Thursday, March 18, 2010
18-Year-Old Demands Right To Be Sexually Harrassed In Workplace
Nigerian web first-timers long to be 'part of the world'
The world has become smaller. The connections established by e-mail and websites have significantly shortened the distances between people. We can live in London and shop in Johannesburg; we can be based in Brussels and run a business out of Mumbai.
The internet has become a constant and inescapable part of our lives. But what would life be like without e-mail, Facebook, or Skype?
It's hard to remember a time when we didn't have any of these - unless, of course, you are among those who never had it.
Welcome to Gitata, a small village in Nassarwara state in northern Nigeria. It is about two hours' drive from the shiny capital Abuja and is not remote in terms of physical accessibilty. But, in many other respects, Gitata is disconnected. It's not connected to the national electricity grid and has no running water or even a single tarred road.
The people are mainly traders and farmers.
Strolling through the village's small market, I spoke to people - young and old. I asked them whether they knew what the internet was.
"I hear it's something people use to talk to each other," one shopkeeper told me.
An elderly man described it as "something that young people play with."
One woman saw it as something that "connects people with wires."
But when I asked people whether they had access to the internet, the answer was almost always no.
I later discovered that the nearest internet-connected computer was 35km away in the town of Keffi.
My mission in Gitata was to observe and learn. I wanted to find out what impact internet connection would have on the lives of people here. What would they do with it, for example, and would it change people's understanding of themselves and the rest of the world.
Enter Nicholas Madaki, a farmer, and Moses Maisauri, a teacher. These two young men were chosen after a meeting of the village elders to represent Gitata in our social experiment.
In January, I handed over two internet-enabled mobile phones to them. I returned a few weeks later to find out how they had progressed.
The results have been an eye-opener. Both Nicholas and Moses had to overcome the challenge of getting used to the technology: setting up a mobile e-mail account, establishing the basic connections to the service provider etc - challenges that mobile users everywhere experience.
But the barriers to information access are higher in Gitata. With no connection to the power grid, Nicholas and Moses had to pay a local barber who owned a generator a small fee to charge the phone. The fully charged phone would work for a day or so until it needed recharging.
The next barrier was getting a signal. The connection to the mobile service provider was irregular weak. It was no surprise then that access to the web required hours of patience.
Then there was the issue of cost. Our post-paid mobile phone needed regular recharging. The basic daily recharge required was about 500 naira, or just over US$3 a day.
But, with patience and determination Moses and Nicholas were online.
So what was the browsing experience like?
Problems of access
Nicholas complained about the frustration of getting access to the internet, but having done that, he said the experience was fascinating.
"I am seeing so many things I didn't know about. I have seen pictures from other countries," he said.
"I saw the White House internet site and I was able to send an e-mail for the first time. I was even able to read news about things happening in Nigeria and other parts of the world."
An enthusiastic Moses told me about visiting a number of health websites and learning about disease prevention. With a smile on his face he said: "In fact I feel like I am part of the rest of the world when I am on the internet."
But the joys of the internet age are clearly overshadowed by the problems of access.
"How can a poor man like me pay three dollars every day for recharge?" he asked. "I have to buy basic things for my family. Even though I like the internet, the government must find a way to make it affordable for people like me."
It's a thought that was echoed by Moses as we listened to the family in South Korea speak of how disconnected they felt when their internet connection was switched off.
As part of the SuperPower season, the BBC asked two families in central Seoul to live without the web for one week.
"They are very lucky. I feel so sad that we cannot have internet all the time. We want to be part of the world but the gap between us and the rest of the world is very big," he said.
The gap Moses speaks of is not just the connection gap - which divides the world into internet haves and have nots - but the economic gaps which raises the barriers in developing countries.
Nigeria is one of the better connected African countries. Hundreds of thousands in this West African powerhouse regularly access the internet.
The online community in cities like Lagos are as savvy and sophisticated as any in the world. But the minute you leave the urban centres, the stories of Moses and Nicholas are commonplace. But the desire to be part of the online world has not been dampened by the difficulties.
I asked Moses if, in light of the costs and the frustrations, he could survive without internet access. His response reminds me of the old adage "drink deep or taste not".
"I can survive without the internet but I cannot live without it. Now that I know what it can do for me and for people in Gitata, I will always want to have this kind of access. If I don't have it, life will be empty - there will always be something missing."