Uganda Archives
Village Phone, Photo Presentation
Jan 19, 2007
At the Nokia Technology Media Briefing last November I touched on the Village Phone initiative between Grameen Foundation, my employer and local micro-finance organisations in Uganda. A short photo essay about the Village Phone co-authored with my colleague Indri Tulusan is now ready for download as Powerpoint or PDF [2MB].
To recap - the Village Phone extends regular base station cellular coverage from around 15 kilometers to around 30 kilometers through the use of a village phone kit - an antenna and ten meter cable (shown above) and a coupler (shown below) connected to a regular Nokia 1100 mobile phone plus of course, a micro-finance loan. The net result? In a number of cases it provides the first convenient, reliable and affordable connectivity to the outside world for many rural communities as well as providing a stable income for the local entrepreneur that takes out the loan.
In the spirit of Future Perfect lets start with a simple question: To what extent do villagers need access to mobile phone? Who is in more need of personal, convenient synchronous and asynchronous communication - someone in London who works 9 to 5, 5 days a week or someone in rural Uganda working 5 to 9, 7 days a week? IMHO the impact on quality of life is far greater in the rural context and the some of the innovations this enables are touched on in this longish essay on Shared Phone Use. One example of the benefits of connectivity? Sente - the transfer of money via mobile phone that essentially also extends regular banking services such as the remittance of cash to these communities.
As always, related research here and you can be signed up to receive notification of new downloads by emailing to info at janchipchase dot com with the word subscribe in the subject line.
And the gent featured on the cover of the presentation? A kiosk operator for a rural village phone in Uganda. Cheers to the extended Nokia team for letting us piggyback your work - Johanna, Jens & Suzanne.
Power Up: Street Charging Services in Uganda
Jan 12, 2007
Uganda is a country coping with a severe energy crisis resulting in frequent power cuts. In addition, access to mains electricity in rural locations is limited. Given that mobile phones require power, and access to power can be unpredictable - how do people keep their mobile phones and other electrical devices charged? Last July a Nokia research team travelled to Uganda and explored this issue as part of a more in-depth study into shared phone use.
There are two forms of mobile phone battery charging services in Kampala - either offered as an additional service by phone kiosk operators or as a stand alone service. It costs 500 Ugandan Shillings (0.2 Euro) to have a battery recharged similar to the price of 2 or 3 phone calls. Whist both services appear to thrive there are a number of barriers to use: customers cannot use their phone whilst the battery is being charged; the customer risks, or perceives the risk that their battery being swapped for an inferior one; a perceived risk of phone theft - signs that suggest service providers are not responsible for loss or theft are evident.
For many Ugandan rural communities with no access to mains power car batteries are the primary means of providing electricity to the home. Businesses such as bars also run off car batteries but they are more likely to have their own power generator. A used car battery costs 30 to 40 dollars and can keep a household powered for a month, though in a bar the same battery might last a week. The homes we visited ran electrical items included radios, CD players, television and domestic lighting.
It can take 3 to 5+ days to have a car battery recharged at the process involves delivering the car-battery to a charging service often tens of kilometers away the nearest town that has mains electricity access. The battery is taken and returned by a trusted and friendly taxi driver or trader. It takes 3 days to charge a battery, longer if the town where the service is based itself experiences power cuts. The cost of charging a battery is around 1,000 Ugandan shillings (0.4 Euro), not including delivery. (As a comparison a mobile phone battery costs half as much to be recharged using one of the mobile phone street charging services mentioned above).
How does people's behaviour change when there is intermittent or limited access to power? How can we better support users with limited and intermittent access to power?
Two short presentations co-authored with my colleague Indri Tulusan are available for download from research.nokia.com. The first entitled Power Up: Street Charging Service in Kampala as PowerPoint or PDF [3MB] and Rural Charging Service, Uganda PowerPoint or PDF [2MB].
Readers may also like the related research into shared phone use as well as the full list of presentations and downloads.
Shared Phone Practices
Dec 21, 2006 | 1 Comment
What happens when people share an object that is inherently designed for personal use?
A Nokia Research team set out explore this topic during a July 2006 field study in Uganda with a brief to understand how people share mobile phones. The research builds on prior research from India, China, Nepal and Mongolia and Indonesia.
An longish essay on Shared Phone Use can be found here, and a presentation co-authored with colleague Indri Tulusan entitled Shared Phone Practices: Exploratory Field Research from Uganda and Beyond can be downloaded from research dot nokia dot com here [7MB, PowerPoint]. A full list of related research can be downloaded from here , and you can sign up to be notified of new downloads by email info @ janchipchase.com with the word subscribe in the subject line.
The research team identified 6 shared use practices: an informal service called Sente that essentially enables a mobile phone owner to function as an ATM machine; mediated communication that neatly side-steps issues of technological and textual literacy; the ever popular practice of making missed calls; the pooling of resources to buy the lowest denominations of pre-paid airtime and extend the access days for the phone that is topped up; the use of community address books to reduce errors and (supposedly) encourage phone kiosk customer loyalty; and finally Step Messaging - the delivery of text and spoken messages on foot.
Whilst the baseline benefits of sole ownership and use of a mobile phone are personal, convenient, synchronous and asynchronous communication, the personal and convenient aspects of mobile phone ownership are compromised by sharing. This support the notion that phone sharing (as it is defined at the beginning of the essay) is seen as more of a transition to sole ownership than a naturally stable state.
For many poorer consumers in emerging markets other people's perception that you are connected is the status symbol, a sign that you have arrived and in some senses are worth connecting to. When most of the members of a person's peer group , or society are connected the focus of status shifts to the brand and model of device. phone ownership is not the same as use - if there are cheaper ways to communicate these will be used.
We are increasingly coming across what have termed unlikely consumers, where feature rich and once premium devices in the hands of the very poor and the myriad of ways the devices get there we have dubbed sideways adoption. Today the front-line of telecommunications innovation is in connecting the unconnected, and its a matter of time before today's unlikely consumers become tomorrow's innovators.
Heading to Sikkim early tomorrow for altitude + fresh mountains air, will return in the new year. Oh, and whilst no-one got it totally correct there is a winner for the blinged nano - will be shipped in January.
One Size Does Fit All
Nov 20, 2006
An innovative solution to the problem of an oversized frame.
From a field study in Kyotera, Uganda earlier this year.
Two Wheels Good
Nov 10, 2006
Documenting a city or country from a car is a bit like doing human behavioural research without ever leaving a laboratory - there is worthy stuff you can learn but IMHO you'll pretty soon reach the limitations of what's interesting. Yeah I know, unless of course the focus of your research is car culture itself. But mostly getting out there requires removing the barriers between you and the world around you. What's your excuse when a motorbike and local driver can be yours for as little as 5 Euro for half a day? And even if motorcycle taxi's don't exist in a city of your choice it is possible to engage regular motorbike drivers to engagte in a bit of moonlighting.
Photos from motor cycle field research in Shanghai above, Kampala, Tehran, Hue, Fujian Province and Ho Chi Minh City below.
So you think language an issue? Some of the most effective days spent researching from the back of a motorbike have been with a driver that doesn't speak a word of English/German/Japanese and likewise me struggling to get my tongue around Farsi/Vietnamese/Chinese/Lugandan. What makes for a good research ride? A driver who is sufficiently aware of the passenger but ultimately knows exactly what he can get away with on the road/pavement/cattle path; a comfy passenger seat; plenty of cc's; and ultimately someone who is not phased by requests to stop in wierd places; and ends up anticipating places and peoples of interest.
Pillion highlights from this past year?
Interviewing boda-boda (motorbike taxi) driver's in Uganda for a study of shared mobile phone use, and on one occasion speeding through Kampala sitting Tour de France cameraman style i.e. the wrong way round on the passenger seat trying to get a good shot of a colleague Indri conducting an eventually very successful interview. Trust in your driver is a wonderful thing, especially when near misses are only witnessed after the miss and the only practical alternative is blind panic.
Being baled out of a sticky street situation by a motorbike driver in Tehran who knew just when to come and rescue me from over inquisitive officials. Watching Ho Chi Minh City wake and commute to work - Vietnam is after all still a 2-wheeled culture. The morning included a stop for a double condensed milk coffee and spending the next 30 minutes gripping and tripping.
And finally a day in the mountains of Fujian Province listening to tunes and staring contentedly at the back of a plant pot helmetted rider, who later introduced me to his favourite barber. The size of rock falls that were common in that part of the world would have wiped us out no matter how much wickerware protection he was wearing.
Bargain hard, tip well, don't expect a helmet.
Connecting the Unconnected
Oct 05, 2006
Earlier this week I attended the Nokia Technology Media Briefing in Helsinki. I recommend Bob Iannucci's talk entitled Yesterday - Today - Tomorrow [1MB] and the accompanying podcast - he's a eloquent speaker. The second slide of his presentation highlights how far the telephone industry has come shows how far we still have to go to offer a simple, enjoyable user experience.
My contribution to the event? A presentation entitled Connecting the Unconnected [2MB] that introduced some of the field research methods we've been using; points to why pretty much everyone on the planet can appreciate the benefits of having access to a mobile telephone (personal, convenient synchronous and asynchronous communication, um, naturally) and introduces findings from a recent field study in Uganda and Indonesia into Shared Phone use. I'll expand on couple of points of the presentation in the coming weeks - in particular the practice of pooling resources to buy air time; the on-foot delivery of messages sent to phone kiosks - something that we've termed step messaging; and my personal favourite sente - the informal practice of sending money as airtime that effectively enables the owner of a mobile phone to offer basic ATM services (slides 37 to 40). All examples of innovation through necessity.
I'll post an annotated version of the presentation here at some point.
Visits to the Espoo mothership are always a chance to reconnect the remotely connected - spend face time with internal research clients, in-depth discussions on the implications of field studies and an opportunity to working out where next to focus our efforts. It's fair to say 2007 is lining up to be an interesting year, not that we've been sitting on our hands in '06. The speed at which research turns to actions shouldn't surprise me but it does - all credit to the development teams that make it happen.
Tomorrow I'll be waking up to the sound of Cairo, the exploratory research team rolls on.
Communication, Literacy, Design
Aug 25, 2006
Remote communication requires a means of identifying whom to contact. How do people who can't read and write manage their contact information?
This is just one of the many questions I'll be asking at a presentation on Literacy, Communication, Design to the University of Art and Design Helsinki on the evening of the 14th September. It's hosted by Teemu Leinonen and Andrea Botero Cabrera and is open to the public. It will draw on three years of research by colleagues at the Nokia Mobile HCI Group into low literacy communication practices, a journey that took us from urban and rural India to Nepal, China, Uganda and beyond.
Related research can be found here and as usual when its all done and dusted links to the slides will be posted to here.
The Art of Thinking Ahead
Aug 18, 2006
Noticed after conducting an ad-hoc interview in Lwamagwa with a rural Ugandan policeman.
The reason for the interview was that the spot just above the police station entrance was one of the only places in the village that had regular cellular reception (basically line of sight through a dip in the landscape to a base station). Move the phone a foot either way and the reception was lost. Making and receiving calls required dextrous use of his head set.
Related: Village Phone extended antennas.
Inherent Properties
Aug 18, 2006
The inherent properties of the matoke support carrying by bicycle, as shown here being displayed for sale (in Kyotera, above). Assistance required (Kansensero, below).
Shoe Gazers, Shoe Gazing
Aug 11, 2006 | 3 Comments
Freshly cleaned shoes sitting outside a barbers shop on the outskirts of Kampala. The photos were taken on a Sunday morning - for many locals an opportunity to dress up and head to one of the many hugely popular church services. White shoes have their moments, but they take on particular significance in a country such as Uganda where the dust and dirt makes keeping white shoes white that much more difficult. Numerous kerb-side stalls offered shoe cleaning services - first scrubbed with a toothbrush then left in the equatorial sun to dry and bleach. Which in a round about way leads me to a topic that has facinated me for a while - when you are walking the street and you see someone where do you look? Where do they look?
Walking streets from Tampere or Tokyo and beyond I've noticed that one of the first things that people look at when they check me out is my shoes. The result is the same whether the target of their gaze is a beat up pair of Pumas or brand new pair of Antas. Shoe gazing is a form of sizing-up behaviour that is prevalent particularly (though not exclusively) amongst male youths and it involves four stages. The initial recognition that occurs at a distance of 10 to 15 meters which is trying to figure out whether the person's shoes are of sufficient interest to warrant further investigation. If the wearer's shoes past muster then this is followed by a short period of looking elsewhere - it is after all rude to stare at someone coming towards you even if its at someones shoes. The third stage occurs in close proximity and involves a sequence of quick glances to check out shoe details. Occasionally there is a fourth stage that occurs once the person has walked by - it involves turning back to check out other aspects of what the person is wearing - by concentrating on the shoes other related clothing details may have been missed, the assumption being that if the shoes were cool then the other gear they are wearing fits the same bracket.
It might be that the shoe gazing effect is extenuated by the fact that I'm 'not local', the implication being that 'someone not from around here' may have access to stores and fashions to which they don't. I've been wondering whether online window shopping extenuates shoe gazing - people have a good awareness of what others are wearing worldwide but this may be the first time to see them locally and in the wild.
So how might all of this evolve in our Future Perfect? What happens when people carry to tools to digitally project who they are or who they want to be? Will someone turn around and look back knowing that their mobile device has automatically recorded all the relevant details? What are all the relevant details? And can they be recorded? What is digital equivilent of shoe gazing? If your interest is piqued then you might like to check out research by my colleagues Younghee Jung, Per Persson and Jan Blom, in particular their work on Scent and Sensor.
And what does all this to do with the elegant group of barefoot ladies above? The photo was taken in a church opposite the barber's shop, above - they're about to energetically head onto the church stage for a dance routine. It reminds me that when it comes to understanding shoe gazing, or pretty much any other behaviour, context is everything.
Electric Shaves (in the Land of Power Cuts)
Aug 08, 2006 | 3 Comments
The average life expectancy at birth in Uganda is around 47 years. This low figure is in part due to the prevalence of the HIV virus, which used to stand around 15% of all adults and at one point having infected almost 32% of pregnant women in cities. Following factors such as an extensive education campaign and the fact that HIV well, kills this figure is now closer to 6%. Those of you interested in background reading might head to here.
And what does this have to do with a barber shop shave in the village of Kyotera?
This barber offers an electric dry shave - somewhat surprising considering the frequency of power cuts in Uganda and the widespread availability of cheap tools that would offer a perfectly good wet shave. Except that a wet shave comes with a higher risk of cuts, and cuts have a higher perceived risk of transmitting the HIV virus.
So electric it is.
Forms of Identity
Jul 31, 2006
Shacks on a Kyotera market street have the owners mobile phone number or name and phone number scrawled above the door. Here there are no signs for street names, no building numbers.
When a phone number and not say, a postal address is the primary means of remote idenification what does it mean to lose a SIM card? For your phone battery to run out? To have no phone credit? To lend your phone to someone else? Or as in the photo above, for the phone number to change? Why do the Kyotera dwellers not include instant messenger contact names, fax numbers or email addresses? Or for that matter ID card numbers or car licence plates? What is it that makes a phone number suitable for writing above the door?
Consider all this in the context of the other objects that are owned and used. How does mobile phone ownership affect status within the community? Are some phone numbers more or less desireable than others? And bearing all this in mind how important is it to have just the right phone model?
Catering for Exceptions
Jul 31, 2006
It makes sense to design for the norms. What is the cost of catering for exceptional cases such as adapting a rectangular display case to cope with an excessively long-horned animal? Which cultures are likely to have to cope with what kind of exceptions? Once societal changes such as an aging demographic or rates of obesity are considered when do exceptions become the rule?
Mobility Is Relative II
Jul 28, 2006
A mobile and wireless phone kiosk in Kamapala draws its power from a car battery (in the red box, photo below). Despite its bicyclesque design they were not particularly mobile - one or more tyres were often flat and they remained tethered in one place for the duration of the day.
However this design does support fine tuning the position where the telephony service is offered compared to fixed infrastructure. In what situations is mobilty is a drawback? For example, if to operate a 'street tax' has to be paid to work a particular pitch (I've got no evidence of this actually happening but bear with me) it would be easier to move non-payers away. Also easier for others to enter the marketplace and offer a similar service in close proximity.
And the country names painted on the phones? Simply a way of identifying which is which.
Spent half a sweaty sunday on the back of a boda boda trying to track down the bicycle repair factory, only to find it shut. Fond memories.
Mobility Is Relative I
Jul 28, 2006
Mobile phone also usable as a modem - owned and actively used by our local guide in Kampala.
Sort of related: White Phone Kiosks in Ulan Bataar.
Motivations for Warning
Jul 27, 2006
From Kampala golf course.
Selection Criteria
Jul 10, 2006
How does a consumer know whether the acid is good or not?
Cultural Norms
Jul 09, 2006
Headline from local Kampala newspaper.
Motivations for Customisation
Jul 07, 2006
Customisation of a fishing boat hulll in Kansensero Uganda and of stop signs on the back of auto-rickshaws in Delhi.
Volumes Enabling Volumes
Jul 06, 2006
The physical size and volume of devices waiting to be repaired and cannabalized compared to the equivilent number of mobile phones (photo above Soweto, below Kampala) . A better demonstration perhaps of the issue of physical size, cubic volume and numbers (volumes) of objects to be repaired first touched upon here.
Places of Significance
Jul 06, 2006 | 3 Comments
What makes a place significant? The equator line running through Uganda, above is marked by a line running across the road (above) and a 3 physics tests designed to play off the natural properties of being on or close to the equator (below). Simple examples of how to visualise the invisible.
If you havn't figured it already I'm back home - photos from last week in Uganda.
Cultures of Repair, Innovation
Jul 03, 2006 | 4 Comments
Update: a slightly more print friendly version of this post appears here and the slides of the presentation can be downloaded via here [4MB].
In an effort to understand the total user experience I've taken time out during recent field studies in emerging markets to explore local repair cultures. The journey has taken me to cities such as Chengdu, Delhi, Ulan Bataar, Ho Chi Minh and Lhasa with recent brief stopovers in Kampala and Soweto. They all contain clusters of shops and market stalls selling a mixture of used and new mobile phones, and whilst (in this instance) size does not necessarily matter, they often operate on a scale not seen in cities such as London or Tokyo. The mobile phone market around Chengdu's Tai Shen Lan Lu Market for example stretches across number of streets and shopping arcades and includes 100's of small shops and stalls. If you want a snapshot of urban mobile phone consumers in emerging markets this is a good place to start.
What sets these locations apart from cities in more 'emerged' markets? Aside from the scale of what's on sale there is a thriving market for device repair services ranging from swapping out components to re-soldering circuit boards to reflashing phones in a language of your choice , naturally. Repairs are often carried out with little more than a screwdriver, a toothbrush (for cleaning contact points) the right knowledge and a flat surface to work on. Repair manuals (which appear to be reverse engineered) are available, written in Hindi, English and Chinese and can even be subscribed to, but there is little evidence of them being actively used. Instead many of the repairers rely on informal social networks to share knowledge on common faults, and repair techniques. It's often easier to peer over the shoulder of a neighbour than open the manual itself. Delhi has the distinction of also offering a wide variety of mobile phone repair courses at training institutes such as Britco and Bridco turning out a steady flow of mobile phone repair engineers. To round off the ecosystem wholesalers' offer all the tools required to set up and run a repair business from individual components and circuit board schematics to screwdrivers and software installers.
How are mobile phone repair cultures different from the everyday repair shops for other mainstream electronics filled with televisions and video recorders? For a start consider the volumes of mobile phones in the marketplace compared to other electronics. Network effects soon kick in - it's easier to find a dead RAZR to cannabalise for spares than spares for a Sony DVD drive drive quite simply because there's more of them about. The physical size of the products to be repaired is also an factor - consider the space required to store and repair 200 mobile phones vs CRT televisions. As objects that many consider essential tools for everyday life mobile phones are carried, dropped, sat on, run over, submerged in a wide variety of situations leading to use cases outside the parameters of most phones. Finally, for many emerging market consumers the phone is considered an essential tool for conducting a successful business whether it's a boda-boda driver in Kampala (gentleman on moped in photo, below) or a midwife in Xiamen. If a person has the choice between repairing a television or a (shared) mobile phone which do you think he or she would choose first?
Each of the cities mentioned above offers more formal repair services, usually officially through customer care service centers, but the scale and sophistication of what is on offer informally is way beyond what many readers of Future Perfect will be familiar. And yes, many of the places mentioned already have networks to (from my observations) efficiently recycle, repair and re-use a wide variety objects including electronics . But in the spirit of the Future Perfect let's start with a very basic question - why do these informal repair cultures exist at all? What is so different between London and Lhasa or Helsinki and Ho Chi Minh?
The informal repair services that are offered are quite simply driven by necessity - highly price sensitive customers cannot afford to go through more expensive official customer care centers and even if they could their phones are unlikely to be covered by warrantee - having been bought through grey market channels, been sent as gifts from friends and relatives abroad, or were locally bought used, second or third+ ownership. In many cases these users cannot afford to be without their mobile phone, not in the social sense of being out of touch (which is valid enough), but in many instances because their livelihoods depend on it. On the supply side there is a ready pool of sufficiently skilled labour, ready access to tools, components and above all knowledge.
It's worth acknowledging that grey and black goods and services are also part of the mobile phone market ecosystem - whether it's passing faked goods off as originals or offering pirated software. Some markets also sell a wide variety of phones that copy the industrial designs of other products, examples are shown here and and example of how it can unfold here (these two links are unrelated). These are however, only a part of the whole market ecosystem and from my understanding are small in scale within the context of the physical markets' themselves, compared to the repair services on offer. And before you ask - no, I'm not arguing that piracy is a minor issue.
For consumers the informal repair culture is largely convenient, efficient, fast and cheap, reducing the total cost of ownership for people for whom a small drop in price may make the difference between having or not having a phone. The culture of repair also increases the lifetime of products lowering their environmental impact (though this could be offset by other factors such as inefficiency of using old batteries).
What can we learn from informal repair cultures? Aside from the benefits, what are the risks for consumers and for companies whose products are repaired, refurbished and resold? Given the benefit to (bottom of the pyramid) consumers are there elements of the repair ecosystem that can be exported to other cultures? Can the same skills be applied to other parts of the value chain? And, turning to my original interest in this topic and the work we do in the Mobile HCI Group, given the range of resources and skills available what would it take to turn cultures of repair into cultures of innovation?
I'm at Cape Town University today discussing qualitative research methods and Informal Repair Cultures. The slides of the presentation can be downloaded via here [4MB download] and related presentations here.
Weapons of Choice
Jul 02, 2006
Lacking Power
Jul 02, 2006
Power cuts are a daily fact of life in Uganda so it's no surprise that power, or lack of power has affected the field study in subtle and not so subtle ways: power cuts during interviews; trying to gather data over the thumping soundtrack and fumes of a nearby generator; keeping laptops sufficiently charged - especially during the long hours of image batch processing; logging the different types of charging services offered by locals; and the strategies adopted by locals to make the most of what they have.
When the power is down guests can request the use of a back-up generator for10,000 Ugandan Shillings (1.5 Euro) per hour - enough for a small hotel. You'll be happy to know it can be charged to room service.
Thanks to our local guides here in Uganda - Julius, Rose, Tonny, Elizabeth and Titus - much appreciated.
Matoke Stoppers, Delivery of Water
Jul 01, 2006
Novel use of matoke in the rural village of Lwamagwa. Communities without running water pay around 200 Ugandan Shillings to have a jerry can delivered by bicycle.
Xxxxxx of Significance
Jul 01, 2006 | 11 Comments
What is it for?
All the clues are in the photo.
And a small object of desire from a far flung corner of the world to be mailed to the first person who figures it out.
Contexts of Consumption
Jun 30, 2006
As media such as movies and TV increasingly shifts to mobile devices the range of contexts where media is consumed changes compared to what has gone before. The user experience of watching a movie in a multiplex or independent cinema (video club in the village of Kansensero in the photo, above) is very different compared to being curled up in bed at home or during snatches of down time in cigarette breaks at work. To what extent does context of use effect the perceived value of media? To what extent is it possible to charge differently according to the context of consumption?
A long time ago I had the pleasure of watching an Argentinean movie at Egypt's International Alexandria film festival. The film was billed as having the first legal kiss in Egyptian public cinema, and all the seats in the venue were filled
with robed punters. I recall looking around that there were two women in the whole audience - one of which was sitting with me. Being a subtitlted film the audience didn't need to concentrate on the sound track and they chatted the whole way through, until the moment of that kiss when the place went silent, which was soon followed by cheering. The memories of the experience as a whole remain vivid despite it being 10 years ago. Why do we pay for (media) experiences at the time of consumption, rather than at the time of reflection?
Hazard Leaves, Hazard Lights
Jun 28, 2006
Spotted on the return journey from Kansensero - a car that had run off the road, flipped and come to a rest on an embankment. Foliage laid on the road to warn approaching cars of an accident.
Note the spacing of the piles.
Double Grip, Speed of Use
Jun 28, 2006
The bike rider grips the handlebars and Kalashnikov in one hand as he cycles, the weapon's strap is wrapped around the other bar to complete the balancing act. But why not slung around his shoulder?
"I keep the strap loose in case I need to use it in a hurry"
Rural Connectivity
Jun 28, 2006
Drive due south out of Kampala and in 70 kilometers or so you'll arrive at the town of Kyotera, our research base for the next few days. Continue straight on from there and you'll soon hit the Uganda - Tanzania border, head east and you're in rural backwaters, head west and you'll need a boat to take you across Lake Victoria. Kyotera is in a good location to research, well, whatever it is that we're here researching and the bonus is that our hotel can offer cold beer despite frequent power cuts.
This morning the research team rose sufficiently early to drive onto Kansensero - a fishing village on the edge of Lake Victoria. We time our departure to arrive with the boats ashore and the last of the catches being weighed and sold. The journey was pretty uneventful save for a herd of long horned bulls (yes they do have exceptionally long horns) and a quick stop at a village phone operator. Grameen Foundation USA is working in partnership with local micro-finance organisations, the regional carrier MTN and my employer to provide Village Phone kits - essentially an adapted mobile phone, an antenna with a long cable and a car battery to keep it charged. (Car batteries are a common source of power in rural Uganda). Through micro-finance lending the village phone operator can borrow enough money to buy the operator kit and for many it becomes a profitable business.
Driving along the back country roads of Rakai district there are two obvious ways to tell that Village Phone operator is offering connectivity: from a distance you can spot the antenna topped pole rising up to 4 times the height of other structures in the village (glimpsed through the tree foliage in the photo above); and on entering a village the yellow MTN sign advertising call rates looms into view. The affect of easier access to affordable connectivity on the prosperity of the village inhabitants is an worthy topic of research, but requires more time than we have today.
Kansensero has irregular GSM coverage and no mains electricity - power comes in the form of a generator or more commonly car batteries. It's interesting to understand the strategies residents adopt to make the most of what is available, but I'm also aware there are broader issues at play such as access to water (mostly it is delivered on bicycle in jerry cans) and basic healthcare. In many respects the frontier of the future perfect is not what's possible in Tokyo, Paris or London but in villages such as this - in providing access to base necessities. Time and again interview subjects bring up the topic of calling hosptials, midwives and sick relatives, or to report the death of a family member.
Despite the availability of fresh fish our local guide advises us to avoid the local menu - cholera is a factor and he can't vouch for the cooking conditions. So we pile in the car and drive up to a loading bay on the Kagera River and munch our way through a packet of digestives and segments of processed cheese. Our driver requests a photo of himself to show his family he has indeed been here on Uganda's southern border, and as I snap away one of our team conducts an ad-hoc interview. The interviewee, a policeman is chatty and his positive demeanour is set off by some pristine white rubber boots - more commonly found on the feet of local fishermen than on the police. He stands on a pile of wood, Kalashnikov in hand overseeing the unloading of a consignment of coffee beans from Tanzania and as the interview progresses we watch labourers lugging 60kg sacks to a nearby truck. This isn't an official border crossing and if tax is normally charged it's not being levied here.
Its hard to turn away from a border without crossing, but that's a journey for another day.
Digital Fireflies
Jun 27, 2006
The entrance fee for Ghana vs. Brazil is 500 Ugandan Shillings (0.3 Euro), a sum that buys us squeezing space in a village hall that's packed to the rafters. The game has already started when we enter, and contrary to what you might have read in the European press the hall includes a local contingent rooting for Brazil rather than their West African neighbours. The heat in the hall is stifling - the windows are boarded up and taped over and there are a lot of bodies generating heat. The video projector cuts off half way through the second half, not as you might expect due to a power cut (the proceedings are running on a back-up generator) but because of a lost satellite signal. For a couple of minutes the audience watches a man with a controller navigate menus and channels, his efforts projected for all to see before he eventually locates another channel showing the game. With all the talk of niche programming what is the potential of usability studies as spectator sports? Thoughts a stadium full of people watching a cognitive walkthrough on a JumboTron before giving their verdict to the designer sitting in the center circle. Public adoration or shaming.
It was dusk when we walked in and by the time the game is finished its dark outside save for the stars and a few candle lit market stalls. This part of town does not appear to be on the mains. At the final whistle the inside of the hall turns pitch black - the organisers simply cut the power. For a few truly wonderful moments we sit watching human fireflies navigating and feeling their way out of the hall using only their mobile phone displays to guide their way.
The photo above? An overlay of repeated 2 second exposures.
Heroes of The (Local) Modern Man
Jun 25, 2006
Photos and dreams for sale on a Kampala street.
In order of popularity by volume: Manchester United, political leaders then pop stars. Of course the reverse could also be true - it could be popularity by order of those left unsold.
What do the idols and heroes say about the values of a society?
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