"In 1997, I took a portaged safari into Brazzaville Congo with the help of Aka pygmies. Fifteen days into the trip, I found myself in a no man's land surrounded by wars. A civil war in the country had cut off all air transport, and fighting in the former Zaire and Central African Republic had me stranded. My family, back in the States, was hard pressed to remain calm as I walked and hitchhiked 1,000 miles overland to Cameroon, where I was finally able to find a plane and return home. That experience etched on my mind the need for an affordable and portable communication system that is able to operate in any part of the world.
The Magellan Corporation has come up with just such a system. Called the GSC 100, it communicates with a series of low-flying satellites to forward messages from Congo, or anywhere in the world, and dump them into the internet, thus communicating with anyone who has internet access. I was able to bring one of these units with me on a recent trip back to the same general area of northern Congo where I got into trouble in 1997. Sending messages was a breeze, in spite of some technical warnings I had received from Magellan about operating in that part of the world. I was able to send a message every time I tried. Receiving a message was a bit more complicated, as you have to have messages sent to and received from specific satellites. This problem........(continued)
