ARD's driver picked us up and drove us to their HQ in Freetown.  The ride is an hour at least, as freetown traffic is similar to LA traffic.  The only thing to do is talk, read the paper, or play ukulele.  We usually chose to play ukulele, which every once in a while drew a little applause, but mostly a lot of funny stares from passers by.  No one we spoke to had seen a ukulele in Salone.

We arrived and had a brief meeting with the lead staff to cover scope and do a little long term planning, and then got to work as quickly as possible.  I thought it was important to work with the staff to show them that they could make good use of the equipment first.  We got the wireless network up in about 15 minutes, then started fixing the existing wired network, and had a cable repair class.  The long term planning consisted mostly of figuring out how to make the least expensive / most reliable vpn between offices after we had accomplished all our goals at HQ.

Noah broke out for wiki training and web development classes with an elite wiki/webdev squad, and helped evaluate some offers to get web dev up to par.

After we had the network up, we tackled shared printing, shared access to the MIS system (identifying a licensing issue that prevented completion of that task), and installed the NAS system, but did not configure it.  I think we broke off that day fairly early.

One thing I tried to do was to smile at everyone.  Sometimes I try to do this at home, too, but I had heard that this is especially useful in Africa.  That worked out wonderfully and became my rule.  Anyone whose eye could be caught would get my best smile.  More people smiled back, and with bigger and better smiles, than you would find in the US.  Everyones teeth are perfect in Sierra Leone, as far as I can tell.  Probably comes from eating real food that involves chewing, instead of processed food filled with "corn sugar".

Next: ARD day 2