092614 Mulanje Mountain Malawi

This morning ***I made a rash promise on face book – I was going to write some blogs or at least post some. After opening my big mouth, so to speak, I went to post and was informed by Skyband that I had exceeded my bandwidth limit and I had to buy more. Now, that may sound easy and it should be – go online, put in your credit card and tell the shopping cart to give you more time – not.

The casual user of internet would find a hotspot and buy bandwidth in relatively small increments but one or two magic jack conversations will eat up a thousand kwatcha ($ 2.5) of “units” in a New York Minute and buying units is not as easy as you might think. You have to find the right person at the right card table on the right corner of the right streets and they must have made the trek in to Blantyre (half hour ride by car when there is no traffic and most people do Not have cars) to purchase some to sell.

Not being a casual internet consumer, I decided to forego the middle men and subscribe to Skyband’s service. I did, I filled in all of the forms and created a user name and a password and tried to pay. There was no shopping cart, nope and a phone call confirmed it – they don’t accept credit card payments. “So how do I pay my bill?” was my stupid question. The incredulous answer was, “Come to our office and pay it – simpleton.” Well she didn’t say simpleton but it was inferred. I complained that I had no time and no transportation and she said I should send someone then – duh. Luckily, there was someone going that way and they offered to sop in and pay my bill. Problem solved, right?

Problem solved until I forgot to check how much band width I had used – or used up should I say. So I found myself out of magic jack contact with denise and no one to take my money to town, so I got brave and used the Malawian version o f in town mass transit and enjoyed another adventure with the locals. I will describe that fun time in another blog – provided the perfect storm of time to use it and available bandwidth coincide to allow such a thing. Suffice it to say for now that I have bandwidth and if the gods allow, tomorrow I will have the time to use it.

Mulanje Mountain – another story. Right now I am sitting in my room at the lodge enjoying a few minutes with my blog and then time to rest.

***Yesterday morning really. I wrote this last night but the metal roof (I keep forgetting about that) attenuated the signal so bad, I couldn’t post. I am at the restaurant of the Lodge, having coffee at 6:00 am. Got a nice long call to Denise and figure I might as well stay up.