Apart from a few sleepy towns, where the mobile phone signal suddenly shot up, life seemed untouched by electricity, television or modern communications.
Though much of the culture is contemporary — a road came through town about 20 years ago, and there are modern conveniences like electricity, television and packaged hot dogs — virtually everyone in town is Mayan, and Spanish is spoken by only a few people.
The advent of such conveniences as electricity, television, and water heaters engender a cultural crisis as the town struggles to hold on to its religious traditions and, indeed, its very identity.
A score for socioeconomic status was calculated adding house indicators (yes=1; no/missing=0): corrugated iron roof, electricity, television and indoor toilet.
There were no modern conveniences, no electricity, television, or toilets, and transport was by a horse and cart, bicycle or on foot.
The questionnaire was based on the ownership of twelve household commodities: electricity, television, radio, motor vehicle, refrigerator, washing machine, telephone, video machine, microwave, analog television channel decoder (MNET), satellite television (DSTV), and mobile phone.
Each household's wealth status was determined by calculating a wealth index based on asset ownership (e.g., electricity, television, radio, phone, bike, car, boat, or refrigerator) and home construction (e.g., quality of flooring and number of sleeping rooms) using the methods of Filmer and Pritchett.
Their Ordnung (loosely translated, rules for living) calls for horse-drawn carriages, no telephones, no electricity, no televisions or radios, and functional clothing with buttons, but no zippers.
Despite their isolation, and the fact that electricity and televisions sets are rare in western Zambia, even the youngest children here know the names of Africa's best players and aspire to be like them.
Analysts said Cisco stumbled because Mr. Chambers distracted the company by trying to push into new businesses like videoconferencing, smart meters for monitoring electricity use, television set-top boxes, video screens for stadiums and even a tablet computer for businesses.
