Day 1  Word Collection workshop for Koorete - details
Monday was a very chaotic day for me, since it was the first day of the word-collection phase of the workshop and the computers had not yet been completely configured for the typists. The plan at the beginning of the day was for me to arrive at the workshop site at 8:30 and begin working on preparing the first computer for one of the typists to use, knowing full well that we would not start at the announced time of 8:30. Then, after the opening preliminaries were finished and the word-collection groups had begun their work, I would have another hour or two before the first results from the collection groups would be handed over to be typed. In that time, I optimistically expected to have at least two computers up and ready to go, and ideally, there would be three. 
That plan might have worked, except for one thing: There was no electricity that morning. In fact, there had been no electricity all weekend, and each of the computers we wanted to use had been used for various other preparations over the weekend, so none of them had much battery life left. Our backup plan was to have a generator available to provide electricity for us in the event of a power outage, but a government meeting outranked us, so they got the generator and not us. So I could do little to prep the computers for data entry until the power came on, and that didn’t happen until about 11:30, by which time there was a stack of folders with data waiting to be entered, but no computer ready to be used.

We brought two computers with us from the SIL office in Addis Ababa, and those two had been prepped to a certain extent, with the software (called FLEx) installed, but no database active yet. They were the two I had planned to prepare for use first. We were counting on a third computer, this one from the government, since this workshop is being organized by them and SIL is providing the technical assistance. After the workshop, they are the ones who will continue to work on the database in order to publish the dictionary in whatever format(s) they choose. So we want to make sure that our work these two weeks will be on at least one computer that will stay here after we leave. As it turned out, two of the typists each provided a computer to be configured for use. We would have to start by installing FLEx, and one of them had a bit of battery life left, so it appeared that it would run long enough for me to do the installation, so I began with that while we waited for the magical moment when the power would return.

I had the FLEx installation file on my personal USB flash drive, and I was able to copy the file to the computer’s hard drive and begin the installation. While that progressed, I turned to the laptop provided by the other typist, in order to at least copy the installation file to his hard drive before his battery was entirely depleted. To my great surprise and frustration, his computer told me that my USB drive was devoid of files! Well, I knew that was not the case, so I took the flash drive out of his computer and put it in mine, only to receive the same verdict! Too late I realized that I had lived too long in the comfortable United States of America and had forgotten the lesson I had learned the hard way when we worked in Burkina Faso—expect a computer to be virus-infected if it is used regularly in a context where access to the internet is difficult, Windows licenses are too expensive for many people to afford so pirated copies are in existence, and protection from viruses is not viewed as a high priority.

By the time we were able to clean my USB drive of the virus, most of the files were restored. One directory full of personal information was unrecoverable, but that contained information from my personal computer, which is back at home, so no great loss unless something happens to that computer before I return home. I was grateful that the files that were needed for this workshop and the one coming up next were able to be restored. But there ended our efforts to get those computers up and running, until we could check the two computers for viruses and make sure they were clean.

However, to check the computers for viruses, we needed to download an antivirus program that came complete with the virus definitions, because downloading large files here is an arduous and time-consuming task when it is even possible. Anne-Christie, who works as a linguist in another part of Ethiopia, invested in a battery that has an extended operating time when she bought her laptop, and we were the beneficiaries of that decision yesterday. Her computer was the only one that had any battery life left, so she set about downloading an antivirus program. We were all pleasantly surprised to see the data transmission speed she was experiencing. Apparently, with so many computers in the area unable to function because of the extended power outage through the weekend, virtually no one else was competing with her for the bandwidth provided by the cell phone company. Ironically, it may have been the long power outage that even made it possible for her to succeed in her attempt to download this software. Unfortunately, the first thing she downloaded did not include the virus definitions, so she had to download a second program, and that one did.

When the power finally came on, I focused on the two computers that were nearly ready to use. One of them had a project on it which I had created last week for the typists to enter the words in. All I needed to do was incorporate a file with Amharic data into it. I knew the file contained a lot of data, but I wasn’t truly prepared for the fact that it would take more than an hour to import that data. That meant that I needed to leave the computer running while we went to lunch—and we weren’t able to start entering data until the afternoon session began. BUT…when we returned from lunch, the computer had hibernated, and when I tried to turn it back on, it wouldn’t respond! Turns out that the power cord had a tenuous connection to the computer at the back and we needed to wiggle and jiggle it just so in order for the computer to have power, so that it could be turned back on. The next hour or so consisted of constantly monitoring that computer to make sure that the incoming current kept getting through to it. It seemed that even typing on my computer a few feet away could cause that computer to lose its connection to the current and it would be ready to shut itself down again. And we were still waiting to be able to have a computer available for the typists to use!

Meanwhile, with the power back on, we were able to work on the two computers supplied by the typists. We learned that, while the one computer needed to have a complete virus scan run to clean it up, the other one needed some additional software not provided by the FLEx installation file. The necessary file would have to be downloaded from the internet and it was more than 700Mb in size. Now that’s a large file to download, no matter where you are, but it’s considered feasible back in the US. Here, it’s not normally something you can even hope to do. But Anne-Christie attempted it anyway, and just before the end of the workday, she joyfully announced that it had been successful. Prepping of that computer will continue Tuesday morning, now that we have the necessary file.

The removal of viruses from the infected computer will also continue in the morning. A number of viruses have been detected and will be dealt with by the antivirus program Anne-Christie downloaded and installed on that computer. But the process is not yet complete.

Meanwhile, FLEx did finally complete the import of the Amharic data into the existing database and the result was just what we were hoping for, just a bit later than we would have liked. With that task completed, I could then begin the process of sharing the project between the two computers that we had brought from SIL in Addis Ababa, and that would allow two typists to begin their work. It’s not a complicated process to do that, so the project was soon on the second computer. Unfortunately, when the typists sat down to do their thing, the second computer exhibited a problem—attempting to type Amharic produced the wrong sort of characters! My frustration level was mounting!! However, after a couple of minutes of poking around, I determined what the problem was and was able to fix it. So I gave the seat at the computer back to the typist. No sooner had he begun, however, when I was called over again. This time, when typing Koorete, instead of getting letters, only rectangular boxes appeared on the screen. So I took his place at the computer once again, in order to try to identify the cause of this new anomaly. But after trying lots of different things, with no success whatsoever, I was completely stymied, so Anne-Christie called to the capital city to talk to the person there who normally handles these sorts of script-related software issues. I explained to him what I was experiencing and what all I had tried. He then suggested that I reboot the computer if I hadn’t already tried that. Boy, have I forgotten all of my basic training! Rule number 1—A computer you don’t know and trust is always suspect; check it for viruses before doing anything else. Rule number 2—If all reasonable solutions have been attempted and the problem persists, reboot the computer; this will resolve the problem in 50% of cases. So sure enough, after rebooting the computer, the typist was able to type in both Koorete and in Amharic, as he needed to be able to do. For the next hour or so, two typists were finally able to do what their “job description” asked of them.

In the evening I worked to prepare a computer that Lydia had available at her house, so that the third typist can use it tomorrow while the two “indigenous” computers are still in preparation. Unfortunately, we were unable to get it configured to allow us to type Amharic on it, so that will remain a work in progress for tomorrow morning.

All in all, I worked from 8:30 AM to 9:00 PM, with the exception of an hour for lunch and an hour for supper, in my attempt to provide the typists with a way to do their jobs, and I was only partially successful. Without Anne-Christie’s help with the antivirus side of things, I would have foundered. As it was, I often felt I was in over my head. It was an exhausting day!

But there were some strong positives to come out of this day, even while we struggled on the technical side of things. The word-collection groups, of which there are four, seem to be functioning well for the most part. More than 1500 words were collected yesterday in less than five hours of time. My tracking spreadsheet tells me that that is on pace to collect 20,000 words by the end of the workshop. That would be a very positive result in the context of a normal workshop, but here we have only four groups collecting words, instead of the ideal six! The Koore participants, working with only 2/3 the preferred number of participants, is on pace to produce numbers that are higher than any I’ve experienced in this continent with the full contingent of personnel. We’ll see if they maintain today’s pace, but we’re off to a great start on the personal productivity side of things, at any rate.

Kevin Warfel