Cell phones

This will probably be my last post from Kenya.  I have not really travelled far. From my window I can see air planes as they slip those surly bonds and improbably hurl themselves into an uncaring sky. On Friday if God wills, I will travel to Uganda to visit Jason, Linda and family. Yesterday was a red letter day for this blog. There was an all time high viewing of 19 post with 14 in one hour. The spike came around midday which suggests to me that a number of you maybe goofing off at work. Thanks for following along. Also a big HOWDY to my German follower, whomever you may be, nice to have you along too. OK on to the topic at hand.

Cell phones are awesome. You know that, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.  They allow us to communicate wherever we are in the majority of the populated world. Not only that, there are all those other things they do....email, internet, texting, playing music and taking pictures. It is small wonder then that Africans have adopted them with such enthusiasm.

The first cell I ever owned I bought 6 years ago when I last visited Kenya. Buying one on this trip was something I did as soon as I could. Cell phones are cheap. I bought one near the bottom of the price range for about twenty bucks. Phones here are all prepaid and have no contract. You have a choice of several providers and simply buy their SIM card. Once the card is installed buy as many minutes as your like. If you don't like your provider then buy a new SIM card. You would have to let everyone know your new number. I will just buy new SIM cards at each new country. There is really no government tracking of who has each number but they can tell which phone you are using so just buying a new card would not help if you are a criminal. There are also quiet a few, Made in China knock offs which are not as good as the real thing, again caveat emptor.

The phone I bought is small and easy to carry in my pocket. It seems to do a good job at being a phone. It is a few year old design but was made to have good basic features. Whoever designed it put a good bit of thought into what someone would want in a simple phone. It has more than this but this is what I use;

• LED flash light 
• calculator 
• alarm 
• metric-inches conversion app
• calendar 

The one thing I wish it had but doesn't is a camera, still, not bad for twenty bucks.

Because Africa is not so computer centric as America they use phones in slightly different ways. Most people here with a cell phone have less access to internet and probably do not have an email address. The infrastructure is still being built to surf like people do on iphones or android. A phone that takes pictures is for many Africans the first camera they have ever owned. Because air time isn't cheap they keep the pictures on their phones and just show them to people. People also probably text more.

One thing Africans do, that we don't, is use phones as a money transfer method. Most of Africa has no mail delivery at all. Instead people have PO boxes, if you can even get one. Along with not having mailing addresses goes not having checking accounts. People have debit cards to get money from the bank but from there on it is pretty much a cash society. Every neighbourhood has small shops that sell minutes. If you need you can, for a small fee, send someone money to their phone.  They have to be with the same company as you but SIM cards are cheap(less than a buck). My sister-in-law apparently had some money transferred to her phone by a wrong number. Again, for a small fee, you would then go to a local phone agent and get cash if you wanted to. Dan tells me that this has not caught on yet in every country.