Bridging the digital divide in rural KZN

Tuesday 4am, I’m on the road to the Happy Valley[1] community in deep rural KZN. For tomorrow evening Happy Valley Private School has planned a certificate ceremony where I must present some course certificates. This is the final stage of a teacher training course we did during the June 2009 school holidays. This afternoon I will start another ICT training course for 10 health workers at the local hospice. Six of the teachers, who have previously been taken through a train-the-trainer initiative, will facilitate most of the training. I still have to give them some guidance in preparing a training schedule and exercises. Quite a lot for 48 hours! Fifty kilometres from Pretoria I am confronted with thick fog and huge potholes — not a welcoming combination. By 8.30am I see the first signs of rural Southern Africa.

Signs of Africa

Rural KZN

Beautiful valleys city dwellers don’t know about

A local market, 60km from my destination

20km to go

Happy Valley town

11am: I’ve arrived at Happy Valley School. I meet with Mrs Ndlovu, the headmistress and S’bu to discuss the afternoon’s training arrangements. I also break the news that due to lack of funding, the school will have to do the training of health workers free of charge until such time funding may be obtained. Mrs Ndlovu was not too concerned about working for free. It seems that the dignity and value related to the ICT knowledge was rewarding enough for them.

“We have received the training for free. We must also give it for free. We will continue anyway.”

This really says a lot especially since the school is located in one of the poorest regions in South Africa. The South African government apparently used the economic recession as an opportunity to cut funding to private schools by 30%. I wonder what they were thinking implementing such one-size-fits-all decisions. People just don’t have it in Happy Valley. Most of the parents live off government grants and many of the households are headed by children! In addition, it is a community where most people are either affected or infected by HIV and have Aids. The worst I’ve heard of is a lady that earns between R50 and R100 a month by doing household chores for another lady who also does household chores for others. Forget ICTs and let’s talk about survival, food, fuel and clothes … and then ICTs. Anyway, by 12am I meet up with M’ni, one of the participants from the previous course. When he saw me, he exclaimed: “When I see you I see hope!” Mrs Ndlovu also introduced me to a very prominent community member, Baba Mtungwa, who thanked me personally for the ICT training we brought to the community. Given the social structures of the community, this really means a lot has he is highly respected in the community and speaks on behalf of many people. After that, a quick lunch and then off to prepare for the afternoon’s training.

3pm: I arrive at the school’s makeshift computer venue. Nobody is there. I set up the data projector and test all the PCs. One PC crashed because of the constant power failures in Happy Valley. Another PC just doesn’t work. It takes a couple minutes to identify the problem as a connection on the screen card. Three trainers join me at about 3.15. We are going to train in Office 2003 because the hospice uses it and do not plan to upgrade soon.

The computer room

3.30pm: Six very insecure looking nurses trickled into the venue. “Where are the rest … we expected 10 participants?” I asked. “We waited for them but they didn’t come,” the Matron noted. I later learned that the nurses were very scared of the computer training because they didn’t know what to expect, how they would be treated and whether they would be able to cope with the new and foreign technologies. Their perceptions regarding ICT seem to be quite disconcerting.

I also learned later that the fact that the training course was facilitated by a “big city university” intimidated them tremendously. By 4pm we finally start with an introduction on the course. It is important to put the nurses at ease and get them to relax. It took quite a while. Our training started very slowly with lots of motivation. Participants needed enough time to master basic skills such as practising the difference between a mouse click and a double click. It is not easy if you are 45 years old and haven’t had the freedom to touch a computer. I use several metaphors to explain the Windows desktop, the start button, the taskbar, and so on. Lots of repetition needed. We quickly realise that the designated 30 hours of training will not be nearly enough to help the nurses from knowing absolutely nothing to knowing something.

My cultural interpreting colleagues suggest that we should give the nurses all the time they need to master ICT knowledge and therefore we cannot have a fixed number of hours of training. We decide to plan training for two hours every Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon until such time students have mastered the content. It’s a different setup than at the university … and it’s going to be difficult to explain and justify this type of innovative flexibility to industrialised minds. At 5.30pm I’m off, leaving the trainers to re-enforce some of the content. I don’t want to interfere too much because the trainers need to take full ownership and responsibility. Nurses need lots of support so as to dignify them and stimulate motivation for IT as apposed to potential “IT trauma”. If I were to tell how much of the course is about technology and how much is about social factors, I would say, 5% IT skills and the rest about things like intercultural communication skills, teaching skills, knowledge of thinking skills and metaphors for learning basic concepts, patience, motivating factors, cultural interpreting, more patience, respect, personal relationships, friendliness, dignifying factors, and so on. It just illustrates what ICT in deep rural contexts entails. Western culture is embedded in ICT and for these isolated groups IT training is not only about learning new technologies, but also about acquiring a brand new culture and technical language.

It’s about learning new and unfamiliar social constructs while also learning about the computer. They have absolutely no existing frame of reference for understanding ICT. Creating a frame of reference is therefore an important aspect of teaching basic ICT literacy in deep rural communities. S’bu observed my use of metaphors. He cornered me later during the training session and asked to explain how I use metaphors. I highlighted a couple of them and showed him from a cognitive perspective why metaphors work so well in training. I have to address this with the trainers when we plan the rest of the training the following day. At 6pm I’m off to the orphanage where I stay for the night.

An email from the school

7pm: After some socialising with the workers at the orphanage, I call the chairman of the hospice to brief him about the initial training experiences. I also explain that the training will have to continue almost indefinitely until such time nurses have gained confidence in acquiring the ICT knowledge. He is quite open to this as he understands the community. I might only come back to the community in November 2009 to finalise the training and facilitate the exams.

8pm: By this time I have met a number of people, including a guy from the Ukraine, one of the doctors from the hospital and a few young people doing voluntary work in the community — what an inspiring bunch.

Wednesday 5.15am: There is movement in the house. By 8am I’ve covered a considerable amount of work on the feedback and reporting documents that I’m preparing for our project funders. I’ve got some time until about 11am to do this. There is a lot more work when I get back home.

11.15am: I’m off to Peter, the operational and financial manager of the hospice. At the hospital gate I negotiate an antagonistic security guard. I finally manage to make friends with the guy. Peter takes me through a brief tour of their facilities. They have done some upgrades. We talk about many things. He also shows me the only broadband receptor in the whole valley. Currently they are paying R400 a gigabyte and they have a 2 gig cap. After that it is back to GPRS. Believe it or not, there is no fixed or mobile broadband in Happy Valley. In addition, cellphone reception is only something worth talking about when you’re in the middle of the town. Peter also shows me the custom-made broadband connection, which is apparently illegal. We discuss the previous day’s training and my initial observations. I arrange for Peter to set up 2 PCs at the hospice so that nurses can practice ICT knowledge between training sessions — most of the nurses don’t have electricity at their homes. By 12.30pm I’m back at the orphanage for lunch and some preparation for the afternoon’s meeting.

2pm: I have a quick discussion with Mrs Ndlovu about the evening’s community meeting. There will be a certificate ceremony in the beginning and then a preacher will address the people. She suggests that she should call out the names and I hand out the certificates. I comply. JJ will take some pictures. Most of the parents will be in the meeting and a number of people from the community. Mrs Ndlovu tells me that it is a good opportunity to explain the ICT training and maybe promote the school’s vision for ongoing ICT training in Happy Valley.

2.34pm: I’m back at the school’s computer room to kick off a supplementary exam for Mr Mbengu. He was so traumatised by the ICT training last time that he just couldn’t make sense of the first exam paper. He failed but at least qualified for a supp. He was one of those that despite having a degree just couldn’t adapt to the pace we initially followed in the first training course. We didn’t do things right the first time but since learned from our mistakes. People like Mr Mbengu had to bear the brunt of our western approaches. Later, a couple of school girls stroll in. I show them some of the Open Source educational programs we installed previously on the computers. I am hoping that they will tell others and then start playing with it.

3.20pm: While Mr Mbengu was busy, I met with the trainers in the room next door. We reflect on the course that started the previous day. I again stress the value of metaphors for teaching basic ICT literacy and we discuss some examples of useful ones. We also discuss the value of the ICT training for the community. Khuli says that the school has to extend the ICT knowledge to the rest of the community outside the mission, because then they would not see the school and mission as isolated from the rest of the community. They realise the danger that ICTs might just create another social or digital divide in the community. It is very enlightening to listen to their views. The previous day, Happiness also had a lengthy discussion with me to urge me to see what I can do about ICT training in the region. The people really place high hopes in ICT knowledge. Happiness has a dream for a computer school and especially for creating jobs and opportunities for school-leavers. (If I just had the money!!!) I asked her what the traditional and older people think about ICT training. Her reply was that they really welcome it because then their children and grandchildren will have opportunities they never had. In the meeting, Wilna and S’bu also stress that they need to gain access to the rest of the community through ICT training. It is almost as if these people see IT as the alpha and omega!!

In the meeting we discuss a schedule, moderation of weekly exercises and some values such as the fact that with knowledge comes responsibility. The trainers also discuss their observations of how the nurses’ faces lit up the previous day as they started to get a sense of accomplishment. It was good to see this. Wilna told me that the Matron from the hospice was very excited after the course. She said that she could not wait to learn how to do her own IT things. Currently she has to write memos and letters by hand and then give it to the “IT expert” to type it in Word or on an email. She and her colleagues now have the freedom to do ICT work themselves.

5.46pm: I notice a couple of people collecting water from the mission’s water tanks. “Yes” they told me “we don’t have water today!”

6.30pm: The community meeting started. For me it was really long and drawn out. Between each “item” there is singing of hymns and between each song there had to be an “item”. This community’s sense of time and completion is not related to what the watch says. Something is finished when there is a mutual sense of completion and no-one is in any hurry whatsoever. Where I come from, social life is dominated by minutes and seconds and a need for efficiency. The Happy Valley community does not have these issues and therefore they do not fret about anything really. Mrs Ndlovu explained the ICT training for teachers and the school’s vision to further ICT training in the region. The community was really receptive. She later told me that the certificate ceremony was a big event in the community and that they now understand where the training course came from, why the school was selected and also the school’s vision to further the training to other community members. We believe that the ICT vision of the school has been accepted by the community. During the handing out of certificates I could sense a vibrant excitement. Sometimes a sweaty handshake would reveal some hidden nervousness. After the last certificate Baba Mtungwa stood up and thanked me personally. The preach went on, the people sung and finally at 9.30pm we’re finished. I gave Mr D a lift home and off I went to the orphanage.

The certificate ceremony

Thursday morning at 5am I’m back on the road to my next meeting in Pretoria at exactly 3pm.

[1]Due to the extremely sensitive nature of this topic and the tension caused by HIV and Aids, TB and poverty in the Happy Valley community, actual names of individuals and places are withheld.