www woes

Those of you who blog know that bloggers can access statistics on his/her site. These stats do not tell us specifically who is looking at our blogs, but they do give us breakdowns of viewers by country, show us the search engines used to find us, and list how many hits we get per day, per week, and per month. 

To my surprise, viewers have continued to check out this blog, in spite of my sporadic posting. Usually, when I have a lapse in blogging, viewing tapers off a bit. Thanks to those of you are are interested in our lives and goings-on way over here in the Middle East and keep checking in for news! 

There is a reason for this lapse. The World Wide Web is supposed to be world-wide but it seems it may sometimes skip over our little corner of the world! Internet access here is sketchy, to put it mildly. Unless we use it late at night or in the middle of the night, like I am doing now, we wait for a page to move. And wait. And wait. I am tempted to call it the Wait-Wait-Wait Web. Often, Internet service is so slow during the day that I wait for a while and then shut it down before aggravation sets in. 

We went to Ehab Communications, the place where we bought our router and Dongle. We had been using their Zain network for about a month and wanted to find out if the company could speed things up. 

The guy who helped us was kind and worked with us and our laptop for quite a while. At one juncture, he somewhat apologetically said, "This not America. This Jordan." We had already come to that conclusion on our own, but in his inoffensive way he was saying, "Don't expect too much because no matter what you do, you are not going to get Internet service like you are used to in the U.S."

When we first arrived, our neighbors, who have befriended us and treated us all kinds of nice, were talking to us about Jordan. Fawzi said, "They say we are a third-world country." He laughed, put his hand in the air and counted off with his fingers. "Not third-world! Fourth, fifth, sixth..." 

"Third-World" is a term that was birthed during the Cold War to categorize countries politically. Some consider the term archaic and outdated but it has evolved to describe developing countries in terms of gross national income, literacy rates, and other socio-economic factors. Interestingly, many third-world/developing countries (the terms are often used interchangeably, albeit with some controversy) depend on financial support from First World countries for their survival. Such is the case with Jordan, which garners aid from industrialized nations, with the good old U.S. of A. being by far the most generous donor. 

Most Jordanians have access to running water (although not necessarily clean according to U.S. standards), food, and shelter and most people are literate but when it comes to economics and technology, things are not so good. Since we were here four years ago, Apple stores have appeared in the malls in Amman, although most people cannot afford iPhones and opt for Samsungs instead. Some people - like me - still use the small, boxy phones that are no longer available in the U.S., having been replaced with more up-to-date models. 

The long and short of all this is that I am really okay without Internet access as I once knew it in my stateside life a few months ago. Fortunately, I am not publishing any books right now and don't need to send manuscripts back and forth to the printer. I am only inconvenienced when I want to Skype a family member, email a friend, or Google something. That is all remedied by using the www late at night or in the middle of the night, when Internet traffic lessens. It is interesting what a person can adjust to when necessary. 

Reminds me of my adjustment to traveling down roads with people who consider stopping at red lights optional, my adjustment to washing clothes with a labor and time-intensive washing machine the likes of which I have never seen in the U.S, my adjustment to hearing cars honking and people yelling on just the other side of our apartment wall, my adjustment to eating falafels and kebabs instead of salads, my adjustment to struggling to communicate even simple thoughts to people who don't speak my language, my adjustment to... Okay, I'll stop. That sentence is way too long already.

The next time your Internet speeds its way from page to page, think of us! Happy surfing and thanks for being faithful to our blog. I will attempt to do more middle-of-the-night posting!  :)