Orangpples

Friends are often surprised to see how often I tweet or how frequently I’ll email back home. And in ways I find it amazing how I can know what’s happening in almost real time all over the world from my room, not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Peace Corps. But its a fact of the modern world that communication technology has permeated all aspects and all areas of life throughout the world. However, the internet I get here is most defininetly not the same internet I got back home in Virginia. Yes, technically it’s the same webpage that is served up – well almost there is quite a lot of redirection so www.google.com goes to www.google.co.za and www.amazon.com goes to www.amazon.co.uk and my facebook ads are about South Africa, other than that its all the same – but it’s still not the same internet because the bandwidth is limited both in quantity and quality (speed).

I connect to the internet by tethering my cell phone to my computer, something your not actually allowed to do with most phones back in the States because cell phone companies don’t want you sucking up copious amounts of data. However, here we don’t have unlimited data bundles like back home. I buy a set amount of data and when that is up I have to buy more, or if 2 months goes by and it’s not finished I lose it. Because the pre-paid model is so ubiquitous here it’s really easy to check your remaining balance and thus insure that you don’t unexpectedly run out.

Since every single byte that leaves or comes to my phone counts, I’m meticulous about where all my data goes and keep a close watch on the current usage throughout each session (ifconfig ppp0 | grep byte is by far the most used command on my terminal). There are many ways you can conserve data and I like to think I’ve got it down to an art. The first week I was here I switched over from IMAP to POP email, which means that all of my mail for the last 5 years can be viewed offline where I can read, replay, and compose before connecting my phone and sending email. When I browse not only is all flash off, but pictures as well – thus the internet I see is most definitely not the one you see, even if all the text is the same. With all my hacks to decrease my data usage I can normally get by on just 250MB in one month (that’s 1/3 of a CD) and when I splurge on data I use 500MB in a month. Back home I could go through 500MB in 30min. Below is a graph the data left on my bundle each day from March to June of last year.

As you can see, my day to day use of the internet barely uses any data. With that I can read my email 3 times a day, follow my top 10 favorite blogs, check twitter and facebook, and browse a few other random pages each day. Every now and then there’s some program I want, or someone sends me an email with pictures attached, or (and these are the worst) I get an email from someone pointing to a Youtube video. What I normally do is put the link in a list of things to maybe check online if at the end of the week I didn’t go over my data allotment.

Yes I could just buy 1 or 2 gigabytes of data each month, but then I’d spend all my hours watching Youtube videos and not actually getting out and experiencing the community. Plus to be fair about once every 3 months I get package from my Mom filled with about 4GB of podcasts that range from TWIT, FLOSS and a few others from Leo’s network to NPR’s Speaking of Faith and This American Life all of which make hand washing laundry, 4 hour taxi rides, and long walks much much better. You might think it’s crazy for my Mom to send me podcasts all the way across the ocean when I can download them right from my room. But I did the calculation (see tables below for Vodacom data prices): for me to download 6GB of data it would cost just over half of what I make in a month R 1200 or $160, the average price of a package from Virginia to South Africa containing a few magazines, DVD’s of podcasts, a letter or two and a few other surprises is less than $15, plus the knowledge that my parents put the package together is priceless.

Vodacom Data Bundle Prices

Obviously it pays to buy the larger bundles, and if they can really give me data for R0.20 a megabyte I don’t know how they get away with R2 a megabyte for no bundle. And I know plenty of people who don’t buy bundles, I’ve tried to explain this chart to them but spending R88 at one time sounds more expensive then spending R150 in R2 intervals. Part of the problem is that many people I work with have know concept of what a megabyte is and how much data it represents.

The best metaphor for explaining megabytes is to compare them liters. Just like water takes up space, so to do all the pictures, text, and videos you download or have saved on your computer. A 4MB of data will be twice as much information as 2MB just like 4L of coke is twice as much as 2L. Still a little abstract but at least it gets the concept of data taking up space across.

I’d be interested to know how these prices compare to data costs back home. I never actually used internet on my phone when I was in the States (Peace Corps opens up your world in so many ways!) so I have no idea if pay by the byte/megabyte plans are comparable to these. If I’m not mistaken the iPhone unlimited plan is around $60 which would get you 2GB on this plan. It’s going to be interesting going back home because I’m definitely used to having internet on my phone, but really like the prepaid model since I can control how much I spend – in 2MB chunks if I so please.

Over the past few weeks I have had several opportunities to render a great service to people. That service is the all important enlightenment about the silent vibrate profile on cell phones! My host mom recently bought a new cell phone, and this phone is a power house of computing power. It has the ability to view word, excel and power point documents, plays mp3s and videos, comes with a 5 megapixel, built in bluetooth and wifi, and could probably control the TV if I spent some time digging through the manual. So anyway one of the first things that she asked me to show her how to do was put the phone in silent mode. I was more than happy to help with this because cell phones going off during meetings, class, or any other inappropriate time is a major problem here. For most of the cheaper phones there’s nothing you can do about this since they have no silent or vibrate option (why those are considered advanced features is beyond me) and these advanced phones hid the option so deep down in the Tools or Settings options that it makes it hard to change.

I fumbled around the settings on the phone (reading manuals sometimes takes longer and in never quite as much fun) for a few minutes and managed to change the up short cut key to take her to the phone profiles page. Since then I’ve had to do this service for about 3 other people. I’ve also been showing people how to get more out of the expensive phone’s they are buying. When you show someone how to use the funny picture frames on their phones camera it doesn’t take long for the phones background to change to their 2 year daughter with a clown face superimposed over her or a snowy boarder around their house. These phones are all really powerful and teaching people to use the more advanced features is quite a rewarding task. Of course I never have to teach any of the kids anything about the phones and ofter learn things from them. My supervisors son was with me at work and told me all about the best sites for downloading MIDIS or flash videos to my phone. My host mothers nephew showed me how all the kids here chat online all day with a program called MxIT where he has over 100 friends he talks to daily.

On a completely different note I was told today by another volunteer that today is SA18’s 100^th day in South Africa. With everything that has happened and all the new and amazing people I’ve meet it seems like it should be much longer than that, but at the same time when I look at pictures from back home or talk to friends it seems like just yesterday I drove with my family to staging in D.C. I think if I have time this weekend I’ll make a javascript counter so everyone can now how many days we’ve been here. It will be a good weekend project to add to my already long list of weekend projects.

Almost all South African phone plans are prepaid. This is one of the reasons cell phones are so prevalent here since the phones are dirt cheap and you don’t need to pay a monthly fee just how much you use. I’ve never had a prepaid phone in America so I’m not sure how it works there, but I think the system here works very well but leads to some interesting cell phone practices.

I thought one of the biggest annoyances of a prepaid system would be continually having to recharge your minutes. But that’s not the case at all. Since everyone always needs to buy minutes the laws of supply and demand have made it easier to buy airtime in South Africa then bread. And the bank Peace Corps set me up with, FNB, has this free service that lest me buy airtime directly from my phone — why such a great and arguably superfluous service is free but withdrawing money from an ATM costs 1% of your withdrawal is one of the many aspects of South Africa I may never logically understand. The prepaid system works quite great in this respect. And it’ss nice to know that you’re not going to get a crazy long bill at the end of the month for going over you SMS limit, since when you’re out of what you paid for you can’t send any more.

Another feature of prepaid system here in South Africa is that you don’t get charged for incoming calls or SMSs. This has the beneficial result that you can basically buy at $25 phone and never put airtime on it but still receive calls. This is actually a great model for children and I don’t think I ever saw more then 2 or 3 rand on my 13 year old host brothers phone. But it also has some very interesting negative consequences. Since getting a phone call is totally free people hate letting the phone go unanswered. This means people will leave meetings, stop driving the car, run out of a volleyball game or anything else they are doing to answer the phone. In America when both parties are getting charged for the phone call its easier to let a missed call go by since when you call back at a time convenient for you you’ll be charged just the same as if you answered it right then.

Another thing about cell phone use in South Africa is that it seems no one ever leaves voice mail messages. I’m not sure if this is because some aspect of the prepaid system makes voice messages unbeneficial to either the caller or callee or there’s some other cultural aspect to it.

Something else that is prepaid in South Africa is the electricity. This also creates some interesting ways to look at electricity use. As the kilowatts count down and your trying to make them last just one day longer before you walk to the corner store and buy more the way you use electrical appliances changes. At first this was rather confusing to me. During training I would come home someday and help my host mom cook dinner over a propane burner instead of the stove. I finally understood that this was because there was only enough kilowatts to keep the lights on and fridge going for the night and running when I was helpin

Almost all South African phone plans are prepaid. This is one of the reasons cell phones are so prevalent here since the phones are dirt cheap and you don’t need to pay a monthly fee just how much you use. I’ve never had a prepaid phone in America so I’m not sure how it works there, but I think the system here works very well but leads to some interesting cell phone practices.

I thought one of the biggest annoyances of a prepaid system would be continually having to recharge your minutes. But that’s not the case at all. Since everyone always needs to buy minutes the laws of supply and demand have made it easier to buy airtime in South Africa then bread. And the bank Peace Corps set me up with, FNB, has this free service that lest me buy airtime directly from my phone — why such a great and arguably superfluous service is free but withdrawing money from an ATM costs 1% of your withdrawal is one of the many aspects of South Africa I may never logically understand. The prepaid system works quite great in this respect. And it’ss nice to know that you’re not going to get a crazy long bill at the end of the month for going over you SMS limit, since when you’re out of what you paid for you can’t send any more.

Another feature of prepaid system here in South Africa is that you don’t get charged for incoming calls or SMSs. This has the beneficial result that you can basically buy at $25 phone and never put airtime on it but still receive calls. This is actually a great model for children and I don’t think I ever saw more then 2 or 3 rand on my 13 year old host brothers phone. But it also has some very interesting negative consequences. Since getting a phone call is totally free people hate letting the phone go unanswered. This means people will leave meetings, stop driving the car, run out of a volleyball game or anything else they are doing to answer the phone. In America when both parties are getting charged for the phone call its easier to let a missed call go by since when you call back at a time convenient for you you’ll be charged just the same as if you answered it right then.

Another thing about cell phone use in South Africa is that it seems no one ever leaves voice mail messages. I’m not sure if this is because some aspect of the prepaid system makes voice messages unbeneficial to either the caller or callee or there’s some other cultural aspect to it.

Something else that is prepaid in South Africa is the electricity. This also creates some interesting ways to look at electricity use. As the kilowatts count down and your trying to make them last just one day longer before you walk to the corner store and buy more the way you use electrical appliances changes. At first this was rather confusing to me. During training I would come home someday and help my host mom cook dinner over a propane burner instead of the stove. I finally understood that this was because there was only enough kilowatts to keep the lights on and fridge going for the night and running when I was helping cook dinner at a fellow trainees house. I was making french-fries and using a small pot to try to conserve the oil even though it would take longer. My friends host told me to pour the rest of the oil in a large pot and cook all the fries at one time. When I asked why it was because we only had 5 kilowatts left and she couldn’t recharge the box until the next day.

The prepaid way of looking at cell phones and utilities takes some mental adjustments When you just get a bill at the end of every month you never really think about conserving electricity or air time because the bill is going to come regardless and adding a little more to it won’t matter that much. Right?. But when you pay before hand and watch the resource disappear before your eyes as you use appliances or talk on the phone, all you think about is the decreasing amount of time you have left.

g cook dinner at a fellow trainees house. I was making french-fries and using a small pot to try to conserve the oil even though it would take longer. My friends host told me to pour the rest of the oil in a large pot and cook all the fries at one time. When I asked why it was because we only had 5 kilowatts left and she couldn’t recharge the box until the next day.

The prepaid way of looking at cell phones and utilities takes some mental adjustments When you just get a bill at the end of every month you never really think about conserving electricity or air time because the bill is going to come regardless and adding a little more to it won’t matter that much. Right?. But when you pay before hand and watch the resource disappear before your eyes as you use appliances or talk on the phone, all you think about is the decreasing amount of time you have left.