Pitufa.at

It seems like such a culture clash when locals in handmade canoes show up, smartphone in hand to take pictures of our boat. People who live in huts made of woven pandanus, coconut or bamboo with just a single solar light and charger still invest the little money they have into a smartphone… PNG never established a network of landline connections, instead they started putting up towers for cell phones once this technology was available, so having a mobile phone was vital to be connected to the outer world. People here love Facebook and video calls, so they want to have a smart phone
Very remote communities sometimes don’t have a cell tower, but just a WiFi hotspot–in these cases the people really need a smartphone in order to do their calls via WhatsApp or FB messenger. In places where this hotspot is broken (or never got finished), people race out when they see a sailboat, hoping that they have Starlink aboard: on a remote atoll we had half the village aboard reconnecting with family after many months without any means of communication!