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Tag: MySkills4Afrika

My Africa Diaries: The Mara

My Africa Diaries: The Mara

Published May 26, 2014

After our first day of pre-safari adventures, our next two days were full day game drives in the Maasai Mara game reserve. Each morning started quite early – usually up by 5:30 so that my colleague and I could shower and dress before breakfast. The meals at the camp were generally great comfort food, but I’ve gone into great detail on the food if you’re interested in more about that. Breakfast conversation was primarily centered around which animals each of us had heard the night before. As it turns out, hyenas sound just like they did in the Lion King.…

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My Africa Diaries: Video Safari

Published May 20, 2014

Video diary of our travel to and time in the Maasai Mara game reserve in Kenya: Since I’m not a professional cinematographer or photographer, my goal on safari was largely to experience it myself, not to document it perfectly. I brought my relatively new point and shoot camera (Powershot ELPH 330). I love the video journaling function on this camera, but turned it off to save space for longer videos for this trip. I ended up with a few hundred photos and 8GB of HD video. (My battery died halfway through the first day of safari since I forgot to…

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My Africa Diaries: The Good Safaritans

My Africa Diaries: The Good Safaritans

Published May 17, 2014

After a full week at the iHub, we awakened early to meet our safari guides for our 5 hour drive to the Maasai Mara. The van we were to take was out front along with numerous other safari vehicles – the Norfolk is a very common starting point for safaris going back to the 1900s. Of course, they were typically weeks instead of days, but they didn’t have radios or cell phones to share information, either. We chose to drive in to the camp – which meant subjecting ourselves to what locals affectionately call “the Maasai massage”. Once you leave…

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My Africa Diaries: The Clash

My Africa Diaries: The Clash

Published May 10, 2014

One of the most striking things about Kenya was what a blend of the future and the past it represented in almost every location, all swirled up in one moment of technology and tradition. The iHub was in a way a space out of time or place. The welcome mats read “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1”, as if I’d never left Silicon Valley years ago. There was a mural of the original Mario Brothers game on the wall in the staircase. And dozens of programmers (both genders), with the stickers on their laptops surely familiar to Western programmers. There were…

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My Africa Diaries: Working at iHub

My Africa Diaries: Working at iHub

Published April 9, 2014

The primary reason I’m in Africa is as a volunteer for the Microsoft4Afrika program. One part of their outreach is to match professionals from Microsoft with identified technology needs in African countries. Many of the assignments are either teaching advanced skills or helping with infrastructure and IT needs. For my own part, I was matched with a request from the iHub in Nairobi for user experience training on developing products for Microsoft platforms. I’ve spent the better part of the last month preparing my curriculum from scratch – though I do teach an intro to interaction design workshop back in…

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