Yesterday afternoon at The Slipway, sitting outside under an acacia tree, and then quickly moving under an open sided canopy when the sky opened up with a drenching rain, the internet connection was great. The time difference meant it was 9:00 Sunday morning in Michigan, so I had a chance to talk on Skype with my dad and then my sister Jan. It was a blessedly great connection. During the conversation with Jan, who also studied in Germany back in the 1980s, she mentioned how amazing it is to (sometimes) have instant communication over such incredibly long distances. The internet has made it feasible and really inexpensive or even free. We contrasted this with our experience in Germany so many years ago (yikes...) when we would call home on special occasion days at a pay phone, inserting our big 5 Mark coins and then talking really fast while we watched the seconds tick down on the telephone. Times have changed so much.
Today, we expect instant communication (well, speaking for myself and probably many in the 'developed' world.. a funny term from this perspective). Yet, despite the fact that I am in Tanzania and am writing this, the internet and its use it still not a widespread phenomenon. The internet connection here at Muhimbili University creaks along, sometimes fast enough for Skype to work, more often not, sometimes it doesn't work at all. And sometimes there is no internet for days. It doesn't particularly seem to bother Tanzanians much. It is what it is when it is....Trying to chat on Skype with Brad and his parents (visiting San Francisco from Georgia) this morning was ultimately aborted. Very few students have computers, there is a small computer lab in the library (shades of the 1980s in my education), and truly, little real business is done on the internet. If I want to get someone a document through e-mail, it helps to call and let them know it is there. Otherwise it is often more productive to print it out and run it over to them. Trying to reach companies through their (often bare bones) websites is generally a fruitless activity. Buying a plane ticket, for example, is much better done by going to the airline office downtown after a stop at an ATM because almost all transactions here are in cash. In person, it is relatively easy. The cash transaction issue also highlights our dependence on credit cards, which aren't used here (and at the few places that do accept them, like sometimes at hotels - plus a 5% service fee, but don't count on it - the machines often do not work).
Ahh... my internet meditation... waiting for the wheels to turn... breath in, breath out...
At the same time, things are changing fast. I look at the aspirations of the One Laptop Per Child project to get every primary school child in East Africa a laptop, a rather audacious goal. Part of me wonders how much time people at One Laptop have actually spent in places in East Africa that barely have working electricity (or none). However, that audacious goal, even if partly implemented, would be a huge stride. Electronics are ludicrously expensive here and way out of reach of the vast majority of people. I've gone through sticker shock in electronics stores. And given the number of kids in most public primary school classrooms in Tanzania (the norm is 65) having a local area network in the classroom might help with the education process in an environment where paper copies of materials often don't exist (it's a challenge at the university!). It could mean a lot to the learning process.
I suspect the online life of Tanzanians is on the cusp of enormous change.
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