Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Age of Communication, Sort Of


Hello My Friends, I am on the ground in Uganda and quite enjoying it. Uganda is a communication rich country, but, as this is still the third world, things are complicated.

Internet is slow and hard to find here, so I still haven't been able to post to this blog until now. The problem is photos; the connection speeds are laboriously slow so its been impossible to upload my pictures. This kinda sucks as that's why I came here. I found fast wireless inet in the city at a modern outdoor cafe called Cafe Pap. I logged on and tried my email but found that it wouldn't load any gmail. I soon realised that it couldn't contact any Google services at all; no gmail, no search, no Google home, no blogger, even no youtube. A little search on yahoo revealed a possibility; regular Google is blocked by the Chinese. I looked up the google.cn page (the censored version of Google that china allows) and sure enough it loaded (in Chinese, of course). The problem, I believe is that Cafe Pap is using a Chinese internet feed, probably from Sudan. If you're reading this then I found a non-Chinese inet feed.

My iPhone works here and my phone number in Uganda is 0772097055. Feel free to call or text me, but be sure to start by telling me who it's from, my phone might not properly identify your number from my contacts. If I don't reply, or take my time, it's because SMS messages going back the other way are expensive, but I appreciate the contact.

I have got primitive cellular internet service on my iPhone and its fast enough for email and basic web browsing. So feel free to post me a note if you want.

No comments:

Post a Comment