Wow! We haven't kept up with our blog since returning to Haiti. We are so sorry for our lack of diligence in this area. We know many of you are very faithful in reading this blog and praying for us, so we apologize and pledge ourselves to do a better job. In fact, over the next days we will make it up to you by posting 10 Adventures in 10 Days. Okay, some of these will be rehashing what has happened over the last few weeks, but the point is that there will be a lot more to read and pray about in the days ahead. So check back!
And now we are pleased to announce that we have the capability to blog more often and more effectively, because thanks to our local neighborhood Vietnamese tech-team, we are up and running on the internet! Thank you, NATCOM!
Let us explain....The first of the ten adventures has to do with getting INTERNET at home. As most of you know, this adventure has been playing out over the past year since we first moved here. Rumors of various expensive options would come and go, and in the end the best we could do was to hike down to Adrien's house and hope he was home and his internet was working. That is how we got through our first year of not having internet.
Then we returned recently armed with some new tools. Lynn has a Kindle which is equipped with an experimental version of 3G access, which works to get online a little bit. It is very slow and doesn't always load pages and you can't download anything, but it was a slight improvement anyway (and access is free!). Then I bought an off-brand Blackberry here and got phone service through NATCOM, a Vietnamese company that has come into the area recently. That comes with internet for $1.25/month. Not bad. You can't do much with the internet, but you can ready your emails, check the news and sports and weather, and it is cheap.
Then finally I went to NATCOM in Les Cayes and got the biggest upgrade of all. They sell a USB device to connect you to their 3G network. It was really funny to go there and interact with the combination of Vietnamese and Haitian staff. At one point I saw a large black woman arguing face-to-face with a tiny Vietnamese man, both speaking broken English. It was very funny, and surreal. When you approach the desk they flat out tell you that they don't have the USBs in stock (which was true for several weeks). Then, if you sweet talk them a little bit, they take you in the back room to meet with the big dogs.
We met with the director of the whole thing, a 25ish computer guru from Vietnam who is fluent in English, Vietnamese, French, and Creole. That was pretty cool. A bunch of the Vietnamese staff were huddled in his office near the window AC unit, chain smoking. They rent a house across the street from the office. I wonder if they consider working in Haiti a desirable assignment or if they were all being punished for something they did back home in SE Asia. Anyway, he gave us the hook-up and soon we were ready to head home. There was some concern whether or not it would work all the way out in Ti-Rivier, because it is 13 miles from Les Cayes where they broadcast the signal, but it hasn't been a problem so far.
Last night I crawled up on the roof, logged on, and flipped through various pages on the internet at a furious speed. I am not ashamed to tell you that a little tear came to my eye at finally having web access at home, and at such a strong speed. The only downside is the access is pay-as-you-go, but my estimate is that I can keep it under $20/month if we use it conservatively. Skyping will have to be done sparingly to make that happen, but we'll manage. It is still cheaper than in the US and just as fast. Time will tell if it is reliable or not.
Blessings to you and yours...
-The Grimms
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