![\"Public](\"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2023/01/konda_1_intro_1.jpg\")
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With the recent release of chatGPT, it made me wonder: what is the future for artificial intelligence in public transport systems?
\nAt Nibebe, we have attempted to answer this question by creating a transit app that can be accessed offline via SMS or online through popular social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram, and Slack. This approach recognizes that many people already have a lot of apps on their devices. Our app hopes to connect disadvantaged communities through offline mobility services.
\nOur app is similar to Uber or Bolt, but it is more accessible to drivers without smartphones. Drivers can register, get verified, and start receiving ride requests using SMS, USSD, or social media, without having to download the app. In addition, our simplified conversational and multilingual interface allows drivers to update their locations periodically, so they only receive ride requests from nearby riders.
\nWe believe that conversational searches are faster because a rider can put all their queries in one message and receive an instant reply. For example, to request a ride using our chatbot, a rider can simply type, "I need a cab from Makumbusho to Posta at 6pm." The chatbot then gives them a list of nearby drivers ordered according to their distance away.
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![\"Contacts](\"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2023/01/konda_5_drivers.jpg\")
\n![\"Public](\"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2023/01/Screenshot_2023-01-16-00-11-17-699_org.telegram.messenger.jpg\")
\nCurrent skills for our travel assistant include:
\nOur roadmap includes:
\nIn conclusion, our vision is to provide mobility services to everyone, regardless of their internet access, using SMS, USSD, social media, and our AI assistant. Our app allows users to request rides, create carpools, get public transport directions, and purchase public transport tickets, all without downloading the app.
\nTo ensure that by 2030 Dar and other African cities are able to provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons, they need to start investing in generation of open transit data
\nIn October 2022, Tanzania Railway Corporation (TRC) participated in the 11th conference and exhibition of Railway Organizations in the SADC Zone which was held in Johannesburg. This conference focused on Innovation in the change of Railway Operating Technologies. This was an important discussion because compared to how technology influences every sphere of our lives nowadays, technological innovation is as equally important as the construction of the infrastructure themselves.
\nAt the meeting Mrs. Amen who represented TRC said ‘Through SGR, compared to other countries in this region, we seem to be further ahead with the construction of this modern infrastructure that will help a lot in reducing travel time and efficiency in operation’. I agree with Mrs. Amen that good infrastructure is a major step to help improve the operational efficiency of the railway system. However, these improvements focus on the railway system and neglects user experience since these transportation agencies/authorities do not provide open transit data.
\nTransit data is usually distributed in a format called The General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), also known as GTFS static or static transit to differentiate it from the GTFS realtime extension. GTFS defines a common format for public transportation schedules and associated geographic information. GTFS "feeds" let public transit agencies publish their transit data and developers write applications that consume that data in an interoperable way.
\nLack of open transit data doesn’t only end with the railway industry. The same applies to all other modes of public transport in Dar: mini-buses (daladala), tuktuk (bajaji), the Kigamboni ferry and BRT. Even though compared to any other East African country, Tanzania has been the first to introduce not only SGR but also the BRT system, unlike Kenya there is currently not a single publicly available GTFS data for any of its cities.
\nEven though BRT and SGR are among the modern means of transport and they were used as case studies for other countries to implement their own, the user experience isn’t so modern. For example, BRT passengers have no way of knowing when the next bus is coming or if there is any service disruption. The lack of this type of transit data makes it hard for riders to plan their journeys properly. As a result, they may opt for other available means of transportation such as private cars or ride hailing. This not only causes reduced ridership but also defeats the purpose of the BRT system which is introducing sustainable and reliable transport in urban areas in alignment with SDG 11.2.
\n![](\"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2022/11/transitfeed-map.PNG\"){kind=spacer}
Fig 1: A map from transitfeeds.com which shows cities in the world with publicly available public transit data. In East Africa, only Nairobi has the open transit feed in GTFS format.
\nSeveral attempts have made to solve the availability of Transit data as explained below:
\nThe Dar City Navigator app by Dar Rapid Transport (DART)
\nAdvantages
\nDisadvantages
\n![](\"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2022/11/Screenshot_2022-11-03-11-23-09-391_com.ega.darcina.jpg\")
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Ally and the Worldbank Mapping of Dar Transportation in 2016
\nThis was the first major attempt to map all public routes in Dar es Salaam. The World Bank also gives a more detailed report about this mapping project and the assessment of open data in Dar es Salaam in general on the Digital Data for Transport in Dar es Salaam.
\nAdvantages
\nDisadvantage
\nOther Mobility Data Provider
\nSeveral private companies have also attempted to map the Dar transportation network. A list of these companies may be provided upon request.
\nAdvantage
\nDisadvantage
\nTo ensure that by 2030 Dar and other African cities are able to provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons, they need to start investing in generation of open transit data.
\nAccording to uitp.org implementing open data policy should generate benefits such as:
\nHowever, as mentioned above, generating these data is costly and time consuming therefore transportation agencies may not give it a high priority. Instead of relying on these agencies to generate the data it will be more efficient if the general public and institutions who benefit directly from these data to be mobilized, map our city and generate these GTFS data by crowdsourcing the data collection and processing. The requirements below are important for this to be possible:
\nI am currently working on a prototype of this tool and hope to release it soon. Anyone who is interested as a collaborative developer or tester is welcome to contact me. I have allocated time for this project and believe that it will be successful because for the rest of the year I have decided to only code for community good with a focus on helping African cities to achieve SDG 11.2.
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2022/11/dart-dar.jpg","date_published":"2022-11-07T06:45:00-03:00","date_modified":"2022-11-07T19:11:42-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["GTFS","Open Transit Data","Projects","Technology"]},{"id":"e21bbb67-dfc6-4260-8e3b-850ab270245b","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/reflection-on-what-i-have-done-so-far","title":"Reflection on what I have done so far","content_html":"After high school I took a gap year before I joined New York University Abu Dhabi and graduated 4 years later with a BSc. in Civil Engineering and a minor in Interactive Media. With that combination of classes and several other 'random' classes I took as part of the liberal arts and science education at NYU it gave me a lot of options for what I can do with my university diploma.
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This was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing in the sense that I was able to work at almost every work or opportunity where I placed my hands. For example, even before graduation I started several startups with my college mates and friends back home. These startup ranged from tourism, bus ticketing and online stores. Even though most of these startups failed I still have personal connections with my first team and are even still building things together. From that experience I learned a good team is better than a good idea.
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On the other hand, it was a curse because after graduation I wasn't real sure about what to do or where to focus my energy into.
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Graduating in 2020, the time when COVID-19 was at its peak, running a startup wasn't much of an option. Therefore, I decided to find a job and was lucky to find one as a software developer at DataVision International. This was my first job cooperate job which means I had a lot to learn and relearn. I was lucky to have the most accommodating managers, Magori kihore and MacLean Geofrey Mwaijonga who were not only managers but close friends too. Working at Datavision I didn't only learn to write better code but also deliver fast and more readable codes. Combining multi-disciplinary knowledge I could ask myself, like in Civil engineering where we have to choose the lightest but yet the strongest beam, how can I make this code better. In addition to learning Python, React and React Native I also learned how to manage projects big projects.
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A year after, I had a 1 year contract to work with WhereIsMyTransport as a data lead for Dar es Salaam. I was responsible to plan data collection and mapping of all public transport routes in the city. In addition, I was also responsible to contact and establish data sharing partnerships with all major transport agencies and authorities in Dar such as LATRA, TAZARA, TRC and DART. When working with WhereIsMyTransport I was surprised to see how important transit data is important for urban mobility planning. The transit data, especially in a the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format, is very important for not only for creating journey planners but also to organizations accessing performance of a transport mode before they introduce another.
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When my contract with WhereIsMyTransport completed in September this year, I have decided to take a gap (not a gap year for sure) away from 5-9 jobs and spend this time to travel, explore and reflect on what I want to do next which I bet will mostly be something related to transit data.
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2022/11/workday-break.jpg","date_published":"2022-11-03T09:49:00-03:00","date_modified":"2022-11-03T09:57:30-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["Personal"]},{"id":"3f67e667-b8aa-4873-a4ba-d2a51ee537f0","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/building-niwezesheapp","title":"Building a p2p lending & borrowing platfrom","content_html":"When we need financial support we usually first reach out to peers to see if they can help before going to financial institutions like banks and microfinances. The reason people prefer lending from peers is because the lending process is faster and requires less paperwork. More importantly, in most cases it requires no collateral other than mutual 'trust'.
\nDespite the fact that 2020 was hit by the COVID19 pandemic, I was lucky to land a job straight from college. As a college graduate without a lot financial burden, it didn't take long for my peers to realize that I had some extra funds at my disposal for them to borrow. At my surprise most of these friends who came to borrow money from me were proposing to return the money with a small interest. Roughly from 3-15% for a month. Since they seemed happy doing so(I think that interest was meant for them to motivate me keep lending them the money) I went with the flow.
\nIt wasn't too long for me to realise that I needed a proper tool beyond excel and notes on my phone to keep track of who owes me how much and due when. Thinking of a solution to solve this challenge, I decided to go beyond loan records keeping and dived deeper into peer to peer lending and borrowing. However, most of the research and products which I came across were about 'smart aligorithms' to match lenders and borrowers who may not be connected in anyway other data attributes which are computed by an AI model. Instead of heavily relying on financial data like credit history, which is sadly not so easily available for the market I was targeting, to match lenders and borrowers I decided to leverage social network from user's contacts list--just like back in the old days when people lended each other based on trust.
\nMy initial MVP was to enable a person be able to know who from their contacts is giving a loan, for how long and under which terms. In addition, the app also enabled borrowers to send loan requests to the lender and specify how the money should be disbursed to them. Once the loan request is approved and the money is disbursed, a transaction with a pending status is created and shared with the borrower. This MVP was shared and tried with my friends who also found it useful to keep track who they or owes them money.
\n![\"A](\"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2022/06/niwezeshe-loan-sample_1.png\")
\nAfter testing the MVP with a wider audience I learned the main problem with p2p lending is actually not knowing who can give you a loan when you need it or keeping records of who owes you how much but rather debt colellection. 40% of 20 people I interviewed said that they would rather give a friend who is in need of cash a small amount of money and expect nothing in return rather than lending them a considerably large amount of money because they are afraid of following up or pressuring their friends to pay them back. To address the debt collection challenge, I thought automated SMS reminders could do the job. Working on the autmated SMS reminders I had to make sure that these messages:
\nThis task was accomplished by creating a Machine Learning Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) model using sample messages. This ML model empowers the debt collection model to generate human-like message which are sent daily to borrowers to remind them to pay their debts if they haven't done so. Using this debt collection approach I have noticed borrowers have started paying earlier and are less likely to default...anyway who likes been sent debt reminder messages everyday by God knows what a bot!
\nTo conclude, the niwezesheapp is now at the stage where I couldn't have imagined before I started building it. The problem which I was trying to solve initially became clearer everyday as I wrote more lines of code and constantly get feedbacks from real users. As of publishing this article niwezeshe has 1500+ users and have loan requests valued TZS 150M+. So, I would say, if you have an idea regardless how unclear it is get a piece of paper and jot it down and if you have time, start working on it.
\nNext time I will also write how implementing a reward system where borrowers get cash back when they pay before due date have boosted the rate of loan repayments.
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2022/06/niwezeshe-users.jpeg","date_published":"2022-06-22T19:54:00-03:00","date_modified":"2022-06-22T21:26:23-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["Projects","Technology"]},{"id":"2bd677f6-a1bf-4897-ac83-2350ae168e55","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/a-failed-startup","title":"A \"Failed\" Startup","content_html":""Congratulate Paschal for 3 years at SafariBomba." A close friend of mine recently shared a screenshot from his LinkedIn account with this message on it. This message spiked me for two reasons: First, it was a gentle reminder that I needed to update my LinkedIn profile and second I was shocked that it has been three years already since I jumped the entrepreneurship train which has rode me through a lot of ups and downs.
\nAfter I had a chance to spend a semester at New York University Shanghai in 2018 I was surprised how much technology can be used to simplify humans' daily activities. In my day to day movements in China I had to interact with several apps. Some of the apps which I interacted with daily and inspired me are Wechat, Didi and AliPay. When I came back home that summer, I decided to jump into techpreneurship by creating a platform which will make bus ticketing easier and accessible for everyone even to those who uses feature phones via SMS. This was an attempt to bring convenience to passengers who had to physically go to the bus station to buy their tickets several days earlier before the travel day. This journey wasn't easy because everything I was doing was doing it for the first time --forming a team to start a startup, coding and running a registered company.
\nThe friend who shared the LinkedIn post asked, how does it feel partying from an idea which you once believed in and invested your time and money?
\nReflecting back, I learned a lot.. I built life-time friendships as well as networked with government officials and other professionals who were working on the field.
\nApart from that, working on this startup gave me a platform to demonstrate my skills especially public speaking. For example, when I launched the startup, I was invited for several TV and radio interviews including conducting an interview with the National Television. These interviews helped me to improve tremendously how to explain complex ideas your simple terminologies . In addition, when working on this project I was mostly dealing with bus owners and ticketing agents whose education level varies from primary education to university level. Therefore, whenever I met a new client I had to quickly adjust my pitch depending on their education level and interests and also had to make sure that I only give details about the product which I was sure they will be interested to hear and be able to comprehend them.
\nIn addition, I improved my leadership skills. Despite the fact that I was mostly spending the time coding, I also had to manage a small team to develop a business logic, marketing strategies and partnership formation. I promise, I wasn't bossy but I made sure that everyone was fulfilling their duties
\nThe Legal work. Running a company has a lot of paper work and legal terminologies involved. At first my colleagues and I were trying to manage everything ourselves before we found it so had and decided to seek for legal help from a lawyer. I learned that most of the time it in inefficient to try to do everything yourself. Sometimes outsourcing makes things smooth.
\nTo conclude, safaribomba was the first but as long as I live I am also not sure it isn't going to be the last startup I start and fails. This startup failing doesn't mean I lost all the money and the time I invested in it. I actually harvest a skills, network of people and professionals who I still communicate with today. In addition, I didn't lose the majority of my team. We are now stronger than ever, still innovating and generating new ideas everyday at HudumaBomba.
\n","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2022/03/safaribomba-logo.PNG","date_published":"2022-03-15T09:00:00-03:00","date_modified":"2022-03-15T09:39:56-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["Personal","Projects"]},{"id":"de7a706f-d094-489c-9bf6-feb536418eba","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/all-over-the-place","title":"All Over the Place","content_html":"
What is my career? Am I an Engineer, a software developer, a designer, or a data analyst? All of them? Or just a civil engineer because that is what it says on the papers? Actually, I do not know.
\nThis circus of endless 'who am I questions' dates all the way back from college where I did not have to declare my major until last semester sophomore year, In other words, I was undecided halfway through my college time. What does this mean? It meant I had the freedom to take all kinds of classes from psychology, film, computer programming, music, philosophy, and mathematics. And when the time came for me to decide I was even more 'undecided' because I almost tried everything and I almost liked everything.
\nTrying and liking everything actually started when I was a kid. I recall at 7 (surprisingly I hadn't even started going to school at that age), I used to observe things around me and try to recreate them. For example, I would try creating flying planes from a set of cardboard and a motor I picked from scrap metals. Talking about this cardboard plane story actually reminds me of one of my childhood controversial stories. I do not know the origin of this myth but I remember at some point I spending a week creating a 'power line' to my room from dry batteries hanging on a latrine pit believing that it is the ultimate power supply--batteries will never die and my whole family will have free lifetime power supply. Remember the Young Sheldon story when he tries to generate electricity from radioactive materials to save his dad from electricity bills? This is exactly the same story except this is an African kid version. Of course, the batteries faded after a week. But now I wonder who told us, kids, those lies? Ultimate power supply from a latrine pit? Real? Anyway, I don't regret much going through all those troubles because as a result, I learned how electricity works. For example, I managed to make my own functional two-way switch way even before I learned about electrons and protons at school.
\nBeing all over the place did not end with childhood. It took me to secondary school. Studying at one of the top secondary schools in the country didn't just push me to be the best at my classes but the best at almost everything. I read inspirational books such as: The Gifted Hands by Ben Carson which was a gift from my girlfriend by then, philosophy books, sports, and traditional dances which were sponsored by Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots club. In the classroom, I loved everything! from geography, biology, physics to mathematics. Then comes that notorious grade 8 English question. Who do you want to be when you grow up? I asked myself 'grow up?' This question sounded hilarious because I was already a 15-year old grown-up man by then. Anyway, I think I wrote I wanted to be either an engineer or a doctor. I didn't know what engineering truly meant by then but I thought this will give me more options to explore myself and nature.
\nWho do you want to be when you grow up? 6 years later while I was at college, this question echoed in my mind again. This time, the answer wasn't as simple as saying an 'engineer'. And again, same question 10 years later after I graduated from college. My life experiences, specifically the 4 years of liberal arts education at NYU Abu Dhabi, have smelted me into everything. For example, At NYU, I learned that it is ok to be undecided in life, it is ok to try things and fail. I also learned that things in life like falling apart at the very last minute. For example, our engineering professors would always encourage us to have a backup video of all prototypes we made in case it doesn't work during the demo day. Finally, I graduated with BSc. in Civil engineering and a minor in Interactive Media. So I did become who I wished I could be when I was as a kid? Still undecided. To be honest, this wasn't the end but rather a new beginning of being all over the place again.
\nSo to speak, I am a civil engineer on paper. You may wonder, do I build stuff? Yes but I prefer building them with code and not concrete. I have been doing all kinds of things after graduation. For example, immediately after graduation I was working at one of the major ICT and research consulting firms in Tanzania for a year as a software developer. I helped develop, iOS, android, and web apps which ranged from microfinance, payment system integrations, and ERP. On the side, during my free time, I also worked on several mobile apps which ranging from bus ticketing, budgeting app, carpooling to real estate. Currently, I am working with a UK-based mobility data company mapping and digitizing Dar es Salaam's public transportation network. As my day-to-day activities, I manage mapping activities, analyze the data as well as establish partnership relations with mobility stakeholders such as politicians, NGOs, and transportation agencies. Despite the busy schedule and trying to make sure that the Dar es Salaam transportation data reflects the ground truth, I still manage to be all over the place as I always have been.
\nYou may be wondering, is being all over the place a bad thing? A sign that you are a failure and disorganized? I disagree. Humans in nature prefer exploring and trying different things. The same way the universe prefers chaos so does our souls. Trying to channel our energy into one thing isn't a sign of mind liberation but rather a way to limit your true potential. After all, most challenges we encounter today require multidisciplinary knowledge to be solved effectively. Therefore, it will be helpful in the long run to know a little bit of everything. This is what the liberal arts and education at NYUAD told me and I embrace this way of approaching life. To conclude, it is ok to be undecided and be all over the place as long as you know you are still in control of your life.
\nBehind the Scene: To be honest, I picked up the pen(the keyboard actually) because I wanted to write about my new p2p lending and borrowing platform called niwezeshe but ended up talking about myself and the concept of being all over the place. This is another indicator that I am indeed being all over the place. I will spend some time later to write about the app and how I came up with the idea as a way to make sure that people especially youths learn about their finances but also take financial responsibilities on their financial decisions.
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2022/03/all_over_place_1.jpeg","date_published":"2022-03-13T06:09:00-03:00","date_modified":"2022-03-15T08:57:46-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["Personal"]},{"id":"fc3ff05a-e349-4c22-af69-4e87108e8f94","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/reading-with-a-computer","title":"Reading with a computer","content_html":"Reading with a computer is the most interesting thing I have ever encountered in my reading life. I always like the easy way to doing work especially intellectual work like readings research papers and analyzing data.
\nEver since I was introduced to computer programming a year ago, I have been looking for ways to automate several tasks in order to save time as well as energy.
\n![](\"http://giki.hosting.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/wordcloud-300x143.png\")
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Voyant is an amazing tool which is used to analyze digital texts. In this practice, I analyzed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Zanzibar tales by the native of the coast. I was able to easily compare a relationship among all the texts. This is a very helpful approach when one is researching a topic and need to know how it was written by different authors or different versions.
\n![](\"http://giki.hosting.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/worldcloud2-300x274.png\")
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On the circus section of Voyant, “said” is the most visible word and then comes “holmes”, “man” etc. From this small observation, a frequent mentioning ‘said’ and the character’s name, it can be inferred that The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were narrated in a third person perspective (another person telling a story of another person). Also, it can be concluded that the author of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes mentions their characters more frequently than the author of the Harry Potter stories. However, this may be a biased conclusion since I only used only one Harry Potter text and 6 Sherlock Holmes texts.
\nI read more in a short time this way. I was able to know the highlights of the stories. Links and trends helped me to easily visualize the texts and find any relationship between them and across different articles. However, this may only be a good technique when someone is more interested in the styles of the authors and not the messages which they provide. I was just trying to imagine how it could be if I had to read all the Harry Potter stories this way!
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2021/01/coding.jpg","date_published":"2021-01-02T09:12:00-03:00","date_modified":"2021-01-06T15:02:15-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["College Essay","Reading Like a Computer","Technology"]},{"id":"34927c37-7b91-4b3a-aa65-339dc323a80b","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/when-i-grow-up","title":"When I grow up?","content_html":"Teacher: "Who do you want to be when you grow up?". My 14-year old me confidently replied, "I want to be a doctor". 10 years later, contrary to what my mother and friends wished I would become, my 24 years old me ended up being a builder and not a healer.
\nIn the society where I grew up, only 3 careers were known: A teacher, a doctor, and an engineer. At some point, I wished to be a teacher, just because the teachers used to beat us so much even when we made silly mistakes like stone fighting with our peers and making them grow an extra head.
\nWho should care about that anyway? They were just kids' fights after all. Back to the main point, The main reason why I wished to be a teacher was that I could be able to revengeful beat the teachers' children if they get to be my students the same their fathers used to beat me.
\nOn the other hand, I knew engineers existed and wished to be one of them because I often witnessed people fixing our roads or building high rising buildings who my dad claimed were engineers. I wished to be like them so that I will also be able to make building things that are bigger than myself and more importantly everyone would use and benefit from them.
\nAt around age 12, the dreams of been a teacher or an engineer were all gone because the society around me, including my parents, had already defined my career. They said, because I look polite and humble and wish a soft face, I would make myself a good doctor. With everyone around me, including my parents, singing this "be a doctor" song I was kind of left without an option.
\nThe idea slowly dwelt in my subconscious to the extent that I remember I said I want to be a doctor in my first class at secondary school when our English teacher asked us to stand up and introduce ourselves by saying our names and who we want to be when we grow up.
\nA few years later when the biology lab started getting intense I realized that I actually get woozy when I see blood which meant I was very unfit for becoming a doctor. Meanwhile, I also noticed that I had a great interest in math and innate things. I also performed exceptionally well in Physics and Mathematics.
\nIt didn't take me long to learn that my hobby is to be a builder and not a healer. I decide to close my ears and ignore whatever society perceived of me and decided to chase my dream.
\nTo summarize, for A-level, I chose Physics, Advanced Mathematics, and Chemistry and 4 years later I graduated college with a BSc. in Civil engineering and a minor in Interactive media. I am currently working as a software engineer at a consultancy company in Dar es Salaam.
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2021/01/growing_up.jpg","date_published":"2021-01-01T06:20:00-03:00","date_modified":"2021-01-03T08:36:18-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":[]},{"id":"10479437-6ca6-4923-8dfa-386d17edd16e","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/hello-world","title":"Hello World","content_html":"I am grateful for what the Almighty has blessed me in 2020. My name is Paschal Giki. Let explore 2021 and beyond together!
\nI am grateful for what the almost has blessed me with in 2020, as we begin this new year, 2021, I would like you to walk with me on this blog as I reflect on both my career and personal journey. In this blog, I will be sharing a bunch of random ideas which you may find worth reading. Welcome onboard. My name is Paschal Giki!
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/Screen%20Shot%202020-12-31%20at%208.16.45%20PM.png","date_published":"2020-12-31T10:11:00-03:00","date_modified":"2021-01-01T06:48:16-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":[]},{"id":"fb1a9722-650b-4725-831f-a10da54d7197","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/the-new-york-university-hackathon-2018","title":"The New York University Hackathon 2018","content_html":"In the Reading like a computer class, I have been working on text computation and what amazed me after I attended the NYUAD 2018 Hackathon this week is that there is more than that. Emotions are also computable, text analysis can be used to help people learn new culture and more!
\nIn this 3-day activity, students from around the world met, paired into teams and presented with social problems. They were then asked to build a mobile application which solves the problem. Students built apps which ranged from Arabic-English medical translators, emotion detectors to be used at schools and Arabic dishes analyzers. In addition, one team made a platform to help job seekers with low or no internet connectivity to be connected to employers. They create profiles by sending text messages to a certain number in order to create profiles which are available on the internet. Finally, employers and employees match.
\nDue to the fact that I recently learned about OCR (optical character recognition) and text mining in a class called Reading Like a Computer I am taking currently, I was intrigued by Shoofshef, the arabic dish analyzer app, which uses this technique. The app enables the traveler to learn about Arabic dishes by taking images of the menu. Then OCR is used to recognize the text and searches on a database for descriptions and images of the dish.
\n![](\"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2021/01/shoofshefteam.jpg\")
\nEven though most teams in the competition used text analysis to solve a social problem, they used different approaches compared to what we have been using in my Reading Like a Computer class. Working in teams enabled the team members to focus more on the areas of their interest which they master properly. For example in building the Shoofshef app, one individual focused on OCR, others on user interface and others on natural language processing. As the result, they made a more comprehensive product. However, in the case of my class, we have been working on individual projects hence we are expected to know how to do every aspect of the analysis which involves software installation, corpus preparation, research and writing scripts which may not be a case. For example, in some text analysis tasks we did in class, it was easier for me to do some tasks than the others. I believe that if I was working in a team, my work could be faster and more efficient.
\nIt is interesting to learn how fast the text computation field is advancing even though it is a very new computational field. Since every aspect of our life involves spoken words or written text, I believe text analysis may bring revolutions and some of them are the mobile applications made by the talented students who participated in the 2018 NYUAD Hackathon. ‘What is now proven was once only imagined.’
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2021/01/nyuadhackthon.jpg","date_published":"2018-05-18T06:26:00-03:00","date_modified":"2021-01-03T06:39:53-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["College Essay","Reading Like a Computer","Technology"]},{"id":"3b48aaa1-e459-48cd-938d-310682a960ae","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/text-processing-and-computer-assisted-reading","title":"Text Processing and Computer-assisted Reading","content_html":""I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can’t really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, ‘If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we’ll talk.’ "
― Ray Bradbury
In the quote above, Ray Bradbury, a famous American author urges that computer reading is not as comfortable as reading an actual book. To which extent is this claim right? Actually, in today post, I intentionally put this quote to only clarify that I won’t be comparing comfortability between reading contents on a book and those on a computer screen. However, I will explain how the computer can be used to analyze a large collection of written documents efficiently by using the US State of the Union Addresses and Tanzania Swahili newspapers as case studies.
\n![](\"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2021/01/sotu_wordle.png\")
\nSince 1790, the United States presidents are required by the constitution to deliver annual reports which are addressed to the Congress. These reports have transitioned from oral to written report as typewriters were introduced in the 1900s. Programming Historian shows an interesting example how computer-assisted reading may be used to analyze patterns with time within a particular set of text by using the State of the Union Addresses as a case study. This computer-assisted learning may do very complicated analysis within a fraction of a second.
\nFor the computer-assisted reading, which is done by using R language in the case of the State of the Union Addresses, to be successful, the documents must be properly prepared. First, they need to be formatted to text files (.txt) which are a format which is easily readable by the computer.
\nIt will be interesting to employ a similar approach to analyze Swahili newspapers in Tanzania, the country where I come from. Tanzania has gone through different historical phases such as a colonial and post-colonial period. However, I will be more interested to work with the post-colonial rule newspapers because they are easily available from library archives.
\nBy using text analysis I would like to investigate the most frequent words in the newspapers and see if their easy any correlation with the political movements and changes which happened in the country at that time. I would expect a shift of most frequent words in the newspapers as the country shifted from one mode of production to another. For example the shift of Tanzania economy and politics from socialism to capitalism in 1992 and a wide usage of the internet in the 2000s.
\nIn order to perform this analysis by R, the newspapers has to be formatted to text files. And it would be better to name them by including the publishers and their publication years. This way, it will be possible to tell if certain publishers have a specific preferred list of words as well as be able to analyze how the list of the most frequent words varies with time or any political events.
\nTo conclude, any of these analyses is not possible if we don’t have digitalized texts. So if I had to say few words to Ray Bradbury before he passed away, I would say ‘digitalized texts are nicer than a jacket’.
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2021/01/nlp.jpeg","date_published":"2018-04-01T06:44:00-03:00","date_modified":"2021-01-03T07:02:53-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["College Essay","Reading Like a Computer","Stylometry","Technology"]},{"id":"e35fcda2-a0a0-4dee-8278-01a2b35a4943","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/movie-response-the-hidden-figures","title":"Movie Response: The Hidden Figures","content_html":"I liked computer programming since the first day I was introduced to it at college. Ever since I have been working on different projects which involves making the computer do most of the jobs which humans find annoying.
\nThis way I find the human-computer relationship very interesting to analyze. But have computers always been a box of electronics where a human can comfortably give commands while sitting on a while chair or even miles away from it? The movie, The Hidden Figures, give some explanations about this.
\nBy watching the movie, hidden figures, I learned not only about the about the history of NASA but also about the history of computers and how it affected people’s daily life. The movie tells these amazing stories by narrating lives of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, 3 African American ladies who were mathematicians, computers, and gave a tremendous contribution in sending the first American to space. By watching this movie I learn how different today’s computers are from the ones which were used in the 1960s. The computers at that time were an actual human, specifically women, who manually analyzed data and sometimes punching cards to be feed into huge mechanical devices. The mechanical devices are what has evolved into today’s computers which are made of a box of electronics.
\n\nThe Hidden Figures movie official trailer
\nApart from topics like NASA and computers, the film also discusses sensitive topics like racism, the cold war and gender unbalance. Throughout the movie, the African Americans are segregated in term of working spaces and utilities like washrooms. Also, women like Miss Johnson and Miss Jackson are the ones who are doing the job while men like Harrison seems not doing any productive work at the office.
\nWill the three women job of being human computers be significant today? Totally yes! Even though most of the computer tasks nowadays are automated, but the automation itself needs mathematicians and geniuses like Johnson, Vaughan, and Jackson to make the algorithm of the machine to operate and act ‘smart’.
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2021/01/thehiddenfigures.png","date_published":"2018-02-25T09:17:00-03:00","date_modified":"2021-01-02T09:21:33-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":[]},{"id":"53bd68f6-8068-4816-8fa1-bc8857e9e07b","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/does-technological-development-bring-more-sorrow-or-happiness","title":"Does technological development bring more sorrow or happiness?","content_html":"“’Look, I am better educated than any of the kings before me in Jerusalem. I have greater wisdom and knowledge.’ So I worked hard to be wise instead of foolish—but now I realize that even this was like chasing the wind. For the more my wisdom, the more my grief; to increase knowledge only increases distress.” Ecclesiastes 1:17-18 Living Bible (TLB)
\nIn the movie version of the novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein was a young boy who was curious to know about the secrets of nature by studying the works of ancient alchemists. This newly acquired technology made him knowledgeable about the human body, ‘creation’ and a desire to be a prosthetic god in such a way that he created a ‘creature’ from stolen bodies from mortuaries, graves, and animal body parts. To complete his creature, he sparked the body with electricity and ultraviolet light to give it life. Victor said excitedly while jumping up and down, “It is alive”, celebrating the fact that his creation had come to life.
\nHowever, that is not all about the story whose ending was not as I expected: ‘Then they [the monster and Frankenstein] all lived happily ever after.’ His acquired knowledge and technological advancement caused him a loss which no one could endure. It ended up killing his loved friends, parents, wife and other innocent people. What a loss due to technological development! This is because the creation could not fit into the society it inhabited. It turned into a monster, a murderer, an ugly creature and any other bad names you can think of.
\n\nTechnological advancements have increased human’s desire to be a prosthetic god. This can be evidenced by an increase in a number of very sophisticated and humanlike tools, which ancient people never imagined could have even existed. For instance, modern people can make fast-moving machines like spaceships, fast-acting machines such as computers, and, surprisingly, humanoid robots made of steel instead of carbon. In addition, apart from medicinal applications to cure diseases, genetic engineering has helped people to modify human beings. This technology is employed in cloning, which is a replication of a dead or living organism from its available genetic material.
\nGenerally, the application of technology in our daily life can be viewed as a daily struggle to attain happiness by trying to have godlike characteristics, especially the ability to create. Sigmund Freud says “Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic god.” This means that men always had and still have a desire to be like God. Nevertheless, this desire to be like god usually produces bad results. For example, in Paradise Lost, Satan acted as a prosthetic god by creating cannon to win the heavenly battle against the good angels. But still he lost and he was cast out of heaven. Also, when Adam and Eve wanted to be godlike by knowing right from wrong by eating a fruit from the forbidden tree, they were chased out of garden of Eden and were punished to labor so as to live.
\nThe same negative consequences are observed in the Frankenstein movie due to the desire to be a ‘prosthetic god’. Victor was very excited for his own creation when he realized that the creature was alive—as he screamed, “it is alive … I created you.” Nonetheless, like in the case of Satan and Adam in the Paradise Lost, Frankenstein’s desire to have godlike characteristics, in his case the ability to create, did not yield good results.
\nThis desire to be a prosthetic god is more about engineering and repairing biological systems, like in the case of mechanical ones, rather than creating, since creation involves making something from nothing. Even though, in the movie, Frankenstein agrees with a remark from a colleague that “[he] created life out of nothing”, his ‘creation’ is actually not creation. This is because he made the monster from dead bodies and a stolen brain—things which were already created.
\n![](\"http://giki.hosting.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/robot-taking-jobs-300x148.jpg\")
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Technology usually sparks the human desire to create things in order to gain happiness from them. As a result, Freud suggests that humans end up having technological enjoyments, which he calls ‘cheap enjoyments’ because they bring us happiness at an expense of more sorrow. This implies that even though it may seem that technology has simplified many tasks, and hence offers us joyous life, in our daily life; when viewed in a big picture, technology brings big problems as it solves the small ones. For example, in the case of Frankenstein, he was trying to find a way to conquer death by using technology so as to cope with the loss of his mother. At the beginning, he was very happy to be able to give life to his creature. However, what he believed to be a solution to death brought more deaths by killing his wife and other innocent people.
\nDoes technological development bring us happiness or sorrow? Frankly speaking, I do not have the right answer to that question—neither do I believe there is one. However, one thing I am sure of is that happiness is eternal. It is something which we are born with. We don’t need material wealth like robots, phones, and computers—which are all technological creations. All we need to do to be happy is to learn how to tap into that happiness from within ourselves.
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2021/01/Frankenstein_monster-min.jpg","date_published":"2017-07-23T02:30:00-03:00","date_modified":"2021-01-09T02:57:29-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["College Essay","Technology","Technophilia"]},{"id":"bf35a4d9-997e-4e7b-8841-f4b7a5fb1e33","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/war-a-source-of-new-inventions","title":"War: A source of new inventions?","content_html":"“War is permeated by technology to the point that every single element is either governed by it or at least linked to it.”--Martin van Creveld
\nThe rapid technological progress that took place during the twenty years that elapsed between the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the First World War in 1919, and the start of the Second World War, illustrates the ways in which technologies developed during wartime can become indispensable during the peace that follows. After I read the Martin van Creveld’s book, War and Technology, I was interested in exploring the relationship between technology and war, especially the WWII. In the book, he argues “war is permeated by technology to the point that every single element is either governed by it or at least linked to it.” (p.311). In this essay, I will explore how the WWII facilitated a discovery of RADAR and nuclear energy and how these new findings have shaped the modern societies.
\n![](\"http://giki.hosting.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Radiation-Lab-Crew-300x114.jpg\")
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WWII facilitated technological development by encouraging funding of high learning institutions by governments so that they could conduct research. For example, the United States government found and funded a Radiation Laboratory (1940-1945) at MIT, which worked on Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) and not radiation for nuclear bombs, as its name suggests. This name was chosen to disguise its primary research of radar for nuclear weapons, believed by many not to be a promising technology for war at that time. The discovery of RADAR led to the replacement of microwaves with radio waves in detection and ranging of objects on land, sea and in space. Radio waves were better than microwaves because they did not need a long antenna and they could work over a long distance. In the course of the research, the government employed 3500 people to work in the lab. The lab spent more than $4 million per month.
\nThe discovery of a long-range radar at the Radiation Laboratory changed the course of the WWII. The new technology saved many lives, but also it killed many people who were considered as ‘the enemies’. For example, it helped to nullify the V-1 threat to London and it also highly reduced the number of Allied ships which were sunk by the enemies. Hence, the new technology saved lives. On the other hand, it claimed several lives since it was employed in airborne bombing radar and gun-laying radar. These tools could be used to fire any people or planes which were identified as enemies.
\n![](\"http://giki.hosting.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/radar-300x176.jpeg\")
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Nowadays radar technology is widely used for national security and allocating lost civilian vessels like planes and ships—for example, most of the time when a plane loses contact with radar, a tragedy happens which may involve a killing of all passengers due to loss of communication with an air control station. Thanks to WWII for bringing us RADAR.
\nIn addition, when WWII was in progress, scientists and engineers were encouraged or even forced by their governments to come up with more advanced tools to help them win the war. This situation led to a discovery of new and more advanced technologies. With a fear that Germany was building an atomic bomb, physicists Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner urged Einstein to write to Franklin D. Roosevelt so that the government could fund their
\n![](\"http://giki.hosting.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1-Einstein-and-Szilard-letter-to-Roosevelt-NNSA-300x228.jpg\")
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research on chain nuclear reaction and building of a nuclear bomb. The president agreed to fund the research, which was known as The Manhattan Project. The mission to build the most destructive weapon ever made and used by humankind was accomplished after 5 years. Einstein described the bomb in his first letter to the president as quoted: “A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.” Even though he never saw any of those bombs when he was writing the letter, his prediction was correct. Five years later, Einstein’s imaginary description of the bomb was confirmed by Masuji Ibuse, the author of the novel, Black Rain. This novel was written after the actual bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed thousands of innocent people. In his novel Ibuse says “I had a glimpse of something that looked like a captive balloon drifting lazily downwards in the sky beyond the barracks … the destructive power of the bomb was fantastic.” (Ibuse 243, 245).
\n![](\"http://giki.hosting.nyu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/nuclear-plant-300x96.png\"){kind=spacer}
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Nowadays, nuclear energy is primarily used as an energy source rather than nuclear bomb development. For example, Countries like France, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belgium, and Hungary produce more than 50% of their electricity from nuclear energy and about 11% of electrical power in the world is produced by using nuclear energy. Despite some negative effects which may happen due to mishandling of nuclear reactors and poor management of nuclear wastes, nuclear energy is promising to solve problems associated with the production of power like global warming and concomitant deaths. Statistics show that annual deaths from nuclear energy production in Japan are just 10, while 12,500 deaths are caused by coal energy production. This implies that, in Japan, the shift from coal to nuclear energy as a source of electricity saved more lives than the ones taken by the 1945-nuclear bomb, nuclear reactors’ accidents and radiation from nuclear energy generation, all combined.
\nIn conclusion, it has to be noted that, I am not arguing that it impossible to just have a creative creation technology and also not arguing that without the WWII, RADAR and nuclear weapons or other technologies wouldn’t have been invented—they could but maybe they could have taken longer to be invented. Neither I am campaigning to have a WWIII so that we can ‘boost’ our technology. But I argue that when there is war, the technological development is facilitated. Even though wars promote a development of destructive technologies, these same technologies such as RADAR and nuclear energy which as dramatized in the Dr. Stranglove movie can destroy the human race, can save human lives when they are properly handled and used.
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2021/01/RL_Group%2023%20Bedford_1945.jpg","date_published":"2017-06-18T02:40:00-03:00","date_modified":"2021-01-09T02:47:58-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["College Essay","Technology","Technophilia"]},{"id":"0b546199-a13c-4c46-9def-ada625356fc8","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/about","title":"About","content_html":"Welcome to my Personal blog!
\nI am an engineer and an entrepreneur. Which means, I spent 1/3 of my time on a computer either wasting time on the internet or putting together lines of code to make something useful which can make other people's lives less boring.
\nI just said I am an engineer. "Which engineering?", one may ask. The truth is, I do not know! But all I know is that I am a builder. I build stuff with either a piece of concrete or code (computer scripts). I hope you won't be as confused with my writings as much as I am confused with my life. My name is Paschal Giki.
\nHappy reading!
\n— PG, The builder
","image":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2021/01/graduation_photo.JPG","date_published":"2017-03-31T21:00:00-03:00","date_modified":"2021-01-02T09:43:28-03:00","author":{"name":"Paschal","url":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/author/paschal","avatar":"https://giki.hudumabomba.com/uploads/2020/12/paschal_profile_bnw.png"},"tags":["Getting Started"]}]}![Einstein to write to Franklin D. Roosevelt](\"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Einstein-Roosevelt-letter.png\"){kind=link}