Technology, Facebook & Islanders

Last day on the islands, sleeping on the floor

We made it safely to the US, but we don’t plan to forget about our island friends and thanks to technology, staying in touch is easier than ever before.

Islanders aren’t terribly tech-savvy. Many islanders are not computer literate. Case in point, one recently older islander asked for our help. She needed to send a picture of herself to someone across the world. She used to work for some foreigners decades ago and they wanted to see a current picture of her. She knew about printing a physical photo and snail mailing it, but we explained that we could take a photo and just send it to them with our computer. She looked very confused. She seemed to think we’d have to jam a physical photo into the computer’s CD drive. We tried to explain that there would be no physical photo, it would go from being inside the camera to inside the computer and then sent to her friends’ computer. She looked even more confused but let the matter drop. As long as we could help her, she didn’t have to understand how it worked.

Photo to be sent across the world!

It is not only the old islanders that are ignorant of current technology. This past week, a young islander came up to us. She wanted to connect with one of our teammates and her brother was on facebook. We contacted them for her, but they aren’t using facebook and instead sent an email address. We explained this to her and gave her the address, but she came back the next day and told us how her brother had searched and searched for them but couldn’t find them on facebook using the address we had given. We tried to explain again but it was obvious that she had no idea what email really was.

So many islanders don’t understand much about technology, email or the internet— but most know about one thing and that’s facebook. Facebook has connected a generation of islanders to the internet in large numbers. Islanders are big facebook users.  We are not.  But, after resisting for a long time, we agreed to open an account to stay in touch with island friends. Joining this online islander community has been pretty interesting— it is another window into island culture.

In transit-- eating lunch in Dar

This week it was a window into breaking island news.  We went online to let our island friends know that we had made it to the US. All of the posts seemed to be about one thing.  As we looked closer we saw that there had been rioting in our city related to a murder and mob justice being applied to the murderer. It was like being back on the islands when something serious is happening— everyone talking about it, differing stories with no clear idea what was true. We imagine that our neighbors were gathered on our street talking about the latest rumors, just as the online community was abuzz with new details.

We’ll have to find another way to connect with our non-facebook-using island friends, but it is nice to know that we can stay in the island loop to some extent even while we’re gone.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We’ve arrived safely back in the States.  The flights went well. We were tired but arrived with all our luggage. We also seem to be getting over jetlag relatively quickly this time around. We have already been enjoying chances to reconnect with family and friends. Our kids have done really well so far. Thanks for praying. 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
The online news was of a man who murdered a woman (an uncommon event). A mob removed him from police custody by force, killed him and dragged his body through town. The justice building was torn apart by an angry crowd. Islanders don’t believe their officials will give justice so angry mobs decide to take things into their own hands. Pray for the islands— that a better form of law and order could be established. Pray for us as we try to keep up our contacts on the islands in meaningful ways. We still have a lot of planning to do for our time in the States— please pray that we would know how to divide our time and that we’ve have wisdom as we plan our various trips and commitments.