Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[IVO NJOSA]

Pat Hall wrote:
 
> ...is there something else going on here - perhaps the language policies
> of Nigeria have led to the education system favouring English?

In response to Pat, Europeans carved up Africa without seriously
integrating the polarizational issue of tribe and hence culture. Let us
not make the same mistake with ICT. Ideally, Africans should learn to
read/write in their everyday spoken language. I believe there is a
school of thought that strongly views this as advantageous.
Unfortunately, many to most African countries have a different tribal
language every few miles. Moreover, each tribe views its language as
the best and that it should be the national language if there were to be
one. Thus for a country like Nigeria, counting only the big three;
should it be Ibo, Hausa or Yoruba. Presumably one would want this
teaching to start at elementary schools and onwards. Try teaching Yoruba
to an Ibo child--even if it would be for the good of the country. Should
one then limit it to only tribal members? Who is going to fund all these
regional programmes? The national government that is striving for
unity?. One cannot even do it on a regional level because there are
children from different areas living and attending school within a
particular region -- even though they may not be a majority.

There are a few country exceptions that come to mind where a national
language can be the village language also and the idea may work better,
(Central African Republic, Madagascar to name a few), but this is rare.
Consequently, English and French were chosen through the colonial rulers
because of its tribal-neutrality and ease of communication with the
outside world. In conclusion, the idea in itself is a good one; but like
many Western-inspired projects, it does not integrate enough the
dimension and complexity of a seemingly mundane African issue called "my
village".

Ivo Njosa
Information and Communication Technology 




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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Don Osborn]

Pat Hall's questions for Pam McLean open up a whole range of issues
regarding the intersection of sociolinguistics, and language and
education policies with ICT policy that are pertinent to the discussion
but probably need to be explored in depth elsewhere. I'll let Pam reply
on the particular case of Yoruba with which she is more familar than I,
but the general situation in African educational systems has been to
favor the official languages inherited from colonization even though
these are no one's maternal languages. Many countries where English is
used have policies for some African language instruction at lower grades
shifting to English later, though I've heard that application is uneven
at best, while the general rule where French is the official language
has long been a French-only (from day one) approach. Although a few
people manage to excel under (or despite?) these type of systems, many
others end up with limited skills in their maternal language (e.g.,
can't write it, don't have as wide a range of expression as they might)
and limited skills in the official language (in which, at least in the
typical Francophone model, learning is by rote).

One wonders if this isn't an underappreciated dimension to the
development struggles of the continent: the means haven't been there or
allocated to developing and applying effective bilingual education,
hence the majority of school leavers don't end up with an optimal set of
language skills and all that would go with that.

On the ICT side, one of the reasons for pushing for multilingual
capacities on computer systems and African language content on Internet
for the continent, is to open up the possibility for use of and
expression in - and indeed learning of/in - the mother tongues and
vehicular languages, whatever does or doesn't happen in the educational
systems (regarding the latter, there are some hopeful developments in
some places like in Mali). But because even literate people may not be
multiliterate, and also because of the importance of oral tradition,
innovation - regarding audio especially, as many of us are saying -
would seem to be an essential part of the strategy ... As well as a way
to avoid having someone translate Yoruba to English to write in a
letter/e-mail and perhaps someone else translate English to Yoruba on
the receiving end.


Don Osborn
Bisharat.net




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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Pam McLean]

Regarding intermediaries, and the use of written English amongst Yoruba
speaking people, Pat Hall asked me to explain more about the situation
in Oke-Ogun:

> Pam, is there something else going on here - perhaps the language
> policies of Nigeria have led to the education system favouring English?

The answer is "Yes." I will give some examples of how things are.

- In Oke-Ogun English is the main written language, and the main
language of education (and, I believe, administration) whilst Yoruba is
the main spoken language.

- The late founder of CAWD/OOCD, Peter Adetunji Oyawale, told me that he
did not learn to read and write Yoruba until the last few years of his
secondary education - and it was against all the odds that he managed to
continue his education beyond primary level. It was a source of
disappointment to him that he could write English better than he could
write Yoruba, but he was not able to express himself in English as well
as he could express himself in Yoruba. The reason he wanted to include
community radio alongside his proposed CDICs (Community Digital
Information Centres) was so that the OOCD 2000+ project could "Speak,
speak to people in the language they understand". He was particularly
concerned for people like his parents and his friends from primary
school. (OOCD community radio is on hold, as our partner organisation
for community radio has been waiting over a year for a license to be
granted)

- Peter's widow Agnita and I do not speak Yoruba. The letters we get
from Ago-Are are written in English for our benefit.

- Before the memorial service for Peter, which was held in London in
2001, Peter's younger brother sent an email with a Yoruba message which
he suggested could be read at the service. A well educated friend from
Ogun state tried to translate it for Agnita and me. (He is another
person with Yoruba as his first spoken language but English as his
written language) He struggled with it almost as if it was in code. He
kept going back over the individual sections. He seemed to be trying out
different possibilities of how the words might flow together, before he
could get the meaning, in order to express it in English. Don Osborn of
Bisharat, who is a contributor to this list, could explain better than I
can the importance of tonal marks in written Yoruba, the related
problems regarding email, and work being done to address the problems.

- At Peter's school there was a sign - "No vernacular beyond this
point".

- At the secondary school in Ago-Are there is a sign "To achieve total
success always speak English"

- My first awareness of Yoruba speakers not writing Yoruba came when I
was teaching in Peckham, in South London. One of my colleagues, whom I
admired as a teacher, was a Nigerian. I was interested in some aspects
fo her culture, and asked her to write down some Yoruba words she had
used in her descriptions. I was intrigued when she hesitated and was
obviously "creating" the written form of the words from knowledge of how
written Yoruba is constructed  (i.e. "I think probably"). Her
writing was not based on "knowing" how to write the words through
familiarity with their written form.

- I have the impression that this is gradually changing and the use of
written Yoruba is becoming more prevalent.

- I have seen a Yoruba reading book in a primary school in Oke-Ogun. It
was in June 2002 when I was in a school just outside Ago-Are. The
children were jostling to get their photos taken and were waving various
classroom objects in front of the camera to atract my attention. One
pupil had a tattered commercially published book. It was in Yoruba.

- Last Christmas I was discussing the use of Yoruba with an English VSO
volunteer who had been working at a school in Nigeria. He told me that
Yoruba literacy is now on the primary curriculum, but other lessons are
still taught in English.

- Two of my Nigerian contacts have mentioned a professor at Ibadan who
is encouraging the use of Yoruba in higher education. As I recall he has
accepted (or is going to accept) a dissertation writen in Yoruba, which
I understand is a very unusual thing to happen.

Pat also says:
> The nice thing about speech communication as in telephones and the
> voice-letters suggested by Vickram is that the technology does not
> favour any one language and literacy is not a prerequisite to the use of
> the technology.

I agree, that is a great potential benefit. We need the "right tools for
the job" and there are many different jobs to be done.

I will point to a kitchen analogy. It is now a little outdated as
kitchen fashions have moved on and what were once known as "white goods"
on account of their white metal cabinets (i.e. cookers, washing
machines, tumbledriers, dishwashers, fridges and freezers) have changed
their appearance. However the analogy still stands. The "white goods" had
to be chosen after deciding what purpose the "electrically powered
labour saving device" should serve. Even now, th

Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Pam McLean]

I read Raphael Marambii's post with interest, in particular:

> Although cryptography is complicated, we should not under-estimate the
> intelligence of people to quickly grasp the basic concepts (snip) It
> would be great fun and very empowering to teach villagers about ciphers
> and the art of cryptography (snip). For example, we could start with the
> simple one of wrapping a strip of cloth or paper around a certain sized
> stick, then writing a message across, then removing the stick, then
> showing the message can only be read by winding it around a similar
> sized stick. etc.
> 
> I think there is something to be gained from not only bringing the IT
> technologies to people but also teaching some of the supposedly
> difficult concepts of computer science that underpin the technologies.

I like this particular teaching idea because it combines a good locally
available Visual Aid with IT awareness. I also like the fact that
Raphael Marambii is interested in ways of teaching the "supposedly
difficult concepts of computer science".

David Mutua and I are developing ICT awareness courses for people in
Ago-Are. We have a slightly unusual approach to ICT awareness because of
the history of our project. Our late founder, Peter Adetunji Oyawale,
was an IT professional in the UK, but that happened against all the
odds, because he was also the son of poor illiterate peasant farmers.
Despite Peter's education and skills he kept the ability to look at the
world through the eyes of (to use his description) an "ignorant
peasant". This means that he was continually recognising information and
opportunities that would make life easier or better for his people back
home in Oke-Ogun. Many of these opportunities related to the effective
use of ICTs. When Peter was killed we lost from our project his unique
ability to look at the world, simultaneously, through the eyes of an IT
professional and an "ignorant peasant".

I believe most sincerely that when it comes to designing computer
applications of any kind it is much easier for someone who is an expert
in a soft system to learn "sufficient" about computers, than it is for
someone who is an expert in the computer side of things to learn
"sufficient" about the soft system. Therefore since Peter's death I have
been looking forward to a time when some of his "ignorant peasants"
(i.e. small scale farmers in Oke-Ogun who have lacked educational
opportunity) would know sufficient about ICTs to be able to see things
more through Peter's eyes, and suggest how ICTs can best be useful. So
you will understand that when I talk about developing ICT awareness
courses in Oke-Ogun I am not thinking about training people to be
"computer operators" of some kind - I'm talking about "seeing things
Peter's way" and giving a community an empowering relationship with the
potential of technology. Raphael Marambii seems to have a similar
philosophy, I hope we will be able to explore some ideas further...

I know a youth in Ago-Are called Toby, who wants to study computer
science, but has no money to go away and be a student. He stays with
David, doing house-boy chores, in order to be around when there are
opportunities to learn about computers. There are lots of chores to be
done when electricity and running water are scarce and there are no
labour saving gadgets. Toby helps me too when I'm in Ago-Are and I would
like to help him in return. Any more ideas like the encryption stick to
share with Toby?

Pam McLean
CAWD UK Volunteer on behalf of Oke-Ogun Community Development Agenda
2000 Plus




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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Pat Hall]

One aspect of Pam MacLean's contribution has intrigued, and alarmed, me:

> 1) In Oke-Ogun letters are often written by an intermediary on behalf of
> an illiterate person, often by hand, not necessarily typewritten. The
> process is made additionally complicated by the fact that letters often
> need to be written in English, although most illiterate people speak
> Yoruba (This is one reason for people being illiterate - they never
> mastered English well enough to read and write it). I understand that
> after having a letter written it is usual to then take it to a different
> intermediary who will read it back so that the sender can check if the
> meaning is close enough to what was intended. Letters are often sent by
> hand rather than by post. Travellers commonly carry letters.

Why are these letters written in English? According to Douglas
Pulleybank writing in Bernard Comrie's book on the languages of Africa,
Yoruba has had a writing system since around 1830 based on the Roman
alphabet, with much of the work in stabalising the orthography done
around the 1850s with a key person being the freed slave Samuel
Crowther. While a significant level of illiteracy is to be expected
related to economic factors - the UN put literacy in Nigeria at 59% in
1997, I don't have more recent figures - I would have expected literacy
to be in Yoruba in the first instance.

Pam, is there something else going on here - perhaps the language
policies of Nigeria have led to the education system favouring English? 
I have seen this in Nepal, where a liberalisation away from a policy
which insisted on all education being in the national language Nepali to
there being a free choice to enable education in minority languages
paradoxically led to an upsurge of schools offering education in
English.

The nice thing about speech communication as in telephones and the
voice-letters suggested by Vickram is that the technology does not
favour any one language and literacy is not a prerequisite to the use of
the technology.

Pat
--
Professor Pat Hall,  Computing Department, Open University,
 Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
tel:  01908 652694 (work at OU), 01825 71 2661 (home and work)
 07813 603376 (mobile)
email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--




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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Meddie Mayanja]

Dear all,

I would like to attribute another role to the Intermediaries which we
have used a lot in both Community Telecenters and School-based
Telecenters in Uganda. Here we talk of Info-brokers.

These are normally influential people of the community by:- their
knowledge, traditional mentoring roles or special role in the community
as say agricultural extensionist, educationist etc. The important role
the group plays in the mediation between technology and the
people/potential users in a manner easily understood by the user
group.

For instance in the case of agricultural information, its the
info-broker (extension officer) who is trained first to access, use and
filter agricultural related information say on the Internet or CD ROMs
(like the FAO agric bank). She is expected then to help the rest on the
farming community in understanding how this info relates to the
community's activities - the chain spans of from the community when the
use of such info is demonstrated by the extensionist. The emergence of
the Community Multimedia Centers (CMCs) supported by UNESCO is a unique
opportunity to expand the benefits of this strategy as the CMCs have
both Internet, access to digital info and radio that bridges the
distances and language very effectively for the case of Africa.

We are also implementing a project in Uganda with support of the World
Bank Institute (WBI) to strengthen efforts towards achieving the MDGs of
Education for All (EFA) using ICTs, using primary school teachers as an
entry point. They are positioned as info-brokers/intermediaries in this
case.

This strategy is built along the understanding that the majority of our
people in Africa will take a while before they could gain the optimum
efficiency in information searching and utilisation when information is
still largely in English. However through intermediaries, they can reap
the benefits of such information as alternative programs are being
developed to increase local content on the Internet and other digital
resources.

Meddie



Meddie Mayanja 
ICT Community Development Specialist 
ICT for Education Program 
World Bank Institute 
Tel: 256 77 502 288 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] OR [EMAIL PROTECTED]




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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Guido Sohne]

Raphael Marambii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On the issue of intermediaries, while acknowledging the very valid
> concerns pointed out by Don Osborne, I'd just like to add that some work
> has been done to try and get around some of these problems. The "voices
> in their hands project" by a Philips Researcher, Paul Rankin
> , a Reuters Digital vision Fellow
> at Stanford 2002-2003, addresses those very issues in almost exactly the
> way Osborne envisions it should, i.e. use of handhelds (modified MP3
> player), used as a service, a voice e-mail store and forward device,
> privacy, leveraging use of Telecenter.

I think that this is a very good idea but should also include video. The
problem with video tends to be that you need to transmit and store a lot
of data. Handhelds have limited resources and this makes it impractical.

Here are a couple of ideas.

Add a writable DVD drive attached to a WiFi transmitter. That's a
separate set-top box and the handhelds can communicate wirelessly with
them when in range.

If having handhelds is going to make it too expensive, you can attach a
TV, and a microphone (how would video be handled?) instead and still get
going.

Only one person can use that at a time, but that's sort of what one
would project for a business in the startup stage. Adding handhelds
could be the next phase for investment by such a business and the
set-top box would already have come with WiFi built in ...

Video and audio are streamed to the writable DVD (or CD) and you have a
set of messages ready for delivery and playback. They say, never
underestimate the bandwidth of a pickup filled with tape. The discs can
be transferred by ordinary transport, shuttled back and forth from the
immediate neighbours.

When the disc gets to a neighbour, the neighbouring box that receives it
acts a bit like a router. Incoming messages destined for the sending box
get written to the disc, and outgoing messages are stored somewhere,
ready to create a set of discs outbound ...

If it's the people that are the network and not the computers, it can
work and promises to be very cheap compared to other alternatives.

The set top boxes (PlayStation, or X-Box type of device) act as
intermediaries in this manner. Each layer of the problem in getting
information to and from the target groups can be solved with appropriate
technology.

- It will work where there is no bandwidth. It costs pennies to
transport messages (one man carrying a satchel and hitching a ride to
the next town and back).

- It focusses on video and voice communication for the target group, who
will find this very useful even when they are not literate.

- The boxes cost perhaps $200 each, which is reasonable, considering
that they will be shared.

- Bandwidth per gigabyte costs: ($1 per mile) / (discs * 4.5Gb) aka
supercheap

It seems like a simple, obvious idea. Does anyone know if this has been
done somewhere? I would be curious to find out how workable it is.




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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Pam McLean]

There has been discussion of email as against broadband connections, and
of the reality of mediators in written communications.

On Wednesday, November 19, 2003 Don Osborn wrote:

..(snip)...
> I'm not at all comfortable with the notion of person-to-person or
> web-to-individual(s) information being mediated where it's not
> absolutely necessary, and then only as a temporary strategy and with as
> few transformations as possible.
..(snip)...

I'm writing to agree. We have to go with what we can get, but mediation
is not an ideal long-term solution. OOCD 2000+ (Oke-Ogun Community
Development Agenda 2000 Plus) is working with various kinds of mediated
and non mediated information. At
 there is a video
clip from Ago-Are. It shows the Baale Agbe, who is the chief of the
farmers in Ago-Are. I had been asked to find out what farmers needed, so
David, the project manager, arranged a meeting with the farmers through
Baale Agbe. The meeting was conducted in Yoruba. Afterwards Baale Agbe
spoke to the video camera, in English, following a structure that was
used for a series of similar interviews. The background noise comes from
people chatting after the meeting. Its not a perfect video - but David
and I were video-camera novices trying to overcome the digital divide
and enable people to speak for themselves. I offer it as an example of
ICT use and an illustration of our desire to enable direct
communication, not to limit it, or to mediate it.

I will further illustrate the present situation regarding communication
with another example, this time one of various kinds of family
communication. It is best understood if you have first been introduced
to the family in question, the Oyawale family.

The initiator of the OOCD 2000+ project, the late Peter Adetunji Oyawale
was born in Ago-Are, Oke-Ogun, Oyo State, Nigeria (where OOCD 2000+
opened its InfoCentre in June this year.) His vision was for an
integrated information, education, training and communication service
that would be built on existing local community structures, and would
emphasise the spoken word in the local language so that illiterate
people, like his parents, would be included. Tragically Peter was killed
when the project was in its very early practical stages after years of
ideas and planning. Peter had been working in the IT industry in the UK.
He had a British wife, Agnita, and four children. Agnita, and I
supported the project on the UK side. Other people had started to
support Peter in Oke-Ogun.

Agnita knows about letters that try to cut across illiteracy and
language barriers. There are no telephones in Ago-Are. After Peter's
death the family tried to keep in touch. Handwritten letters came to
Agnita, written by intermediaries, passed from hand to hand by people
travelling between Ago-Are and Agnita's part of London. When I visit
Ago-Are I usually take letters from Agnita.

The family use email more now. Peter's Uncle Timothy speaks English. He
increasingly uses email rather than letters to contact Agnita, or me, on
his own behalf or to pass on family messages. Mr Timothy Oyawale is a
farmer in Ago-Are. He serves on the OOCD committee and has worked very
actively to help David, the OOCD project manager. Mr Timothy gets David
to actually send the email when he travels to Ibadan. (David provides a
similar service for various people in Ago-Are)

We can't send photos via the Internet into Ago-Are (although David
sometimes sends me photos about the project from Ibadan) but it would be
good if we could.. Last time I went to Ago-Are there was no opportunity
to see Agnita before I left to take letters. However I was taking my
laptop with me, so Agnita emailed me some recent photos of herself and
the children. I shared the photos with the family in Ago-Are on various
occasions. One of my abiding memories is sitting with Muji (from the
InfoCentre) next to Peter's mother in front of the laptop. I named the
children as the various photos came up, and Peter's mother reached her
hand out to the pictures of the grandchildren she has never met,
nodding, smiling at them, speaking their names, and (as Muji told me)
praying for them.

Videos are even better than photos, and, technically, can of course be
sent via the internet (like the Baale Agbe clip mentioned earlier). I
am not, in principle, against applications that are more bandwidth
hungry than email. In theory it could even be done in real time. Video
is great for family communication, and all sorts of other applications.
The day that I was due to leave Ago-Are Peter's mother came to visit,
along with Timothy Oyawale. She sat in front of my video camera,
speaking her heart out for Agnita and the children, in Yoruba. Uncle
Timothy sat by her repeating in English what she had said. It was
infinitely more than the old handwritten greetings could ever convey.
Agnita has the recording at home now on a VCD to play on her computer.
My role was simply to fill th

Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Raphael Marambii]

Apart from the "voices in their hands" program, there may be other ways
to conceivably tackle the problems of ensuring the process empowers the
end user and not create a class between them and the intermediaries.

Take the example of Njideka's Oweri Digital Village model where youth
are employed as "runners" delivering messages to and from the center.
This makes sense economically, because if there is one thing in
over-abundance in Africa, it is youthful unskilled labour. The rural
farmer labouring in the fields all day also hardly has time to venture
out to the Telecenter. Intermediaries as knowledge agents may help
facilitate more use of such centers.

Innovative use of encryption could help ensure privacy and ensure the
"runners" remain just that, as "griots" and not transform into
translators or priests. Take the case of a handwritten letter. This in
fact may be the best technique to use, then the letter can be scanned
right away in plain sight with simultaneous encryption occurring and the
letter sent as an encrypted image attachment. All that the end users
need to know are the public keys of their loved ones and a Version of
PGP or interface to some encryption algorithm that presents a simple
interface for them to authorize the encryption process, perhaps a
Numeric keypad? or Photos on a touch screen - The simputer comes to
mind. i.e. villager touches photo of daughter which means (I want to use
my daughter's public key) and encryption proceeds. The letter is then
sent and only her daughter in the city can read it after that with her
private key.

Although crptography is complicated, we should not under-estimate the
intelligence of people to quickly grasp the basic concepts and then
trust the system. After all, Julius Ceaser was using ciphers as far back
as 100 BC! It would be great fun and very empowering to teach villagers
about ciphers and the art of cryptography as part of the marketing of
such a service and let them try it. Even issue challenges with prize
money for anyone cracking them (let them crack some and move on to more
difficult ones). For example, we could start with the simple one of
wrapping a strip of cloth or paper around a certain sized stick, then
writing a message across, then removing the stick, then showing the
message can only be read by winding it around a similar sized stick.
etc.

I think there is something to be gained from not only bringing the IT
technologies to people but also teaching some of the supposedly
difficult concepts of computer science that underpin the technologies.


Kind regards,

Raphael Kaume Marambii
Microsoft Fellow
Reuters Digital Vision fellowship Program
Stanford University
Cordura Hall
210 Panama Street
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
+1 650 724 9258 or 9259 (tel)
+ 1 650 861 0241 (mobile)
+1 650 724 4076 (fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://reuters.stanford.edu





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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Raphael Marambii]

On the issue of intermediaries, while acknowledging the very valid
concerns pointed out by Don Osborne, I'd just like to add that some work
has been done to try and get around some of these problems. The "voices
in their hands project" by a Philips Researcher, Paul Rankin
, a Reuters Digital vision Fellow
at Stanford 2002-2003, addresses those very issues in almost exactly the
way Osborne envisions it should, i.e. use of handhelds (modified MP3
player), used as a service, a voice e-mail store and forward device,
privacy, leveraging use of Telecenter. It just struck me how great minds
think alike in solving problems. Admittedly there may still be technical
issues to work around. It's a work in progress. Please visit the site
for more information and send any queries to Paul Rankin. Other
solutions could be variations on this theme.

Don Osborne wrote:

> I'm not at all comfortable with the notion of person-to-person or
> web-to-individual(s) information being mediated where it's not
> absolutely necessary, and then only as a temporary strategy and with as
> few transformations as possible - i.e., if as a service, more like a
> postal relay (can what the sender says be recorded and transmitted
> exactly as such through the media to the receiver?) than like the
> traditional letter writer in much of Africa who hears in one language,
> translates into another, and writes a letter that may have to be
> back-translated on the other end. Maybe handhelds will help in this
> regard.
 

Kind regards,

Raphael Kaume Marambii
Microsoft Fellow
Reuters Digital Vision fellowship Program
Stanford University
Cordura Hall
210 Panama Street
Stanford, CA 94305-4115
+1 650 724 9258 or 9259 (tel)
+ 1 650 861 0241 (mobile)
+1 650 724 4076 (fax)
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Re: [GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Pam McLean]

Vickram Crishna and Cliff Missen have referred to intermediaries writing
letters and emails.

I just want to agree that is also how life is in Oke-Ogun.

I offer four examples to elaborate.

1) In Oke-Ogun letters are often written by an intermediary on behalf of
an illiterate person, often by hand, not necessarily typewritten. The
process is made additionally complicated by the fact that letters often
need to be written in English, although most illiterate people speak
Yoruba (This is one reason for people being illiterate - they never
mastered English well enough to read and write it). I understand that
after having a letter written it is usual to then take it to a different
intermediary who will read it back so that the sender can check if the
meaning is close enough to what was intended. Letters are often sent by
hand rather than by post. Travellers commonly carry letters.

2) David Mutua, the OOCD 2000+ project manager in Ago-Are, is known to
travel to Ibadan to use the Internet there, so he is often asked by
Ago-Are people to send emails on their behalf.

3) David can't travel to Ibadan often. Sometimes if I want to contact
him I'll email a mutual friend who will send the message on to Ago-Are
by going to the motorpark (the stopping place for the public service
vehicles). He will ask one of the drivers who are bound for Ago-Are to
deliver the message to David.

4) When I first sent emails to contacts in Nigeria I could not
understand why the "replies" did not seem to answer my questions, but
referred to things from weeks (or months) earlier. I gradually learned
that it was because of intermediaries. The intermediary took the draft
of an email (email B) to the bureau to send to me. This was in reply to
my previous email, email A. When the intermediary sent email B he also
picked up email C, the most recent email which I had sent, probably
weeks earlier. So the person I was actually trying to communicate with
did not read my email C until well after his email B had been sent.
Hence my confusion when email B arrived, as I wrongly expected it to
answer questions raised in email C, not email A. The emails never
carried a copy of the email they were a response to, but just referred
to "your email". The use of intermediaries happens amongst literate
people as well as illiterate people. Sending an email in Nigeria is a
frustrating and time consuming business, so for many people it is not
something to do for yourself if you can send someone else to do it for
you.

You may wonder why we use email at all if it regularly takes weeks or
even months for simple exchanges of information. The answer is
shockingly simple. It is the most effective system available to us.

Pam McLean

CAWD UK volunteer on behalf of OOCD 2000+ (Oke-Ogun Community
Development Agenda 2000 Plus)




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[GKD-DOTCOM] Using Intermediaries to Facilitate Communication

[Don Osborn]

Regarding the messages of Herman Wasserman and Cliff Missen, this is
interesting but there is a danger I think in any strategy that seeks to
rely on intermediaries. Cliff uses the word "griot" but in fact it may
be more like "marabout" or priest (although these latter analogies are
not perfect either) - a class of more educated people to mediate between
common folk and the knowledge (technology), and by extension do the
interpreting for them.

Cliff is right to point out the use of notes and more knowledgeable or
mobile intermediaries in communications. Long before internet, of
course, there were some people who would help their illiterate neighbors
to write letters. But such is no one's ideal, just something that
works.

Likewise for e-mail etc. Access is the issue and that has 2 parts in
the case of computers & intenet: the physical aspect (are you in
proximity and can you afford to log on?) and the meaningful or "soft"
aspect (if you had physical access and found yourself seated in front of
a connected computer, would anything make sense?). The latter overlaps
with user skills of course (basic literacy again, and now computer
literacy) but depends also on the user interface, design of software,
content, and language. The fact is that even, say, the old lady who
grilled kebabs and fried sliced yams in front of the Binnta cybercafé in
Bamako - and most of the passers by who would sit and eat on the corner
there - would have to send something through an intermediary not because
of distance (assuming for a moment that access fee inside was not a
problem) but because the technology would not facilitate their use of
their first language, written, or provide for mailing an audio message
(for the lady and others among them who were not literate).

I'm not at all comfortable with the notion of person-to-person or
web-to-individual(s) information being mediated where it's not
absolutely necessary, and then only as a temporary strategy and with as
few transformations as possible - i.e., if as a service, more like a
postal relay (can what the sender says be recorded and transmitted
exactly as such through the media to the receiver?) than like the
traditional letter writer in much of Africa who hears in one language,
translates into another, and writes a letter that may have to be
back-translated on the other end. Maybe handhelds will help in this
regard.

On another level some internet for development efforts have relied on
people who surf and translate (e.g., in connection with a local
community radio) - in effect another kind of intermediary. This is
certainly helpful, but if the vision does not extend to developing at
least some content that bypasses the need for such intermediation (and
interpretation), then it risks institutionalizing a relationship that by
its nature keeps some people marginalized.


Don Osborn
Bisharat.net






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