Note: This article is available on the Oregonian website (oregonlive.com),
but only as part of the pay-to-use archives.
The Oregonian / TechNW Section, Page 1
April 23, 2001
MY NEW START IN AFRICA
BY JEAN MACDONALD
SPECIAL TO THE OREGONIAN
Editor's note: Jean MacDonald, a Portland teacher and practitioner of
Web site design, provided the following dispatch and the accompanying
photographs this week by filing them via e-mail from cyber cafes in Ghana.
MAKING WEB PAGES IN AFRICA, AS SHE DISCOVERS,
TAKES A BIT MORE FINESSE, WITH LESS BANDWITH
THAN IN THE STATES
ACCRA, Ghana * During my interview for Geekcorps, a program that sends
high-tech volunteers to developing countries, the recruitment director
pointed out that I would be going to a West African nation only five
degrees north of the equator.
"It will be very sunny and very hot there all the time," the recruiter
said. "Can you cope?"
I just laughed and said, "Spending February, March and April in that
kind of weather sounds pretty appealing to a Portland resident!"
My stint here in Accra, the capital city of Ghana, ends this week. Of
everything I expected from this program, the weather has most
spectacularly lived up to its billing. Other aspects of the experience,
including the success of my work here and my relationships with my fellow
so-called geeks, have provided a few surprises.
The driving force behind the nonprofit program is Ethan Zuckerman, for
whom the description "twentysomething dot-com millionaire geek" might
be accurate, but hardly comprehensive. Yes, he was a co-founder of
Tripod, a hugely successful Internet community that Lycos bought for $58
million in 1998.
Yet, he also was a philosophy major in college and a Fulbright scholar
in Ghana, where he studied African drumming. His experience in Africa
gave him the idea of a techie Peace Corps. After the Tripod sale, he had
the means to join a wave of dot-com philanthropists, making his concept
a reality.
Geekcorps' goal is to spread skills * and use of the World Wide Web *
around the world.
Volunteers are matched up with local companies. Each company
designates an employee to be a "shadow partner" who is to learn skills the
company needs. Ours is the second group of geeks in the first country where
Geekcorps has set up shop. This fall, the program plans to bring geeks
to the Dominican Republic.
I first read about Geekcorps in The Industry Standard, the weekly
Internet business magazine. A very brief article described Accra, and
something about an experience there sounded appealing.
When it mentioned the region's beaches and lively night life, I
realized I never had thought of Africa as anything other than the setting of
countless CNN reports on ethnic atrocities or military dictators.
But neither the weather nor the night life inspired me to apply.
Instead, at 40, I was just ready for a challenge. I had been an
independent Web designer since 1997, ever since I left Portland-based
PrintPaks, the children's multimedia software start-up where I was Internet
marketing manager and localization producer. The business had gone well,
keeping me busy designing sites for small, mostly art-related
businesses * interesting clients. I'd also been teaching Web design, most
recently on the faculty of Pacific Northwest College of Art.
But I had a yen for something completely different, something that
would challenge me to see things differently. My mother had died of breast
cancer last year. "Life is short" may be a cliche, but it's true. My
mom's death got me thinking about what was important to me and what
things I had yet to do.
Africa seemed like a fertile place to get a new perspective on work
and life.
The program also sounded tailor-made for my skill set. I have taught a
lot of people Web design and Internet skills at PNCA. I love
introducing students to the excitement of publishing Web sites.
I also have experience helping businesses get their start on the Web.
It's been rewarding to introduce them to basic Internet concepts and
develop Web sites that meet their needs and budgets.
On the other hand, I don't do any programming and I don't play Quake,
so I was afraid I would not make the cut as a geek. As it turned out,
those were not requirements. (But the question of who is a geek has
enlivened many a discussion.)
The eight of us in the current group brought know-how in a wide range
of technical areas: Java and Perl programming, wireless Internet,
database development, geographic information systems, Web development and
graphic design. Geekcorps chose us based on the expertise that local
businesses requested.
In early January, we met for 10 days of training at Geekcorps
headquarters in the Western Massachusetts town of North Adams, near Williams
College, where Ethan went to college.
There, I realized my first task of cultural adaptation was to relate
to my peers. They are all guys, average age 27, almost all programmers.
If I hear the question, "What languages do you know?," I think of
French, German, Russian, some Italian and Spanish. But the rest of this gang
is talking about Visual Basic, C++ and the like.
Training concentrated on such subjects as technology in the developing
world, Ghanaian business culture and models of learning.
North Adams offered little else to do. So, Ethan cooked a Ghanaian
feast one night and introduced us to akpeteshie, a distilled palm wine
that tastes a bit like tequila and is innocently described here as "local
gin." He also is a league bowler, so we spent one evening at an alley.
We also watched my DVD of "The Matrix," using my Powerbook, which I
hooked up to a television in our house. Thanks to that feat, the guys
made me an honorary geek.
On Jan. 25, we headed for Accra to meet our partner businesses and
test all of the theories we had discussed.
My Ghanaian partner company, TSS Ltd., is a developer of software for
hotels, insurance companies, stock brokerages and hospitals. It also
provides hardware and networking products and support. TSS wanted to be
able to build Web sites for its software customers. My mission was to
train some of TSS' staff to do Web design.
The first week, the managing director told me he hoped I would impart
"all" of my Web design knowledge before leaving. I quipped that I
should be able to plug in my brain and download everything I knew to a TSS
computers. After a second or two, he realized it was a joke. The quip
comes back to me now, as I compare it to what I actually have
accomplished.
The Ghanaians we are working with are hungry for knowledge, but the
influence of an educational system built on rote learning hinders their
acquisition of computer-related skills.
The programmers among the volunteer group have felt this impediment
most acutely. Their local partners often expect to receive a list of
steps on how to write a program, which they can memorize so that they
always know how to program. In reality, programming requires an intuitive
grasp of underlying principles.
In my case, it's been a little easier. I have spent a good deal of
time teaching HTML, the Web's presentation language, by using handouts
that give code for students to type. My Ghanaian students have responded
well to this method, the same one we use at PNCA.
Internet penetration in Ghana is interesting.
Cyber cafes sit on practically every corner. These places have maybe
10 or 15 personal computers, usually hooked up to one or two modems.
Using them to go online costs about $1.50 an hour * inexpensive for us,
but expensive for Ghanaians. The minimum wage here is about 60 cents a
day.
Connections are incredibly slow. It takes me at least five minutes to
sign onto Yahoo, read an e-mail and respond to it. As far as I can see,
Ghanaians use the Internet only for e-mail and chat. I rarely see
anyone surfing the Web. The few times I've tried, I've given up after
waiting five minutes to load just one or two pages.
The cumbersome Web surfing has serious implications for Web site
design. For one thing, those who might design sites have little experience
looking at them.
One fellow geek works with the online service of Accra's most popular
radio station. The Web site enjoys huge traffic, but a large portion
comes from Ghanaian expatriates in the United States and the United
Kingdom.
The slow state of the Internet here has provided an unexpected benefit
to me. I always disliked Web sites bearing frivolous * and slow-loading
* graphics, especially animated entry pages with no content and no
skip-through option. Here, on the receiving end of such annoyances at their
worst, watching as each piece of an overdesigned home page loads one
bit at a time, I have vowed to be stricter with my own designs, making
sure to trim every kilobyte of flabby file size.
I've gained a new perspective on other things, too.
Ghana is a poor nation. The technology here, even basic services,
would be appalling in the United States. Open sewers are the norm; roads
are full of potholes, where there is any pavement; and telephone service
is a hit-or-miss proposition.
Yet, I really love being here.
It's colorful and lively. The tropical plants, the mangoes and
avocados, and the humidity all transport me to my childhood in Miami. I spend
lunch hours just walking the streets of downtown Accra, when I can find
any space to walk. Vendors occupy practically every inch of available
sidewalk, hawking goods * papayas, snails, batik cloth, soap, or
batteries. By comparison, Portland's streets will seem quiet and empty when I
get home.
Interactivity has a different meaning here. People interact with each
other, not Web sites or video games. The culture is built on
face-to-face interaction. Ghanaians are the friendliest, happiest people you can
meet.
The price of just about everything, for example, is negotiable. Every
time I take a taxi to work, I must bargain with the driver. If I want
to buy some cloth, I have to discuss what it is worth with the seller,
trying to find a common ground. Every transaction requires a
conversation.
The United States seems to be headed in the opposite direction:
Whether with e-commerce, automated telephone dialogues or "U-Scan"
self-service lanes at Fred Meyer, we appear increasingly to value the economic
transaction that lets us avoid live human beings.
Many benefits would come with better technology and connectivity here,
especially in health and education. But I would not say our technical
superiority otherwise makes us better off.
Ghana is more than the problems you see on CNN. The people enjoy a
vibrant culture and strong communities, a kind of connectivity that we can
envy, even as they envy our broadband and cable connections.
My mother was a big people person, loyal to friends and family. She
would have loved it here.
Ghana has reminded me that it is important to put the computer aside *
and to remember that without people, there is nothing to connect.
Copyright © 2001 by Jean MacDonald