My Journey to Wedza.

An experience with technology in rural Zimbabwe (Diary of Jabulani Chirinda) Friday afternoon I set out to travel to Wedza, my birthplace with my inner circle. The journey is approximately 460km away or 6 hours drive. I picked along my fuji finepix camera for snapping anything of interest along the way. Interestingly, the road had plenty to give in terms of photography. The beautiful greens and colours of vegetation was a pleasure to the eyes. Lots of ideas ran through my mind from beautiful lodges along the highway to bullet trains zapping along the angulations stretching from outer Bulawayo all the way to Gweru. I imagined these structures being there perhaps in 20 years or so. It was not just the flora and fauna that caught my eyes, technology being my area of interest first appeared in form of yellow and red pipes laid at regular intervals along the highway. My younger sister had so much to ask about the ongoing fibre network that was being laid along Bulawayo Harare road. As I explained to her what the stuff along the road was all about, she was googling on her nokia phone some of the stuff I cared not to explain to her. She wanted to enjoy the discussion with the same passion I had. I was a bit puzzled to note that a few months earlier, other firms had been digging on more or less the same spots along the highway. Could it be that these firms were different or were now doing some maintenance to a network structure only laid down less than a year ago? A number of pickup trucks from Liquid confirmed my initial guess that the firm laying these cables was Liquid, a subsidiary of Econet (or partner?). So in total how many firms could have laid their cables next to the highway? I hoped that the services to be deployed in the next few months would answer some of my questions. After Gweru we travelled to Mvuma which is less than 100kms from Gweru. I dropped a few signal bars on my phone here and there but I was persistently locked on edge network. There were a few moments when I checked my mail or sent some sms from whatsapp. I later switched to flight mode between Chivhu and Murambinda fearing I would drain my battery as the signal more regularly fluctuated. With all thanks to the Almighty, we arrived safely at our rural
My Journey to Wedza with a smartphone (Diary of Jabulani Chirinda)

homestead at 2025hrs, just in time to see the setting of the star know in shona as vhenekera tsvimborume. After the usual morning chores, I remembered to check my phone for mails, google+ and facebook updates. The signal was not as good, however just a few yards away from my parents grass thatched kitchen the signal was amazingly excellent or strength 5, full five bars. I got connected to econets edge network and was able to browser smoothly for 15mins or so. I send a few pictures to a niece in Bulawayo via whatsapp. In a distance, about 5km away I saw a towering base station which was visibly clear all the way from its foot. I was later told that it was an econet property but it had never been in use for more than 8months. The reasons varied from person to person. Some said it was not working because of zesa, another reason given was that econet was still waiting for some equipment to complete the base station. Whatever reasons, this base station was really needed in this area with 3 secondary and 5 primary schools. In the afternoon I had a chance to meet with several friends and relatives at a family gathering. Naturally we went into numerous discussions from politics, sports, progress in the fields, Chiyadzwa stories and myths and technology was our last major discussion and perhaps the most interesting for almost everyone judging by level of participation and the duration. Mobile was a hot issue, not surprising as everyone could relate with cellphones. Out of a group of 8 or so only two elderly man did not possess mobile phones. They both admitted regularly using those of their relatives or friends whenever need arouse. I had a chance to see the hot mobile phones in Wedza in all their shapes and sizes. The Chinese made models topped the list perhaps because of their key features dual sim support, high audio output, multimedia support (ability to play a range of audio file formats, record audio/video clips and snap some JPEG photos). There was one model that really impressed me, it had a detachable battery with some speakers attached to it. Not strange at all this model was branded nokia and had user interface so similar to nokias symbian mobile os. It took a few button clicks to figure out that was not a genuine nokia.

My Journey to Wedza with a smartphone (Diary of Jabulani Chirinda)

My initial curiosity was to find out as much as possible what perception the rural folks had about mobile phones, I was careful to conceal my Samsung galaxy tab and not to contaminate their views. I asked simple leading questions like so can you watch TV on those phones, is the picture clear? Of course non were watching TV on their mobiles. Such questions triggered some verbally congested mini lectures as each of my friendly hosts tried to explain what they were using their mobile phones for. I was pleasantly surprised to hear one of my uncles talking about mobile banking. He was yet to register for mobile banking but he admitted he had seen an individual in Rusape being issued cash from a deposit done via mobile phone. At that moment he turned and looked at me with a mischievous smile and said, Mzukuru, kozvichanetsa here kuti muti tengere beer? unongo kanda katen dora ka ndonomwira kwaMurambinda hangu. I smiled back and reminded him to get done with registration although that could have been just an excuse. A cousin brothers son, a form 4 student who had been mostly silent for the greater part of the conversation took out his G-Tide model and asked me if he could access the internet from his cellphone. After some tinkering, I managed to get the handset connecting to econets EDGE. I must admit it was pretty slow and constantly timing out, beside that, the wap browser was inferior. It could not load lots of highly scripted pages like facebook and gmail. I gave a 3 minute lecture of google searching. After a few demos, the young man beamed when he noticed he could do some research from the phone. The thought of using the phone during tests was the young mans first forbidden apple. We all laughed at the idea and warned him he would be digging his own academic grave if he ever cheated via mobile. My attention later shifted a young man who was a teacher at a local high school called Makanda, he was a carrying a sony cybershot digital camera. He was supplementing his income through part-time photography. He would use a canon selphy portable photo printer for processing and producing the 6 inches photo cards. As a photography enthusiast, I took the opportunity to observe how he was optimising his camera for best shots. We had a somewhat lengthy discussion covering a lot of stuff on digital photography. At this point I took out my galaxy
My Journey to Wedza with a smartphone (Diary of Jabulani Chirinda)

tab and naturally I got a lot of wows and an avalanche of question on what exactly it was. It was easy to explain what a smartphone was after much of the previous discussions. All I did was to combine all the features scattered on each of their handsets and talked a bit about other features and services that were standard on a smartphone. After much of discussions on the future of the country and technology, we wound up with lunch being served. We had sadza and rural delicacy, makurwe, nyevhe and goat meat. It was a memorable way to conclude our own consumer electronics show (CES) in Wedza.

My Journey to Wedza with a smartphone (Diary of Jabulani Chirinda)