The Incredible Shrinking Globe

Maputo used to be 13,700km from our home in Mississauga. Now, it seems, it is just another suburb.

How do I know this? Laura telephoned her grandmother. Granddaughter using a laptop, Internet connection and Skype software; grandmother using a standard old telephone plugged into her wall and serviced by Ma Bell, just like it has been for decades. Laura's grandmother couldn't quite understand how she seemed so close. "When your grandfather went off to war," she said, "I wasn't able to talk to him for four years." Needless to say, both were happy for this new world.

The short commute between Mississauga and Maputo provides an important lesson about poverty, as well. I learned this lesson when my friend Mario stopped in at our house today. You know, two-dollar-a-day Mario. No electricity or running water Mario. No roof over his head Mario.

I offer him something to eat every time he comes, and on occasion, when he's really hungry, he accepts. He'll always accept a glass of water, but preferably not straight out of the fridge.

Today, Mario wanted to ask me for a favour. No problem, I thought. What kind of favour would he ask, I wondered. Probably a loan, I thought.

"Could I please use your computer to check my Gmail account?" Wow, I thought. Gmail in Africa.

And while he was checking his Gmail account, I helped him read a piece of junk mail that he received. "Could it really be true that I've won $500,000 and a new Toyota car?" he asked me. We were both in awe; he, because he saw a sliver of possibility that riches had been heaped on this poor man by some unknown source. Me, because this poor man receives electronic junk mail despite not having electricity in his home.

Wow. Even Africa's poor receive spam.

I argued earlier that poverty is the antonym of power; that the solution to poverty isn't wealth, but empowerment. First, clean drinking water, some bread, maybe even some basic medicines, and then empowerment. A sense of controlling one's own destiny.

Technology has empowered two-dollar-a-day Mario with global knowledge. New tools built on top of a platform of technology mean that I have been able to have intelligent conversation with an undereducated, impoverished African about weapons of mass destruction, the retirement of Kofi Annan and the value of the UN in global diplomacy, and the death penalty in places like California and Florida.

It sounds strange, but traveling to Africa felt like coming to a new world, not unlike the Portuguese explorers who colonized Mozambique. Now that I've been here for half a year, I've realized that the globe has shrunk a lot in the last half-millennium.

It has shrunk so much that Mario, who is my neighbour now, will continue to be once I've moved back to Canada, as well. Maputo has become a suburb of Mississauga.