Surprise!

25- October

My village has this new thing - it's called the Internet. I was eating dinner with a friend a couple nights ago when he told me that the Rwanda Develpment Board had installed a new computer lab just down the road. I was in disbelief. Internet? in Nyakarambi? My life was about to change.

The weekend only intensified my excitement as I waited in suspense for Monday morning. Could there really be internet here? Was it coming and not yet finished? Would the lab be open and working? Usually news travels fast in our village and I would have expected the whole town to be buzzing about this. In my impatience I had asked a few people on Sunday if they knew about the new connection. Some gave the same reply I did: "Internet? In Nyakarambi? Oh no, not yet," but others verified it. I gave the whole thing a fifty fifty chance.

Monday rolled around and I roled out of bed, did some laundry and took some breakfast until the clock rolled around to 9am. I headed down the road toward the new white building that was rumored to house fifty computers with a fast connection the outside world. The gate was open. Okay, that's a good start. How about the door? Yep; wide open as if magnifying the eagerness of new visitors like me. I walked into the room on my left to find my pastor hunched over a computer punching a keyboard finger by finger and a sea of sleek new computers behind me. He looked up, hugged me, and through his grin said, "I think Nyakarambi is now having the internet!"

I sat at my computer and opened internet explorer. As I waited for the browser to load, I looked around me. A little dissatisfaction set in. The other computers were all occupied by teenage boys, browsing any entertainment sites they could find, loading YouTube videos (hogging precious bandwidth), and looking at new electronic gadgets they could only hope to buy. Gmail's homepage was open and I clicked sign-in. The screen went black; the electricity was out. I let out a sigh. It could be three minutes or three hours. I waited thirty minutes, then gave up hope and went home.

As I write this (having just returned home) my bubbling excitement for the internet was quelched by dissapointment. Sure, the power will come back on eventually and I will probably be posting this blog via the new computer lab. These things are to be expected in Rwanda. But strangely, I am more discontented with my first impression of the internet's use here. What will the internet be primarily used for in Nyakarambi, and by whom? How much time and money (what little they have) will teenagers throw at a box that provides them with music videos, merchandise, and promiscious entertainment? We aim for development and pour foreign aid into Rwanda and hope for what outcomes? I don't mean to sound cynical or condemning, but I do mean to be skeptical or at least cautious and aware of how technology affects the world. And while materialism and entertainment of all sorts is as common as day in America, it is a strikingly new technological and social revolution in Rwanda. And while countries like America have had decades, even centuries to adjust, a small town like Nyakarambi is receiving a concentrated dose of this revolution that is in stark contrast with the hoe-digging, hand picking, cattle herding life they have always known; and this, bear in mind, only sixteen years after a genocide. What curious and unimaginable dynamics are shaping this country. Nyakarambi, welcome to the rest of the world.