The day there was no Tigo

One day a few months ago, a couple weeks after coming to site, my dear friend Katie was going to come visit. We were going to explore Santa Rosa and possibly head to Gracias Lempira to visit our other friend Anna. That very same morning I had a date to learn how to make bagels from scratch (yes… it is possible to make them). Katie calls me about 8 am, in true Katie cheery fashion informing me she had gotten on the bus and would be here in 2 short hours. In the mean time I went to the restaurant, made my bagels, ate breakfast and noticed the time…. Katie had yet to call telling me she had arrived. Strange I thought seeing as it had been about 2hours and 20 mins. I tried calling her, but the call didn’t go through… maybe there was a spot on the road where there was no signal. I went home, showered…and still no Katie. I call again, call failed. Again… call failed. I soon come to realize that my fear has come true and the world in Honduras had come to a halting stop..... THERE WAS NO TIGO SIGNAL! For those who don’t live in Honduras, Tigo is the cell phone company that all peace corps volunteers use. It is our life-line, how we communicate, how the PC lets us know if the country is going to blow up or get hit by a hurricane. We were instantly flashed back to a time where PC communicated via courier pigeon and donkeys. The entire cell phone network country-wide had been turned off and poor Katie was in transit to Santa Rosa with no idea where I lived. I tried calling her a good 15 more times, I went out on a search of Santa Rosa on 2 separate occasions looking for my dear friend…making sure to check the places I thought would lure little Katie in, grocery stores and shoe store… still nothing!
Dear Katie was lost and I could only assume she was in Santa Rosa seeing as I knew she had left her site. In a last ditch effort I checked my email, thinking that maybe she found an internet café and thought to email me… still no word from Katie but our friend in Gracias had emailed me (seeing as calling was out of the picture). She was wondering where we were, if we were coming to Gracias still and seeing as neither of us knew where she lived, provided me with directions to her house… a thing I neglected to provide Katie with.
As the morning turned to the afternoon and the afternoon turned to evening… I quickly realized that Katie was never going to be found and I just prayed that she was ok.
Next day… we were back up and running with the cell phones and I found out that she did in fact arrive in Santa Rosa on time, but realized as she arrived there was no signal… she didn’t know where to go, had no money cuz the ATM was broken and decided to get lunch and turn back around to go back to Qumistan…. Santa Rosa would have to wait until another weekend.
How did life go one without cell phones!?!