such a system.

I felt duty bound to comment and before I knew it Steve had emailed me and did a second post on my little project.

In the time since I have had several nice emails from people about the site including one from Mike Sheppard the guy behind Peace Corps Journals. I had always assumed that PCJ was an official site but it turns out not to be the case, you can read about the site history here.

Today I received an email from Alex in VSO’s communications department. When I saw the sender my first thought was “the game is up” and I was about to receive a volunteer placement review for using their name in vein. I shouldn’t have worried though, I had forgotten VSO are a groovy bunch of guys and gals who always know where their towels are.

Apparently VSO are working on something similar in an official capacity and Alex just wanted to say “hi” and give me a list of some other VSO blogs which are now included in the VSO Journals index. Good stuff.

So a big thank you to everyone who has emailed. Please use the site, submit new blogs and let me know if you have any suggestions.