{placekitten} – Service provides kittens for use as img placeholders. FULL OF WIN. In Which We Teach You How To Be A Woman In Any Boys’ Club – Home – This Recording – In Which We Teach You How To Be … Continue reading →
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Friday photo: Showing the flag | FP Passport – Libyan embassy staff raise pre-Qaddafi flag at Libyan ambassador's residence in Washington WeightWatchers.com: PointsPlus Values – Don't know how long this will be free. A Graphical Analysis Of Lady-Hating Online Trolls … Continue reading →
In Liberia, splurging on sushi to feel at home – CSMonitor.com – WTF there's sushi in MONROVIA, but not in COTONOU? I AM MOVING. http://icio.us/5JKdux In Liberia, splurging on sushi to feel at home – CSMonitor.com – WTF there's sushi … Continue reading →
I love Happy Hour with expats and Peace Corps Volunteers. But every fucking Saturday, the check is a fucking hassle. Ridiculous! Dear everyone in the world who will have to share a check with someone sometime during your life (expats, … Continue reading →
Becoming a Foreign Service Officer (read: American diplomat) is a long and frustrating process. I’ve made it through the most difficult parts, and I’m now officially on the list of future hires. If all goes well in the Congress, I … Continue reading →
‘ Somebody must have put Benin Telecom’s feet to the fire because they’ve launched a series of impressive initiatives to lower the price of bandwidth for Beninese consumers. They have: doubled the bandwidth for all DSL consumers. That means users … Continue reading →
Damn, it’s good to be home. As wonderful as it was to visit friends and family, this last trip hammered home how out of place I feel back in the States. Normal for me is Cotonou. Even with all of … Continue reading →
I passed the orals. I don’t know what the future holds. I am eusxhausted. I am only updating because I am totes Internet famous now.
I’m in DC next week and Seattle the week after that with a fair amount of free time between meetings. Shoot me an email (I may or may not see your comment here)!
Bertrand and I dressed up as zems for Halloween. It was fucking awesome.
This year has been a rough one for Benin, and it’s not about to get any easier. ICC, the LEPI, and now catastrophic flooding are combining to make this fall one of the hardest since I’ve been here. The whole … Continue reading →
Last week, I gave some concrete suggestions for improving participation by women in technology. Among them were exhortations to create an empowering environment to get work done. All of the mentoring and social networks in the world won’t help you … Continue reading →
Are you looking for a woman working in IT? Someone who’s bright, innovative, and ready to take risks? Someone who’s already trained in the basics and is excited to learn more? Have you talked to a secretary lately? People Online … Continue reading →
Shopping sneakers in Benin is not nearly as much fun as shopping for bras. It’s a hassle and I don’t like it at all. It sucks every single time I go out. The first go around took several weeks, and … Continue reading →
I passed my State Department Arabic class! After 12 weeks of not-as-diligent-as-it-should-have-been study, I can now read the alphabet, count to a million, say hello, and introduce myself. My teacher left me with a long list of subjects I need … Continue reading →
I passed the Foreign Service written exam. Now I have to write some essays. Then maybe I’ll have to fly back to Washington (oh no! not the briar patch!). Then maybe one day I’ll be a FILTHY FILTHY RICH RICH … Continue reading →
On the way to the grocery store, Bertrand and I noticed this misaligned gas station:
Much to the delight of everyone around me, this yovo pulled out her camera over the weekend and snapped some pictures of the lake I’m going to have to drive through on the way to work every day. More pictures … Continue reading →
Last week, I decided that I absolutely needed a hunk of fresh tuna. Never mind that I had no idea how to go about buying tuna. I had to have it. In Cotonou, salt water fish are bought fresh off the boat at the Port of Cotonou. Chaos reigns as fishermen and fish mongers negotiate prices [...]
We’re getting to the “rains twice a day” part of the season. Soon it will be “rains all day every day”. And then, “doesn’t stop raining for a week straight”. And then finally, the light at the end of the tunnel. A brief one month stretch with scant rains and lots of sunshine. August, you [...]
This past weekend, PINK BENIN went up north to Parakou. We’ve been struggling to get out of Cotonou, and more importantly, get the message out to more women in order to a) start tracking breast cancer cases throughout the country and b) create a force strong enough to pressure the Beninese government into making cancer [...]
We’ve had a lot of visitors lately, new to Benin and/or to Africa, who are afraid of food poisoning. I’m going to be really honest here: if you leave Cotonou, have any middle class Beninese friends, eat street food, or do anything but eat at ritzy expat restaurants and prepare your own (vegetarian) food, you’re [...]
After a long weeks of not having enough time to breathe, much less sleep, Bertrand and I are more or less settling back into routine. In the intervening weeks, things have changed a bit in the Carpenter-Sondjo household: We have a freezer. We have a cat. I own a pair of sneakers. The rainy season [...]
I am in fact, still alive and kicking, all evidence to the contrary. The first week at a new job is always difficult—lots of new people to meet, lots of information to digest, and of course, lots of work to do. Despite the fact that my job is ostensibly part time, I get home exhausted, [...]
PINK BENIN is a big fan of International Women’s Day. Breast cancer is a marginalized illness in Benin, like many places in the world, because it’s something that primarily affects women. So it’s nice to do work on a day where we don’t have to defend ourselves for primarily working with women (What? We don’t [...]
People Online still guarantees IE6 compatibility for almost 100% of the sites we develop. We don’t even charge extra for it! And this is why:
We’ve spent an awful lot of time in cybercafés in West Africa, and an awful lot of these cybercafés are still running Windows XP (or Windows 2000! Or Windows 98!) and [...]
Six months ago, rumors began circulating about an orphan who could heal, raise the dead, and perform exorcisms. And what better place for a second coming than a region plagued by sorcery, witches, and the devil himself? Thousands of pilgrims came to weekly masses in a tiny village with no water and no electricity, in [...]
Bertrand’s oldest brother passed away over the weekend.
I could write a fascinating post detailing funeral rites and Beninese mourning. But somehow, that feels like an invasion of privacy.
I’ll be back on SVO, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest in a week or so.
I haven’t written much lately because every time I sit down at my keyboard, I want to write about Haiti. I want to write about terrible injustice. And I want to write about the appalling difference I see between main stream media depictions and fresher, more local sources.
I haven’t written about Haiti because, let’s face [...]
Attribution-ShareAlike, to be precise. Copy away, even for commercial purposes. The sole conditions are: 1) you have to credit me (attribute the work) and b) whatever you use my work for also has to be CC licensed.
As SVO is coming up on its five year anniversary, I’mcleaning out some closets and setting a few things in [...]
Look, women need bras, okay? It’s normal, and I’m here for the long haul, which means that I can’t depend on care packages and occasional trips home for underclothes anymore (yes, it’s true, I did that for a brief period).
For every man who’s like, “WTF is Theresa talking about bras on her blog for?” there’s [...]
What we know (facts):
Our Internet connection has been out since last Friday.
So have those of all other WiMax clients.
Non-WiMax clients of Benin Telecoms have been having problems since Friday for certain types of downloads and have experienced unusual bandwidth shaping.
Connections from other ISPs sometimes work, and sometimes don’t. There is probably a [...]
I hate the end of the year in Benin. Everybody turns into a liar. “I’ll pay you tomorrow.” “I’ll call you this evening.” “Stop by at the end of the week.” “Let’s make an appointment for 4:00.” Nobody calls, and we constantly show up to empty offices. It’s more socially acceptable (and easier) to lie [...]
I have a confession to make.
I’m not a development worker.
I work with ICTs in the developing world, but I am driven by profit. This is both a luxury and a burden. It’s cool that people think I have something to say about ICT4D. I don’t. I have a lot to say about ICTs in the [...]
Freedom of the press and the right to say what I want, when I want, is something I take for granted. Despite the many problems that plague American media, our right to free speech is well protected. The press, while beholden to its corporate interests, does not fear jail or sanctions for telling the truth, [...]
Last Thursday, we woke up to no Internet. At 8:00, we called Benin Telecoms to signal the problem. “We’ll send a team right away,” they said. “Are you sure you need to send a team out here? We just can’t log in, so the problem’s probably on your end.” “What could you possibly know about [...]
I had lunch with an expat this morning, and said I that sometimes I have a hard time talking about development in Benin, as even we haven’t gotten it right yet. She looked at me with raised eyebrows and said, “We??!? *I* come from a country that has universal health care and free education up [...]
This is the second in a series of posts where I address technology, women in technology, and women in technology in Benin. *
Accompanying the recent spate of questions about how to find more and better women speakers for tech conferences, the general lack of women in technology, and a lot of comments about women’s capabilities [...]
This is the first of a series of posts in which I’ll discuss technology, women in technology, and women in technology in Benin.
My clients are all businessmen. Accent on men. After over two years of developing websites and web applications in Cotonou, we have a lot of clients (what can I say, we’re good [...]
I’m just going to get this out of the way: I am quite sympathetic to PayPal and how they’ve cut off the entire continent of Africa.
Going to a cybercafé in Cotonou means two out of three computers are occupied by Beninese or Nigerian boys scamming rich Americans and Europeans. Sometimes, they’re training 9 and 10 [...]
I have a new job. I mean, a new job in addition to running Benin’s most successful web development firm. Jon Gosier at Appfrica just relaunched and hired my magnificent self to blog about technology, entrepreneurship, and other awesomeness in Africa. I’m getting paid to write about things I love!
I know, I know, I know. [...]
Nigerian ISP Internet Speeds.
Originally uploaded by Wayan Vota
This is an awesome screencap by Wayan Vota showing just how bad the bandwidth gets in Nigeria. Normally, Benin has similar service levels during the day. Night time speeds approach a whopping 56kpbs (we are paying for 256kbps).
Now image that the undersea cable connecting Benin with the rest [...]
I am appalled that I 100% agree with something Fake Steve Jobs said today.
We all know that there’s no fucking way in the world we should have microwave ovens and refrigerators and TV sets and everything else at the prices we’re paying for them. There’s no way we get all this stuff and everything [...]
For the past two days, a client has desperately been trying to get a hold of us. He said he couldn’t access his website. We checked, no problems on our end, and brushed him off.
He showed up this morning at 8:05am with his laptop and CDMA connection. “I’ll prove to you I’m not an idiot,” [...]
GoogleOS excites me in a way that that Google usually doesn’t, and here’s why: Google Gears works. And it works really well in Google Chrome.
What? You didn’t notice? That’s probably because you never have to use it. Here in Cotonou where power and internet connections cut all the time, it’s quite useful. And with [...]
It’s been a bit since the last time I posted about turning WordPress into a CMS. I’ve learned a bit more about WordPress, and some really great plugins have come to my attention. WordPress has evolved a bit, and so have the types of sites I work on here in Benin.
The following plugins have a [...]
Hahahaha. Like having power at the beginning of the installation is any guarantee of having power by the end of installation. Did the folks at Microsoft think about any of the emerging economy edge cases ?
Clay Shirky’s recent tweet about Couchsurfing reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about it for a while. Couchsurfing is both a verb (to surf someone’s couch) and a thriving community of travelers and hosts.
We’ve hosted several couchsurfers over the last year and met many more through meet-ups. It’s been an amazing experience. [...]
Hmmm.
The difference between “social entrepreneurship” and “entrepreneurship” can break down quickly. When we’re talking about African students building new web applications to make it easier to send money to families back home, what should we designate that? Entrepreneurship or Social Entrepreneurship? Or does it not matter? Should it perhaps make us wonder if we should [...]
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