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 IE6. Anecdotal evidence aside, the default install for Windows XP is IE6, and most offices here never upgrade (why should they?).

It’s all good and well to say that only stuffy corporate offices in the States are using IE6, but my experience has shown otherwise. I analyzed a sample of People Online’s 10 most trafficked websites, all aimed at both local and international audiences This criteria actually didn’t exclude anything, as none of the sites aimed exclusively internationally or locally made the top 10.

Browser share number crunching for Benin

19% of our traffic is local. Not bad, but not great. We should probably work more with clients to publicize the sites in country and optimize for Yahoo!, which gives us far more local referrals than Google (note to self: possible later blog post).

18.8% of our traffic uses IE6. This number by itself is relatively large, but still small enough that we could start quietly dropping support, warning our clients not to expect pixel-perfect results. Except that …

35.5% of our Beninese traffic is IE6. That is, over 1/3 of a major target audience is still using IE6. Oops. That’s far to large to drop support, especially considering that many sites have much higher percentages (up to 49.6%). In this sample, opposition newspapers tended to have the lowest IE6 usage rates, while pro-administration newspapers had the highest. That too probably merits its own blog post.

27.9% of Beninese users are using Firefox, and 16.6% are using IE7. Only are 15.4% using IE8. That might sound like good news for open source, but what it really means is that we’ve got a pretty even distribution of browsers, dominated by IE6. I imagine that Firefox will overtake IE6 by the end of 2010, but as long as IE6 is still overing around a third, we don’t have have a choice but to support it.

I think it’s marvelous that there are markets in Sub-Saharan Africa where IE6 holds a small enough share that developers can drop support. That’s wonderful! IE6 is a buggy disaster and it makes for both CSS and JavaScript nightmares; however, our market does not allow us to do the same. It doesn’t even allow us optional support.

Most of our local users connect from cybercafés and government offices. They don’t download the latest and greatest versions because it’s not their job to do so. If you’re in a developing market and you’re considering dropping IE6 support, take the time to study your analytics (you’re doing that anyway, right?). Africa’s Internet market is not monolithic.

The young woman spoke of terrible things, accusing the clergy of hypocrisy, Benin’s leaders of thievery, and claiming that national heroes were burning in hell for witchcraft and the murders they committed during their lives. Despite her fanatic following, she was soon chased out of the village, not by the inhabitants, but by the Catholic Church. Heresy is not looked kindly upon by the Vatican.

Today, she resides in another small village, still in the heart of Voodoo. The Catholic priests that raised her and guard her have built a makeshift church… nothing more than a tin roof large enough to cover two thousand kneeling souls. It’s not large enough, of course, and there only enough pews (desks borrowed from a nearby school) for a few hundred.

The first thing that struck me about the church and its surroundings was the cool breeze, as if we were under the constant threat of rain. During the hot season, where breathing is almost too much effort, the refreshing wind was surprising in and of itself, more so that it lasted our entire visit.

The second thing is the multitudes of pilgrims, both healthy and not, sprawled out on mats under the tin roof of the church. Every few hours, a priest would stand at the alter, with a choir to his right, and exhort the praying to get on their feet and praise the Lord through song and dance. They did, enthusiastically.

Despite the hundreds of people praying, dancing, milling, eating, and living on the small church grounds, a spirit of tranquility prevailed, rather than the cheerful noise that usually pervades Beninese gatherings.

We were lucky to be accompanied by a friend of a friend, who was an intimate acolyte of the Holy Spirit. Our friend had met the young woman while she wasn’t possessed by the Holy Spirit. Surprised by her loneliness, she comforted the girl. I too would be lonely if I were visited by thousands of supplicants a day, who could only be satisfied with a painful manifestation of another spirit.

Would we be able to speak with the Spirit Himself? Apparently, He gave personal audiences. He turned us the way the first day, because we took too long to arrive. The second day, we arrived at the priest’s home, where the young woman also lives. We waited outdoors in our SUVs until the young woman arrived. Our friend informed us that she was currently possessed by the Holy Spirit, and we would be able to see Him.

“Do not tell Him why you’re here!” she admonished us. “Just ask for a blessing!” God, after all, already knew what we wanted. We entered the sparsely furnished house to find the Holy Spirit seated on a couch, giving orders on a cell phone. He calmly hung up, and stood to greet us. We took our seats. Our friend then instructed us to kneel to receive a blessing. The Holy Spirit placed his hands on our heads, one by one, whispering words only He could hear.

Later that night, we gathered in the church, curling up on mats to wait for that night’s Delivery Mass. The sick would be healed. Demons would be exorcised. Sorcerers would be cast out. And so on and so forth. Singing and dancing began at 10 o’clock, The mass started at midnight and continued until six in the morning. There were over five thousand people in attendance for the mass. I was the only foreigner, but there were many many SUVs that arrived between 8 and 10 in the evening.

There’s a large part of me that wants to retreat into the cynical irreligiousness that I’m comfortable with. God doesn’t manifest Himself (Itself!) through miracles. That men and women who claim to see Him, to experience Him are charlatans. That Christians, Muslims, and anyone who believes that they will be Saved is delusional, using the comfort of religion to escape their own responsibility to make the best of the life they have.

There’s another part of me that recognizes that I witnessed something special, if not something that I can easily distill into a thousand word blog post. Do I believe I encountered the Holy Spirit? The second coming? Those I went with are absolutely certain that we were blessed by the hands of the Lord. That the Grace we received will allow us to do any and all things that are God’s will. I am less certain, although I am convinced that the young woman who claims to be inhabited by the Holy Spirit is special. Whether it’s sheer force of personality, or wisdom, or the Holy Spirit Himself is beyond me. In any case, to judge is for God and God alone.

Her priests toe the Catholic line theology wise, although their sermons focus on two things: the importance of faith and how the rich should not be surprised when the poor rise up against them. Inciting revolution? I don’t know. I do know that she incites love and not hate. She accepts no differences between classes, race, and rank. “We are all children of God,” our friend says. “God doesn’t recognize the titles men give themselves.” Rich or poor, everyone prays together and everyone waits in line together.

Whether or not the woman is whom she claims to be, she is giving hope to many who live every day of their lives without it.

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 about Haiti because, let’s face it. I’ve never been there. I’m not going anytime soon. I don’t even know much about Haiti today (although I’m reading everything I can get my hands on). In fact, many many others have already done a better job writing about recent events than I ever could. They’re experts in Haiti, relief, aid, and a million other things.

That said, there are a few stories that have touched me. Ushahidi and their unflagging efforts to connect people with the help they need. The outpouring of sympathy and relief from Africa. Plug-and-play hospitals from Doctors without Borders (okay, less touching and more “oohhhh shiny”).

This tragedy touches Benin uniquely, as the majority of slaves leaving the country went directly to Haiti and Brazil. The Beninese consider Haitians to be close cousins, practically Africans. Visiting Haitians have told me they feel at home here, and Beninese who’ve traveled to Haiti feel the same way. The whole country is praying for Haiti, and although our financial capacity for giving is small, I do not doubt that Benin will do everything it can.

Bertrand and are thinking about what we can do to help, and at this time, I think the best thing we can do is encourage everyone we know to donate. Several of our clients have asked for extensions on their bills so that they can do just that. Normally, I’d be skeptical (and was at first). Today, we’ve chosen to give them the benefit of the doubt because, strangely enough, we really do think they’ll give.

As SVO is coming up on its five year anniversary, I’mcleaning out some closets and setting a few things in order. I thought I’d done this when first setting up the blog, but it appears that it slipped my mind. For five years.

Dantokpa (photo courtesy of Mark Surman)

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 a woman nodding her head, saying, “OMG I always wondered how they do it.” Well, I don’t know how they do it, whoever they are, but I do know how I do it, and it’s a doozy.

Step 1: Gather up your courage and go to the market. Wear a thin shirt that is easy to take on and off.

Step 2: If you live in Cotonou, catch a zem to Tokpa and run around until you find the women’s clothes sections. These are new clothes, freshly imported from China. Never worn. This is important. The second hand clothes market is a 100F zem ride away.

Step 3: Find a woman with bras and panties hanging on her stall door. I do not have pictures, but I promise to take some the next time I have to go bra shopping. Ask her if she has bras for fat women. (If you just ask for larger bras, every single woman will say yes. It is absolutely crucial to specify that the bra is for a larger woman. Don’t ask me why.) Rinse and repeat as needed until you find someone who stocks bras in your size.

Step 4: Note that there are many large Beninese women who wear bras. Wonder why the fuck there are so few merchants that sell large bras. Realize that most Beninese women who have large breasts wear poorly fitting bras. No Victoria’s Secret free consultations here, my friends.

Step 5: Now that you’ve found a woman who claims to carry bras in your size, tell her exactly what you want. Be prepared with both American (inches) and French (cm) measurements. The woman will begin tearing through enormous plastic bags of bras (each individually wrapped in clear plastic, of course). She will completely disregard any request you have made, and start handing you bras.

‘Take this one! Good quality.’

‘This one is sexy. Your husband will like it!’

‘It’s not too small! You’ll see.’

Step 6: Start sweating.

Step 7: Once you have a handful of merchandise, you have to try it on. If you’ve found a lady with a stall that only opens on one side, you may be able to convince her to hold up a pagne (wrap) while you try things on. Otherwise, you will find yourself in the middle of the market trying on bras over your shirt in front of a rapidly growing audience.

Step 8: None of the bras the woman handed you fit. Yes, she exclaimed that each and every one of them was perfect. She’s never seen or worn a correctly fitting bra in her life. No big deal. Keep insisting until you get what you want. And don’t forget that labeled cup sizes are wildly inconsistent. What might be a B back home could run the gamut from A to D depending on the mark. For larger sized cups, just pretend you can’t read the label and try it on. No need to get ego involved. The point is to get a bra that fits, not argue about your cup size.

Step 9: Haggle. If you’re a yovo, drop the price to 1/3 of the asking price, then work up to about 1/2. This process may or may not take twice as long as your entire adventure this far. Don’t stop smiling. Wipe the sweat off your brow.

Step 10: Treat yourself to a cold beer and a cigarette. You’ve earned it!

• 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 pattern, but we don’t yet know it.
• .bj domains are up and down and up and down (currently down).

What we’ve been told by Benin Telecoms employees (lies, truths, and half-truths):

• Benin Telecoms isn’t recognizing WiMax customers’ passwords.
• Employees of Benin Telecoms shared their passwords with friends so that said friends could use services for free.
• Benin Telecoms employees are having password problems (including the only person there who can check account status).
• Benin Telecoms has never seen a problem like this before (and is panicking).

What we think (100% conjecture):

• Sharing passwords that give access to sensitive information is BAD BAD BAD.
• Benin Telecoms has no idea how to fix this.
• This seems to be a perfect storm of overselling bandwidth, poor security, password sharing, cheap equipment, and lack of expertise.

I’m currently using Moov’s USB modem (GPRS) to connect. It’s not bad for checking email, web stats, and occasional blogging, although I wouldn’t recommend it for anything heavy duty, as the connection’s quite unstable.

Hopefully the connection will be back next week, and we’ll be in the free and clear. Otherwise, Bertrand and I will be in the uncomfortable position of looking for a new ISP. For now, we’re using Moov, and hopping around Cotonou looking for cybercafés that work. An hour or two here, an hour or two there—it’s expensive, but it’s the only way to stay in business.

What a way to end the year, Benin Telecoms.

Manipulating and manging people you owe money to is an essential part of Beninese culture. You can’t cut someone off unless you have a face-to-face meeting, and if miraculously the face-to-face meeting never occurs, well, it’s your debtor’s lucky day. “Il nous gere.” we say to one another, and sigh.

The biggest spender in Benin is the government, who ran out of money in May. Since then, they’ve been begging, borrowing, and stealing (oh yes) just to pay salaries. Contracts finished in 2008 rest unpaid, and look to stay that way until at least April 2010. If the government can’t pay its large contractors, large contractors can’t pay medium sized contractors, who can’t pay the small businesses they work with, and at the end of the day, somebody’s salary’s not getting paid.

People Online works with small businesses. A lot of people owe us money. It’s easy to say, “Cut off their hosting! Stop doing work for them!” But if we do that, then we lose any change of recouping our losses when everyone finally does get paid in April 2010. And of course, you can’t squeeze water from a stone. We’re well aware that our clients are broke broke broke. It’s not like it’s their fault. Their clients aren’t honoring their contracts either.

Neighbors who can’t pay their rent. Friends who’ve had their electricity cut off. Colleagues who can no longer afford their Internet connection. Small businesses that can no longer pay salaries. This is the precarity of the middle class.

What do you do when a friend comes to borrow $20, and for the first time it’s a choice between helping your friend and paying your water bill? When your brother, who’s always been able to rely on you in a pinch, needs twice as much as usual, but you only have half as much as usual? When your niece’s family can’t afford her school fees, and you no longer have enough to make up the difference?

In normal times, you wouldn’t hesitate to put yourself in a position of slight difficulty to help out your family. You know that when you’re in trouble, your neighbors and family will be there for you too. Everybody’s always broke, and the the easy give-and-take of favors often means the difference between being broke and being poor. Today, the friendly process of social loans has stopped working, and it’s breaking apart the fabric of society.

Everyone knows the end of the year is difficult. Smart businesses (like People Online) prepare a cushion. Normally, this process starts right about now. Mid-November. The gov’t closes the its coffers, and everyone begins the waiting game until February, when some bills will start to get paid, or April, if you’re a small business owed by the government.

This year, the government stopped paying its bills in September, which means that funds were cut off before anyone finished establishing their cushion. Call it corruption, call it the financial crisis, call it utterly irresponsible government spending, call it what you will. The country’s run out of money, and for Benin’s middle class, the difference between being broke and being poor gets just a little bit more blurrier every day.

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 developing world, but much less to say about ICTs in a development context. Because I don’t know a bloody thing about development. My world view is skewed towards profits and markets.

In my line of work, ROI is very clear. Either the project makes (or saves!) my client a lot of money, or it doesn’t. Either it increases exposure by X number of readers a month or it doesn’t. Either it brings in advertising revenue, or it doesn’t. Either it brings in new clients, or it doesn’t. Either it fills a market need or it doesn’t.

Our clients are not poor. Broke, sure, that’s normal for small businesses everywhere in the world. But not poor. Their clients are rarely poor either. We don’t work with the BoP.

We don’t have to worry about quality of life.  We don’t have to worry about development indicators. We don’t even have to worry about government buy-in. While we do worry about ethics, we don’t have to worry about negative externalities that will make life worse for a large number of people. Our projects just don’t work that way (and thank goodness for that).

On the other hand, because our clients are paying for the tools we build, I don’t have the luxury of choosing an expensive tool that may or may not work. I can only choose tools that work. Otherwise, I lose clients. Not taking end-users needs and wants into consideration results in failed projects lessoned learned. “Lessons learned” = “very expensive mistake” for clients with limited cash flow.

It’s a luxury to be able to work exclusively locally. Even when we deal with the government, there’s flexibility that doesn’t exist in development and aid sectors, because we’re a private sector firm being paid for our services. As a businesswoman, I cannot imagine designing a tool for local businesses without ever having set foot on the ground and spoken to the end users.

Technology is a tool that allows users to do many many things, including becoming more informed about the world around them, improve rural heath care, encourage citizen journalism, clean water, and a million other things. Tools have to be appropriate to their context.

In some ways, it’s limiting to only do work for money. There are a lot of cool projects that pass us by, including projects that could improve quality of life for a lot of people. Our work is almost exclusively small and local, which means that we rarely work on country-wide implementations. We don’t do large-scale public health projects, for example. Even when we work with development organizations, we’re very focused. We’re hired to accomplish very specific goals: build X tool that accomplishes Y within Z budget, or train X number of people to be able to accomplish Y.

On the other hand, it’s liberating. My job is to look at the market and find new ways to fill market gaps, and that’s easy to measure. Either we’re profitable or we’re not.

ICT4D fills the space between “market demand” and “making lives better.” There are a million ways to improve quality of life that don’t have obvious revenue models. I like to use crisis mapping as an example of this, but there are many others (public health, education, etc). Projects like this are what government and development do best. Entrepreneurs aren’t moving into this space because we can’t figure out ways to make them profitable (yet).

It’s appalling to me that there are people who design projects without accounting for local needs. It’s appalling to me that we even need to discuss why this is important. Those who took part in yesterday’s Twitter chat are aware of this. But for me, it’s like being aware that the sky is blue. Of course it’s blue. There’s a reason it’s blue. Everybody knows it’s blue. Why are we running around talking about how blue the sky is?

The answer is, of course, that there are a large number of people involved in ICT4D who are not aware that context-appropriate solutions are the only solutions that work. Which is crazy. I actually don’t know anyone in #ict4d who isn’t having intelligent conversations about appropriate technology. I do, however, have evidence that such people exist, because Beninese ministries keep paying me to clean up their messes. Someday, I would like to meet these folks.

It’s odd to participate in conversations about development where everyone’s like, “Yeah! Local! Small! Low-tech! Sustainable!” For a businessperson, these things are so painfully obvious, they even don’t need to be said.

On November 3, CAPP FM, one of Benin’s oldest and certainly one of the most respected radio stations aired a program highly critical of the administration and several politicians. The administration reacted immediately, accusing the radio host of slander and inciting violence. The state has permanently removed her right to appear on the air in Benin. CAPP FM has been suspended for a month and has publicly apologized. If they had not apologized or had defended the woman, they risked having their license permanently revoked by the state.

Mme. VALDAVE Emailia hosts a religious show on CAPP FM. The following texts are those that the High Audiovisuel Communication Authority determined problematic (quoted directly from the text of the decision against the radio*):

» Que le sang de Jésus-Christ de Nazareth coule sur tous les hommes maintenant. Coule dans tous les services de l’Etat, les institutions de la République, les institutions étrangères, les représentants diplomatiques pour purifier ce pays le Bénin de toute souillure, de toute abomination, de tout esprit humain qui ne glorifie pas le nom de Jésus Christ de Nazareth, de tout esprit contraire au plan de DIEU pour ce pays »

That blood of Jesus Christ of Nazereth runs over men. Runs in all the departments of the State, the institutions of the Republic, foreign institutions, diplomatic representatives, to purify this country, the Benin, of all sin, of all abomination, of all human spirit that doesn’t glorifiy Christ, of all spirit against the plan of God for this country.

» Qu’avons-nous compris? Nous avons compris que vous [YAYI Boni] n’avez pas été quelqu’un avant de devenir quelque chose dans ce pays le Bénin. Nous avons compris que depuis trois ans nous vivons au Bénin, l’épisode d’une bande d’opportunistes en aventure; nous avons compris que vous êtes, non pardon que tu es scorpion. Mais pourquoi un scorpion? Le venin du scorpion est renfermé dans sa queue donc doux au départ, tendre au début mais féroce à la fin. C’est ce que tu es. Un scorpion qui commence bien, qui trompe au début et qui montre après son vrai visage »

What have we understood? We have come to understand that you [YAYI Boni] were no one before becoming something in this country, the Benin. We have understand that, during the last three years in Benin, we have lived an episode of a band of opportunistic adventurers; we have understand that you are, without pardon, a scorpion. And why a scorpion? The venom of a scorpion is locked up in its tail, so sweet in the beginning, tender in the beginning, but ferocious at the end. That’s what you are. A scorpion that starts well, who convinces in the beginning, and shows his true face afterwards.

Incendiary? Sure. Inciting violence? Well, not exactly. Television stations have been airing relevant bits of the radio show, and the clips used by the tribunal to judge the radio host and CAPP FM. Bizarrely, the clips don’t even appear to be controversial. It is true that in many ways life in Benin is worse in 2009 than it was in 2006. It is true that business in Cotonou has boomed, but the rural poor have been largely left behind. It is true that the state is more corrupt now than it was under Kérékou.

Benin has a long tradition of intellectualism, scholarship, and freedom of expression. Even during 17 years of dictatorship, the Beninese press was allowed to criticize the administration. Elections were held in 1991, and Benin saw Africa’s first peaceful transition between communist dictatorship and functioning democracy. YAYI Boni campaigned on change. “This can change. This must change. This will change.” Le changement lit the country on fire. In 2006, free and fair elections elected the Dr. Thomas Boni YAYI to power, with 75% suffrage.

Since 2006, freedom of expression and freedom of the press has been radically inhibited in Benin. Whether jailing journalists and editors who speak out against the administration, or sanctioning television and radio stations, the administration comes down hard on those who dare criticize.

Two weeks ago, Reporters sans frontières (Reporters Without Borders) published their annual freedom of the press index. Benin has fallen from 23rd in 2006 to 72 in 2009. During the run-up to elections in 2011, I have a hard time imagining that things will get any better.

More information (in French, of course):

• Audition publique à la Haac : Les émissions de Capp Fm suspendues pour 30 jours
• “La voix de la sentinelle“ provoque la suspension de Capp Fm

*Full disclosure: the Nokoue is a client.