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Gogogo village
Story:
When villagers in Gogogo in Limpopo province wanted to make a phone call, they had to go to the top of a hill, then climb a tree and maybe, just maybe, they would get a weak signal.
This is how Samuel Makhado, a principal at a school in the area, explains how cut off the 800 people in the community used to feel. That all changed in 2010, however, when Vodacom put up 2G and 3G base stations, giving Gogogo decent connectivity for the first time.
Timothy Mudzilwana is a 31-year-old town planner who hails from Gogogo. He does most of his work in the Venda area of Limpopo and in Polokwane but it was almost impossible to be productive in his home village, whose nearest town is Louis Trichardt. “I have some work in the area and I visit my parents there but you had to travel 100km to get a GPRS signal,” says Timothy. “The area has engineers, teachers and agricultural officers who need to be connected to do their work, plus, of course, entrepreneurs. This was very difficult until Vodacom put up the masts. What Vodacom has done for Gogogo isn’t just to improve the situation, it is superb.”
Awelani Sengani, a Vodacom engineer based in Polokwane, also comes from Gogogo. He recalls that a woman was recently forced to give birth at home because her family couldn’t contact the local clinic for them to send an ambulance. “If they were lucky, people could make calls but not receive them,” says Awelani. “Recently, however, I made a video call to my grandfather in the village. I will never forget the look on his face when he saw – and heard me. He hadn’t known that such things were possible.”
Mr Makhado is just as excited about the possibilities that being connected will hold for his learners. The school has 437 pupils but, by 2014, this is likely to double. Dell has donated 50 computers to the Vele Secondary School and it has received funding, through the Department of Basic Education, from the Oprah Winfrey Foundation to build additional classrooms, laboratories and offices. But the electricity supply to the school is so weak that the school can’t use the computers. Nor has Vodacom been able to install and open a mobile voice and data centre that will be used by learners and the community.
Hopefully, Mr Makhado says, Eskom will soon improve its power supply and the school will then enter a whole new era. “We don’t have the internet or even email at the moment. People couldn’t contact us and often we received information late,” says Mr Makhado. “We are a very remote area but, thanks to Vodacom, we will soon be able to make wonderful progress,” he predicts.