All-terrain mobile office in Namibia

December 2007 it was time to explore the possibility to work in a new surrounding. Traveling through Namibia in a 4x4 jeep, sleeping in tents and getting on-line with a laptop and cellphone created an office with amazing ambiance.

For me and Ourego work usually implies to have the possibility to get online every once in a while. Certainly this is something that is facilitated by the day as more countries develop their infrastructure, but as I was about to travel to Namibia I was curious to see what could be found down there. Being a vast agrarian African country (about twice the size of Sweden) with a population less than 3 millions they don't have the resources or needs for neither optic fibers nor extensive cellular coverage. But nevertheless, people want to communicate and Namibia never plowed down vast sums into landlines that require expensive maintenance in desolate places of the country. They skipped that step and went straight for modern technology to connect people without any wires. They have a growing matrix of base stations, many of them solar and wind powered, that create nodes in an expanding mesh of cellular coverage.

One of my offices - Toyota Hilux 4x4

Getting connected in new places

So, in order to get online I just got me a prepaid SIM-card at the airport and configured my cellphone to work with the GPRS the biggest Namibian telephone company (MTC) offers. To be honest it took a while due to a combination of my lack of experience in these matters and the instructions I got from the company. Meanwhile I had to use the internet cafés that could be found and they offered connections that taught me the meaning of patience. The zeroes and ones traveled with the speed of a glacier and it would not be an option to work in such conditions. It took about 15 minutes just to open my mailbox (Microsoft exchange server might not be the fastest on the block in situations like this). I even had the opportunity to try the facilities of the Icelandic embassy in Windhoek and there the speed was slightly better but not much and frustration knocked on the door more than once. Anyway, the same evening I managed to configure the phone for GPRS in Namibia and after connecting it to my laptop I felt like I had the fastest internet connection in Namibia (100 kb/s). Traffic was fast both ways though I was a bit wary about the price, but it was quite a pleasant surprise to see that it only cost 1N$ (about 1 SEK) per MB which is a fraction of the cost in Sweden. A sweet advantage with GPRS is that you only pay for the traffic which means that you can stay online for as long as you like and just pay for what you do. Perhaps this is a good incitement for the telephone companies to offer speedy connections as nobody would think of working with bigger files over a slow connection, or even use it at all.

No matter what, checking mails, transferring pictures, website editing, chats and skype worked just as good next to a waterhole in Etosha (national park in Namibia) as it did with the same type of connection in Sweden. The only difference was that it was much cheaper and that the jeep I was sitting in was surrounded by impalas, giraffes and springboks. I even had a two-way video call on msn with Hans while sitting there waiting for some predators to find their way to the water (must admit that there was a lag in the video-call that made communications a bit tedious, but without the webcam things flowed nicely).

One thing to have in mind is that reception drops to zero soon after you get out of a town (even the capital Windhoek) but as soon as you get to the next town, no matter how small it is and given that it has a gas station, the coverage jumps back up. So, if coverage in the desert is important for you - get a satellite phone.

It's easier than you think

One of my offices - camp site in Upowu

A very important thing here to understand is that being able to work like this does not require the newest gadgets or expensive equipment. It is surprisingly simple and even more of a surprise is how fast, reliant and cheap it is, even in an agrarian country in Africa like Namibia. Business and pleasure can be combined, and just imagine the boost of mind and spirit you get.