Because They're Burning Bricks

Posted By Sika on September 13, 2007

First things first: Happy birthday to elfflame and my brother, Matt!

My new address for everything:
Jessica Holman
Zomba School of Nursing
P.O. Box 122
Zomba, Malawi
Southern Africa

Could someone do some research on whether there’s a way to make livejournal load a more simple, faster version and/or if blogspot or something else is faster? With my connection it literally takes 30 min+ load the update page, which makes it prohibitive to update my journal.

I received a comment in my journal asking about communication, and so I have decided to just write a separate post (I’ve been meaning to do so anyway, just somehow it never seems to be the most important subject I want to discuss.)

When we arrived in country, most of us did not have cell phone plans. There were a couple of people who had international plans from back home, which turned out to be hideously expensive. However, since we were not taken into town to get cell phones until the second to last day of homestay, the people who brought phones were the only ones who could communicate with home until then. My mom thought it was a little cult-like, the way we were isolated from outside contact during training, but there were some definite plusses to it. For one thing, when one of the volunteers was feeling overwhelmed by the isolation she was allowed to go to Lilongwe on medical hold and get a phone so that she could be in better contact with her family and her SO. For another, I think that if I had a phone I probably would have spent far more time being homesick and too much time calling home. Without the phone I had to actually participate in the life of my homestay family and find the fun in that.

Homestay is intense. Nobody likes it while they’re in it. You’re trying to communicate in this brand new language you barely know and the people are nice but they’re not your family and this isn’t your life and you have to figure out how to use the chim and bafa and carry water and you worry about the food and water quality and and and . . . . It’s just stressful to be there. I think if I had had a phone it would’ve been my crutch to avoid processing all of the intensity of the situation. I commented to other trainees, when our speakers coming in from Lilongwe forgot to bring in the mail, that I don’t think the trainers and coordinators understand how incredibly important mail is to us. This is not a slight on the coordinators; it makes no logical sense how much you feel like you’ve fallen off the face of the earth. I even felt that my homesickness was borderline ridiculous—but that didn’t change my feelings in any way. So, anyway, because there is this completely understandable blind spot on the part of the coordinators, I think it really helped us as a group that there were several people who asked when we’d be able to get our cell phones at least every week. Wellington arranged for us to stop at the shopping arcade in Old Town and pretty much everyone got their phones (we all got the cheapest Nokia available—they’re durable as all get out, and that’s important here) at the same time (which reminds me—don’t put all your money in the safe at the Peace Corps office if you’ve got somewhere secure in your luggage where you can lock it up in Dedza or in your village. We just needed about $50 for a phone and $10-$20 for gifts for your homestay family. If you don’t have somewhere secure to keep your money, you will be able to access the safe before buying a phone, but it takes a while.)

Ok, so on to the logistics of the phones. There are two service providers here in Malawi, Telekom and Celtel. Telekom is an African company and Celtel is owned by a company in the UAE or somewhere like that. The rates are approximately the same, although Telekom is a little cheaper and has a little worse service. Celtel likes to arrange proprietary business arrangements so that stores can’t sell Telekom and Celtel units, which makes Celtel a little nasty. But, it is cheaper to text people within networks, therefore most PCVs have Celtel because most PCVs have Celtel.

Not every area has Telekom and Celtel service. Some have only one and some have none at all. I have a friend who has to crouch down in a cassava field, using her arm as an antenna in order to get service. I know someone else who has to climb a mountain in order to get service. People in those situations tend to set up specific times for family and friends to call.

Some people get both a Celtel and a Telekom SIM card and it is possible to get someone to splice them together so that you can have Telekom and Celtel numbers in the same phone. Now here’s the fun part about Malawian phones: Incoming texts and calls are free, which yay! because we PCVs have almost no money and that way our lovely friends and family back home can shoulder the cost of the phone calls. (A side note: because incoming calls are free and outgoing calls are pricey, you will get “flashed” a lot. Flashing is when someone calls and then hangs up so that you will call them back. Since we are poor PCVs, we curse and whine a lot when we are flashed. Because we are poor PCVs, we flash our friends and family. Nothing like moral relativism to get you through your day.). My friends and family in America (I apologize for the use of the word America. I know all the issues around that word, but I’m afraid that, since here in Africa they call it America, I will be calling it America too. It’s kind of like how I’ve started pronouncing the p and s in Corps) use gorillamobile.com and speedypin.com. Both have their issues and problems, and the Malawian system is such that sometimes they have to call in 5 times or more before the call actually connects.

And internet: Internet is sporadic at best. I am one of (as far as I know) 2 PCVs who have internet at work. I’m pretty sure that my connection is slower than when I had a 56K modem, but it could just be the amount of time that I have spent with faster connections that is warping my sense of reality. But remember, I am unbelievably lucky. If you are out in a village, you will probably get internet as often as you come into your boma—maybe that’ll be once a week, more likely it will be once a month or less. Internet is also difficult to budget for, and generally is definitely a luxury.

Categories: Malawi, Peace Corps
Tags: contact info, internet, logistics, phones, training