Children of the digital revolution

Charlie is currently on sabbatical in South America. Over the next few months she’ll be blogging about her travel adventures in the age of digital.

Anyone wanting to make money in the digital revolution would do well to invest in Bolivian internet companies. The country is fanatical about communication.

In the four-block, 10-minute walk from my house to the bus station I pass 33 shops selling mobile phones or top-up cards. There are rural villages where the high street consists of a grocery shop and two mobile phone retailers. From the sprawling city of La Paz to truckstop towns, the fluorescent green swoosh of the Vigo network is more prevalent than the Coca-Cola logo – this is a big deal considering Coke is the biggest brand in the world and plastered on everything here from roadside kiosks to bus station toilets.

Nowhere has the idea of traveling in the digital age been more apparent to me than here. I write this from the school computer room in the community where I'm volunteering; Uspha-Uspha, an ex-miners' town, barely legal, outside the city of Cochabamba.
If you want a case study in modern social priorities, this is it. The community covers four kilometres of valleyside and houses tens of thousands of people who have no proper sanitation or running water – but do have internet and mobile phones.

Yesterday was SODIS day (solar water disinfection), a chance to teach the community how to use old plastic bottles to purify water and make taps.

"When do you need to wash your hands?" we ask the children as we hand out soap.

"Before going to the bathroom," is their muddled response.

They haven't grasped the basics of hand-washing but ask any kid how to complete Mario World or download a reggaeton song as your ringtone and even the primary schoolers could show you in a second.

My relationship with the internet here is difficult. Bolivian connectivity might be wifi, but it has all the qualities of 1990s dial-up. This, for an online professional, is torturous, not least since part of my work here involves uploading photographs to online networks.

But there's not a doubt in my mind that, should I return in even a year's time, the change will be enormous. If business is based on supply and demand, internet service providers have a fortune here for the taking. You just have to get Evo on side.