Communication

What aspect shall I take first? Phones: as may know, there are no landlines in this country. We do have telegraph poles but no lines between them as they were cut down during the rebel war (ended 2002). So we rely on mobile phones and thank heaven for them. But coverage is patchy so people often have up to 4 handsets on the different networks and, as far as I can work out, they only have pay as you go, not contracts. Well, that would make no sense because there is no postal service (see below) so they couldn't send out bills and I suspect the banking system is not very sophisticated so direct debits and suchlike may be unknown for all I know. Anyway, most people don't have a bank account. Most people have no money. I am on Zain network as I was given their sim by my organisation when I arrived here. I phoned my daughter last week as it was her birthday and I ran out of credit. When I tried to buy more, there was none! Nowhere in this town could you buy Zain credit for several days. So I was incomunicado for almost a week. Don't forget: no landlines.
Internet: we do have modem sticks (or dongles perhaps you call them) but they are very expensive and I discovered they do not work with the operating system I have on my laptop (Linux). There are only 2 places I know of where they have internet facilities - I am sitting in one of them now - and sometimes the server is down. One of them - the other one - is a bike ride away, so you pay for a taxi up there, discover you can't use the internet and have to have a taxi back again. This can happen time after time. Why not phone them first? Because there is no phone! There are also a few dodgy looking places that say 'internet cafe' (believe me, 'cafe' would not come into it) but they usually have unbelievably loud football on and somehow I don't think a respectable lady would want to be seen in them.
Postal service: none. We do have a post office, a lovely old colonial type building and they do have a post office box system, which I may investigate, as it would be better to send post there instead of via my organisation. But I would have to go to collect anything, rather like if the postman in the UK can't deliver your parcel and you have to go and get it. But if you don't know something is coming for you (uncertain phones and email access, don't forget) you would leave things there for ever. I got 3 letters early this month, unfortunately from Revenue and Customs, which had been posted in November, and one Christmas card was hand delivered by my organisation when they visited on the final Saturday in January. It was postmarked 2nd December. Yes, I know that happens at home, too.
I will include photos here as they are a form of communication and I had hoped very much to post some on this blog. I still have hopes, in fact, but they are fading. Most internet access is very slow and the only time I have managed to upload any photos it took quite a long time and I regretted not choosing the pictures a bit more carefully. I had imagined I could upload lots of them and could not. When I tried with the modem stick on a friend's laptop, we aborted mission after 40 minutes trying to upload 2 pictures. Also, they do not believe in viruses here, or they have no virus protection anyway. So I am worried if I put my memory card from my camera into one of their computers it will stuff up my lovely digital camera. So those are my excuses.