Getting Connected
It’s amazing how the plight of the modern traveller has become the quest for good wifi. Wifi that you can actually video call your nephew to see how he’s grown up in the last few months, or upload your photos to your blog. Neither of those things have happened for me very often in the last two months in Africa. Maybe I’m staying in the wrong places… or the right places depending on how you look at it. Oh how times have changed.
And then when you do get a wifi connection, you are faced with the overwhelming task of juggling your priorities between researching your next destination, figuring out how you’re going to get there and where you’re going to stay, applying for visas, making contact with those loved ones who haven’t heard from you in a while (dependent on the time zone compatibility when you happened to find your functioning wifi), posting your latest antics on social media, uploading photos and content to your blog, checking your dwindling bank account and updating yourself on the news of the world. All this across an often unstable, patchy, weak connection that may disconnect at any time, requiring you to re-start whatever process you were in the middle of when said disconnection occurred. This can lead to hours of low levels of productivity and high levels of frustration (but is often accompanied by a good view and even a cold beer, a combination which definitely helps ease the pain).
I had the best of intentions of keeping a travel blog to document this trip of a lifetime, and it is happening, but just not as often as I had imagined. I’ve learnt that the eternal quest for wifi cannot take over your daily priorities when there are so many other important things to be done. Things like having new adventures, soaking in your surroundings, getting outside your comfort zone, connecting with new people and cultures, meeting like-minded travellers, relaxing, doing some exercise, journaling or reading a book.
And so as I sit in my tent on the edge of Lake Bunyonyi tonight and listen to the rain on the roof, I take this time to write about the challenges of my new full time gig as a long term traveller. This afternoon I went on a pilgrimage to the hotel that was said to have the best wifi in “town” (a.k.a. lakeside village) thinking I would have a nice coffee (what a treat) overlooking the lake and catch up on all this travel admin but it was not meant to be. Soon after I got there the skies clouded over and the rain came down, slowing the satellite wifi connection down to a crawl, then the power went out cutting off the wifi completely. Accepting that today was not going to be the day that I would finally be able to upload my safari photos from last month, I resigned myself to another task on my to-do list while I waited for the rain to ease – starting my Christmas shopping in the local craft shop.
Tomorrow I’m heading back to the village of Kabira where I’m currently volunteering and where there is definitely no wifi connection so let’s see if the technology gods will allow me to post this update before I go!
Update: I wrote this on September 16th and am posting it on October 6th. I am happy to report that once I got back to village life, the quest for wifi became less important ;)
