Dear Editor,

It is by great fortuitousness that I am able to email this letter, because the Essequibo Coast is seemingly a communication graveyard.

To all my friends overseas, I apologize for not calling you. My GT &T prepaid phone cards are seemingly incompatible with my landline telephone. Before you castigate me, please note that I did dial 868-2355, and Customer Support informed me that not only my PIN was valid but sequence numbers were quite valid.

Those poor folk definitely expended a lot of time asking me to listen to the recording “in its entirety.” I swear they could have found no more compliant a customer.

So, dear friends abroad, I may have lost $5000 in prepaid phone cards, but I do promise prompt contact when I escape this communication desert.

Friends, you may have received a few emails from me, and that is largely owing to my having both a dial-up and broadband internet connection. You see, there is no ISP on the Essequibo Coast, nor is there any DSL capability, so I laboured with my dial-up connection, which is invariably lethargic. I realized that I was making a retrogressive move in switching from 1Mb/s download speed overseas to a shared 56 Kb/s dial-up technology. But it was all there was at my disposal. Well, that was before someone intimated there was one brave broadband internet provider (not one of the obvious few in Georgetown who suffer trepidation extending to these parts) close to Region 1.

So here I am, on my brand new technology, a spanking broadband connection of 256 kb/s shared among 10 customers. Other than the routine disconnections of service and the unavailability of the provider’s technician to remedy the problems, I only seemingly lost $45000 deposited to this service.

It makes sense keeping both dial-up and broadband – it’s a fad and all credit of originality should be bestowed on me.

I am not sure why I even highlighted these issues. Perhaps because even Cin-derella is tired of being in the attic, or maybe because I just got reconnected again!

Is anyone receiving my signal from this wasteland?

Yours faithfully,
Romain Khan