Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

If you’ve noticed, our e-mail response times have improved and our blog posts are more frequent.  These are just two of the benefits of having internet access in our banda now.  Yes, out in the middle of nowhere, we have figured out how to access the internet.

I discovered shortly after arriving in Tanzania that Celtel (cellular provider) offered data services like internet access on their network.  They are the only company that has a signal that reaches us at Riverside so that’s who we’re with.  A couple of weeks ago, I finally figured out all of the umpteen-gazillon settings and got my laptop online… about wet my pant, I tell ya.  On top of that, I can do it without wires because both my phone and laptop have bluetooth connectivity.

So, the next challenge was to get Dana’s online.  I tried and tried all to no avail.  Then, I remembered that my laptop can share it’s internet connection.  We tried it and it works.  So now, the internet comes into our banda, into my phone, to my laptop via bluetooth, out of my computer via wireless card, and into Dana’s laptop via wireless card.

i didn’t even have this cool of a setup in the states.  Guess I never really needed to tap into my resource of a cell phone as a wireless modem.  It is REALLY nice to be able to communicate all from the luxury of our riverside African banda.

Now, you can pray for the price to come down (450 TSh/Mb ~ $0.40 USD/Mb) and its speed to increase… I’m connecting at about 5 kb/s, about a tenth of the speed of dial-up in the USA.  Patience is a virtue.

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