Worlds Touch

Work Story from Tahiti

Here's a story about how they do business in Tahiti. I got it from a guy who picked my husband, Jean-Francois, up hitchhiking. He is headed to Canada as soon as possible now.

Job story

More unrest in Nepal

Nepal, the country where Worlds Touch has its established projects, as well as its most promising prospects of projects, has entered a particularly disquieting and bloody phase.

My correspondant at Lumanti, our partner organization, writes that the Maoists have begun targeting city buildings. Until now, the Maoists--who have, by the way, been repudiated by the Chinese Communists--have operated mainly in the countryside, but with the end of their month-long cease fire, it appears they've moved operations to the heart of Kathmandu.

This is pretty upsetting for my plans to go there this summer to work for two and a half months.

My partner Gilda Martinez and I are already discussing alternatives, "just in case," though I think neither of us wants to give up on our favorite mountain kingdom.

To be continued...

Internet in French Polynesia

Moorea, French Polynesia
Interview with Pascal at Arts Polynesians

Pascal is the fellow who runs the only wireless internet cafe on the island. The price is very competitive: $30 for two weeks of wireless service, as opposed to $10 an hour for regular internet use. Since it can take up to 20 minutes just to load a 2 minute video, Pascal's wireless service saved me a pile of money while we were on the island.

Pascal told me he used to do web sites when he lived in France. He declined, however, to go into any detail about what brought him to live on Moorea. When I asked, How did you come to live here? he answered, "By airplane." I laughed and said, "A very French answer," and he replied, "Well, I could have come by boat!" The French are very reticent to divulge personal information to relative strangers. Americans, on the other hand, can very easily go into the kind of detail about their private lives that would make their best friends blush.

I was amazed, in fact, when the woman in a couple we were visiting told me she and her husband were having problems, that he'd had an affair recently, and they had been talking about splitting up. Unheard-of personal information from a French woman. I have no idea what got into her, and I certainly didn't know what to say. If she'd been American, I'd probably have gone right into it with her, but I was so dumbfounded, I was speechless.

Pascal and I talked about the internet and its impact here in French Polynesia. He told me that there are just about 200,000 people who live here, spread out among all the islands. Half of them live between Tahiti and Moorea. The only internet, he told me, is on these two islands.

This isn't strictly true, however, since there was an internet connection at the post office on Rurutu where JF stayed for a week, but it was even more expensive than normal, $14 an hour. You had to buy a phone card to use it, and it used your money just getting -- very slowly -- online. With a phone card, you can never use your money wisely. Either you are down to three or four "units," and that's not enough to get online and DO anything, or it cuts off on you in the middle of something and you lose whatever you were doing.

Still, it was there, for the use of the wealthier inhabitants.

Of the 100,000 people on the two populated islands, Pascal told me, only about a third or so even have a computer, much less the internet. They just don't care. Frankly, he said, they don't give a damn. When they do get on the internet, what do they do? They go immediately to see pornography. Pascal quoted some wild figure that over half the people who get on the internet (this was supposed to be a worldwide fact, by the way) go first to the porn sites before they go anywhere else.

I started talking about the email computer that the folks at ___ in England are developing. No need for electricity...I pointed out to Pascal, who was about to object that half the islands don't have any. And as he was about to go into the lack of service providers, I said the devices would be connected to satellites. He protested that satellite charges are exhorbitant, more than $40 an hour. The company has negotiated a somewhat reasonable price for use of the satellite connection for their email machines, something like $.05 per email message. This is still FAR cheaper than regular mail, if you think about it, and also much faster. The advantages for village doctors, teachers, and administrators (not to speak of police...) are, I thought, obvious.

Pascal was still skeptical. Why would they bother? he wanted to know. You get them to send an email to someone and two or three days later, you ask if they've gotten a reply. Reply? No reply... Did they turn their machine on to see? No, they didn't realize they had to turn the machine on to find out of they've gotten an email reply.

Pascal's point, well taken, is that computer training has to start where folks are, and that may very well be far more elementary than we might think. It's true that computer programmers have trouble communicating with those of us who just USE their inventions (hence the uselessness of most computer user manuals), and the same difficulty to know how to communicate computer rock-bottom-basics holds true for us semi-literates.

The French and Americans we met on Moorea--not counting the Rotary Club, which was more mixed--have stayed there to make their lives because they are looking for a return to a simplicity, an easing of the bonds of "civilization," a kinder, gentler lifestyle more in tune with nature. They look to their Polynesian neighbors for these values, the choice not to participate in the commercialized, materialistic modern society, the choice to live without "conveniences" in order to have more time for family, fishing, swimming in the azure sea, and just sitting.

Pascal, at Arts Polynesians, echoed the views we heard again and again, that the Polynesians simply don't need our computers, our internet, our materialistic "stuff." I suspect the situation is more complex than Pascal painted it, but I would need more than a week's visit to the island to ascertain the truth. I suspect there's a romantization of the Polynesian life going on not unlike our own with the Native Americans, who might choose to be less "simple" and somewhat more "materialistic," if they had more educational and employment opportunity closer to home.

As it stands, the internet in Tahiti and Moorea is a toy for the foreigners, something tourists do, and are willing to pay good money for.

Audios and Videos

This is where we AREN'T staying. Stop by the travelertrish blog for photos of our present accomodation.

Since I only had three weeks here in French Polynesia, I decided not to try to accomplish any computer work while I'm here. I'll make an effort when we get to New Caledonia. In the meantime, you're welcome to visit my personal travel blog at:

http://www.travelertrish.com

Click on the little book that says Blog when you roll over it. From there you'll find other links to audio files, videos-- the Polynesian dance videos by Jean-Francois, my husband, are particularly successful.
Professional entries will resume when I'm actually being professional again.

Rotary Moorea, French Polynesia

Moorea Island, French Polynesia
Wednesday, Jan 18, 2006

This is my first report to the Rotary Club folks back home. I had been planning to attend the Rotary Club over on Tahiti, the main island in the splatter of volcanic islands called French Polynesia. Tahiti is the exotic name we hear most often, but in fact, the choice tourist spots are on other islands--Bora Bora, for one.

JF and I left Tahiti after a pleasant weekend there with family and came to be tourists on Moorea, a short 20-minute ferry ride from Tahiti. Moorea is often called the "sister island" of Tahiti. It's calmer here, less commercialized in some ways, slower-paced. Sort of like coming to the country after a stay in the big city.

Paging through a guidebook yesterday, checking on things we might want to do, I came across the ad for the Rotary Club of Moorea. They were chartered only last November, so it's a brand new club that is part of a district that includes New Zealand!

Yves Pasquier, the president, was most welcoming when I called, though he told me he'd never heard of a Cultural Ambassador. He and his lovely wife were quick to invite me to the evening's meeting, which took place in a very swanky resort called The Moorea Pearl Resort and Spa.

This part of the world is famous for its black pearls-- actually they range in color from the color of eggplants through flywing, rainbow and deep purple, silver and green. So the "Pearl Resort" takes up the theme, the objects that attract so much touristic attention here.

Jean-Francois and I checked out one of the pearl boutiques yesterday. They wanted about $150 a pearl, so I don't think we'll be buying any on THIS trip!

Yves and his wife picked me up in their convertible and took me on the road that circles the island, pointing out picturesque bays where Captain Cook dropped anchor, "discovering" this place. The interior of the island is made up of tall, green peaks and valleys, all that's left of the volcanoes that created this place.

We pulled into the very posh parking lot of the Resort and were ushered into a shockingly frigid conference room for the Rotary meeting. This club has 23 members, though only 14 were able to come last night. They divide their weekly meetings into three business meetings, where they discuss club activities such as a health and anti-drug information booth at an upcoming run-walk fundraiser for island charities. The fourth meeting, which is the one I attended last night, has a presentation and a gourmet dinner at the resort restaurant. The meal ran to a hefty $45, which helped Jean-Francois decide against attending, but it was quite nice: red or white wine, salad with mozarrella cheese and tomatoes in a balsamic vinigrette sauce, nice fish steak in a honey sauce with rice. I wasn't familiar with the name of the fish, but Yves told me it was one that's found on the bottom, like halibut or cod. For desert, three scoops of different ice creams in a pastry cup.

But before dinner, we had the meeting in the air-conditioned conference room. First Yves introduced me with elaborate compliments on my French. Apparently, the French do not expect my fellow countrymen to speak decent French at all, and so someone like me, who is basically fluent, is always a surprise and a pleasure. I am always quick to point out that my gift for languages is a gift from God, and so I can't really take much credit, but it is nice to be able to communicate fairly quickly wherever I travel.

Here is Yves' speech, in English, to the Rotarians in North Carolina

I had left my banners back in Tahiti, never for a minute thinking they had a club here, so I'll be mailing our banner back here when I get to the main island next Monday or so. For the non-Rotarians reading this, it is a custom all over the world for Rotarians to exchange banners of their individual clubs when they travel. The club's collection of banners is a story in itself of where the members have been and what travelers have visited. 

After my introduction, I gave a short speech about the Rotary Club scholarship program, how I came to know about it, why I applied, and what the procedure is for getting accepted. I talked about my nonprofit, Worlds Touch, and our projects in Nepal and how learning Nepali will help me with that work. And, of course, I thanked the Rotarians there because they are part of the grand network of Rotarians the world over who have made my Cultural Ambassadorship possible.

The group was friendly, and after my short speech, Yves presented me with the club banner, a very attractive green with the Polynesian totem animal, the yellow lizard (gaeko), with various symbols for happiness imprinted on it. Here's a photo of that presentation:

Next it was Christa Teihotu's turn to take the floor. She is one of the elder members of the club, and is also a leader in the island movement to preserve the environment here. She began her talk describing the beauty and simplicity of her childhood here, where there was no such thing as "garbage," because everything went into the family compost heap, or fed the pigs or chickens or was immediately recycled into other uses. Nothing wasted. Life was simple then, with all one's food grown on the land, or fished out of the sea. The rivers ran crystal clear; the sand a brilliant white.

At 10 or 12, like many of the children of French citizens in these parts, Christa was packed off to France for eleven years, for school. What she saw when she came back, roads, garbage dumps, ugly advertising billboards, cars and trucks everywhere, galvanized her into action. She has been hard at work trying to protect the fragile island ecosystem ever since. For many years, she ran a low-impact hotel overlooking one of the two picturesque bays here. Now retired, she has devoted all her time to organizing groups of local citizens to petition for stronger laws to protect the land, and for enforcement of the laws they have.

I learned, for example, that junked cars are a huge problem here in French Polynesia. They simply do not have land for junk car lots. They do have machines for compacting the cars into bales, but THEN what do they do with them? JF tells me some are shipped to New Zealand, though what they do with them THERE, I can't imagine. Here, one batch of almost 300 of these car-bales were dumped directly into a big hole that had been dug to get at the sand for concrete construction. The developers had dug right down to the sea water table. They were forbidden to fill the hole with dirt, since it would immediately wash right out and muddy the waters of the lagoon. So what did they do? They dumped 270 squashed cars into the hole, leaking oil and windshield wiper fluid and all, covered it over and then simply shrugged away any protests.

You can bet Christa will be protesting, however. She's a woman with a mission, and a Rotarian, a combination that can prove quite effective in getting things done.

After dinner, my hosts drove me back to my bungalow in the shadow of the volcanic peaks and bade me goodnight, sending best wishes to their fellow Rotarians in North Carolina.

Going -- trepidatiously-- Wireless

Los Angeles--

I'll be going out later this morning to buy a wireless card for my laptop. I didn't have any techie friends at home who could explain what I needed and tell me how they work. I planned to stop by the IT office at High Point University, where I got my information systems training, but that last week before the plane took off was...well...crazy.

I had to do my taxes before I left, and without the benefit of a W-2 form. My daughter will fill in the blanks and file for me later, but I couldn't leave her with the worst part, the stuff you have to do whether you have an accountant or not. Rotary, at the very last minute, added several things to my To Do List, which was already overlong. I mostly got everything done, leaving a list of things for my daughter of things to mail, videos to take back to Blockbuster, details...I even had to go to the Driver's License office to get a new license my last day at home.

I sat in the airport terminal in Greensboro before the plane left and listed everything I have in each of my carryone items. For anybody interested, I'll post this list in a separate entry, probably on my personal blog, where I can hide such possibly boring details behind link to another page.

I'm staying in LA with my friends Rob and Traci. Once was, Traci and I were writers and her spouse was in computers. Now, Rob and I are in computers and Traci's a writer... Rob is in Corporate Computers, however, and so didn't know anything about N-TEN, TechSoup, eCircuit Riding, or any of the other totally familiar catchwords to most of the readers of this blog. Should I post a glossary? I could put it on my "about" page....

I'm getting a Linksys card, and I've written down exactly what I want: a wpc54g card, 802.11 wireless protocol. Rob went online to check prices: 50 at Wal-Mart, 60 at Staples, Office Max and Best Buy. Bad old Wal-Mart does it again. Ideally, I will find someone out in the world who will sit me down to talk to me about what this card does, why it works and how it hooks up with the wireless world. I'm hoping that I can also use it when I'm going to be in a country for awhile to sign on with a wireless company and have my own internet. I really dislike tying up the family phone line when the homestay I'm doing only has dialup. Of course, there's the satellite option, where if I had either electricity or was solar powered, I could also sign up for an independent satellite option.

But I simply didn't have the time to research all that, do Christmas cards, do CHRISTMAS, deal with the fact that my husband left on Dec. 20th for Tahiti, organize my life to be gone for ten months...and organize my connection with Rotary. After all, the other scholars have at least seven months before any of them will hit the road.

I'm ready for suggestions on where I can read up on this. I'll head over to TechSoup this morning before my hostess gets up. That's one of the advantages of going West. You get up at the crack of dawn and can use the family computer before anybody else needs it. Of course it also means you miss the family movie and popcorn session after 10 p.m.

Check out my personal blog for the tale of how I lost my purse already, and more reflections on packing, baggage and what we take along for ten months on the road.

Rotary Orientation

I did a few audio clips at the Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship orientation. The first is my own introduction of myself to the group. We were supposed to say something that WASN'T in the bio, so this was the first time I sprung on the Rotarians that I'd be on a trip around the world.

The speech.

Rotary International

I spent 24 hours this weekend with the other recipients of the Rotary Foundation's Ambassadorial Scholarships. I'll be spending three months in Darjeeling, India as a Cultural Scholar, learning Nepali to better be able to communicate with my partners and eClients in Nepal. I'm also planning to visit Rotary Clubs around the world, make presentations about Worlds Touch's work, and look for friends, associates and networks I can plug into. I'm impressed with the way the Rotary Club works, and I'm hoping we can find mutual projects in the future.

I postponed the start of my trip to go to this Rotary orientation for new scholars. I learned a whole lot about the Rotary Club, and renewed my own gratitude to this group for their support. I'll be posting some audio clips from that orientation soon.

Travel Equipment: Geek Goodies

I'd like to begin today with on a series of blog entries about what I'm taking with me on the Johnny Appleseed Tour. As you may know, unless this is your first blog entry, I'm leaving in just over a week for ten months around the world. But it won't be a tourism type of trip. Since I'm hoping to provide technical advice and services as a member of Worlds Touch and as a Rotary Cultural Ambassador, I need to bring more than my Visa card, clothes appropriate to the season, and my latest copy of the Lonely Planet Guidebook to the region.

I already have a list, compiled by someone on one of my email communities, which I will share here, but it might also be useful to see what I have come up with myself.

My personal philosophy of travel baggage is: Light, light, light. A corollary, in terms of STUFF, electronic or otherwise is: Do I really need it?

This is TechSoup's list for an eRider, along with my notes:
   1.
      A laptop with at least 20GB hard drive, a CD burner, network card, and at least a Pentium III processor

I've got the laptop but it doesn't burn CDs. I'll grouch about my laptop in a separate post. Watch this space. I've also got an American Tourister laptop case that took quite a while to find. The old case I had was just too heavy. Several international flights convinced me that a very lightweight case was a necessity.

   2.
      A cell phone, and for those who cover multiple countries, either an individual Subscriber Information Module (SIM) card (which holds personal information and settings and can be used on multiple phones) or a phone with good roaming capability

JF has the phone for this trip. It's my daughter Natasha's Moroccan phone -- no photos, no videos, no flippy thing, no frills. AND the letters are in Arabic, which we all think makes the phone extra cool. When I get to Kathmandu, I'll buy a phone. Which brings up more travel philosophy: You don't have to take everything you MIGHT need. Most of what you need, you can buy along the way. This may cut down on the souvenir haul, but I'm opposed to Travel-as-Souvenir-Shopping-Trip anyway.

   3.
      An Internet connection, preferably high speed (cable, DSL, or wireless), or if not high-speed, then an unlimited dial-up and subsidy for the phone bill

I've decided at this point that I will rely on Internet cafes around the world for the internet connection. The internet subsidy will come out of Worlds Touch's VERY limited funds. Donate to the internet connection, anyone? Donate through PayPal and you will be forever appreciated!

   4.
      A team or community discussion list with archives

This is a great idea and I'll be looking into it. For now, though, the comments function on this blog will serve as our discussion list. Please do comment. I have been thinking, thanks to Deborah Elizabeth Finn about offering to set up community discussion lists for the organizations I meet along the way.

   5.
      Instant messaging software to stay in regular contact with other team members and managers

I'm on yahoo as travelertrish and on msn as patriciaperkins@hotmail.com. Every internet cafe in the world has at least one of these installed, since one of the main functions of these places is community chat room for the young folks of the neighborhood. What I've found, over the past year of World Touch's life, is that building the habit of IMing in order to stay in contact, is one of my jobs as international eTechie. IM has the reputation, among upright mission-minded organization leaders, as being somewhat frivolous, something young people do when they should be studying. It's important to help them see its uses as a help desk and strategy tool when their staffers are in the field.

   6.
      Electrical plug adapters and a multi-plug power strip

To be bought, as needed, in The World. NOT to be lugged around in a backpack!

   7.
      A handheld PDA (such as a Palm handheld device) to take notes and keep track of appointments

I spent a lot of time and energy trying to find and compare and price one of these. My ancient Jornada, inherited from when my son started college in 2001, will NOT talk to my newer laptop. I have considered taking it and just using it as a notepad while I'm in the field. I considered forking over the money for a new one that WOULD talk to my laptop. I spent hours in various discussion groups (which invariably focused on MUCH newer equipment.) In the end, I decided that my pad and pen notebook, approximately 3x5 with about 200 pages, would serve just fine for the out-and-about times. Evenings, I can enter contact info, appointments, etc. into my laptop. It might be sort of cool to whip one of these out in discussion with, say, the local Rotary president, to enter the meeting times. But this boils down to a case of, "if you don't NEED it, don't buy it."

   8.
      Licensed software including Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamweaver, and Quark XPress

Don't I wish. Because our 501c3 application is stalled somewhere in Kentucky, we are still waiting for the day when we can visit TechSoup and order a bunch of good software. I have Office on my laptop, the software that came with my digital camera (Zoombrowser Ex...problematic at best, but it's what I've got), and a dream that someday, I'll have Dreamweaver, which I use on my PC at home but don't have a "licensed copy" of. I know how to access the open source GIMP, and worked with it when I put together the road, the road. So I will probably go with that if I need "photoshopping" work. 

   9.
      A multi-tool such as a Gerber or Leatherman and a small toolkit for quick disassembly and reassembly of hardware

In Nepal, I've found that the availability of local guys to do all the hardware stuff makes this part of the eRider work I might do irrelevant and redundant. And our job is to increase local capacity where it needs increasing, right? My guess is that the boys out there (as in, of the male gender) like to carry this sort of tool and do this sort of work. They built computers from baling wire and Lego boards when they were ten, and it makes them feel, well, masculine. I love making friends with the locals who do this sort of thing. They quite often increase MY capacity.

  10.
      Travel funds for bus, train, plane, and hotels while on the road

Check. I don't do hotels, I do homestays. Most of the travel funds for this particular trip will be donated by yours truly and her sabbatical-taking husband (who after all makes the money in our house.) In the future, though, we need active fund raisers doing their excellent job to fill the coffers for this part of the process.

  11.
      Access to small grants for small purchases of equipment including memory or software

See #10.

  12.
      A small hub and network cables to set up and share connectivity at training sessions

I doubt if I'm going to carry network cables around, even if I knew what to do with them. But I rely on the local talent to carry out this part of the job, and so far, they have not let me down. I do plan to build my capacity in this matter, however.

  13.
      A digital camera to document work

I'll do a blog entry about this item separately, as well as my digital recorder, both of which I consider absolutely essential to World's Touch's work.

  14.
      A Web site for posting information in the primary language for the organizaitons supported

As Gandhi said about Western Civilization, "I think this would be a good idea." I'm learning the primary language during the fall, thanks to the Rotary International Foundation. And I'll be in touch, while I'm on the road, with folks involved in converting English to their local languages. It's important to note, though, that many college and universities in the world operate in English and that many people consider learning English a number one priority in their desire to get jobs, support their families and increase their buying power. I support local languages and ALWAYS learn as much as possible to speak them, but I won't turn my back on English as long as it is THE language of commerce in the world. It may be a sign of World Domination of the English speaking world, but pretending it isn't important is adding another handicap in the Digital Divide.

  15.
      Access to a mentoring network or help from "experts" while troubleshooting problems and developing solutions

YES! I have spent the fall building relationships with experts and mentors. I've subscribed to six email communities. And I'm taking a long list of email addresses with me. I'll be writing you folks, be forewarned.

  16.
      A resource for discounted equipment and software for nonprofits -- think TechSoup Stock International

This is a great resource and I'll be looking into it.

  17.
      Business cards and brochures

Printed in Nepal in four-color glory! I'm exceendingly proud of these, and also what they cost my donors compared to what they'd have cost in America.

  18.
      Training, training, and more training

Check. 30 hours of university coursework, three years' experience as a tech consultant and web developer here in the states, and two database projects in Nepal under my belt-- all this has been excellent training. And I've given myself the GRADUATE level course in nonprofit eRiding over the past several months. I'm also hoping to take the 10-day course in GIS in Nepal while I'm there.

  19.
      Sufficient time to prove their worth and the impact of their support

As a Johnny Appleseed traveler/tech advisor, I'm hoping to sow the seeds for future tech planning and consulting work on this trip. I can't be a "true" eRider without at least a year of funding and leave from my life in America, but I can still be of service, share what I know. I can provide access to the mentors and trainers I know. I can provide web addresses to the online tools and free software I know. And I can start on the first, and most essential step in the process: RELATIONSHIP BUILDING, without which, no technical project in the developing world goes ANYWHERE.

(http://www.techsoup.org/howto/articles/consultants/page1687.cfm)