trips.schrull.us

This morning we set out right after breakfast with the Bishop to visit the TTCL (Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited) office in Kasulu to talk to them about getting a broadband connection to the intranet for the Bible College. 

We have had intranet at the Bible College for the last 5 years via a satellite provider.  By it’s nature, it is not very fast and is very expensive (imagine paying $6,000.00 USD a year for your home internet connection), but that has been all that has been consistently available in the area up until this point.  However, TTCL now has a fiber optic line to the area which provides broad-band at much higher speed and at a much lower cost. The Bishop has had this service installed in his house and has found it to be very good, the cost for setting it up is quite low by American standards, so it seems to be only good stewardship to see if this will work for the Bible College.

If you want to do business in Western Tanzania and do not have an appointment, you need to go to the office first thing in the day.  It is not unusual to find that otherwise the person that you need to speak to cannot easily be found.  We found the gentleman in charge of the internet in his office, and with the Bishop’s help, discussed our requirements.  We only needed one port for our internet connection, but there was a problem:  TTCL only installed 32 ports in the Kasulu area and they were currently all allocated.  Our TTCL representative got on the phone with his supervisor and discussed our situation.  Apparently there are a few customers who have not paid their bills for 6 months.  They have actually been disconnected, but are still taking up a port.  The representative and his manager decided that they could re-allocate one of those ports to the Kasulu Bible College.

We discussed the cost for installing a new telephone line at the Bible College, buying a modem and the TTCL connection charge.  We also discussed which data plan we would purchase. In choosing a data plan you must choose between the speed of the connection and how much data you expect to download a month.  If you choose a very fast line you can find that you have used up all of you data before the month is out – and then you are stuck until the start of the next month.  It is important that the Bible College remain on line as much as possible; with a faster speed more data will be downloaded.  We decided to go with a slower speed (but still much faster than provided by satellite) and unlimited data.

We headed back to the compound to get the cash necessary for placing the installation order.  Tanzania is almost a completely cash society.  The only time you do not use cash is if you are doing funds transfers (or wiring money) from one bank account to another (NOT cheap even in the U.S.)  Bill and I had each gotten a supply of money from the ATM machines before we left Dar.  Needless to say, we do not carry much of it around with us.  We got the cash and headed back to the TTCL office where the Bishop, as the Kasulu Bible College representative filled out the necessary forms and contracts and we the installation fees.

Working with a Bishop who knows everyone in town is a good thing.  TTCL is going to try to get the wiring to the Bible College done today.  Tomorrow they will try to get the internet connected.  This is perfect!  We will have a few days still “in-country” to see how it works.

Often we Americans have to change our expectations about schedules and and goals in Tanzania, because the people here are more relaxed about these things.  We have to get used to working on African time.  But other times we can be surprised by how quickly things are done.  If I ordered internet today at home, I might be waiting as much as a week.  And that’s in a country with a much more established infrastructure than here in Kasulu!

On returning to the compound we had a really good meeting with the Bishop, about his plans and vision for the diocese and about administrative changes that he has and is instituting.  Bill and I did not really know Bishop Makaya before this trip.  He has only been at the diocese for a year, and while Bill had met him last year it was during the week that the Bishop was being “enthroned”  in the diocese (or, as we say in the U.S. “installed”) and there was no time for getting to know one another.  We now count him as a good friend.

After lunch I wondered around in the garden, while Bill rested.  The varieties of fruit that  grow in the compound alone are astounding:  Banana plants, of course; also Mango, Papaya and Avocado trees.  With the exception of the mangos, none of the fruit is ripe yet.  Still, the idea of such an abundance growing right outside the door is amazing.

This evening we were supposed to meet with the Kasulu Cathedral Choir (KCC for short) to practice with them.  But it rained.  It utterly rained.  (Did I mention that this is the rainy season?)  The choir members finally began arriving at the cathedral after 6:00 pm, after practice was scheduled to be over.  Bill and I headed back to the compound.   We are scheduled to meet with them two other times before Sunday.