Cell phone coverage in Rwanda is quite good. You can call, text or even use GPRS everywhere — even in the remote places. Unfortunately for us, Rwinkwavu is one of those places where coverage sucks. MTN (cell provider) did agree to install a cell extender to boost our coverage as a temporary solution, so they came out a few days ago to power and configure our new extender.
Getting things done in Rwanda (and I’m guessing Africa) tends to be slow and bureaucratic — everything requires explicit and multiple approvals have been given. Not necessarily a bad thing, but whether you are installing a cell tower or ordering food, expect long delays. I got a message from Giscard that the cell tower would have to tap into our UPS and MTN (provider) wanted verbal confirmation again. I was off site, so I headed towards the hospital.
When I got there, the grey skies had turned dark and swollen with rain. It was mostly sprinkles at first, but then the downpour started. By the hour mark, it was clear we were in for a long night. We couldn’t leave until we knew the cell tower was working and the MTN employees were working slowly due to the rain. We went inside the hospital to take shelter and wait.
We’d only been inside for a few minutes when we heard the crack of lighting and a loud explosion. Everything went dark. As the flashlights and cellphones came out, we saw smoke leaking from the walls. Whatever had happened in the last few seconds had destroyed the light switches in the room we were standing. The switches had exploded and the smoke was from the burning plastic. Nice.
We rushed to the power room to check things out. The UPS which was supposed to run the hospital for 3-4 hours was completely dead. Not damaged, but rather instantaneously drained. It seemed something in the power grid and shorted and sucked all the power out of the hospital. The generator had suffered a similar fate — all its electronic components were dead. Awesome.
The next stop was the server room. Everything was off (we run of the main UPS) but at luckily there was no burning smell. We were unplugging everything from the wall when we heard yelling. We stepped out of the server room into a deluge of reddish water. The hospital was being flooded. Great.
It was at this point that my flashlight was commandeered by the doctors. A patient was in surgery when the power went out, and the flashlights the staff had were not adequate. I snuck a peak into the operating room and the poor guy had some sort of mouth wound that they were sewing and it would take all night. Given the lack of power there was not much else to do. We had a quick chat, and called it a night.
The morning after was no easier. The lightning did very bad things to our equipment. The spike had come through the ethernet cabling and the power lines. We lost computers, monitors, printers, and routers. Even in the house close to the hospital strange things had happened. The satellite modem, despite being on a working UPS, blew both fuses and the motherboard was toast. I took it apart, but couldn’t figure out why it was dead.
At this point, we’ve reshuffled most of the network and things are sort of working. The EMR server survived and one of the two satellites is still running so we can still work. The UPS and generator are still down, and half the network is down because we’ve run out of routers and ethernet boosters. In a few weeks, we will be getting a shipment of gear that will get us back to full capacity. Everyone in Rwinkwavu is rebuilding after the storm. This ant path appeared the morning after…
