"Exterminate all the Brutes"

As every year I visit the Chaos Communication Congress. My speech will take place at 11:30 AM at Saal 3. It will also be streamed to the Internet.

The “do-gooder” Bill Gates does now, after Madonna boght her little orphan, take care for Malawian orphans as well. After an article in the Nation Malawi Newspaper of yesterday, the 7th of December 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donates 2’124’992 US$ to the Malawian NGO OSA (Orphan Support Africa).
(My comment reserved).

On the very same page of the newspaper there is an article about the Malawian organisation for disabled people complaining about the bad ICT infrasturctures for handicapped. At this point I would like to link to the GNOME accessibility projekt that allows blind people to use free software with the braille line. Also Gino Filadoro has worked with free software on a project at the dept. on new media studies together with a handicapped person.

Link:
Debian accessibility projekt

Yesterday the Systemadministrator Maganizo Monawe came to my office and introduced me to the italian Carlo Fonda of ICTP who is working in the next 10 days at the Polytechnic with a couple of students and lecturers on a “Wireless Networking” Project. After a few italian phrases it was obvious that Carlos group from Trieste work with the same attitude with his project not imposing western ideas in an imperialistic way. As I read on Carlos Wiki-Website in June 2006 there was a training course taking place in Trieste and now the workshop continues in Blantyre to connect the colleges and hospitals around the Polytechnic.

Carlo was also shocked by the high ISP (Internet Service Provider) prices in Malawi and also about the fact that the VSAT equipment, that was setup by the United Nations Developpment Programme (UNDP) on top of the Polytechnic building is run by Paulus Nyirenda commercially. The Polytechnic pays 3000 US$ monthly to SDNP for the 256 KBit uplink and 512 downlink connection.

Carlo further talked about person of the Wirless community, some of them I know from the Chaos Communication Congress (like Freifunk.net etc.). I watched a speech of Elektra Wagenrad at the congress last year about “Wifi Longshots” in Bangladesh. This know-how is also part of the ICTP wireless workshop and is a convenient technology for Africa. A lot of connection cables are digged out of the grounds and find different uses. The wireless technology can bridge big distances (world record 279 km) and cover wide areas. Together with the wireless meshed networking technology it can split many different access points with low bandwidth.

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.

The 23rd chaos communication congress will take place from the 27th until 30st of december 2006 in Berlin. This years congress stands under the “23” and keeps the nice title: “Who can you trust?”. Because the Malawi project fits nice together with this title, I’ll hava a talk myself at the third congress day about Malawi.

The CD-Duplicatemachine from Andrew Msiska is close to be finished. The woodbox is now full of african carvings. The eagle stands for Andrews Artist Company, the chamäleons are dedicated to Alex, the dicdics to Ramon and the monkey to me. What about the Gnu? The Gnu is dedicated to all Gnu Friends.

Iwould like to add, that the computernerds from here, when they come into the office and see this beautifull box, they get little stars in their eyes. One Student likes it so much, that he would like to build one also for his computer.

More detail pictures will follow next week. The low Internet bandwidth at the Polytechnic don’t allow large image uploads.

The 2 Thinclient Networks are now properly setup with squid as proxy service and work perfectly. The research and article of Ramon Cahenzli was pretty helpful for the setup, because doing research on the internet in the Polytechnic is very frustrating because of low bandwidth.

The past days we did some stress tests and fine tuning of ltsp, dhcp and squid. The system is pretty fast compared to the old crappy computers of the Polytechnic. We’re now waiting for an order of about 12 TFT screens from South-Africa to be installed with the thinclients. The handover will probably take place next week.

After Andrew has produced some stamps for his artists company I also wanted to produce some stamps for myself. One of the samples was the “Heckert GNU”.

Nathalie and me have decided to publish all photographic pictures, that we took in 2006 in Malawi will be released under the GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License). This “copyleft” license allows the use, copying and redistribution under the condition that the work keeps it’s freedom and the author is mentioned.

The drawings, that were made by Nathalie are published under a similar license called Creative Commons “Attribution ShareAlike” Lizenz. This license also allows the copying and redistribution under the conditions that the author is mentioned and the work keeps its freedom.

*(White people think… Black people think…)

We all dont really like to think in cliches, but somethime it is not so easy.
How shell we be able to read pictures from places we never had the chance to smell, never were able to listen to the noise it does? Our brain automaticly puts together a picture, a meaning made out of this little pieces we get on the other edge.

Munthu in Chichewa means human beeing. Because we, Alex and me, have white skin, we can not be Munthu, we are Azungu. (Azungu=Ghost, today used for white person).
That only people with black skin are Munthu, might sound somehow strange. Our Chichewateacher did explain it to us like this:
The word Munthu originates from the time bevore any white guy stept on the african continent. According to this, a human beeing was a beeing with black skin, walking on two feets.
Suddenly a white guy apeard, they where very surprised, they thougth this must be a ghost, an Azungu.
So, Munthu means human beeing, but without the white ones. You got it? 🙂

Somehow i thougth this issue of the skins color is not a big one anymore. Im very surprised, about myself and my surrounding, that it is still a big one. Not necessarily in a discriminating way to each other, its more something you can’t hide, you will always see.
For us one of the fact is, that everithing is a little bit more expensive. Tomatos, Onions, Bananas, what ever you want. If the seller goes much to much over the normal price, (cause we slowly do know the possible prices) we say: “com’ on, this is Azungu price!!, give me Okuda price..”
So basicly. In the venes of a white guy, ther must flow gold instud uf blood, or even platin.
In the other way, if we think honestly about it, are this strange pictures we have about Okuda. The picture from this wilde wilde human beeing, eating things like grasshoppers, ants and snakes, that probably lives on a tree, who is poor and without education.

So i started to draw this kind of pictures. The first ones you can see below.