Central Region Groot-Marico

Darrel Bristow-Bovey finds that internet access requires more patience...

Groot Marico in the News

In the days of Herman Charles Bosman and Oom Schalk Lourens, information was transmitted through the Groot Marico the old-fashioned way – gossip and tall tales over a pot of coffee and a belt of mampoer. It was slow but it was sociable, and you did not have to worry about message encryption, or whether that person in the chat room calling himself Jurie Steyn really was Jurie Steyn, or some spotty teenager hunched over his computer in Randburg.

Today word of mouth is still the most popular means of communication, but the times they are a-changing. The Internet has come to Groot Marico.

Johan van As is the dominee in the town, which is 200 km from Johannesburg by car, a lifetime away in the imagination. Johan is also the proud webmaster of the Groot Marico’s web site, the first place to visit if you’re interested in holiday accommodation, the history of the area, or a closely reasoned treatise on the pros and cons of monkey hunting.

Anyone who can access the Internet, say the smart alecs, can have their own web site, but accessing the Internet is not so easy when your telephone operates through a manual exchange. When Johan first considered putting his corner of the bushveld in cyber-space, he phoned the exchange for advice.

"I want to go on the Internet," he said.

"What’s that?" said the operator.

Johan thought a while. "Like a fax machine, only through your computer". That satisfied the operator. The ladies at the Groot Marico telephone exchange pride themselves on their knowledge of fax machines.

The problem is that Johan cannot get a line with a dialing tone unless the Marico gets an automatic exchange. The good news is Telkom has promised to provide one. The bad news is they promised it several years ago. They did once start constructing a building to house the exchange, but then they ran out of money.

To understand the difficulty of dialing up the Internet on a manual exchange, you must understand what it’s like just to make an ordinary call. You pick up the phone, then you wait. Sometimes you wait for 20 minutes. Finally the operator answers and says: "Nommer asseblief?" ("Number please?")

Johan used to get into his car and drive down to the exchange to ask someone to pick up his call. "Nowadays," he says, "I ring them with my cell phone and tell them to answer".

You then tell the operator the number, and listen to her dial. "If it’s a local call," says Johan, "the number will be engaged. If it’s long-distance, you will be told that the phone lines have been stolen. If you somehow get through, the person you’re ringing will not be at home."

Whether you made the call successfully or not, you must get hold of the operator again to tell her you are finished, or you will receive a phone bill more frightening than Oom Piet van Niekerk’s home-brewed mampoer.

In months of research, Johan could find no advice on accessing the Internet through a manual exchange. The MWeb helpline thought he was a prank caller.

Finally he began configuring his PC for the Internet, more in hope than expectation. The nub of the problem was the telephone number for his service provider’s POP (point of presence). The computer wants to dial the number, and so does the exchange. Old and new technology eyeball each other across a line drawn in the electronic sand.

The secret, finally, is to configure the PC for manual dialing, and in place of the POP number insert a comma. Then dial via the exchange, and once the call is made, manually click the "connect" tab on the screen.

On rare occasions, Johan gets through first time, but more often he stops after the sixth attempt, and tries again later. Each failed attempt can involve 20 minutes of waiting and two cell phone calls to the exchange. "You need," says Johan, "patience."

Once you’re online, setting up the web site is simple, even from the far side of Swartruggens. Johan uses a shareware FTP (file transfer protocol) programme to upload page content, which he programmes on his PC at home. The actual site is hosted by a company in Cape Town. As his nearest service provider is in Rustenburg, 100 km away, every connection is on trunk-call rates. He became briefly excited about Telkom’s flat R7 call rate on weekends, but that, of course, is valid only for automatic exchanges. It’s not all picnics and cheap liquor in the countryside.

Johan appreciates feedback about his site – he is especially proud of mail he received from a certain Bob of Michigan.

"Wishing you happy monkey-hunting from the heart of America’s fruit belt" said Bob.

Sadly, Johan doesn’t receive much comment from the Marico locals. No one else has the Internet.

TAKEN FROM: http://www.marico.co.za/

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