El Limon On Line !

On Saturday August 29, El Limon went on line, becoming one of the first isolated rural communities in the Dominican Republic with public Internet access. In this cutting-edge experiment , the community will use the internet to reduce rural isolation, support agricultural change and economic development, and facilitate innovative programs like this summer’s Art Week. The Rural Information Technology Institute, which promises to be at the core of El Limon’s development, will be designed around the communication possibilities of the internet.

The connection culminated over a year of working… and waiting. The idea of bringing computers to El Limon was originally sparked by the imminent prospect of cellular telephone service in the Ocoa Valley. The whole computer project was focused around the use of the computer as an internet connected communication tool. When cellular service failed to materialize, we decided to use spread spectrum digital radios to connect to the nearest phone line, six miles away in Ocoa. Last spring we lined up the use of a mountaintop repeater site, and the donation or loan of all the necessary equipment. This summer, when we went to put up the repeater, we found out the site wasn’t where we thought it was. There was a hill between the site and the building where our phone line would be located. It wasn’t a very big hill, but big enough that we didn’t have the line of sight that the 900 megahertz digital radios needed.

Then we found the perfect repeater location. Halfway between Ocoa and El Limon, a hilltop where the phone company has a microwave relay tower… and a live-in guard. Unwatched equipment, especially solar panels, can have a short lifetime around here. We approached the phone company for permission to locate our little 1 watt repeater on their hilltop. Months later, they’re still "studying" the situation. After much climbing around in the hills, and peering from treetops, we found another hilltop site. Security was a potential problem, which meant putting the repeater in an iron box out of reach on top of a post. It turns out they don’t sell prebuilt iron boxes in this country. After two weeks of waiting for our local blacksmith to finish his current project, he finally sent us off to his friends, who welded up a funky but solid box the next day. We found a nice piece of rusty six inch pipe to lift the box out of easy reach, and put all the pieces together.

On the hilltop, our work brigade found more work than we had bargained for. It was hot. There were an awful lot of big rocks in the hole. The radios don’t like trees in the line of sight, and cutting a 200 yard long tunnel through tropical second growth by machete took several hours. Lining up the tunnel by pocket compass wasn’t quite perfect either, and cutting a few feet farther uphill took awhile. We left a swath of destruction that looked like the path of a dozen crazed giant beavers. Not exactly something for us eco types to be proud of.

Two days later we were back on top. The radios on both ends of the link were in place and powered up. The brigade came up a bit short-handed that Friday, and the cargo going up the mountain included several hundred pounds of iron, concrete, and water. We did finally get to the top, and everything did go together pretty easily. Except for the hole for the ground wire I had forgotten to drill in the iron box. A 4-in-one screwdriver bit and hand sledge can work wonders. We hooked up the antenna and battery. The radio lights flickered red, then steady green. El Limon was connected.

All that was left was the serial line extension from the El Limon school up to the radio a hundred yards above. We hooked it up… nothing. After a couple of hours of getting to know an intermittent serial line extender better than I ever wanted to, the last little piece of the link seemed to be holding. The "OK" coming back from a modem six miles away was amazingly satisfying. And after the usual several tries at getting into the modem bank away off in Santo Domingo, Internet Explorer was filling the laptop’s screen with garish colors and crass advertising. That was just fine with me.

It’s Saturday night, and all evening a steady trickle of local people have passed through our little computer room, to search the Web for "agricultura organica" and send email to the students who were here earlier in the summer. And just to see this internet that they’ve heard so much about, and is going to change their lives in ways none of us can even start to imagine on this clear and warm mountain night.

Here’s a well deserved word of thanks to those who made this all possible. To Harvie Branscomb, to and Steve Wulchin of FreeWave Technology; who got us the radios. To the lightning protection people, Bob Copple of PolyPhaser, Keith Pacholsky of Harder, and John Jensen of Northern Technologies, who are helping to keep those radios alive. To Rafael Presinal and all the other good people of El Limon who work so incredibly hard for a better future for their community. And to all the others, at Cornell University and ProNatura and Rotary and around the world, who support the work in El Limon, who contributed toward the truck and the video project and all the other unlikely things it takes to make the world a better place. Finally, a plea for your financial support. We’re coming out of this summer, incredible as it was, $ 2,000 in debt. Contributions to CRESP-EcoPartners are tax deductible.