The Travels of the
Techno-Freedom-Fighter

Probably one of the neatest and coolest geek side shows that I have ever been involved in. During my posting to Vanuatu I met up with a rather remarkable VSO Volunteer, Gregor. Gregor was a Systems Administrator from Toronto, Canada. He was assigned to VANGO the Vanuatu non profit sector’s peek body to help them get the sector’s IT Infrastructure together.

The project was called Wantok (‘one talk’) as this means in Bislama (Vanuatu’s language); tribe, clan or brotherhood. The general idea was to set up a Dial-in E-Mail Server based at the Vanuatu Credit Union, which would allow the local nonprofits to have access to email. Basically the NGO would pay a small fee that would cover the running costs. Because there was enough organisations involved it was cheep and sustainably funded which ensured that the project would have a good chance of survival. They would be able to dial in and once they had ‘popped’ their email the connection would be dropped.

The Computer was an old 486SX PC Clone that was liberated from the Chamber of Commerce, where I was working at the time, and refurbished. We installed a distribution of Red Hat Linux as the OS with out a GUI so the HDD footprint was quite small. We set up the box to Dial in to the internet 3 times a day, thus keeping overheads low. There where only one modem in and one out so if you dialled and could not get through you just had to dial latter. You have to remember that in 1999 most business didn’t have email capability never alone community sector organisations. So this was a great leap forward for most of the organisations.

By the time that I left Vanuatu at the end of 1999, Wantok was going strong, Gregor was due to depart of Canada in mid 2000. unfortunately I lost contact with Gregor eventually so the ultimate fate of Wantok remained a mystery to me. When I went back to Vanuatu with Chun in 2004 to network the Youth Challenge office, Wantok’s fate was not really on my mind as I thought that it probable died a long time back as it had been 5 years. It was not until I was leaving to head back to Australia at the end of our stay that Georgia, one of the staff from the Youth Challenge office introduced me to ‘some other geeks’ as she put it who where also doing some IT voluntary work. As soon as they introduced themselves I knew who Dave was. He was professional services and solutions provider for MITEL SME server (other words esmith), my favourite Server Distribution that I had been installing all over the world.

As soon as I introduced my self, he asked me if I was ‘The Norvan Vogt’, “the one that has been installing version 5.6 in Mexico, Japan, Guatemala, Germany and Costa Rica?” he said. I replied with, “yeah that would be me, how do you guys know that?” “You put your contact information in the updates fields” he responded. So we then spent a few minuets talking to each other in a sort of geek frenzy that no one else understood. It was like a gaggle of football fans meeting at a sports bar after their team had just one the grand final but ten times worse.

When they explained what they where doing in Vanuatu the mention a mythical email server called Wantok. I informed them that Gregor and I had built and implemented her. He then informed me that they had just upgraded it. So apparently, I was later to find out, she had gone the distance and kept going with little disruption for the past 5 years. A small warm glow starts in my hart when I think about that. I am from a linage that goes back 5 generation on my paternal side of Master Craftsman, so the work ethic of ‘a job worth doing is worth doing well’ is close to my hart.

Wantok was a simple yet elegant solution to a great need. It was built and implemented well and lasted longer than any of us expected that is why it is the neatest and coolest geek side shows that I have ever been involved in.