My African trip (Part 2)

While we were on flight to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, the pilot made an announcement that Mount Kilimanjaro was visible on our left. Nishant came running to me, all excited asking me to take a look through the window. Seeing the commotion about the whole thing, I requested the person on the window seat to give up his seat for a few minutes while I took some pictures. Only the Kilimanjaro, with its snow laden peak, along with a nearby peak called Mt. Meru was clearly visible, rest everything was hidden beneath the clouds. Kilimanjaro is actually Africa's highest peak, standing at about 5892m above sea level. The Kilimanjaro has a funny bowl-shape, perhaps they are the bowls of the Gods, from which They spit fury at the earth, yes, the mountain is volcanic. I really wish I had taken the window seat, because I had to abandon my position soon. Nishant was luckier in this respect.

We were going to Dar Es Salaam to attend the OpenRosa conference, a conference for the members of OpenRosa consortium involved in the development of JavaRosa. JavaRosa is an open source solution that can be used for collection of data through mobile phones. The OpenRosa conference was to bring together the people involved in development of JavaRosa and the implementers who used this technology in the field of public health. So the conference was as much about Public Health as much as it was about JavaRosa.

A taxi was found waiting for us at the airport, as had already been communicated to us through email. Dar Es Salaam is a nice city with good infrastructure and good roads, almost comparable to our very own Bangalore or New Delhi. On the way, I saw 3-wheelers of many different colors - green, yellow, blue, red, all of them from Bajaj. In fact, a localite who was attending the conference, surprised me when he told me later on, what these 3-wheelers in Tanzania are called. Guess what, they are not called autos, auto-rickshaws or even 3-wheelers but they are called Bajaj. I didn't see too many 2-wheelers, they are not commonly used as in India, since they are considered a bit unsafe.

It took us an hour to wade through the crowded city, but when we reached our destination - the Kunduchi Beach Resort, all our tiredness evaporated. There was a beautiful fountain in front of the main entry to the resort. As I went inside the resort to the reception, I was fascinated by the architecture and the beautiful designs I could see there. It was a big resort, well-decorated and gave the impression of pure luxurious living. Ah, and I missed the most important thing, the resort was situated on the shores of the Indian ocean.

At the reception, Natalie gave us a warm welcome. She was the person responsible for the smooth running of things at the conference. She took care of our dinner, our rooms getting allotted, basically all logistics related to the conference.

We were shown our rooms. The rooms were big, air conditioned, came with a television that had few interesting channels to watch, but then who came here to watch TV. There were 2 beds to choose from, a nice jacuzzi to relax, a wonderful view of the Indian ocean and the beach. Calling the place luxurious would have been an under-statement!

After keeping our luggage in our rooms, we decided to go out, and meet other people attending the OpenRosa conference. We met Neal Lesh, a representative of a company called D-tree. He was the main organizer of the conference. In technical jargon, I would call him the Administrator of the whole conference.

We also met Heather, a lady from the US who was an implementer in the field of Public health. We met guys from University of Washington, who were working on different projects. One of them I met, told me that he went upto the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Then we moved to have dinner. We had lots of salads, veg-nonveg food available. I had Dal tadka (yes, you read it right) and chapati as dinner along with different salads and vegetables. After dinner, there was a nice dessert waiting for us to indulge ourselves.

During dinner, I happened to strike a conversation with a guy called Sam from Kenya. He told me that he used to spend an hour for development of open source tools related to medical records everyday, and was instrumental in introduction of open source technologies in the university he used to study in, as an alternative to Windows based proprietary systems. Impressive.

After dinner, I roamed around the resort, found a bar, a nice swimming pool and of course, the beach.

The next day, on 20th July 2009, the conference started. We had Neal, starting with the introductions. Then Kieran, a guy from a company called Cell-life gave a short presentation on why collection of data from mobile phones is needed and how can this technology lead to faster results. Then everybody was passed on the mike so that they could introduce themselves - with the condition that they additionally had to tell the audience why they loved their mobile phones. Most of the people came up with funny answers.

After the presentation, we had our coffee-breaks, which were at least 45 minutes long. The extra-long breaks were intended for people to socialize, build bonds, know more about what others were doing and thus serve as a platform for future collaborations. Definitely a wonderful idea.

We had a short training on Xforms after lunch, the technology which is to be used for collecting data in mobiles or even in PCs.

After the conference ended in the evening, myself, Nishant, and the people from Makerere - Laiton, Job and Steven went to the beach. Surprisingly we never got to know the Makerere team very well while we were in Uganda. This was because we never saw them apart from office hours. Now, we were living together in a beautiful place, so bond-building was happening.

After the beach stroll, we found people playing beach volleyball, so we joined in. Soon, we switched to football and had fun together.

The next day, 21st July, we had various presentations from the representatives of companies associated with open source and Javarosa. After lunch, the people were divided into 2 sections, one was the Coder's corner where all the geeks sat together and discussed what they liked best - code and the second one, the lesser mortals like us who took part in brainstorming sessions as an exercise to learn how to solve problems in the field of Public health where a technological solution could be adopted.

In the evening, we had a cocktail party. Various hard-drinks, soft-drinks and food were available. We tapped to the rhythm of music as we enjoyed ourselves together. We also went for a stroll on the beach after the party to take in the fresh air.

On the third day of the conference, we had our presentation as we were newly added to the OpenRosa consortium. We basically had to tell the people what we were doing. We continued the usual discussions and brainstorming sessions of yesterday and later gave our presentation. The presentation went fairly well, but I do regret the fact that since we were new to open-source, we didn't have much to show, we just talked about our plans. Fair enough.

With our presentation behind us, along with the Makerere team, we decided to go to the city of Dar Es Salaam, since we didn't had the taste of the city yet. We boarded a mini-bus to a place called Mwenge (pronounced Moin-ge) which was famous for its souvenir shops. At one shop, after lots of bargaining, I brought two African map wall hangings as souvenirs. I bought them at half the price the shopkeeper was asking for.

We came back to Kunduchi and had dinner - Laiton christened it 'the last supper'.

On the fourth and final day of the conference, we had feedbacks, suggestions and  discussions about the conference. The proceedings ended at about 12 pm. Our flight was at 4:30 pm, so we had lunch, and bid farewell to all people and the friends we made at the conference.

Taxi was ready as usual on time. We reached the airport and boarded Emirates flight to Dubai and then to home sweet home - Bangalore, with a kilo of Swiss chocolates bought from the Dubai airport.

I learnt many things from this conference. The passion of people working in the area of public health made me feel good and motivated to work in this area. I learnt more about open-source and how people are trying to build their revenue model on Open source technologies, something which we are looking at, ourselves.

Thanks to Natalie, Neal and other people behind this conference, everything was so well organized that I marvel at the fact that there were no problems and issues, no last-minute goof-ups during the whole conference.

I had a wonderful time in Tanzania at the conference, though I missed going on an African safari, which would have set me back by about $500, a bit expensive. Maybe next time.