October « 2010 « Hackers For Charity

That was it. That was all I was going to post. But for whatever reason, I’m typing. It’s a mistake. I can feel it already. I just know that I’ll regret this post. It will come across as whiny and pathetic, and I feel like too many of my posts are whiny and pathetic as it is. But I just can’t stop typing. Besides, this one is different somehow…

I feel all wadded up inside. The stress and gunk and bile is rising in my throat and I feel like I’m going to just pop.

It’s well after midnight and my family is asleep. I should be too, but I can’t sleep, or won’t sleep until I just talk to someone, and that someone, gentle reader is you.

The day started off on a pretty good note. I saw Jen and Jenny off at 7:00am as they left to open the cafe. I came back to my room and cracked open my Bible. I was just about to get some quality time in, and I fell asleep. That should have been a sign.

I crawled out of bed and decided to exercise. I got dressed and made my way to the garage. (Yes, we have a garage. We moved this weekend. That’s a missing blog post.) The weight machine was there, but too much junk was in the way from the move. An hour later, I had disassembled three ceiling fans that were blocking the path to the machine. I greeted Trevor and Declan who had woken up, summarily sent Trevor to work on his school work, and offered to let Declan help with the ceiling fans. He seemed excited about the concept, but wandered off anyhow. (Connect-with-child FAIL.) I finished the fans on my own and started exercising. It felt great.

Somewhere around the last set, I mentally committed to Body For Life (BFL), that weight loss and muscle building program that I went on like ten years ago. I was sick and tired of feeling like crap, and REALLY tired of people referring to me as “40″ a full eight months in advance.

I heard laughing in the house and realized Trevor was goofing off with Declan. I leaned into him about how bad a listener he was and sent him back into the house to do his school work. I finished my last set and headed into the house when I hear Makenna and Trevor talking and goofing off upstairs. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I snapped and told them we were looking into boarding school. I was tired of them “abusing the freedom they have been given with homeschool”. That’s what I said.

Deep down inside, I think I was overwhelmed with the fact that I’ve failed to commit myself to helping them in their studies. My failure at accomplishing anything in this place combined with my failure as a father combined with my failure to properly run an organization or even properly answer emails combined with my failure to pay proper attention to my wife combined with my failure to follow a recently-decided 9-5 work schedule that would allow me to spend more time with my family combined with that fact that even my most sincere attempts to honestly build and love someone ultimately result in failure, hurt, tearing, breaking, pain and confusion made me just lose it. I summarily threatened to send them to boarding school which made any damage I might have caused in the past even worse. I projected my failure onto them, plain and simple.

Stinging from frustration and completely overwhelmed with emotions I can’t even get a grip on, I left their room and showered. After the shower, I dressed and called Declan and without a word to the other two kids, we left for The Keep.

My desire for some drastic change nudged me more in the direction of BFL and I ordered four egg whites and a slice of toast for breakfast. “Things will improve,” I reasoned, and I convinced myself that egg whites would have something to do with that.

Later in the afternoon, the power went off at The Keep again; the second time in as many days. Normally Mondays are our busiest days, but because of the power problem, we had practically zero customers yesterday, an event that sets us back financially for an entire month. But today was different. We were disconnected for non-payment despite the fact that we’ve paid all of our bills on time. We’ve never even received an electric bill because frankly the power company is completely incompetent. So we were disconnected for paying our bills. A unique concept. Over an hour of discussion and argument ensued, and three hours later our power was turned back on, halfway through the Monday Night Football game my kids were so excited about watching on TV(which is broadcasted on ESPN a day later in East Africa).

I was hoping to watch the game with the kids to try to reconnect with them, but decided to take a few moments to work on my wife’s “Honey-Do” list instead. The top of the list was to call the law firm representing the mortgage company that’s foreclosed on our house in Maryland. The foreclosure itself shines the light on another failure: keeping up with the mortgage company back in the US and making the proper phone calls and bank transfers needed to recover from our renter’s fist bounced check that sent us into a perpetual cycle of late fees. There were warning signs and looking back, I am an idiot for not addressing them. I was too busy “saving the world” to bother with something as droll as imminent foreclosure on our only financial asset in the world. Stupid. I even managed to alienate my parents in that deal.

So this lawyer thing required me to open the HFC ledger to double-check the support money we received for the month of October and then verify that it had been withdrawn from the PayPal account into the bank account in the US where we could somehow transfer it to the law firm / mortgage company. When I went to open the ledger, it hung my spreadsheet program (Numbers). No matter what I did, I couldn’t open the ledger. All the frantic Google searches revealed one thing: if one of your Numbers files gets corrupted, you’re finished. The only option is to recover from a backup. In the heat of trying to fix Jen’s computer, I managed to nuke my backup drive. “If I can’t even manage to keep track of our finances in a spreadsheet,” I thought, “I have no business trying to run an organization.” I decided I would be obligated to fire myself even before the 501(c)3 is granted and put myself and the org out of it’s misery. With all HFC’s financials hanging in the balance, I once again pulled away from my family and threw myself into another fire.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, the lawyer that’s handling our work permit texted me. He told me:

“Immigration says ur is only certificates yet there are ugandans with masters degrees in IT! … You may have to … ask Migereko 2 help…”

So a bunch of nice folks sent me honorary certificates to provide to immigration to show that I have some formal training and education. But the response is basically that it’s not enough. With Ugandans holding Master’s Degrees from Ugandan Universities already bopping around the country, Immigration can’t see the need for me to hang around in Uganda any more. I don’t have anything to offer. My reaction, quite honestly, was something like “screw this country”. If the (extremely corrupt) government is willing to screw over people that give up their lives to help it’s citizens, what’s the point of even trying? Let the “Ugandan Masters” fix the pathetic state of the country on their own. (And asking Migereko for help is out of the question. Remember, not too long ago we gutted half of the computer center he wanted us to build for him because the school wasn’t taking care of it properly. That certainly didn’t get our relationship off to a stellar start.)

It’s beginning to happen all too often, but once again I found myself asking why, exactly I felt the need to leave everything and drag my family to this God-forsaken place.

This time, no answer came.

I threw myself headlong into solving the ledger problem (which, I might remind you was NOT on my wife’s list) and that didn’t set well with her at all. It was a last straw for her, and she summarily packed up her stuff and walked home with Declan. I packed up my stuff into the truck and leaving Makenna and Trevor behind at The Keep to watch the game with their friends I set out to try to patch things up with my wife. Our half-family dinner was stilted, but civil enough. The rest of the evening was decent enough, I think partly because I showed that I recognized a problem and was at least willing to drop out of the race long enough to acknowledge her presence.

She went to bed, we parted on decent enough terms and I headed downstairs (yes, two story house now, after the move) to get to work. I was feeling OK. Not because anything had happened, just because of the promise that behind the cloudy skies, the blue sky awaited.

Then the bottom fell out on me after she went to bed.

I was convinced it was possible to pass through this stuff without hurting myself or the ones I love. Personal, spiritual, familial and organizational success always seemed like it was right around the corner, and if I just pushed harder, things would work out and I could score a win that would make everyone happy. It turns out, I was wrong. I’ve managed to make yet another mess of my life, and this time it’s not just me that’s paying the price. Even with the best intentions, I’ve hurt the ones closest to me and the result is devastating emptiness and loneliness. That’s as honest as I can say it.

And I’m left asking myself the painfully obvious question: “What’s the point of saving the world if it costs you the ones you love?”

This was not part of the deal. If it had been, I never would have signed up for this.

So what’s next? I wish I could tell you that I had some epiphany tonight, but I didn’t. I do know that the thousands in need will have to take a back seat for a while until our little team of six is restored, healthy and back in action. Fractured and separated, we’re useless. Together, though, God can make miracles happen in the midst of my mess.

As if one conference wasn’t enough, we’ve got two amazing conferences spinning up this weekend, and both are fundraisers for HFC! I’m so proud of all the volunteers that are pitching in to make this happen. Please stop by the booth and show your support. I know the crew will be happy to see you. We’ll have swag and shirts and all sorts of goodies available, so please stop by. Especially since we’ve got both coasts covered on the same week! =)

I recently sent this email to Chris Simpson, who is heading up the HFC presence at Toorcon this year. It seemed relevant for the blog, so here we go. It’s long, but speaks to a lot of things that are going on here in Uganda.

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I don’t want to steal your thunder, but I thought I would give an overview of the training center, our classrooms, and the various work projects we are doing.

In a nutshell:

> – Johnny’s contributions to the community
> – The good things HFC has accomplished so far:
> Training center, coffee shop

The training center is operating in a state of perpetual loss. The reason is that our prices are too low. At our current price point, we can get many people in the door, which is our goal. Additionally, we train most of our students for free as long as they come with a letter of appreciation (for the free training) from an NGO or a a government organization. As of September, every salary of the training center is paid from HFC donations. Average salary of an employee in the center is 5,000/= or about $2.50 a day… a good wage for Uganda. Plus staff gets free training. We just added Internet to the center as a way to try to generate some revenue. Most courses in our center were purchased from the US (CBT’s) saving us staff salaries and making it possible to train off a schedule, making it more convenient for students. The down side is that some students may not have strong English.

To give you an idea of the price difference, a typical Windows intro course will cost $15 and take three weeks. We charge $4 and the course takes five hours for the same training. Plus our students are hands-on. Our competitors teach via lecture, most often without computers. They charge $22.50 for Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. We charge $7.50. They charge $75 for Photoshop. We charge $4.50.

Bear in mind that a middle-class Ugandan makes about $2.50 a day. If they want training in something like Photoshop, they wold have to burn their salary for an entire month, but still not have money for food or lodging. On top of that, they would have to take weeks off of work (unpaid!) to take the course if, and only if they had already taken all the prerequisites like Typing, Windows, and most likely Office. We’re trying to change that model. The courses are affordable, flexible, and accessible. If a student only has an hour a day, they can jump in.

Our price is fixed at 1500 shillings per hour (about 75 cents, the price charged for Internet surfing all over town) regardless of the rarity or difficulty of the course. Training businesses charge a premium, taking advantage of the fact that most people can’t afford a computer and bandwidth is still expensive for the typical Ugandan, meaning they have no way to self-train. But the fiber cable is here, and bandwidth is coming, so there will be a real opportunity for people to raise their standard of living with digital skills. That’s where HFC comes in.

As for the cafe, The Keep is so much more than a coffee shop. It’s the nicest place in Jinja. We serve coffee, American food and Fast Internet to the tourists and the more affluent Ugandans. We paid for the meager start-up costs out of our family’s personal savings in order to try to sustain ourselves but also to provide a way to fund our community work. We’ve been open for three months and it’s been a rough road. For most of that time, our whole family has been at The Keep at least 12 hours a day, six days a week. (As many know, I’m off the grid because I’m so swamped. That’s part of the reason.) We’ve had theft, dishonesty, and every imaginable problem facing a start-up business. To make matters worse, we are in a developing country, so that makes everything hard. But the feedback so far is positive. We seem to be well-positioned in the market, and The Keep has become a safe, restful oasis for our customers. The miracles that made it remind us that we need to stay the course. For now though, we still operate at a loss. Staff salaries are again coming from the money I make on the far-too occasional training or speaking gig.

> How many people have you trained?

Working on those numbers..

> – The difficulties of working in Africa

1) Corruption. Everything takes a bribe. Whether you want your electric meter to “run slower,” or you want the power connecting in fewer than 2 months, you need to pay a bribe. Gone a few minutes over on your hour parking permit (even though you are parked where you aren’t supposed to be charged) you need to pay the attendand or argue with him and pay his supervisor AND him. Got a shipment coming in? Prepare to pay a bribe to everyone that touches the shipment. We’ve spent millions of shillings in “taxes” and “appreciations” because we’re too small to have a permanent shipping and clearing agent. Want to work in the country? You need a permit. Going to Immigration will always cost something. Get a lawyer to help, and you find that his fees include “appreciations”. He’ll likely give you some good advice, but them corruption steps in and every step along the way becomes complicated because the client is a mzungu (white). One of my friends walked into Immigration and the agent started sniffing the air. My friend asked what that was about and the agent says simply, “I smell money”. This was a government agent in charge of the Immigration process. The foundation of Africa is broken in so many ways that anything built here is subject to turmoil. We have to keep our wits about us and have faith. Otherwise, we’re screwed.

2) Safety. We’ve had our compound broken into four times despite two guards, three dogs and a compound fence. Once the thief cut through the fence and removed a wheel-locked bike. Past the guard, past the (barking) dogs and right through the hole. Crime is on the rise and with volatile elections coming in February, we’re in for God-knows-what. Some people tell us we need to leave the country for a month. Impossible. Too expensive. Death is a constant here. This week, our house help lost her daughter to AIDS, a brother to “sickness” and a brother to poisoning. Despite every precaution, we realize every day that without God’s provision, we’re in real trouble… it’s so easy to lose hope without something bigger than us to guide us and keep us.

3) Money. If you have it, everyone wants it. Not just because of corruption. We’ve given advances and loans to just about every employee. Some employees that are neck-deep in loans still have life problems that demand our attention. It’s impossible to stand by and watch suffering without feeling the need to help. But we have to have limits. We get random people at our gate or cafe asking for money and we have to get our staff to deal with it because if we go, we end up paying something or feeling terrible about not paying something. So for now, we offer them free training, or extra food from the cafe, or try to find some creative way to help other than cash.

4) Trust. By majority, Africans have grown up in abject poverty. Once they get “out in the world” they have learned to look out for #1 (themselves) and realize that no one will come to their rescue. If they get a job in a mzungu-owned restaurant, many will help themselves to stock or food or airtime, or whatever isn’t bolted down. Some have said this isn’t considered stealing, but that the mzungu has so much excess that they won’t miss it. If they get caught, or a theft happens, no one will admit to it. Everyone will keep their mouth shut because (ironically) they don’t want to disappoint the mzungu or “hurt the relationship”. Our most trusted employee had a very questionable past that we never looked into and eventually things started happening, and he or she left unexpectedly. Then things started coming to light that just set our hair on end. The advice we’ve been given is to not trust anyone and to lock the locks. But we are attempting another tactic: grace. We’ve told our employees that we value honesty above all else. We’ve shown grace (undeserved pardon and forgiveness) because that’s what God gives us if we ask. And we’ve seen results. One employee has made life changes that encourage us that we’re either on to something or complete idiots. I hope it’s the former, but I know one thing: I don’t want to be the typical hardened cynical ex-Pat that seems to be the norm. I’m holding out hope that somehow we can change lives for the better instead of losing touch with what makes us human.

5) Evil. I don’t know how else to say it. In the developed world, the face of evil is generally very subtle. It takes the shape of lust, greed, envy and pride. In Uganda, those exist, but they don’t seem to be as effective in terms of throwing people lives off a positive path. Here, evil is up front, looming, personal and undeniable. Demon possessions are so common that many visitors tend to think it’s just voodoo folklore stuff. It’s simply not. When rage overtakes a crowd and they shred, stone and beat a suspected thief, it’s evil. When you see it, you can’t deny it. It’s more than just “village justice”, a term that’s far too whitewashed. When a child is sacrificed, that’s unmistakable evil. It’s pervasive.

6) Scope. The problems are so big that it’s impossible to make a real dent. It takes focus. One life or one issue at a time. Operating at our level, we count on the trickle-down effect: if we help one we can make a generational change. We need to make sure we’re not trying to do too much. We try to do something small very well.

> – How important this work is and how it directly helps people

We’re offering something that’s extremely important. Most of us have reaped the benefits of exposure to computers and a digital education. We’ve seen the benefits. Here in Uganda, computers are expensive and leveraged by businesses to make a profit. With one fiber broadband cable in the country, bandwidth prices have dropped 75% in the past two years. Another fiber is on the way. We’re trying to lay the groundwork to ensure that many people are well-positioned to benefit from the influx of technology. We’re trying to prevent the problems that occurred in Nigeria, where the tech came before the training and the criminals were the first to take advantage of it.

> – How the money goes directly to help, very little overhead/admin

I stress and struggle over every dollar that’s invested by our donors. These days, I pay salaries (about $400 per month), rent on the center ($350/mo) and expenses (about $100/mo) out of HFC funds and I’m hoping to turn the corner this month and cover at least rent and expenses with funds generated from training. Beyond that, our overhead is next to nothing, meaning that the donor’s money goes right into expenses that will make the most difference including new training materials, outreach, funding of village projects, the food program in Kenya and into tools and equipment that will help generate revenue (like hardware repair toolkits, spare parts, paper and toner for our printing service, things like that).

I’m so encouraged by the response so far. I’ve already received two certs, and I’ll post them here as they come in.

The first is from http://lockfale.com, who granted me the FALE Certified Security Professional and Educator certificate.

The second is from http://digitaltrustllc.com, who granted me the Journeyman Training in Information Security certificate.

Thank you guys! I’m really honored by the certifications. Keep them coming. I’d like to put my best foot forward so I can pass the next round with immigration!

It sounds a bit sensational, but it’s true.

We need a work permit to operate in any capacity in Uganda. After several “payments” and visits to the appropriate people in the government, immigration today informed us that our request for a work permit has been refused. That means we’ll have to leave if it’s not sorted soon. According to the head of IT in the immigration office, “This resume looks very high-tech. There is no way this person can do these things without a degree or a certificate.”

He then proceeded to say that, “If he had an A+ certificate or something similar, it would be a different story.”

He can see that I’ve been involved in a dozen book projects. He can see that I’ve worked for the US government, taught at various universities and trained law enforcement the world over. But that’s not enough. As a college dropout, I “have nothing to offer Ugandans”.

I acknowledged the lunacy of the situation explaining that we train A+ in our center and asked if I could produce a self-signed certificate from our training center indicating that I had taken training. He said that “would help the situation”.

So a Ugandan certificate would better qualify me for the work here, I suppose.

He went on to explain that I should forge a certificate of some kind and “tender a particular payment” to “expedite the process”. Seriously?

Without the work permit, we can’t stay.

Is there anyone out there that would be willing to provide honorary certificates of some kind?

I know that really smart people sometimes get them from big-name universities, and I don’t for a moment consider myself to be on that level, but I’d rather go the route of honorary certificates than forge something.

But our time is running out. We’re scheduled to be in Mombassa at the end of next month, and the process of the work permit should take at least that long. If you’re interested, please email me or use the contact form. I’d really appreciate it.

Is it any wonder people burn out so easily working in developing countries?

We’re paying too much for an armed guard at the training center. Yeah, it’s only like $200 a month, but it’s a lot by our standards. An unarmed guard is like $70, and they generally work harder because they’re seeing all of that money, versus the armed guard which scores less than a quarter of that. But an unarmed guard is a risky venture with all that gear. So we decided to put in an alarm system. Even with the armed response service, and a full-time unarmed guard the monthly cost is less than we’re paying for a single armed guard. The only down side is the up-front cost. But that gear is ours after it’s installed, and I’m looking at the long-term picture.

So here are some pics of the install. Enjoy.

Some of the gear used for the installation.

The tech working on one of the motion sensors.

One of the corner sensors. The plastic conduit is pretty universal here for cable runs since most of the walls are solid concrete or brick laid around the 1950′s. No thought of internal conduit or channels for electricity back then.

The control panel is pretty sweet. It’s funny though… I really picked this system apart, thinking of all the angles by which the system could be defeated (old habits die hard) and all of them were decidedly low-tech. I’ll have to thoroughly train the staff on the use of this thing. And I won’t go into much more detail, because that would be silly. Then somebody might Google hack the security on the training center. That would be ironic.

Enjoy the photos!

On Saturday, our good friend Charles ("my number one fan") visited us from Nairobi. It’s always great to see Charles. He’s such an encouragement. Every time he visits, it seems we’ve made some progress because his visits are months apart. In July when he last visited, the cafe wasn’t even open. He’s also the bearer of gifts. Every time he comes he brings something fun for us. This time is was all coffee-related stuff. First, there was the stock of creamers, just like the ones we loved in the US. He also brought Kenyan coffee from Dorman’s and decaf Nestle’s cappuccino (which Jen loved and absconded with). The most amazing part of the package was the set of espresso cups.

These cups were absolutely exquisite pocelain… trimmed in gold an absolutely flawless, they were the most amazing cups I’ve ever seen. They’re a great addition to the cafe. I just hope our customers or staff don’t throw them into the wall or anything. I almost want to keep them to myself. Thanks Charles, for your thoughtfulness and your support! Safe travels back to Kenya!

Yesterday, we visited CRO, an organization that works with street kids. This is a photo of their compound. It seems they’re doing an awful lot for these kids, and we’re starting to become very interested in finding ways to help.

This is a map the kids painted. It’s really pretty good. The only problem was the spelling of Australia… but that’s ok. =)2`

Today, Eric, our bakery man made us laugh. It turned out that we had a staff shortage and the girl that nomally cooks for the staff couldn’t make it. So Eric volunteered to do the cooking. The only problem was that he didn’t wan’t to get his clothes dirty. So he put on the girl’s dress to keep his clothes clean.

Every time he walked past, we cracked up. He’s really a funny guy.

Today I got the Internet running down at the training center. We decided to put in Internet as a way to make a bit of money. We’ll see how that goes. We’ve invested about $150 so far to get the service up and running. I hope we make that money back.. We also went to Amani Baby Home to help with some tech problems. Here’s a photo of some kids playing outside the home.

One of their technical problems disappeared when we showed up. That happens alot. The other problem had to do with this munged Ethernet cable. It was one of those nasty, double-insulated outdoor jobs.

A few crimps and clips later, and they were back in business. The job took a little longer than expected because we were getting our car repaired. So Fred and I shared a boda (motorcycle). IT was the first time I’ve ever shared a boda with a non family member. On the way there, Fred tried to make a few suggestions about the route we should take, but I insisted on the way I knew best. On the way back, we couldn’t find a boda and Fred led us on a path that easily cut off three quarters of the distance. Guess I still have a lot to learn about this town. Today was busy, but in the end I feel flat. I’m not balancing my life very well. I need to spend more time with my family. It’s become a common theme.

Our baristas are practicing again.

We’ve decided to do traditional music on the first Friday of every month at The Keep. This is from last week’s performance. Sorry it took a while to post. Thanks to Jude for getting up and dancing her heart out. She was awesome!

We (kinda) went to church today. Somehow, I’ve become the “sound guy” at church. I think this is because I know how to use an iPod and I’ve been seen behind the mixer at The Keep enough that people think I know what I’m doing. So today I helped with the normal sound (an iPod) and a “special” as the Ugandans call any kind of solo or stand-alone performance. We had four singers, two guitars, a keyboard and a drummer. I miced one singer and a guitar and fed the audio for the keyboard and mixed it. It took an hour to get everything right. I had intended to leave after setup but the mixing was a bit touchy so I stuck around. We’re trying to take a day “off”. We’re back to full-time at The Keep now that we’re down a manager and last night we were flat-out exhausted. It was good to help out at church though, and the songs really did me a lot of good.