Zimbabwe among the top 5 countries on Earth

Yes - actually. And not in any "bad" way either (like when we broke the world record for inflation...) but, at least as I see it, in a positive way.

According to Pingdom, a web monitoring company, who got their figures from StatCounter (as you may understand is a "hit counter system" for internet) Zimbabwe is the 4th largest linux desktop user country!? I will admit that I am more than a little surprised as the ongoing discussions in the "open source community" in Zimbabwe rather give the feeling that we are not getting through with our message of a legally free system for computers and computer systems.

You will find this information by clicking here.

The flipside of the coin is that Zimbabwe is also rated as one of the worst offenders in software piracy, according to some sites we are number 5... according to others not among the top ten but definitely "up there". I find the "number 5" difficult to accept as that would mean over 90% of software would be pirate copies. And that is not the reality I see on the ground.

Either way - nice to be among the good guys and interesting. I/we think increased linux usage here would mean huge cost cuts for eg schools, hospitals, government and so on. But to get the message through is another story and there is an attitude towards software of "it can not possibly cost that much let me find it cheaper or for free" - meaning piracy.

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The Hippo Slalom Canoe trip and our marriage

Over 10 years ago I did a 4 day, 3 nights canoe trip down Zambesi river that I still remember as awesome. Last month an old friend from Sweden, Peter, and his son Victor arrived and I had again booked for this experience.


They arrived Sunday 17 April and did not really have much time to settle in as next morning we were off to Makuti turnoff up in Kariba to meet up with Natureways.


I can not say that it started too well... for some reason I could not start the 4*4 so instead chose our trusty Corolla, picked up the guys and off we went. Some time later start noticing that the engine temperature is climbing... oh no! Stopped and added water to cooling system (it NEVER needs this and I had checked it 2 days earlier). That only helps a short while.


What to do? Called Mia and asked her to work on the 4*4, call Natureways and alert them we will be late and return home to change cars. Have no idea why Isuzu did not start in morning but now works fine. Leave Mia with all problems and off we go again!


That was however our last glitch, once we were on our way again all went well. Arrived in Makuti only to find we are the only going for this canoe trip, happy that noone had to wait for us. Off to Chirundu bridge (border Zimbabwe/Zambia), quick lunch, pack canoes and off we paddle.


As we were late we had to catch up some lost "distance" and due to this actually pitched our tents using torches this first day. The last hour or so felt a bit like going slalom between hippos who to varying degrees let us know they were not amused. They are quite territorial and pose by far the biggest risk and challenge on these trips.


After dinner we admired the starry sky, shared stories and relaxed. That is when the distinct sound of blaring music comes travelling from the Zambia side of the river.. what the?? Turns out that on their side there is a large banana plantation and what we heard was the bar serving the workers. "But it is Monday", I argued. To which the guide replied that in Zambia bars never close, they just change staff now and then. Oh oh... around 1 am they finally stopped and I could sleep peacefully.


Then followed some peaceful days with good weather, gameviewing, some very close encounters with hippos, elephants, waterbuck and so on. We arrived at Nyamepi Camp in Mana Pools on the morning of the 4th day, had a well deserved shower (you do not swim/bath in Zambesi due to crocodiles and hippos) and a relaxed breakfast. Then the nearly 80 km "tse-tse fly drive" out of the park. There are few insects more irritating and stubborn than tse-tse and they give you wonderfully itchy bites!


Apart from ending up behind a brick-carrying truck doing around 20 km/h the last kilometres on our return to Harare the return was otherwise uneventful.
Here some photos, more will come: http://tinyurl.com/42v3fle


Next day was Good Friday and I took the guys and our sons to Ngoma Kurira where I managed to twist a knee so bad I got stuck on the sofa at home.. and how much fun is that on a Friday when you have visiting friends? Hellen and sisters had to show Peter and Victor nightlife Harare.


The rest of Easter Saturday and Sunday I spent mostly preparing the last details for our marriage. After 8 years "living in sin" we decided it felt like a good thing to do the deed and get married. This took place on Easter Monday 25 April in our garden at home and I have put up some photos on the link below. Again, more might come.
http://tinyurl.com/6zk9xhk


After that it has been HIFA (www.hifa.co.zw) and we saw some good performances and had fun though this year did not really feel like any artist/show was a "must see". Our friends left on 1 May and are already planning the next visit!


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Launch photos

Some photos from the launch at Tongogara:

http://picasaweb.google.com/O.Sinclair/TongogaraTelecenterLaunch2010#

Courtroom Comedy

I just can not stop myself from commenting on this. The full story can be found at Zimbabwe Situation but in short the State has found an IT "expert witness" in the trial against Roy Bennett (MDC member with very strong support, hated by ZanuPF and supposed to be Dept. Minister of Agriculture, at the moment on trial for "treason").

This expert was called in to give statements on the authenticity of some emails that are supposed to be from said Bennett regarding the treason charges. Note that only printed versions seems to exist...

a long quote:

"HARARE - February 24, 2010 - AN information and technology expert-witness who was called in to buttress the State's assertion that emails printed from Peter Michael Hitschamann's laptop were authentic in the ongoing trial of MDC treasurer general Roy Bennett, stunned the court when he revealed that he was not aware of the term hackers.

Under cross-examination from defence lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, State's expert witness Perekai Denchort Mutsetse, who claimed he is a provincial engineer for Africom based in Mutare, stunned the court when he said he was hearing the term "computer hacker" in court for the first time in his life.

"There are no such people called hackers. I am actually hearing that term for the first time here in court. Where are they trained? I don't know anything about hackers. They don't exist," said Mutsetse.

"There is no software that can be used to trace the originality or otherwise of emails. The website that created that email will be shown at the top if
that email is printed out," he said.

Asked whether he was aware that there were people called computer forensic experts Mutsetse said there were no such people in Zimbabwe but might be found in South Africa.

Mutsetse, who claimed that he had several certificates on data communications from the City and Guilds, University of Zimbabwe and Africa University, was also asked about the EnCase software used by computer forensic experts to which he responded, "Where did that come from? There is no such software in Zimbabwe; if it's there you must have brought it in here. I am not in forensics."

After given the example of the hackers who have been hacking information from the US Pentagon for years, Mutsetse simply asked "What is the Pentagon?"

Mtetwa also told Mutsetse that he was not qualified to be identified as an expert who can be called in to give an expert testimony with regards to computers and internet functions.

Instead of responding to most of the questions from the defence lawyers, Mutsetse continuously asked Mtetwa which led to Justice Chinembiri Bhunu to
intervene and ordered the IT expert to respond.

"The witness' function is to give evidence and the lawyer has to ask questions and not the other way round," ruled Bhunu

He said they tried to verify the emails by sending messages to the given addresses but they bounced back to show that they were no longer in existence.

Mutsetse also declined to talk about his position at work arguing that the company's policies do not allowed them discuss it in public. He also denied that he only passed 2 O' Level subjects in 1994 according to a CV that he send to one of his previous employers.

end quote...

You have to ask yourself a number of questions such as: is the guy joking? Is he being deliberately stupid in order to actually help the defence and not the State? Or is it simply that this is the only person the State can find that is not willing to lie in court and so they had to scrape the bottom of the bin?

To be called an IT expert and state that email can not be falsified or traced, being unaware of the term "hacker" and not know what Pentagon is or the attacks on Pentagon (hacker attacks that is) is an insult to everyone in my profession.

But I had a good laugh though...

Birthday bash

During the weekend a certain president in a southern African country celebrated his 86th birthday. That is of course great for him and his family.

However, for the majority of the citizens of the country in question it is nothing but prolonging the pain. The biggest obstacle to recovery of a once well working economy is spelled in the name of one old man.

There are theories that he is in many ways a great leader but, like Mwalimu Nyerere, does not understand finance and economy at all. In a way I hope that this is true. How can you otherwise defend the too-oft-repeated warcry of "sovereignty, indigenisation" etc etc. Can you eat sovereignty? Is it better that a company is owned or run by a local idiot instead of a foreign professional? What puts more money in the State's coffers?

WHY are local parastatals and companies not doing as well as foreign-controlled or owned? THERE lies to question to be answered and the solutions to be found. NOT in "we must own our own resources no matter how much we do not utilise them or frankly waste them".

Soulsearching is something very much lacking +20 years after independence in many former African colonies.

Tongogara comes online

If you know a bit about Zimbabwe's history the name of Tongogara is known as one of the original freedom fighters. It is also the name of a local council nowadays, the Tongogara growth point.

Since 2006 I have been involved in setting up a so-called Telecenter there. It has involved quite a bit of hard work and patience, more for the people involved in Tongogara than for me, as it involved creating a business cooperative, raising funds, finding a place to house it etc etc.

Last year some equipment, including computers, were donated and training was done in October for the operations manager and some others.

Sadly however, we have not managed to find a way to bring telecommunications and thereby internet to the place. TelOne, the landline provider, says the switches in the area are full. The cellphone providers have coverage but very "spotwise" and not for internet anyhow.

But, as I think I have mentioned, Econet has promised coverage and they are also introducing 3G internet. Yesterday we went for a follow-up visit and I brought my 3G-modem just in case.

Boy was I surprised to find that not only could I connect but it was faster than what I get at home... we are now looking at how they or we can fund some modems and next step will be to make it a "true" Telecenter with internet and phones!

Not much to write about

I was actually asked why I have not updated the blog for some time. Well at least that means that it is being read by one person!

I guess the reason is that sometimes life just sort of goes on. The winter in Zimbabwe has been continued awfully cold, good thing we have plenty of firewood after taking down 6 dead trees.

No new house woes except for a TV gone dead. Constant power blackouts and surges are not nice to your electronics, that is something we have learnt the hard way. After much searching we found a guy who said he could fix it. That is now 2 months ago I think and he is at the moment "waiting for spare parts" since 3 weeks or so. I strongly suspect the truth is that it is beyond repair (in Zimbabwe at least) but he doesn't want to admit it.

Good thing that at the time I asked if any Swede leaving the country were selling their TV! One lady called and said she had an old but large and good TV. But she was not selling it until she was leaving in August. I told her to please come back to me as she basically did not ask for any money to talk about.

Last week she called, on Sunday we picked it up. Mia and syster Cynthia had to do all carrying as I was suffering from lumbago. As she had said it is an old Philips TV but large screen, good picture and no faults we have found. Bingo! Moved the "kids TV" back to their bedroom and they have hardly been off Playstation since.

In Zimbabwe the somewhat limping unity government continues amid constant infighting. Maybe it should be called non-unity government? However, most of us still enjoy the slow progress and every small step towards "normalcy" that takes place.

Some things are plain weird though. Like City of Harare insisting on residents paying water bills in areas that have not had city water for the past 2-3 years.. excuse but paying for WHAT now? The idea being that if we do not pay they can not fix the system so we can get water. Hm, never heard that logic before, once water come back will I then get x months of free water?

Same goes for newly introduced system of road tolls on major highways. Most of them are in awful shape yet we are supposed to pay for using them... I have never before heard of paying tolls BEFORE a highway is fixed. From all my experience you either use tax money for maintenance or you let a commercial entity fix the road and that company then charge toll for that.

Another "funny" one - TelOne (only fixed phoneline supplier) announces proudly that they will introduce a new billing and reading system. Cause the existing one is in shambles and have not survived hyperinflation, new currency etc. Fine with me. But they still send skyhigh bills to everyone and insist on full payment without any proof of usage, metering etc. Que? We pay an amount every month that I consider reasonable, no more. They want to cut us off fine go ahead. Have not heard of anyone they have actually cut - they need every dollar and they know it.

My final rant for today: cellphone rates. All 3 providers in Zimbabwe have had their rates approved by referring to "regional rates". Nonsense, in short. Don't know who helped them to establish those rates but they are way higher than neighbouring countries.

Two very simple examples: In Mozambique I have a local "pay as you go" sim-card. When I am there I buy a 4-dollar top-up. I get 100 free sms (local) on that. I hardly ever use the full amount in a week even though I sms to Zimbabwe once or twice a day and make local phonecalls.
In Zambia I also have a local card. I normally buy 2 dollar top-up for a week! No free sms but I can sms to Zimbabwe once or twice daily and make some local calls.
In Zimbabwe it is no problem to spend 5-10 us dollar in less than a week. Only on local calls and sms.
Regional rates my foot.

Just an update

It has been over a month since anything was written on this blog. There are reasons for that, I have been travelling extensively and spent time both in Mozambique and Zambia. We are all OK though a bad bout of flu hit me, Eric and Mia. It hit a lot of people actually. August has been unusually cold (still cold nights and mornings) and maybe that has something to do with it.

Otherwise we now live in the country of empty shops. There is nearly nothing to be found in the shops apart from cheese, some polony/ham and such products. Forget bread, milk, flour, meat, sugar, cooking oil, drinks, washing powder, most tinned products and so on. The reason for this being price controls - once more. Unrealistic allowed prices coupled with now officially over 7000% inflation have caused a situation where near everything is traded outside the normal system. Let's just say it makes life interesting but rather tiring.

On top of that we had "plumbers" at home. They did one thing right - they cleaned out our hotwater-geyser that had stopped working. Otherwise they managed to create a large hole in the ceiling and reconnect the geyser basically backwards. We have since fixed a new ceiling (about time but even so...) and had a proper plumber reconnect the geyser. To add to that one of our cars is almost constantly parked at the workshop and this makes moving around a problem. Get a lot of cycling exercise lately.

Some photos from home, nothing sensational: Homephotos

Have had my first experiences of Microsoft Windows Vista in some different scenarios and am less than impressed. I am far from the only one, the editor of PC Magazine have given up and gone back to Windows XP and is considering switching to Linux: pcmag

I am increasingly happy with my switch to Kubuntu - no viruses, no intrusions, no spyware. And increasingly tired of "normal" users tendency to hit "OK" whether they have any idea of why or not.

Finally some photos from my youngest brother David's wedding and a link to Anna Tibblin's blogg about Zimbabwe (in Swedish)