OK, never mind yesterday’s post. Looks like I will get to be a techno-geek while we’re in Ethiopia picking up our son. At least a little bit.
A friend has stepped forward and offered to pay for my Twittering. They shelled out for four updates a day for our 10 day trip (each international text message is 50 cents), and then some. How cool is that?
So when I’m thousands of miles away you can know almost immediately when my son spits up on me for the first time. Seriously though, we’ve had so many friends supporting us in so many ways, it will be fun to share this experience with you as it happens, a little bit at a time. Of course that assumes I can work the 9-button keypad fast enough to send four messages a day (I’ve used my cell phone exactly one other time to send Twitter updates).
I didn’t ask anyone to do this, I wasn’t expecting it and I’m pretty humbled.
Follow me on Twitter for the whole Ethiopia experience.
When we were in Ethiopia in October we could not send international SMS. This was true with a local SIM or roaming with an AT&T SIM.
The gov’t controlled monopoly cell phone company blocks it to control information flow. In fact, sometimes they shut off SMS all together. We had to twitter from the web over dial-up once/day.
Hope you can make it work, though.
Really? I just talked to AT&T yesterday and they acted like it was no problem. Wow, that would suck. I’ll look into this and see what’s what.
It’s not an AT&T problem, it’s the problem of the local cell phone company. But maybe I’m wrong, just found this: http://momentsofclaritybygretchen.blogspot.com/2009/02/one-of-reasons-i-love-twitter.html You might contact them – maybe stuff changed.
I realize it’s not AT&T’s problem, but if a partner service is making it not work, then it simply doesn’t work. AT&T should know whether or not the local cell company is doing their part or not.
I’m check in with our agency and some other folks who’ve been there to see what their experience is.
Who knows? Like most international travel, I suppose you have to be prepared for the unexpected. Thanks for the heads up.
Gretchen did send some tweets during her time in Ethiopia, but not very often. I think she wanted to do it more frequently than she did.
She’s unplugged herself from most of the information superhighway as part of Lent, but she did mention that she’ll check email – I’d assume that would include DMs via twitter. If you’re not following her (or she’s not following you), I could send her a message if you’d like. Just DM me @mattdantodd.
Kevin,
texting/twittering worked great for us in Ethiopia with AT&T. email me if you want to talk more about it!
gretchen@uiscsf.org