Hello from sweltering Delhi! It is late Wednesday night, 4/22, and we are just turning the first corner on our long journey home: Imphal to Delhi, Delhi to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Philly.
I would have sent an update sooner, but have been unable to connect to the Internet and email for the last 6 days. Why is that?
My phone is also an email device--which is a lifesaver on international trips, since sending and receiving email on my phone when abroad costs far less than making an international voice call! And my wireless service supports data calls in well over a hundred countries. Especially when I'm on the road, it is very helpful to be able to connect without using my laptop. So, why didn't this nifty solution work in Northeast India?
Well, Northeast India is very rugged country. I spent most of the last week either in a remote village or bumping along dirt roads through steep valleys and ridges to get there and back. But that's not why I couldn't connect.
Northeast India also has a lot of poverty. The village we stayed in, Talui, only gets electricity 2 hours a day, and you never know when that will be. Needless to say, I didn't see any Internet shops tucked between the roughly 500 houses of Talui. But that is not why I remained offline.
In fact, the hills were alive with mobiles! Everywhere I went, people were chatting away on their cell phones. I was doubly amazed by our driver: as he took us around hairpin turns, switchbacks, steep inclines and precipitous downslopes, much of the time he did it with only one hand, for the other was keeping his cellie in his ear. I was amazed he could pull all that off, and amazed that his phone never dropped a call, even at the bottom of the narrowest valley. So why couldn't I connect?
It's political... or maybe military... or really, both. The hills of Northeast India are home to a large number of indigenous peoples (they refer to themselves--when they're speaking English--as tribal people). The tribes are ethnically, culturally and religiously very different from the majority population of India. So, there are conflicts.
But that is to put it far too mildly. Some of the longest-running armed conflicts in the world are concentrated here. The region contains a remarkable concentration of insurgent groups, and they have been fighting for decades--both against the central government and among themselves. The insurgents and the national government disagree radically about what has been promised to whom and to what extent the promises have been kept--to say nothing about the adequacy or justice of what was promised in the first place.
The underground groups mostly carry out hit-and-run guerrilla attacks. Sometimes they have used cell phone-activated bombs in their offensives.
So, the central government came up with a strategy. First, they require service providers to encode their wireless signals in such a way that they can be read by a special kind of SIM card (note to non-techies: for "SIM card" read "innards"). Those SIM cards/innards are sold only in Northeast india and the sale is tightly controlled. The government keeps a very close eye on who is connected to what mobile phone. (You might recall that the authorities cracked the case of the Mumbai terrorists by tracing their cell phone calls.)
So, my marvelous phone was useless during the entire time I spent in Manipur and Assam. I quickly learned to leave it in the bag, turned off.
It was a minor inconvenience for me, but a frequent reminder of the just-below-the-surface tensions that frame the daily lives of all who live in Northeast india, whether government officials, insurgents or those caught between them. It reminded me of life in El Salvador in the 1980s. And reminded me to pray for the transformation of these conflicts into a just and humane existence for all who live there.
I am grateful for the opportunity to serve people in this difficult situation.
Thanks for your support that makes this service possible!
Blessings,
Stan
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
I would have sent an update sooner, but have been unable to connect to the Internet and email for the last 6 days. Why is that?
My phone is also an email device--which is a lifesaver on international trips, since sending and receiving email on my phone when abroad costs far less than making an international voice call! And my wireless service supports data calls in well over a hundred countries. Especially when I'm on the road, it is very helpful to be able to connect without using my laptop. So, why didn't this nifty solution work in Northeast India?
Well, Northeast India is very rugged country. I spent most of the last week either in a remote village or bumping along dirt roads through steep valleys and ridges to get there and back. But that's not why I couldn't connect.
Northeast India also has a lot of poverty. The village we stayed in, Talui, only gets electricity 2 hours a day, and you never know when that will be. Needless to say, I didn't see any Internet shops tucked between the roughly 500 houses of Talui. But that is not why I remained offline.
In fact, the hills were alive with mobiles! Everywhere I went, people were chatting away on their cell phones. I was doubly amazed by our driver: as he took us around hairpin turns, switchbacks, steep inclines and precipitous downslopes, much of the time he did it with only one hand, for the other was keeping his cellie in his ear. I was amazed he could pull all that off, and amazed that his phone never dropped a call, even at the bottom of the narrowest valley. So why couldn't I connect?
It's political... or maybe military... or really, both. The hills of Northeast India are home to a large number of indigenous peoples (they refer to themselves--when they're speaking English--as tribal people). The tribes are ethnically, culturally and religiously very different from the majority population of India. So, there are conflicts.
But that is to put it far too mildly. Some of the longest-running armed conflicts in the world are concentrated here. The region contains a remarkable concentration of insurgent groups, and they have been fighting for decades--both against the central government and among themselves. The insurgents and the national government disagree radically about what has been promised to whom and to what extent the promises have been kept--to say nothing about the adequacy or justice of what was promised in the first place.
The underground groups mostly carry out hit-and-run guerrilla attacks. Sometimes they have used cell phone-activated bombs in their offensives.
So, the central government came up with a strategy. First, they require service providers to encode their wireless signals in such a way that they can be read by a special kind of SIM card (note to non-techies: for "SIM card" read "innards"). Those SIM cards/innards are sold only in Northeast india and the sale is tightly controlled. The government keeps a very close eye on who is connected to what mobile phone. (You might recall that the authorities cracked the case of the Mumbai terrorists by tracing their cell phone calls.)
So, my marvelous phone was useless during the entire time I spent in Manipur and Assam. I quickly learned to leave it in the bag, turned off.
It was a minor inconvenience for me, but a frequent reminder of the just-below-the-surface tensions that frame the daily lives of all who live in Northeast india, whether government officials, insurgents or those caught between them. It reminded me of life in El Salvador in the 1980s. And reminded me to pray for the transformation of these conflicts into a just and humane existence for all who live there.
I am grateful for the opportunity to serve people in this difficult situation.
Thanks for your support that makes this service possible!
Blessings,
Stan
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile