40 Days: Episode I

Today is my fortieth day in the desert. I have survived 40 days in the desert and I have come out unscathed. Its strange that no matter what you do, after a while you always seem to have a certain resilience and develop certain immunity.

Speaking of developing, its been quite awhile since I posted anything; that is not to say that nothing exciting has been happening in my life. Its just that things have had a way with me such that I could not pen down what I thought without feeling like a worthless tweet.

But I digress, forty days at my very first 8-6 job, which sounds like a 10 hour job but in reality is 12 hours! It was in the fine print of the contract, I guess no one ever reads that huh?!

Anyway, I was very impressed when I learnt that over 300 students had turned up to attend a free session in which they were to translate the Mozilla Firefox browser into Luganda. For all of 2 days, the students worked feverishly, to ascribe commonly known Luganda definitions to the browser’s, vast array of functions.

At the end, they all gleefully clapped when the Dean of Makerere’s Faculty of Computing and IT joked about how the achievement should be pushed to the Buganda government and how this would make the kabaka very happy.

It kept coming to mind how the recently belegeaured king was at a point where he could actually use some help, what with all the king’s men being accosted, detained, released and then re-arrested! All without reason!! Oh Uganda!!

It portends good things if a web browser can be translated into a local language because that means that local writers can be encouraged to write more in their local languages, and this in turn has great potential for increasing literacy and uptake of internet products. The day, then, is not far when we will be able to log on surf, download, and even upload material entirely in a different language complete with the ever elusive ”ng” Luganda sound!

However there still remain infrastructural questions, access concerns and literacy as big impediments the realization of this dream. The even greater threat from within the industry is that the ICT mammoths like Microsoft, IBM, DELL all want more control of the econ-share and have taken great steps to approach “the last frontier”; Africa.

Moreover, the fast changing tech-world means that such achievements are only hot and worth selling when they are still fresh, so the challenge to patent, market, brand and sell is and almost sounds gargantuan!! But they will do it. How do I know? Because when they set out to build Africa's largest computing facility, the world laughed but today its is a marvel all across Africa. With 700 computers in a lab; and the lab replicated on six levels; with lecture rooms with system sound surround and equipped with the tech aids to make learning a digital experience, there is nothing that will stop them from making this project fly.

And that is one of the most amazing things I have had the opportunity to witness in my first 40 days as a working professional.

….and now back to normal programming.