First Day at Work

Today was our first real day in Lwemodde and even though it was cut short thanks to a malaria scare on Julian’s part, we managed to have a good look around and to begin to come to terms with what our job this summer is going to be like.  

The town itself has 47 homesteads, and about 300 residents, but people come from nearby areas as well to use the youth center’s services so that every day, they charge about 150 phones for 200 shillings a piece (that’s about 8 cents each phone, or $10.50 earned each day).  We arrived on the day that they were unpacking a computer that had been bought with money earned, and that money also bought a 21” T.V. that sits in their building as well and everybody comes and hangs out and watches T.V. until midnight or so, when their treasurer shuts down the building.  Another purchase was about 25 green plastic chairs that the group uses in their building, and also lends out to others in the community when they want to use them.

The youth center is in fact an incredible organization.  It’s members provide many services to the community, apart from the purchases and the phone charging/repairs themselves, they work with a rearing farm animals project and on hair salons as well.  The first day when we visited, we saw they were running a TV, a fan, and charging multiple phones and we couldn’t tell how this was possible.  However, today we learned that they actually are on the grid and most days draw power from there.  In Lwemodde though power is only on maybe three days of the week, and can be off for four days at a time, requiring them to travel to Kalisizo to charge car batteries to keep their charging abilities consistent independent of the grid.  Another man in town offers the same charging services off his own grid line, but not only is his place less safe (he doesn’t sit and watch the phones), but when power goes off he can’t do anything about it and everyone must go to the youth center.

During our visit we noticed an interesting spread of technological knowledge amongst members.  The things that people knew are clearly a product of how they learn things: by trial and error with the materials.  For example because their inverter allows them to charge more phones faster than their previous set up (attaching multiple phones to a car charger) they assumed that it was more efficient.  However, the inverter in fact wastes a huge amount of energy that’s not necessary if you’re just trying to drop 12 volts from the battery down to the phone charging voltage (5V) even though it does allow the phones to draw the current they need.  Other things, like soldering the speakers and earpieces onto cell phones, a job that has clear visual logic (you know the speaker has to connect, so you solder it and you’re done) is one that they do incredibly well. 

Julian’s and my first project for tomorrow is to begin teaching basic concepts of circuitry that can allow us to teach center members to do the electrical work needed to set up solar power and other similar things.  Tomorrow’s lesson specifically works with Ohm’s law (V = IR), the photoelectric effect (to provide a basic understanding of where that “I” in ohm’s law comes from), and the relationship between power, voltage, and current drawn.