Let’s just say
there aren’t quite as many internet cafes as the volunteers were led to
believe. In fact there is only one, and it’s two miles away from our
neighborhood. It is such a good news/bad news story, the kind of thing that
seems to happen to travelers. It went like this…Fred said he would take all the
volunteers to the city because he knew the guys at the Vodofone store and we
would all get all the wifi and data we could ever have dreamed of. He took us
from school and off we went. Sort of. It
was a blistering hot day, even for Tamale, and we ended up in an area of town
that consisted of about one square mile of market stalls. We parked in a wood
merchant’s lot because Fred knew everyone there, and just needed to have a
quick word with them all because that’s what one does in Ghana. We stood in the
lot for about half an hour, meeting relatives with titles like “Junior mother” (we
would say “aunt”) and second mother (well, we don’t have a word for that
because it is your father’s second wife..) Finally we were off in search of
data and wifi. Sort of. Instead we had a tour of various parts of the market,
all interesting and colorful and sometimes an assault to the senses like the
rows and rows of mackerel booths and the “butchering cabins,” (I’ll spare you
that.) Somewhere around the gourd bowl rows, Fred met some long lost friends,
or maybe just a junior brother or second sister, but we got a full run down of
how they make the bowls and even got one each as a souvenir. But Fred, the wifi? the data?
We emerged from the
market somewhere around the manure stalls (yep, that’s what I said) to blasting
music from…the Vodafone store! There were five guys in red t-shirts hawking SIM
cards right on the sidewalk and up we walked to wait our turn. If we hadn’t
been so hungry we might even have been excited to see there was an actual, very
modern, and AIR CONDITIONED internet café inside. It was just about then I
realized I didn’t have my phone with me, but no worries, I would check out how
my friend’s fared, come back tomorrow if need be, and for now I could nip
inside and buy an hour online. Had I brought enough cash? That was the really
good news. An hour online and in working, brilliant A/C cost sixty cents. At
that point I would have paid twice that just to sit in A/C. During the hour I
was trying to catch up with the real world, my friends outside were anxiously
watching their iPhones be pulled apart, Verizon identities removed, and tiny
little data chips inserted. Most didn’t work till the third or fourth try, and
even then the most they could do was iMessage and Whatsapp, but honestly, it
was all good (except for me because I had forgotten my phone. I would bring it
the next day.)
And that’s what I
did today. Why didn’t anyone tell me I needed an ID? Americans don’t carry IDs!
I wrote my name down on a scrap of paper and told the guy that was my ID.
(Being way too hot and hungry makes you more assertive than you have ever
been). It took all five guys to get the
SIM card to work, and it is only as insufficient as my friends’ service, but
I’m online in a texting kind of way now, even when I’m back in my neighborhood
outside of town.
I’m not even going
to tell you the trauma with my original plan for easy internet access, my portable
personal “Skyroam Hotspot. Take it anywhere with you! Instant communication
with existing 4G service! Pay for one day at a time!” After using a full hour of
paid internet time chatting with Paolo, my new best friend at Skyroam’s tech
support center, and trying every trick he passed on to me, I opened a new
window and checked the “worldwide service provided by Skyroam.” Yep, not quite
up and running in Ghana yet. Oh well, there’s always What’s App on my phone,
and a nice sixty cent investment at the internet café and the glory of air conditioning.
No comments:
Post a Comment