Post By Kevin
Disclaimer
For various reasons, we brought a lot of different electronics. You do not have to bring any electronics if
you don’t want to. You will have to keep
in mind that most sites will have a charging station or a cell tower (which
acts as a charging center) and you will be able to keep most things charged for
an easy Le 1000 ($0.25) per item. Lara’s
father, and electrical engineer, wanted us to make sure that we were charging
at home, so he sent us with a roll-up 26W solar panel that we use to charge car
batteries. We then use a 140W inverter
that was designed to plug into the cigarette outlet in a car. It has been extremely convenient, because we
can keep our phones, iPod, and laptop charged at home most of the time, but this
kind of system is by no means necessary.
If you come here with nothing in the way of electronics, you will have
the opportunity to buy smart phones, radios, solar panels, mp3 players, lights,
and just about anything you want short of a computer (too expensive
here!). Don’t sweat it if you just want
to plan to buy these things in-country.
Acer Aspire One
I could not have been
happier with this choice of computer. It’s
super lightweight, easy to travel with, and quite a durable little thing. Two years in and it’s still kicking with
great battery life! The only problem we’ve
run into is hard disk space and processing time. Unfortunately the problem of processing time
is not easily fixed (installing more ram); hard disk space can be easily supplemented
with external space (1TB hard drives are pretty inexpensive now and I wish I
had one so badly. Right now we’re
working with 1 500GB and 1 250GB external to pair with our 500GB internal. Turns out whenever PCVs get together, we
share movies and TV shows and now we everything is full and we’re working with
flash drives). Lara and I have been able
to watch four to five hours of video at night if we want and have since taken
advantage of this nearly every night for the two years of service.
If you’re on the fence
about whether or not to bring a computer and/or a smart phone, I personally
would highly recommend it. You have to
do quarterly evaluation for Peace Corps and having your own computer to work on
it and submit it from site is extremely convenient (internet at site depends on
your reception. Internet is still dial
up in this country and is troublesome at best).
I know the people that brought smart phones or bought them here were
extremely happy with their choice. The
internet tends to run a bit faster on the little guys and they are great for
quick things like checking your email.
Kindle
Having a way to read
1600 books without having a massive book shelf is so wonderful. The Peace
Corps group before us has been generous enough to put all of the books on a
flash drive and share them with us. This has given me quick access
to all the books I wanted to read but was never able to.
There has been one
hiccup. Because of the humidity in this country (fluctuating between
70% and 100% year round), the Peace Corps Hostel has a drawer full of dead
kindles. We have personally gone through
2 Kindles before we figured out a proper way to keep them safe. We started to ask anyone who was sending us a
package to include the silica gel packs that come with most things (shoes, some
electronics, beef jerky, etc.) to throw them in with whatever they sent
us. We then put our Kindles into a
ziplock bag with the gel packs and have since been pretty lucky. We found out that after a few weeks the packs
stop working efficiently, so to keep them fresh you can put them in the oven at
300 degF for 10 to 15 min to dry them out.
If you are looking for a more permanent solution, I’ve heard good things
about the Pelican case that can be bought at R.E.I.
Hybridlight (Solar
Flashlight)
This solar flashlight
is a great idea, but I am unsure of its practicality. First things
first, it claims to be waterproof, however when I tried to open the battery
case, the plastic that protects the solar panel pulled away from the case and
seems to have opened the “waterproof” part of the case. Now when I
place it in the sun you can see the condensation build up on the clear
plastic. Secondly, I’m not sure how long the battery is supposed to
last on 8 hours of full sun, but it does not seem to last very long (possible
humidity problem since it’s obviously not waterproof). Lastly, the
backup batteries that come with the flashlight are the very expensive, very
hard to come by, flat batteries. This is not very feasible for
Africa where they only get their batteries from China.
This is still true 2
years in. Because we have headlights, we
tend to not use the other various forms of flashlights. We almost never use this light, but it is
still working and we’re planning to give it to someone here before we
leave. I don’t trust that in the hands
of our Salonian friends this lights is going to last too long.
TechLite Lumen Master
(Flashlight)
This is a freaking awesome
flashlight. It is the brightest thing that we have brought here and
it runs on AAA batteries. This flashlight is arguably brighter than most
headlights on cars in this country. This
is a hand-held flashlight that is great for looking at night wildlife and has
been quite the pleasure to have here.
Voyager Pro by Kaito
(AM/FM//Weatherband/Shortwave Radio)
This radio has so many
really cool options that I want to talk about. It has a solar
charger, a crank charger, charges using USB input, charges by using AC input,
and lastly charges the internal batteries by using the AAA batteries (all of which
can in turn charge an iPod or mp3 player [theoretically- I haven’t
tried]). On the backside of the solar panel (which flips up) there
is a string of five LED lights that are perfect for eating dinner or grading
papers. There is also a flashlight that makes it easy to look for
something directly. As far as functions on the radio, there are two
alarms that can be set and an auto off function that can be set for anywhere up
to 1.5 hours after the alarm goes off. There are also 100 different
presets you can program if you would like, but since there is also a number pad
on the front of the radio, you could just punch in the radio station you
desire. This radio transmits AM, FM, Weather Band, and
Shortwave. If there were weather band stations in Sierra Leone, I
could use the “Alert” function which would make the radio turn on any time
there is a weather emergency broadcasting on the weather band. There
is also really good reception where we are in the Bo area, and the radio has a
thermometer and barometer on it.
It seems like for
every good thing about this radio though, there is a bad thing. For
one, the first time I used the hand-crank feature, it popped off and all four
screws were stripped. I wanted to try and fix this by taking the radio apart and
trying to screw them in again with some super glue, but I could not get it
apart without feeling like I was breaking it further. I bought a
larger antenna for the radio and after taking the antenna out, I realized that
they had soldered the wire for the antenna to it and I had pulled the wire off
from where it was soldered on (still works though). Lastly, with all
my solar charging devices, they take way longer to charge than what they claim
in the instructions (this could be due to the humidity, which I have yet to see
below 70% in the two months I have been here. They don’t call it rainy season
for nothing!).
We now use this radio
purely for the solar light capabilities.
This radio is a bit like the dog from Family Guy that is dragging its
legs and barely able to stay alive. We’re
leaving this radio with our 14 year old neighbor for her to study at night and
possibly listen to the local radio. Just
like the flashlight, I’m not sure this radio is going to last more than a few
months in someone else’s care.
Tecsun
FM/Shortwave/MW/LW DSP Receiver [radio]
This was the radio
that my father-in-law said was the nice one, and he was definitely right. It
doesn’t have the fancy gadgets the other one has, but as far as picking up
radio stations it’s pretty killer. This is a tech geek’s radio,
where you actually have to pull out the operations manual to figure out what
the hell you are doing, but as far as operations go, it wins outright over the
other SW radio. First thing, it has an antenna that is about 4 feet
long. This would be awesome in the states because we’d probably be
able to pick up stations from 50 miles away in the flat lands of Ohio where
they have much more powerful transmitters. Here in Sierra Leone that
antenna doesn’t pick up a whole lot (we have 1 FM station in town. That’s all.
It broadcasts 7AM-11AM and 7PM-11PM daily. Outside of those hours,
silence.) The radio also came with a 15-foot-long flexible antenna
that I spent some time last week feeding up the wall and connecting to our tin
roof- now we get several stations, including the BBC, which is very
exciting. The first 3 weeks we were at site we didn’t really have
news to speak of. Now we can tune into the BBC and fill up on US and
International news. It’s been great to have this radio and we appreciate it
quite a lot.
Still working two
years in and was wonderful to have at site for two years. Lara’s dad thought it was necessary to have a
backup radio incase this one kicks the bucket, so right now we have two
identical radios that we’re going to leave to the PCV that’s going to replace
us.
Soladec (USB Solar
Charger)
This solar charger is
super awesome. It took some trouble shooting to figure out the
problem, but I figured out that the humidity in fact is killing all my
batteries. I found this out by charging it with my computer USB and
then keeping it in a ziplock bag. I have taken it out to charge my
speakers from 0% to 100% and it was still showing a green charge light. I
had read that this battery was able to charge an iPod 2.5 times and still be
able to use the flashlight on the back. The flashlight is composed
of five LEDs that have ballooned plastic over each of them. This
makes it possible to completely illuminate a room with no problems. Only
downside to this is using the solar panel to charge, I have never been able to
get it to fully charge (blame the humidity).
This update was prior
to the wonder that is the dry season. I
have since been able to put this charger out in the sun and get a full charge
in a day. It in fact does charge iPods
2.5 times and the flashlight attached with it is used quite often when we have
company because of its amazing ability to illuminate the whole room. The only problem I’ve run into with having
this solar panel (or any panel for that matter) is your neighbors will
constantly ask you if you can charge things for them. It can be trying, but you’ll learn how to say
no pretty quickly.
SunPak Solar Charger
(On loan)
I will have to update
this one later, but it was $7 to purchase it and it seemed to be worth every
freakin penny. I will talk to the PCT we lent it to and see what she
thinks of this.
After talking to this
person, I found out that she left it outside to charge and it was stolen pretty
quickly. I still think this would be a
great purchase because of its price.
GoalZero Solar Charger
(On loan)
Gifted to us from
Lara’s brother and the claims of charging an iPod in 1 hour is pretty close
(due to the massive size of the panels). Only complaint, there is no
battery pack that it charges, which means you can only use it when the sun is
out (a battery is available as an extra feature that I’ve seen fellow PCVs had)
and if you don’t have full sun it will in fact draw power from your iPod, so
this needs to be monitored closely. All in all though, it’s a really
cool product.
The person who I
loaned this to was too afraid to leave it outside alone, so she said she did
not use it frequently. She said the few
times she did use it, it worked well but the need to keep it in the sun and in
eye shot was pretty strenuous. From the
other volunteers that I’ve seen with this solar panel I’ve heard that it’s a
pretty nice to work with if you have that spare battery pack.
GoalZero Speakers
So grateful that
Lara’s brother Eric loves music like he does because I would not have thought
to get good quality sounding speakers prior to coming here. This has
made watching movies awesome and listening to music at night incredibly
nice. At one point they even used these speakers to show a movie to
a room of 60+ people about malaria and it worked great. The speakers
use a wooden box to resonate the bass and they make any movie watching
experience much greater. They have an internal battery that can be
charged by a micro USB input. I have successfully been able to watch
a movie and listen to two hours’ worth of music on one charge. One
thing that could make this better is if they would have made the battery bigger
in the speakers and made an output such that I would have been able to charge
my devices. It is because of this that I leant out the Goal Zero
Solar charger as opposed to any other ones that had internal batteries.
Two years in and this
was one of the best things we have here.
We use these every day for hours on end.
It has been a wonderful thing to have here.
Power Film Solar
(AA/AAA Solar Charger)
This has been a very
useful tool in keeping the many (Read: boku) flashlights charged. I
use this charger to charge AAA and AA batteries and it so far has worked out
perfectly. People have envied my charger because it folds up so
small. It uses six flexible panels to charge 2 or 4 batteries. It
claims to charge them in 3.5 hours for 2 batteries and 6.5 hours for 4
batteries, but once again, the time has taken much longer than they
claim. Again, I will reassess this in the dry season when it actually
falls below 90% humidity. All in all though, this is a great product
and I am very happy to have it here in country.
We have found that
with repeated folding and unfolding of the panel, the wires can wear and
break. We have had one of these panels break
and we want to find someone to solder it back together. However, when this panel was working it was
wonderful. Because our headlights and
camera run on AA and AAA batteries, we use this nearly every day.
Chinese Adapter/Power
Strip (Bought in country)
I bought this power
strip at a small wooden stand that was selling all sorts of
electronics. They had this power strip that was made in China and has five
three-prong outlets on top and 10 two-prong outlets on the sides. It
also came with a voltage meter on the top and 5 on/off switches for each set of
plugs. After one use, something arched when I had plugged it in and
it fried the voltage meter (common problem with 220 volts it turns
out). When I went to purchase this product, the seller gave me the price
of Le 38 000 ($8.77). Because this is a haggle economy, I said Le 15 000
($3.46). We bantered back and forth for a bit and eventually ended
at Le 25 000 ($5.77). So far this has been my most exciting and most
functional purchase in Sierra Leone because you are able to use any plug on all
the outlets on the surge protector. Also, it’s a freaking surge
protector! There is a real problem with the surges coming from the
completely rigged generators that they run here. This power strip
seems to have gone missing somewhere along our trip to site, so we bought a
new, smaller one last time we went to Bo. The smaller one cost Le
10,000 and has 3 outlets.
Super cheap and easy
to break.
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