So, this trip was going to be a whizz-bang techno trip, feeding back stories whilst we were in the villages, etc… As you may have noticed this hasn’t happened – I’ve got some more people to talk to about this, and later today, I’ll have set a post for you to read to talk to some of the villages about mobile phones.
- At the airport there was wifi (quite weak, but it was free) – most airports now seem to have this, so you can tweet to say you’ve landed (good for friends/family wondering, and may also encourage others to visit the same destination as it’s raised in their awareness.
- At the first guesthouse we stayed in – there was also wifi – well, for some of us! Dave didn’t really seem to be able to get it in his room, but I seemed to have a strong signal – all became clear in the morning as we saw that the router was right outside my room! This seemed to bode well for the future … but … we were in Entebbe/Kampala – the more urban areas, and we were heading for rural Uganda.
- Arriving at our guesthouse for the week, we were given Orange Dongles – we thought with 4GB each on them, but as mine ran out last night at around 2.5GB… We then purchased another 3GB credit – which was 85,000 Ugandan Schillings – that’s the best part of £20 – so really does challenge us on how used we’ve become to ever-present wifi (or mifi in my case usually – but at £6 a MB on roaming, wasn’t planning on using that!). These have worked pretty well, but the culprit in mine appears to be the 75 seconds of video I’ve uploaded – so sticking to photos and text I think for the rest of the trip!
- Tearfund lent us HTC phones, but to take photos these need SD cards, and despite asking for data SIM cards, we were given MTN talk/text cards (about 75p) – so we’ve not used those…
- In the village, we’ve tested the dongles inside/outside buildings = no signal. Odirah indicated that Orange is best for data, whilst MTN is best for coverage – but we haven’t yet managed to combine the two, and in many ways, reflecting then blogging gives time to think things over on the journey home. There is a question of battery life, but we’d probably be OK with good electricity back at the hotel, and multiple devices.
- Yesterday, as we were acclimatizing to the village, all of us just used our cameras, and none of us took notes … but today I took my laptop into one session (with Isaiah), and my iPad into the session on mobile phones…. Much easier to think what I want to say without entirely re-wracking my brains! Without wifi however, I’m going to have to read/retype because there’s some information worth sharing – as I start to think about an article I’m preparing
- How has the digital impacted the village?
- How has the digital affected the charity/those campaigning?
- How has the digital affected the supporter experience?
- How has the digital affected the rest of Uganda (we’ve already been told that data is becoming more common and that the urban kids are never off Facebook)
- I’m also thinking of seeing if the kids want to draw onto my iPad tomorrow …
