MOBILE MAGIC
- 25/ 3/ 2014 <--Prev : Next-->
The magic of the mobile phone is indeed incredible. I doubt if there are many people, even in a country as cash-strapped as Zimbabwe, who do not possess a mobile phone!!
Magic is possibly not the correct word, how about 'compulsion' or 'addiction'?
Being rather a vintage model user, I am often amazed at how au fait everyone is with their cell phones! I have HeeHoo as my very own personal techno-guide and am still unable to fully understand this phone of mine. And yet the populace has every possible intricate facet of the device under control, not only with phone calls and texting but every single aspect from the internet to facebook to whatsapp to viber to sending ecocash!!
If I need to converse with the amazing lady Lumana who runs our lives and our home, there is no need to call her directly, I converse with her on facebook of course!
Lumana has confessed her addiction to me, I supply Buddie cards for emergency 'top ups' but she prefers the one dollar top ups to the five dollar top ups, stating publicly that if she has money on her phone, she is compelled by some strange dependence on her mobile, to use it!!
Now almost everyone in Zimbabwe appears to have a mobile phone these days, partly due to the influx of inexpensive phones pouring in from the East. School children, gardeners, domestic workers: I passed a sad fellow, a tramp, last week digging in the neighborhood garbage for scraps of food or plastic bottles. As I got closer, I could see that he too, was talking on a cell phone!!
How can a man, who probably lives in a ditch somewhere, with little or no education, be comfortable with the vagaries of a cell phone?
I read that if one reaches for one's cell phone in the morning before one reaches for a cup of tea, that one could be addicted to one's mobile phone!! Well I certainly am but there are I believe, ways to rid oneself of this addiction, if one really tries!!
We have become so tuned to sounds, beeps, notifications, from our cell phones that the switched- on advertisers have now incorporated beeps, buzzes and cell phone sounds into their adverts, just to get our attention.
HeeHoo has the sound of a freight train as his mobile phone alert, which causes some concern in refined company!!
It's hysterical, in a restaurant, when someone's cell phone rings, and every man in the place is suddenly grabbing at his breast or trouser pocket!!
Full marks to the service provider who has invented a solar lamp which recharges cell phones and full marks to Mark Zuckkerberg who is, I gather, considering sending in internet drones to provide cell phone coverage in Zimbabwe's most deprived rural areas!!
