My Enemy: The Internet
Matt Smith
Aug 20 2010

In a country like Sierra Leone, you have many beautiful things: the people, the land, much of the food, music, clothing, dances.  Countries like Sierra Leone have a rich cultural heritage that I sometimes feel a slight tug of jealousy over.  What countries like Sierra Leone do NOT have is fast Internet.  That’s right, no broadband or high speed (gasp).   Now, for the average citizen of West Africa, this, I imagine, is not too much of a problem.  But, for the average NGO intern it can be a slightly frustrating endeavour, one that regularly can take up my afternoon.  While I am spared the annoying television commercials spitting facts at me about why Shaw is better than Rogers or whatever, it can take me up to 45 minutes to send a photo to Canada.  In Sierra Leone, Zain is better than anything and Zain is not very fast (see photo of Zain Internet stick).
I will admit that a few times my frustration has gotten the better of me, and though I have yet to throw anything through a window yet, I have had to come face to face again with the ways that I have let the technology we live with affect my expectations of the way the world should work.  And though I feel the Internet plays a small role in my life back home, it certainly plays a large role here.  Whether it’s communicating with family or trying to send a batch of photos to the office in Canmore, the Internet sometimes feels like an enemy. 
One of the beautiful things about life here in Sierra Leone is that many people live free from the tangled web of electronic and technological mayhem in their lives.  While we may be tempted to praise all the advances that these things-cell phones, Ipods, cameras, TVs, DVD players (unless I’m out of touch and everyone has already switched to Blu-Ray; also a shout out to anyone still using VHS)-I have begun to notice at times what a hindrance it is to getting on with living.  It is easy to assume that technology only drives us forward and makes us better.  But to believe this is to reduce “us” to an information assembly line, able to text more, email more, download more and buy more. 
So while I spend half and hour trying to send this blog to you over the Internet I’m going to try to take a minute to reflect, not on what the Internet has done for me, and for the world, but about what my dependence on it and other technologies has actually taken from me.