"Exterminate all the Brutes"

Yesterday afternoon at 4:00 pm central african time (cat) the official handover of the thin clients was taking place at the library of the Polytechnic. The Ceremony was located in the audiovisual where one part of the thin clients (12 pcs) is set up. Because of his tight schedule the vice-chancellor of the University of Malawi did not join the handover. Martin Thawani, the librarian of the Polytechnic opened the ceremony by mentioning with a few words my last stay in 2004 when I worked for 5 month at the Polytechnic and set up the Servers and Network. Martin Thawani praised the Free Software project especially because of its massive success in the fight against Spam, Viruses and scarce bandwith problems in africa. (On the image above you can see the symbolic handover of the book “Free as in Freedom” between Alex Antener on the right an the librarian Martin Thawani on the left). After his talk I added, that we run in the ICT of the University of applied sciences and arts in Zurich all the servers of the students and lecturers on Free Software (GNU/Linux Debian) with a big success. und that the very same thin clients that the ICT is donating to the Polytechnic are used in our administration and that the students and lecturers of the Polytechnic also deserve to use the newest information technology, not having to use the used crappy outdated computer trash that most of the NGOs are donating. The principal Dr. Charles Mataya expressed his thanks and told us about his fistr experiences with Unix in 1981 when he did his PhD. Further he said that the Polytechnic and the University of applied sciences and arts are initiating an intercultural relationship with this project. At the end of the Ceremony the librarian Martin Thawani gave us 2 traditional malawian masks and and a carved africa map to underline his thanks.

In this place I would like to thank cordially my Boss Barbara Berger and her replacement Harry Rauter of the ICT of the University of applied sciences and arts Zurich for their support. Ramon Cahenzli as well as Gino filadoro deserve my warm thanks for their collaboration. To Nathalie Bissig I would like to express my very special thanks for her wonderful pictures which we all apreciate a lot.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 11:13 AM and is filed under digital divide, Malawi, Technology, The Polytechnic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.