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This rather blurry shot is of a Colobus monkey, way off in the distance. We spotted it whilst on a walk on Mt Meru a couple of weeks ago.

On the way to the waterfall we found this glade of pine trees. Yuki wants to make a film called Black Heidi here.

This is Kinyonga. He is Mary’s nephew.

He is a rasta man.

He and Jongo (Godfrey) took us for a walk to an amazing waterfall on Mt Meru. It was a long walk, and we stopped on the hill here to look down on Arusha

Well, still no cafe. Today I discovered that my photo CD has a massive scratch in it – I was struck with the terror that all photo’s we had taken so far had been lost! What a nightmare. I then found that a lot of pics were still in the Recycle Bin on my laptop. One of the few times I will thank Microsoft… I have upped the size of my recycle bin in case something like that happens again.

I have got a little further with writing up my past diary entries, but managed not to copy the details on to the CD I brought with me today… Bollock!

There are some pics in here with names like upl_49.jpg going up to about upl_104.jpg. Check them out if you can figure out how, otherwise wait till tomorrow.

Leah called to say that she has decided to go with wireless with CyberNet since they couldn’t connect us via ethernet. I guess things might start happening soon… I have thought that before.

Yuki and I are thinking of learning to Scuba dive in a couple of weeks. It is definitely time to do something…

Mary had sliced up a nice big melon when we got back into the house. Very nice. Here is a good pic of Mary.

We took another crowded Dalla-dalla home, and wandered back to the house. On the way I took the picture of Meru above. Outside the gate the usual mass of children were playing. I decided to take some pics, and we were instantly mobbed. Here is a particularly nice shot. They ran off screaming when the flash went off, but then returned to pose some more.

More frustrations.

Today I have been to every single ISP in Arusha that we knew about, and found out about two others.

The day started early with Yuki and I getting a dalla-dalla into town at about 7:30am. We haven’t really been up and out so early before. The temperature was much more pleasant at this time, and the dalla-dalla was pretty quiet too! Arusha was pleasantly deserted as we made our way to meet the technician at ACE. He reiterated what I had been told yesterday – there are too many hubs between their office and ours and the signal would be too weak. What I did discover though was that they were actually offering a connection to their wireless connection, not a hard wired connection to the Habari network. I also discovered that Habari is actually Arusha Node Marie, and they are commonly called Habari simply because www.habari.co.tz is their domain name.

Discovering all this we decided it would be a good idea to make a definitive visit to all the ISPs in Arusha and find out exactly what each offers and at what cost.

As we walked back to the cafe to talk to Leah about all this we noticed an electical shop that was advertising internet service provision. We walked in and it turned out that there is a third player on the market.

The company had been called JR Internet, but had been bought by a Dar es Salaam based company called CatNet.

I got talking to the guy in charge and told him what we were up to. He called his head office in Dar Es Salaam, and enquired with them regarding how much to charge us. He told us it would cost ony $40 per month, plus the usual huge sum for wireless equipment ($1500+ in case I haven’t mentioned it previously). This seemed like a fantastic deal. The other ISPs in town all charge about $180 a month.

We got back to the cafe feeling quite hopeful, but we decided it was still worth going round to all the other ISPs to find out what they were offering. Leah, Sylvan and I headed off to the offices of Arusha Node Marie, in the Arusha International Conference Centre (AICC), where the UN Rwanda Burundi Genocide trials are going on. They had an information sheet which detailed all their costs. Pretty much the same as CyberNet – $180 a month. Then we headed to CyberNet to confirm their prices, then Leah wanted to talk to CatNet to confirm what I had been quoted.

It was too good to be true. When Leah spoke with the guy it turned out they would charge $40 per computer. Too damn expensive! So they had priced themselves out.

I brought out a Linksys BEFW11S4 Wireless Router from the UK intended to get Uru School online with it. I thought it was time to find out whether or not we could save some money by using this as our connecting hardware, so we took it to CyberNet. Of course, they were very sceptical, since if it doesn’t work we will be buying some very over-priced kit from them. They couldn’t see that the router is a radio the same as any other wireless device that they sell. However this arguement was pretty academic as I don’t think we will be able to get hold of the RP-TNC connectors for the external antenna connectors on my box. Damn! Should have planned for that.

I then decided to visit an internet cafe to check email. We went to Bethel internet cafe. It is there that we discovered the fourth ISP in Arusha. The national phone company, Tanzanian Telecommunications Ltd (TTCL), offers some kind of connection via copper wire. The connection costs $300 a month according to Bethel, but they are planning on dropping the price to $150 a month. The hardware is some kind of modem, and it is necessary to buy two, an extra one for the telephone exchange. This costs about $1,200 according to Bethel. Again, this seemed like a pretty good deal, as Bethel are very happy with their connection, and the speeds seem quite acceptable.

We decided to pay a visit to TTCL tomorrow.

Argh! The full realisation came that Leah hadn’t really checked out whether or not it was viable to get a wired internet connection at the office dawned… Even though I suggested she look into it while the site owner was messing us around. We had thought we could be connected to Habari, after CyberNet said it was too far. Then it turned out there were too many hubs in between us and Habari’s node, and the signal would be too weak. Tomorrow I will meet the engineer to find out if there are any solutions, and if so what the costs will be.

It is all so frustrating I am starting to wonder why I let myself get so involved. It is Leah’s cafe, and I might be better off spending my time doing something completely different.

A nice, if blurry picture of Sylvan and Beatrice.

Finally we are in the office, the computers are being set up and things are beginning to move. Took the computers town this afternoon and started installing them. Started to have a bit of a lapse of confidence, but we will get them up and running soon for sure.

After spending most of the day getting things together we headed off to Seven Up Inn for some nyama choma and beers, and a long session discussing what to do next and how the cafe can develop. Plenty of ideas and potential.

Can I set up a small web design and marketing business in Arusha? We will have to see how things go. Is there a large enough market here for that? Got to keep the ideas coming. It is a relief that things are starting, but it is going to be hard work too. More beer and meat should keep things going!