The Internet, Bennde style

Continuing on with my 2015 slogan of embracing technology and using it to the capacity of my abilities, which I have not fully embraced YET! 

There are always small difficulties to overcome. 

Take the internet, fantastic, we have access here in Bennde-Mutale and therefore have the same access as someone in an office in Brazil. However at the moment the way we able to access that technology is very different and the end results are therefore quite different. Your attitude to the internet in general and how you utilize it has to be in the correct place.  I realise my attitude to how I went about using this technology was completely backwards even considering the following.

Here in Bennde we can only get cell phone reception (the only way to get internet) in certain places (within a 40Km radius), and within those certain places you get better signal for phone and better signal for internet (from Edge to HSDPA) and on top of this you have 2 or 3 different carriers which have better reception in each of these certain places.  Then you have to consider the weather, because on overcast days, other areas will work whereas your usual areas wont, again depending on which carrier you use. 

The culmination of this is general frustration which isn’t helped because you are usually sat in your car next the road at the ‘Cell Phone spot’ in 30’c+ heat, open to anybody to come and say hello, ask you for something, and yes disturb your work, research or concentration.  Some of you may be thinking, yeah stop your moaning………not moaning I’m just trying to paint a picture here of how we access the net, while you most likely sit and read this on an office pc, a tablet at home on the sofa or your phone on the toilet. I’m lucky, I can’t moan, I have a smart phone to access emails etc, I can create a Wi-Fi spot for my laptop and sit in my car.  For 99% of the villagers they don’t have any of this……..anyway I digress…

Frustration, time wasted and expense can be the results of how we access the internet here.  The expense comes in by having to use 2 carriers, I generally use 1 gb per month which costs 150 Rand (15$ 10£) per carrier so 300 rand a month, for 2 gb at poor to intermittent quality. An expense a local villager cannot afford.

If you are lucky you have built your house in a ‘Cell phone area’ and can get reception in your kitchen or bedroom, maybe if you put it, ‘there….right there, you see the door frame just on top you can get 2 bars if no clouds’.  This again depends on your carrier, which most people have 2 of.  Sometimes in peoples gardens you’ll see a sock hanging from a bush or a piece of wire from a tree, these are placed in strategic places where you put your  phone and get  1 bar maybe 2; enough anyway to send and receive a ‘please call me’. 

I am lucky again in this respect, I can occasionally, weather dependant, get 1 bar on one carrier, this is enough to sometimes get my emails, as I get an intermittent edge signal.  You may be wondering why don’t you get an external aerial?  Yep done that, no help and cost money.  I’m willing to buy something to boost the signal, but not until I see it working at my house for a month or so. Otherwise it is a waste of money paying for service or help when you live 200km away from a service place and they charge you 3 rand per Km for a visit or installation.

Until the area gets a tower for mobile signal or I get some cash for satellite internet, which is expensive and not always reliable the only other solution is to have a better way of harnessing the internet and getting the most from it.  This may be by connecting to people who you share interests and passions with.  Sharing in something which is more rewarding than an easy superficial ‘Like’ on Facebook.

Again I am lucky I have access to the internet and to such things as Facebook where I can harness the goodwill of people, but think for a minute of the secondary school child whose ‘homework’ is to research a historical figure or to find some information on Rhino statistics.  So many ‘latest’ text books and teachers rely on access to the internet to supplement school work.  Students have no such access and thus fail their homework assignment again and again, then they fail the whole year.  Yes, this is a problem for teachers and the dept. of Education to rectify but for the students it is a problem of now.  

The internet is a wondrous thing and a powerful force for change but let’s not forget that not everybody has it and for many millions if not billions of people it is still a great barrier to education and even an unknown.

The solution, there isn’t a perfect one however  this year I am endeavouring on building a ‘Digital Learning Centre’ with up to 10 laptops (safer as you can hide them from thieves).   This may sound quite straight forward but it brings with it so many other small problems, electricity being the biggest one!!

Anyway, I will keep you posted on the progress and if you are interested in helping out by researching small funds for such an endeavour or by donating old or refurbished laptops then please let me know.

I will do my best to embrace this technology and to keep people informed for the long term benefit of the community.