Greetings from Lesotho

It's amazing how dependent we become on technology.  Internet access and a working mobile phone are something that most westerners now take for granted.  When they are gone, however, you feel oddly disconnected.  You can't pop online to check news.  You can't check email.  Without a working mobile phone, you can't send text messages wherever you are, or use a mobile to coordinate meeting details.

I grew up without either of these things.  Today, I can't do without them.

Thank goodness the hotel at which I am currently has wireless Internet service.  Mobile phone service isn't working (mostly because Lesotho, a landlocked kingdom completely surrounded by South Africa, lacks interop agreements with O2, the network of my UK phone number), but Skype enabled me to make the phone calls that kept me linked to the people I love.

The situation was reversed in Zimbabwe. I did have the ability to send and receive messages, at least sometimes, and from certain sources.  As it turns out, my wife was receiving messages I had sent, but her replies weren't routing back to me roaming in Zimbabwe (it is impossible to buy Zimbabwean SIMs inside the country due to price controls).  I also couldn't make outgoing international calls, a function of the hyper-inflation gripping the country (a $50 million note was worth 0.25 when I arrived Saturday, and had gone down to about 0.17 by the time I left that Tuesday morning), as well as their inability to pass prices on to customers due to price controls.  Given that they lose money on every international phone call, the result is, not surprisingly, a reluctance to upgrade capacity. 

Dial-up Internet access existed, but was "temperamental," to put it kindly.  As for speed, there was no way I was going to visit one of my normal graphics-rich American news sites.  Again, price controls combined with runaway inflation leads to an inability to upgrade capacity. 

Of course, to the typical Zimbabwean, that doesn't matter as much as stores filled with empty shelves.  Zimbabwe is a country filled with wonderfully generous people who deserve to reap the rewards of their country's natural endowments (what a shock to arrive in Johannesburg after three days in Harare).  Zimbabweans are a resourceful people, and have done some amazing things to cope with what, by my standards, is an impossible situation.  The economy persists, even if it doesn't thrive.  Businesses manage to function even if they have to change prices daily, if not several times during the day. 

Zimbabwe is like a country of tightrope-walkers.  Over the past decade, that tightrope has been shaken vigorously, and lots of people have fallen off.  Some rather adept tightrope walkers have managed to persist, however.  They can't do it forever, to be sure, but you can't help but be amazed at their balancing skills.