Folabi Sunday

Fola is a primary school teacher in Oyo State. Fola teaches in a village in "the bush", which is even more rural, and with less infrastructure than Ago-Are. (I know young men from Lagos and Ibadan who consider they have ventured to the rural depths if they reach Ago-Are - but it is a major metropolis compared to Fola's village.)

Fola and I first met a couple of years ago through Pastor David who manages the Information Centre in Ago-Are. Fola was interested in the Teachers Talking programme. Later he joined the Learning From Each Other group, and he participates in discussions in the worknets chat room. In September 2008 he attended the Self Directed Learners course at Fantsuam Foundation. He also took Mohammed Yunus books on "Creating a World Without Poverty" back to Oyo State.

Fola's contract requires him to teach where he is sent. The Parent Teacher Association of the school where he teaches is required to provide his accomodation. He therefore lives in a traditional small round thatched "mud hut". Really he is a "city boy" and so he does not find it easy to live in such a rural setting. His lifeline is his phone, which he cannot use in the bush, so he has to travel to somewhere like Ago-Are. Fola uses this phone to keep in contact with the outside world, including connecting to the Internet.

The Information Centre at Ago-Are has computers but no Internet connection, and it is only in the last couple of years that Ago-Are has had coverage by the mobile phone network. Fola and Pastor David have been wondering what can be done to help the Information Centre get online. Today Fola sent emails to Learning From Each Other, which suggest a way forward, and explain a glitch.

I copy his emails below:
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The possible solution - "Browsing made easy"

it was an interesting story, i met with a company that introduced me to browsing with my phone for 500naira in 24hrs or 3000# every night(10pm-5am) in a month or 10000# for every hour in the month(24/7) using my MTN line. better still it can still be used to browse on the computer and the phone will serve as a modem. i tried out the daily plan of 500naira yesterday and i browse all day on my phone but iam planning to connect it to a desktop and if it also work all day on the system that bring us to limelight at Dadamac and the Ago-Are centre. i have told pastor about this and he asked to give it a trial. iam a happy man now because i can browse all day spending 500naira only. iam even using it to send this mail now. what do you have to say to this
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The glitch - "my 3G phone"

I have a sony ericsson phone p990i(a 3G phone) the one i always use to send my mail. but it has developed a little fault not quite long. it does not allow me to install some beautiful softwares like opera,cellity,mig33 and others anylonger. it always says application closed registry server, reason code 9 and some other jaggons but Kelechi said it is the software that needed to be updated. is this true? and if indeed i need an updated software how do i go about it because it is now (that i have discovered how to browse 24hrs spending just 500#)that i needed the phone most. please anybody that has the know how should bail me out.
thanks
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I am no techie so I don't know the answer to his problem, but discovering the more affordable Internet service, which he and Pastor David might use to provide an Internet connection for the people of Ago-Are is a huge step forward.

Update -problem solved

After Fola wrote his emails he got helpful advice from Bidi Bala and Ricardo through the Self Directed Learners (SDL) Group. The problem was solved and on Friday 12th December 2008 Riccardo posted the update below to the SDL group.

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Dear All
just to finish this thread, Fola has now got his phone
working again. He went to the Somy Ericsson website and downloaded
and installed McAfee anti-virus, firewall and VPN manager program on
his phone, and it fixed the problem. He can now run application
programs again on his phone. He didn't need to backup phone numbers
and reset all the memory or install the latest firmware.

I think viruses are mostly a problem for people who install new
programs on their phone. Most people don't add any new programs, so
they never download any viruses onto their phones.

I just posted this info, in case it affects anyone else.

Ricardo

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