Tanzania Trip 2025 [2025-08-31]

Thanks to the hard work of Reneal Country Director David Nyangaka, the 2025 Phase 1 shipment was received by Reneal Team Tanzania and installation/training activities have begun. The other news is that I am bound for Tanzania on Tuesday. It will be a schedule similar to last year’s, with most of the time spent in Arusha working with Reneal Team Tanzania. It will be my first opportunity to spend time in Reneal’s Tanzania office. We are so grateful to JR Institute of Information Technology for hosting Reneal.

One exciting aspect of the JRIIT partnership is having their students help with laptop troubleshooting and maintenance. I am anxious to interact with these students as well as with Reneal’s troubleshooting gurus to see how Reneal can improve maintenance throughput and turn-around time. We have also had joint discussions between JRIIT, Teacher-in-a-Box (www.teacherinabox.org.au), and Reneal to enlist JRIIT students in helping to deploy more TIB systems in Tanzania schools. TIB brings a rich range of educational materials to students and teachers via a server and local wi-fi connection.

Fortunately, my trip will overlap that of our partner Terrawatu’s founder, Dr. Tanya Pergola (www.terrawatu.org). Since my last visit, Terrawatu’s new Lynn Bretsnyder Women's Centre (LBWC) has opened. I also have meetings planned with Reneal’s long-time partner Arusha Node Marie (www.arushanodemarie.or.tz) as they begin their new school computerization initiative.

I will be taking a Reneal server build USB disk with the latest version of the Reneal system software. For cases where server problems are beyond my or the Team’s capability to resolve, this USB disk gives near-instant reconstitution. It’s somewhat brute force, but it gets the job done. We are also expecting to deactivate some dormant Reneal computer labs, so this will enable us to redeploy the servers with fresh software.

This is my first trip to Tanzania since Neal’s untimely death. I share with Reneal Team Tanzania a passion to carry on Neal’s legacy. We will celebrate Neal’s life with his friends and colleagues in Tanzania while continuing his work to bring computers and technology to students in Tanzania.

[Photo: Reneal office at JRIIT]