Your Messages Travel Underwater

Right now, your messages are at the bottom of the ocean. Send a text to another continent and it does not fly up to a satellite, whatever the films have taught you. It dives. Almost all traffic between continents travels through cables lying on the sea floor, past shipwrecks and deep sea trenches, in the permanent dark. Send this to the person you message across an ocean.

Kwa sasa, ujumbe wako uko chini kabisa ya bahari. Tuma ujumbe kwa bara lingine, na hauruki juu kwenda kwenye setilaiti, hata kama filamu zimekufundisha hivyo. Hushuka. Karibu mawasiliano yote kati ya mabara husafiri kupitia nyaya zilizolala sakafuni mwa bahari, kupita meli zilizozama na mabonde ya kina kirefu, katika giza la kudumu. Tuma hii kwa mtu unayemtumia ujumbe kuvuka bahari.

Each cable is surprisingly modest, often about as thick as a garden hose. Inside, protected by layers of steel and plastic, run thin glass fibers that carry your words as flashes of light. Special ships lay them slowly across entire oceans, and the routes are planned the way roads are planned, around underwater mountains, away from fishing grounds, avoiding places where the seabed likes to move.

Kila kebo ni ndogo kwa kushangaza, mara nyingi si nene kuliko bomba la bustani. Ndani, ikilindwa na tabaka za chuma na plastiki, hupita nyuzi nyembamba za kioo zinazobeba maneno yako kama miwako ya mwanga. Meli maalum huzitandaza pole pole kuvuka bahari nzima, na njia hupangwa kama barabara zinavyopangwa, kuzunguka milima ya chini ya maji, mbali na maeneo ya uvuvi, kuepuka sehemu ambazo sakafu ya bahari hupenda kusogea.

The system has enemies, and the most persistent ones are not spies but sharks and ship anchors. Cables get bitten, snagged and buried, and when one breaks, a repair ship sails out, hooks the cable off the seabed, hauls it up and splices the glass back together in a floating workshop. So tonight, when you message someone far away, picture the journey. Your words just crossed an ocean floor, as a flash of light in a glass thread.

Mfumo huu una maadui, na wale wanaosumbua zaidi si wapelelezi bali papa na nanga za meli. Kebo hung'atwa, hunasa na kuzikwa, na kebo inapokatika, meli ya ukarabati husafiri kwenda huko, kuinasa kebo kutoka sakafuni mwa bahari, kuiinua juu na kuunganisha tena kioo hicho katika karakana inayoelea. Kwa hiyo usiku wa leo, unapomtumia ujumbe mtu aliye mbali, fikiria safari hiyo. Maneno yako sasa hivi yamevuka sakafu ya bahari, kama muwako wa mwanga ndani ya uzi wa kioo.