Almost internet

written Monday, 16 July 2007

 

 

A few days ago one of my villagers told me that there is now an internet cafe in Missira, which is about halfway between my village and Tamba.   I was skeptical about his claim because Missira is just a small town with little infrastructure, but I couldn't help getting my hopes up a little - Missira is close enough that I can bike there and back to my village in a day, so if there were internet there I could be online as often as once a week.   In the words of one of my volunteer neighbors who I spread the rumor to, internet in Missira would change EVERYTHING!

 

I had already been planning to go up to Missira yesterday (Sunday), just to get out of the village for a day and get some exercise, but the possibility of internet made the plan much more exciting.   In Missira I met up with some other volunteers and then went with one of them to hunt down the alleged cybercafe.  It didn't take us long to find the building, with a big "Cybercafe/Telecenter" sign painted on it.   Unfortunately, it was all closed up.  But the question remained: was it closed for good, or just closed for the day?

 

So we asked some men who were sitting in the shade of nearby trees.  They said yes, the place is in business, and one of them said he knows the owner and he insisted on calling him and seeing if the guy could come and open up for us.   Unfortunately, the owner turned out to be out of town.  But then the man we were talking to said he knows the president of the local middle school, and he would get him to open the school for us and let us use the computers there.

 

Of course we protested that we didn't want him to go to so much trouble (plus I was 95% sure that while they have computers at the school, they don't have an internet connection).   But the man insisted, so we went up to the school, where, sure enough, there were computers but no internet.  But after the man had gone to so much trouble for us, we didn't want to tell him that it actually wasn't helpful at all, so we stayed for a while and preteended to do work on the computers.

 

The way even complete strangers will go so much out of their way to help people out is one of my favorite things about Senegalese culture (along with being the most religiously and ethnically tolerant place I've ever been).

 

Anyway, so I'm still not sure if the cybercafe in Missira is functioning, since the man we were talking to clearly doesn't know the difference between computers and internet.   But I'm still hoping thhe rumor will turn out to be true.