I started a two week trip to Freetown, Sierra Leone yesterday. I am here as an IT consultant for the Health Metrics Network, part of the World Health Organization. We are taking a bunch of random hardware that the government bought with a not-quite-complete architecture and putting in place a foundation for IT services related to the Health Information System. Of course, the HIS relies on lots and lots of low tech forms and paperwork “up country”, but there’s also a need for a datacenter in the capital.
I probably won’t post much from here, since I’ll be really busy.
I’ll just say a couple of brief things: it’s great to be back in West Africa, the humidity is not so bad when you get used to it, I enjoyed Star beer and jollof rice for dinner last night.