Millbug Tablet: bringing touch-screen connectivity to rural villages

The way to know you are close to Port Elizabeth, the city where Millbug Vuya Tablet PC was invented and still manufactured, is by smelling it and not seeing it. It was so at least the first time I visited there as a teenager, many years ago now. This visit, though I have always intended to return, was also to become my last there. I cannot be misremembering this memory, it is not rescued from amongst many other memories, it is the only intimate memory I have of Port Elizabeth. It was a school trip that lasted for a short time, so short in fact that it was limited to only two full days. In that 48 hours, I smelt PE, wrestled strong wind, engraved my feet in sand and watched the waves wash them away and started all over again until the teachers summoned me to the bus. I also remember PE as a beautiful place stuck between land and an ocean and often the ocean came to the city center in the air.

The smell made its way to the city from some 12 km away at the Marina Sea Salt mines in the Swartkops area outside of Port Elizabeth. The salt mining is not new, in the 1700s local inhabitants already gathered salt in pans. These are also believed to be among the first saltpans in South Africa. Production of the salt unfolds in four phases — evaporation, crystallisation, harvesting and washing and then in the last phase, the salt is laid out in mountains and mountains in the sun and wind so that it dries.