Loading up the Kio Kits for our education expedition to Samburu

The trip from Nairobi went well, as you can expect when you’re on the best roads in Kenya. There was only one small problem with a fuel line on the tired out old 1981 R80G/S when we got to Archer’s Post. I’m not bitter at all that my much nicer 2007 Suzuki DR650 is constantly overlooked by everyone as they drool over the old Beemer. We fixed the fuel line by finding a local motorcycle mechanic and raiding his parts bin.

Fixing a fuel line on the 1981 BMW

Shortly after, we shunted off of the main road into the dirt and made our way past Kalama town. Kiltamany Primary School lies about 15km past Kalama, and is the education facility for 170 children. We rolled into the school as the sun was setting, to the singing of the women in the community and the elders waiting for us for initial introductions.

An unexpected outcome of the evening was that we were going to be shown how the women are learning. Sylvester, the younger Samburu man who was responsible for this program, explained that he had built this program to teach the older women and mothers in the community how to read and do basic maths in order for them to understand the value of it. This encourages them to send their girls to school for the full first 8 years of primary school, and possibly beyond.

What was encouraging to see was just how hungry for learning the women in the community were. Sylvester asked us to be the teachers for the evening, so Nivi took over the classroom and worked through some mathematics with the ladies.

The Kio Kit was brought from the vehicle and the ladies watched a video on counting and number placement in Kiswahili. It’s by one of our partners, Ubongo Kids, out of Tanzania. This is one of the great values of the digital education kit, and our content agnostic approach, since we can partner with specialists on education content from anywhere and help get distribution of their content to the far edges of the country.

The Kio Kit about to be introduced to Samburu women

We ended the night with the Samburu elders showing us a luga (dry riverbed) and leaving us to camp for the night. Most places don’t have great connectivity, but we’re getting fairly strong 3g reception here and are able to do posts like this fairly easily.

Day 2 is going to be spent with the children from the school. Focusing on training up the teachers on digital tools like the Kio Kit and making sure that they’re comfortable, then doing some classroom exercises with the students.

This morning finds us on the road north of Nairobi, heading to Samburu country in northern Kenya. [Actually, it finds us delayed by 2 hours as we troubleshoot a bit of the new education software, but that’s besides the point!]

Each year we do an expedition, last year we did a trip to Uganda testing around education. The year before that we went up to the shores of Lake Turkana. Here’s a video from our trip last year to South Africa overland:

Kenya to South Africa / Nairobi to Johannesburg from BRCK on Vimeo.

Samburu Schools

This year we’re going up to Samburu county to do two installations of our BRCK Education school system called the Kio Kit. This kit comes with 40 seven-inch tablets that are all wirelessly charged and the BRCK device acts as the brains of the network, loading content supplied by a number of different partners. All the info on the Kio Kit is in this video below.

We Introduce the Kio Kit from BRCK on Vimeo.

The trip north takes us to a school near Archer’s Post, and then a couple days later to one near Korr. Both of them are well off the road, but have been electrified by the Kenya government’s school electrification program. So, while we’re going with some extra solar kits, we’re expecting to be able to use the school’s power system.

On this trip is Mark (UX), Jeff (Design), Nivi (Education), Janet (Ops), Rufus (Customer Service) as well as Philip, myself, Juliana and Peter. It’s a full roster and we’re looking forward to having an adventurous road trip.

We’ll be posting on this trip for the next few days, so you can follow along here on our blog, on our Twitter account @BRCKnet and on our Instagram account @BRCKnet.

With all the hubbub about the team’s epic three week dash to South Africa and back, some may have forgotten that only a month and a half ago, the other half of the team were cruising Lake Victoria and the Nile in Uganda. The video edit is done, though, so we’re bringing it back!

We started off with a plan to work with Johnny Long of Hackers for Charity to connect schools around Jinja to the internet and learn from local educators how we can build technology that meets their needs:

http://brck.com/2014/11/brck-expedition-2014-exploring-edtech-on-the-water/#.VJP-mACU

We wound up visiting the Living Hope Secondary School on Lingira Island in Lake Victoria:

http://brck.com/2014/11/brcked-expedition-connecting-lingira-secondary-school/#.VJP–ACU

http://brck.com/2014/11/brcked-expedition-part-two/#.VJP-8ACU

On the boat ride back, we broke out our OpenROV underwater exploration robot:

http://brck.com/2014/11/going-deep-with-openrov/#.VJP_JACU

Finally, we took a raft trip down the White Nile to play with antennas and sensors, to see how the Internet of Things could help conservation efforts in threatened ecosystems:

http://brck.com/2014/11/how-the-internet-of-things-can-help-save-our-rivers/#.VJP_TACU

You can see all that and more (read: zany BRCK team adventures) in the video above. It’s been a heck of a year for us here in Nairobi, and we can’t wait to see what 2015 brings! (Did someone say they need a weather station on Mt. Kenya…?)

It has been 18 days since we left Nairobi for South Africa, then returned to Kenya. In that time, we passed through 8 countries, 18 border posts, covered 9,000 kilometers and saw some of Africa’s amazing beauty and realized just how vast of a continent we live and work on.

Sunrise riding is beautiful

A BRCK Expedition is meant to be challenging, as well as provide a testing environment for the device, and of course to have fun as well – this was all of those things.

Philip fixes his broken throttle cable roadside, early morning in Tanzania

Our path to SA and back to KE

Through the BRCK, and partners like Inmarsat (with their iSavi device), we were able to stay connected on the road to the internet. We learned about the hassles of SIM buying, registering, activating, buying airtime and converting that to internet data in each country. On the motorcycles we stayed in conversation using Sena headsets, which meant we could warn each other of dangers, as well as have conversations on future products and features (of which there are many). Around campfires in the night we discussed our current challenges and ways we could make things better.

Inmarsat iSavi, BRCK, computer and solar panels

The team back home, as well as our families, tracked our progress and helped us remotely out of some problems. Whether that was trying to get the information on the gap needed on a 1983 BMW R65 spark plug, or finding a place for us to camp in the next couple hours when things got a bit dicey. Having the ability to communicate and people who anchor the expedition team were amazing luxuries to have.

We used a couple channels for public updates, including the BRCK Twitter and Instagram accounts, Open Explorer as our geographic diary of sorts, and of course the BRCK blog. However, on the trip north we also had a cool gift from the Inmarsat team of a satellite tracker for the vehicle.

The route back north to Kenya

A Few of the Best and Worst Experiences:

[BEST] Makuzi Beach Malawi – a beautiful, unexpected, and much welcomed oasis. We did amazingly well on our 500km that morning, so were there by lunch and had a whole afternoon to rest, fix things and have some fun before continuing.

Paul drives the underwater OpenROV

Matt catches this amazing sunrise in Lake Malawi

[BEST] Hospitality of Tech Communities in Africa – It was amazing to roll into Lusaka, Zambia and be welcomed by the BongoHive and find the same in Harare, Zimbabwe from HyperCube and the tech community there. Finding like-minded individuals who were wonderful hosts was just what we needed.

At HyperCube in Harare, Zimbabwe

[BEST] BRCK Working Everywhere – Having someone in the vehicle working to get the BRCK going with a new SIM in a new country, as it was attached to an amp and vehicular mounted antenna, meant that we could stay connected (almost always). Rolling up on the vehicle and watching my phone sync up with messages and updates was cool, even in traffic. Mostly, it was gratifying to see the tech we had built withstand the harshness of travel and terrain, and just work.

Kurt readies a BRCK with the Wilson signal booster

[WORST] Border Crossings – It’s a toss-up whether the Tunduma Border crossing from Tanzania into Zambia is worse than the Beit Bridge border crossing from South Africa into Zimbabwe. The first is a chaotic mess, and the second is a process nightmare. (Note: Crack-of-dawn is the best time to do both crossings)

Beit Bridge border process into Zimbabwe

[WORST] Speed bumps and Police in Tanzania – The speedbumps in every town slow you down, plus the number of police waiting to stop any vehicle. The worst are the ones with radar guns, as their only mission is revenue generation. It seems that all Tanzanian police are unsubtly looking for bribes all of the time.

A police officer in Tanzania not asking for a bribe

[WORST] SIM card frustrations in new countries – Kurt wrote about this in a past post, so won’t belabor it, but it was extremely annoying to have to figure out the obscure and opaque mysteries of getting a SIM card connecting to the internet in each country. One of my personal goals is to make this easier for other travelers in the future.

Before we left Nairobi, 2 weeks ago, I though that a 500km day on a motorcycle was a long time. Now I just ask, “well, what will we do in the afternoon then?”

BRCK truck top

Our setup of BRCK plus Amp plus Car antenna

We left Harare, where the Arensen’s had hosted us for two nights in their lovely home, for a bit of a long day. We were gambling that we could make it through the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border AND then the Mozambique-Malawi border in good enough time to get to a campsite by the end of the day. A quick breakfast of chai, coffee and pre-boiled eggs underneath a baobab tree saw us to the first border in good time.

The Douane border crossing is less busy than it’s Beit Bridge counterpart. Leaving Zimbabwe, the customs and immigration officials are efficient and helpful. Getting into Mozambique was equally problem-free, especially since we had all gone to get our visas already.

A rickety wooden bridge in Malawi

Philip, solving problems in Kenya, while on the road in Malawi

Kurt with Lobo in the vehicle

My Suzuki DR650

Now, Mozambique, this part of it anyway where you shoot across the Tete corridor towards Malawi, is a hot, dry and barren land. The only thing of any note is the nice bridge you cross over the Limpopo river passing through the city of Tete. Besides that, I’d suggest it’s not a place you want to spend any time.

Two interesting things happen as you run to the Malawi border. First, you realize that you cross back and forth between the two countries a couple times on the way. Second, when you pass through the Mozambique side of the border you’re still 5km from the Malawi border crossing. Strange… but, again border crossings are not about security, they’re about revenue generation.

The Mozambique customs officials had clearly never seen a Carnet de Passage (it’s like a passport for your vehicle), so they acted like it was something they couldn’t stamp. We were able to convince them that it was something normal, and that their colleague at the previous border had stamped it, so they could as well. Stamped and moving, we shot off for the campground, as we saw a storm rolling in.

It was at this time that our small team mascot, Lobo the Australian cattle dog puppy, decided to have an explosive experience inside of the vehicle. Many curses were heard as people sprayed themselves down, and cleaned out the dog’s carrier. Praying for a dry night, we took off a bit behind schedule, and still managed to roll into Bushman’s Baobabs (great place), and had a warm still night of sleep.

500km up Lake Malawi

Off early, as always, we were half-way to our destination by 9:30am and got to camp by just after noon. As an aside, I think the word “Malawi”, and the flag symbol, all are pointed at the meaning of “land of the bicycle”. We saw so many people on bicycles today, more than in any other country we’ve been to.

The bicycles of Malawi

Makuzi Beach area of Lake Malawi is beautiful, and having a full afternoon ahead of us was something we didn’t know quite what to do with. So, of course we broke out the drone and OpenROV to have some fun.

We got some shots.

The OpenROV set to try Lake Malawi

Philip getting ready with the drone

Lobo checking out a shell

Matt Schoenhold of Teague playing with the OpenROV

Philip managed to crash the drone into the lake, so we’re trying to see if we can resurrect it. (Update: we dried it out all night and now it’s working again. DJI makes an amazingly hardy device)

We had a grand idea of Paul driving the OpenROV underwater vehicle under a rock and taking a video of someone jumping into the water. We kind of did that, the problem was the cable was a bit short. The other problem was that it cut my toe with a blade as it came up directly underneath me. The good thing is that we had a lot of fun trying and leaned some of the limits of the vehicle.

There is now a beautiful, slow moonrise happening at 9pm, over Lake Malawi. We’re all well, fat and happy. The bikes and Land Rover have been behaving well. We’re set for our early AM departure as we have 750 kilometers and a border crossing to go through.

We had a long 17 hour day on the road yesterday. We did this to compensate for over 10 hours lost fixing the Land Rover in Johannesburg. We started at 4:30 in the morning and stopped at around 10p.m. But that has become normal.  Covering over 820km a day is something we have stopped noticing too much. Something else was noticeable getting into Zimbabwe from South Africa. There was a surreal binary switch from Africa-lite to the real Africa.

Right from the border, after the South African side, you drive into this huge frenzy of hundreds if not thousands of people, busses, trucks and people offering to fix the border process for you so you clear in a few hours and not take the whole day. I understood why Beitbridge border in Zimbabwe is considered one of the worst crossings in the entire continent. One experienced traveller told me it took him 3 days to get through once.

After 3 hours of Erik’s quick thinking and some local help, we were lucky to go through. Once inside Zimbabwe, there was a surreal feeling on former optimism and progress. A restaurant that was once nicely done, now a shell of its former glory. A mall with half the shops in business, roads that must have once been beautiful to drive, but slowly withering from the edges in, making driving and riding on them quite dangerous, especially coming against wide load trucks in blinding full lights in the pitch black wilderness. We were back to real Africa.

We tried to get a local SIM in a mall and this too was a surreal experience. We have done this in every country to test the BRCK. Once a full mall now with only a handful of shops.  This on the other hand had formed the perfect breeding ground for hustlers. Local fixers who could get you anything you had come to buy from the mall. They have SIM cards, airtime, you name it.

The cell connectivity is the worst we have found so far. Even with a multi directional antenna, we could only connect sparingly across the journey, which was not surprising since along the road down, there was nothing. Long stretches of amazing scenic natural beauty but little signs of civilization.

One thought I had as we drove from village to village was how could access to information affect the situation in Zimbabwe? What if these school kids, vendors, villagers had access to the internet? How would that affect their situation? Their country? Thats fascinating thought.

Paul and I flew down to Johannesburg on Monday and spent some time helping prepare for when the team arrived.  We looked for mechanics shops for all the vehicles, I had some meetings and Paul prepared for Maker Faire.

Now we get to join the guys as we dash back up to Nairobi!  I have wanted to do such a trip since I was a high schooler in Nairobi and Paul has also had visions of taking a motor bike across Africa. So we were both very excited to have this opportunity.  And we still are… but today didn’t start off the way we would have chosen.

This Mark and I went to check on how the Land Rover was fairing.  The mechanic was already there, trying to get us on the road as early as possible.  Unfortunately it didn’t have an indicator console, a steering wheel, a passenger door panel, nor any wheels on when we arrived.  Johannesburg has been suffering from load shedding for a while now and we got to feel the pain yesterday.  Without electricity, the tire shop was unable to get the tires ready yesterday.  So while he went to get the tires Mark and I got to installing a GPS tracker that our friends at Inmarsat had generously loaned us.  It didn’t take to long to give it power and arrange the antennas, unfortunately the truck was inside the shop so the GPS was unable to connect.

By about 12:30 the truck had a brand new set of wheels, things were settled with the mechanic and we were on the road.  Unfortunately that lasted about 10 min.  Coming up to a stop light something started squeaking and 100m later the truck screeched to a halt; a wheel had seized up.  We were not able to call the mechanic so I quickly just jogged back to the shop, which luckily was less than a mile back.  The mechanic had to make a couple of trips back to the shop so in the mean time I figured, hey, I wonder if the GPS is working.  So on the side of the road I booted up my computer, got online (we are BRCK after all!) and sure enough, there we were sitting on Malibongwe Drive!  We are currently looking into feeding that data live to our other feeds so stay tuned!

It turns out the rear stub axle had seized.  We were able to let the affected wheel coast and drive back to the shop.  By 4:30 we had removed the bad axle, cannibalized a good one from another Defender 11o and were back on the road.

Meanwhile back at the guest house the guys had simply had to wait for us.  As soon as we rolled in the driveway they were tossing gear up on the roof rack and filling up the back.  And at 5:30, about 9 hours after our ideal departure time, we were on the road up to Zimbabwe.

Fortunately the roads in South Africa are amazing and the traffic very organized.  We made excellent time until 8pm.  Then we hit a weather system which included heavy rain and some incredible wind.  The bikers got soaked so we stopped around 9pm so they could change and we could get some food.  But the system passed us while we were stopped so we had to get through it again.  After running it twice the bikers were just frozen so we called it a day, found a hotel to get a decent nights sleep.

To make up for the lost time we need to be on the road again in about 4 hours!  But that’s OK, as always told my campers years ago, “It’s not an adventure if everything goes as planned!”

The BRCK and Gearbox tables at Maker Faire Africa in Johannesburg

We’ve been excited to show up at Maker Faire Africa (old site) in Johannesburg for quite a few months, so actually being there yesterday was a big deal for us. Especially as we had driven 4,400km to be here and it was our primary goal for the journey.

The BRCK table certainly drew our fair share of interest at Maker Faire Africa this year. While Maker Faires elsewhere often feature the likes of fire-breathing dragon statues and other impressive works of art, making in Africa has a slightly different tone. The Faire in Joburg had plenty of amazing artwork – not least of which was a 30-foot tall LED light sculpture made of CNC’ed plywood and steel that looked amazing as the sun went down – but it also featured a leveling device for brick layers to make high-quality masonry easier to achieve. There’s a strong enterprising spirit to many local makers, and lots of them were keen to learn BRCK’s story of starting a hardware company in Africa.

From questions about sourcing components, to finding access to tools, financing, and marketing expertise, makers from across the continent wanted to know BRCK’s story of taking a uniquely African innovation to commercializable product. We held a joint workshop with the Gearbox team on how to take a product design from idea to prototype to production, and showed lots of people how they could leverage their experience in the local market and knowledge of the local context to develop innovative new products that no one else in the world would be capable of making.

While this year’s MFA is a bit smaller than in years past, we were still in great company with people building drones, robots, DIY kids electronics kits, 3D printers and a guy who built his own art car and skinned it in denim. (The best coverage is found on HTXT.africa. There were these guys who had built a small remote-controlled hovercraft who kept sliding it around, as well as a whole space setup for people to 3D print and make their own things.

Prototyping to Manufacturing

MFA is a great event, if for no other reason than that it brings together the engineers and inventors in an area together. There’s a lot of learning and connections made, and then more things happen afterwards. The other thing that happens is that people who are inventing new things are found by media and business people who can help them.

Last year there wasn’t a Maker Faire Africa, so we at BRCK weren’t able to showcase our prototype-level devices. This year, we had one of the more polished items at the event.

There’s a lot that needs to happen between your first hacked together prototypes and a real production run of a new product. This is why I think providing an on-ramp to manufacturing is the obvious place to go next with Africa’s inventors. This is why we’re helping to build Gearbox in Nairobi. We need people, training and machines that can take guys with great ideas and early prototypes, and move them into becoming real businesses.

The foundation is a lot more hardware-based prototyping, whether that’s Fundibots in Uganda, MakerHut in Zambia is trying to foster a community around hardware, and there’s a lot of activity in robotics groups by engineering students in Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and Senegal much of it happening in their respective tech hubs.

[As an aside: read Bankole’s post on “Africa needs an Industrial Revolution“]

The next layer is what we need to plan for next. So, while we’re thinking of Gearbox in Kenya, there are others doing the same in South Africa (who has always had a great manufacturing base). What others are out there? Who else is creating a program, space and bringing together that city’s inventors and engineers to not just create prototypes, but take things to market?

Thanks goodness for BRCK. 

Unfortunately this will be my last expedition post this trip. I’ve had to leave the guys early to make a dash north to sort out some business. If it weren’t for BRCK I’d still be in Livingstone. When the news came that I had to come back to Nairobi, we knew we had 40 minutes to get flights. The BRCK was fired up, with in a minute we were online, and 4 of us rapidly trying to find the fasted route north. Its times like this that the utility of BRCK really shines!

Earlier in the day the BRCK became a lifesaver as well. On the road from Lusaka to Livingstone, a short 563km journey, the Land Rover developed a nasty fuel system problem with the fuel lines filling with air every 20km or so, stalling the truck mid drive. Stopping every 20km to bleed the fuel system makes for a LONG trip (14 hours I believe!). Out came the BRCK, and everyone who wasn’t driving was delving into Land Rover forums the world over trying to work out what the problem was, then trying twitter, facebook and instagram asking for help. Eventually diagnosing the problem as a faulty lift pump. Another quick Google search for a replacement lift pump in Livingstone and we were on the way again.

Trying to get help with a buggered 300TDi fuel system

Power issues again. 

We are an expedition company, and as such, our vehicles are kitted out more than most. We’ve got a 1500W 110V inverter wired in to the battery, 4 x 5A Cigarette jacks, and dual 12V batteries powering all the kit we have on the road. The biggest problem? Finding cables! Every time we have to charge a GoPro, power the Satellite internet or charge the motorbike headset, a mad scramble ensues trying to find the adapter, cable, or correct power BRCK. This is why we love the microUSB. As from Part I, we know its not perfect, but now we are torn. What should we use!

Knowing your limits

Getting the BRCK online in Tanzania and Zambia has been really easy, in fact, other than getting SIM’s and working out the crazy commands, the BRCK’s have been working flawlessly. One area that has popped up constantly is ‘how good is my signal now’. Driving from village to village the signal fluctuates quite a bit. We are working now to streamline the process of finding out how your BRCK is doing now.

Back in Nairobi we are working feverishly to take what the team and I have learnt to get some updates ready for the trip north on Saturday.

Working on new wireframes with information from the expedition south

Along this trip, we are really putting the BRCK to the test. We are trying as hard as we can to dog-food this thing in the most extreme environments to see where it falls down and where it stands
up. Here is just a snippet of what we’ve learn’t so far. Some of it reinforces what we know and a lot of it, thankfully, is breaking down our preconceptions.

“Pickin’ up good vibrations”

We did a lot to make BRCK robust, we’ve used thicker than normal circuit boards, everything is tied down with multiple methods and in all directions. Hitting these washboards, thowing the BRCKs in
the truck and just plain misusing it has shown a few things. So far its done well, with all our BRCKs behaving flawlessly, other than one small thing. The microUSB cable keeps walking out! We know
we need to move away from this connector, but we really love it for so many reasons. Its one less cable to lose, one less to carry, and I have 20 spares at home.

450km of this. #brckexpedition

A photo posted by Reg (@regorton) on Nov 11, 2014 at 9:30pm PST

Dust and Water (Fire and Ice?) 

Dust, its part of what defines Africa and part of what makes working in this continent so hard. The dust here is like nothing I’d seen before moving here, and something that is hard to comprehend.
If you look back in the blog, you may see our trip to Turkana. In this trip, we changed a lot about how V1 was made, specifically we moved the power button from the top to the side, and really
improved its weather sealing. Its these small changes that make a huge difference out here in the bundus. Driving from Arusha to Dodoma in Tanzania reinforced that thought. While the BRCK fared quite
well, it always astounds me where dust can get to.

We’ve often run on the theory that if you have a BRCK, you have a smartphone, laptop or some other high value equipment. Unfortunately this trip has shown that’s just not as valid as we hoped. The
BRCK is your often your only connection, your lifesaver, your redundancy. I have a laptop, a phone and iPad and many more, any one of these can get me online. I think the assumption is not true any more.

“Failure is not an option.”

But it will happen. We have to be realistic here. We are working in environments that are tough, dirty, messy and we must. As above, in order to make the device less complex we purposefully used
the thought pattern that ‘the BRCK will do the hard work for you’, but its frustrating to just wait in the dark. I want to know why it’s failing, and I want to help it get online now. We are activly working on improving the offline experience of the BRCK, like said before, its not going to be a traditional router experience, but conversational, something that gives you the information you need to know, but isn’t just for a networking expert to understand. With us on the trip is Mark Kamau, from the iHub UX lab, Mark is going to help us form a better mechanism for explaining why you damned BRCK isn’t working and how you can get it back online.

The Land Rover just 48 hrs before departure

“Right here, right now”

This trip has been taxing, and we are only half way though. Sometimes in these taxing times when you are tired, dehydrated and hungry the last thing I want to have do is fiddle with tech, all I
wnat to do is make sure things are working, send an email home and get to bed. Right now there are 2 speed hiccups with BRCK. Firstly boot time, the BRCK typically boots in less than 45 seconds,
but then latching a network takes time and if something goes wrong then trying to rectify that with antennas, APN settings, checking the charge level all take time. Also, just doing prechecks in
the morning takes time, there are many things to do. Check the oil, check the tyre pressure, GPS batteries, everything bolted down and . Right now, we are working on the offline functionality to
speed this up and give you more information right there. For V2 we are going to address this, additionally, we are investigating display options so that you can see the status of your BRCK even
when its off, getting you all the information you need instantly.