What I thought I would pop into a blog post is simply some technological realities and challenges of Internet access and usage in the context of living in an urban setting in a developing African nation!
Today is Sunday and since I am rarely able to get to church, I often try to download a sermon to watch and listen to - sometimes on YouTube or other times from a particular website. Today I was trying to download a message by Charles Price from The People's Church in Toronto, Canada. I decided to turn on the computer before breakfast and start the download as the download speed is just soooooo slow. I was hoping the Lord would make a way to at least have some kind of a sense of a 'sermon' today, as sometimes with the slow speed and internet drop-outs we can try all day and still have no success.
Today, it downloaded in just a couple of hours which was great....and then before we got to watch it, the power went off and so of course also did the computer!
So, once the power came back on again, we started the whole process again. By early afternoon, I thought I could have lunch and then watch it. But, while I was still thinking that, the power went off again!
So, yet again, I restarted the downloading once the power came on again.
I was thrilled to actually be able to watch it! The message was really good - on the sufficiency of Christ in all circumstances.
And then, about 40 minutes into the broadcast and still 20 minutes from the end, it suddenly stopped!
Guess what? It seems we had an internet 'drop out' which ceased the download!
Such is life here. Even though some children in Africa are now familiar with computers, and much of the continent has internet access either via landline ADSL or via smart-phones or dongles, it just doesn't function the way you might expect. It immediately gave me a real-life situation to test what I had just been learning about being content in all circumstances!
The whole process was a reminder of a conversation I had with family in the USA just a few days before as we compared internet speed - their internet speed is around the 20Mbps in comparison to our 512kbps! And when I actually checked our provider's details the 'Bronze level' we subscribe to (which is the lowest as it is all we can afford at about US$47 per month) is "up to" 512kbps. (Mind you the maximum available at 'Gold' level is still only "up to" 2Mbps).
Sometimes, people often don't even stop to think that even though we have internet access that it might not be reliable (ie no drop-outs - sometimes it can be dropping out every few minutes or no power outages), or it might be very, very slow in comparison to what is available in the USA or UK or Australia. It means when someone sends us a photo at full resolution as an email attachment of a few MegaBits, it can take a-g-e-s to download!
And just to illustrate just how important that little phrase "up to" is that our provider puts in front of the speed of 512kbps.....I did a speed test yesterday and discovered at a point when I thought the speed was 'reasonable' for what we normally experience, it only registered 83kbps!!!
So when we have someone suggest we make a little video and put it on YouTube....it is not even an option worth considering as even with no drop-outs or power outages it would probably take a week - just to upload it!
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