Windows Is Shutting Down...

So, there is this huge influx of strange cell phones into the country which is threatening the monopoly of our trusty and dearly loved Nokias. They are loud, they are flashy, they are huge (I mistook one for an iPad) and they carry multiple sim cards so you can simultaneously receive calls from your NetOne, Telecel, Econet lines as well as an MTN one on roam.

Think its a Nokia? Look closer...

We call them all G-tides down here in Zimbabwe, probably because that particular brand seems to have pioneered the invasion spirit.

Doubtless, it’s a completely new breed of phones the likes Zimbabwe has never seen before. And this, being a country endowed with its fair share of quirky individuals, has challenged my sentiments that Zimbabweans are really great guys. They are not taking the invasion lying down: they are saying some not very nice things about the phones.

For instance, some people are calling these phones ‘radios with sim cards’, and one guy went as far as saying that ZBH should start collecting licence fees from all owners. Well, I admit they do tend to get a little loud…aw okay, VERY loud, but c’mon: radio with sim? Not very nice.

Another popular legend doing the rounds says that one particular phone fell into a plate of good ole sadza. Immediately, they say, the phone sprang up from stand-bye mode and started flashing on the screen: ‘Phone charging’. Lame shot, really.

Then there is the other one, which can’t possibly be true but can only be an obvious stab at the linguistic dexterities of the phone makers. It was related to me with a straight face, a face which insisted that when he sent a message on an acquaintance’s cell, it  indicated simply ‘Message Went.’ And a minute later, when the message was replied to on the same phone, the notification read simply: ‘Message Brought.’ Very funny guys, cut it out.

Them phones, according to another tale, must surely spot what should be the strongest and most sensitive antennas in the world. As the story goes, one phone, just after a gonyet drove by, dutifully recorded ‘One Missed Call’ on the screen.

Antennas so strong, went the explanation, that any type of wave (cosmic ray, gamma ray, sound wave) gets translated into a cell phone signal.

The last is my personal fav...I mean…the one I personally dislike the most. It was a conversation (reportedly) captured between a lady and a cell phone repair guy. Now this guy had just had a god-awful time trying to resuscitate a dead phone. It went something like this…

“…you are sure you never dropped the phone?”

“No, I never did mukwasha,” the lady answers.

“Or immerse it in water?”

“No”

“You didn’t leave it near a huge magnet, like your home theatre speakers or something?” The guy is getting desperate, of course, because he knows this to be a highly unlikely cause for cell phone damage.

“I do not have a home theatre,” The lady points out.

“Okay.” The guy scratches his head, “What was displayed on the phone screen just before it blacked out?”

The lady has it written down, she read, “Saving your settings, Windows is shutting down.”

The phone never made it.

See, not some very nice things them Zimbos are saying about these phones. It gets worse…much worse: something I discovered when I stumbled on an I Hate G-TIDE Cell Phones Facebook page when I was concluding this post. If you are a G-Tide fan, please stay away, unless you have a exceptionally thick hide.

Zimbabweans and their vital cuppa tea

Zimbabwe has generally a very favourable climate throughout the year. For some places though, like Chipinge, there are times when the temperature plummets below favourable…well below favourable (for those who were not so keen on high school geography, Chipinge is a small town in the Eastern Highlands region of Zimbabwe). At such a time in such a town, that is when I found myself huddled up late at night finding solace in a warm black cup of tea.


On my third cup, the random wandering of an idle mind started pondering, of all topics, the avid tea drinking habits of the average Zimbabwean. It could have been a passing thought until I realized that these habits can’t possibly be normal.


I first noticed this fact when I went away to college. Prior to that, I used to fancy myself a champion tea drinker until I met a whole load of individuals who effortlessly laid shame to my claim day after day. This one guy had an early morning cup to jumpstart the day, then a one or two cups to support the breakfast meal at around ten. Lunch was also accompanied by a cup, and the same applied to supper. Oh, and if he happened to stay up late, the count of cups could rise significantly. I could tell you the number of cups he would have during exam periods (and the day he broke up with a long standing girlfriend), but you wouldn’t believe me.


Ok, I have to admit that this guy could be in the extremes, but Zimbabweans drink a lot of tea - and that’s a fact. Tea drinking in the country is more popular than the much more vital glass of water. Why, breakfast is not even called breakfast in this country- its called tea.

And our specialty is black tea. We don’t care if there is green or white or oolong tea. We don’t even care for the supposedly healthier herbal alternatives that they want to call tea, but are really just dried leaves and flowers from other plants. We stubbornly stick to our good old black camellia sinensis tea. (Please note: tea is not named, as some might have erroneously assumed, from the existence or absence of colour altering additives such as milk. It is named from how it is processed).


It came to my attention that Zimbabwe exports 15 000 tonnes of tea a year (that’s according to the UK tea council). Now that is a lot of tea by any standards, if you ask me. It all started some 80 years ago when some very enterprising spirit planted the first seeds on an estate known as New Year’s Gift in the Chipinge district of the Eastern Highlands (Click on maplandia to find out where that is)


Could it be that we drink so much tea because we make so much of it?


Maybe, I don’t know, but that is the conclusion I reached over my fourth vital cuppa tea. The fact remains that we never looked back ever since!

Zimbabwe's Dish Mania

I was going through Sakubva this other day, when I saw a guy fiddling with cables on a rooftop. He was trying to install a satellite dish on top of a house. Now, there is absolutely nothing strange with someone fiddling on a rooftop trying to install a satellite dish. Actually, it is a very common scene in this part of the world, finding someone fiddling with cable on a rooftop trying to install a satellite dish. What did strike me as funny (Note: funny ‘queer’ and not funny ‘ha ha’) was that this particular roof had four satellite dishes on the top already.

Let’s put things into perspective. Sakubva is a high density suburb (the highest density suburb) in the petit Zimbabwean border town of Mutare. The residents of this place have arguably the lowest incomes in the city as far as formal employment is concerned. If you want an explanation, though, of why Zimbabwe’s unemployment is pegged at 80%, yet (almost) no one spends the day basking in the sun for want of something better to do, you need to visit this place. It’s bustling to the brim with informal trade. But that is beside the point. The point is that Sakubva represents a good population of the financially challenged Zimbabwean, yet the Household - Satellite dish ratio seems to defy this fact.

On my way out of Sakubva, I started working on a theory that might be able to explain the phenomena and came up with one. It is based on the nature of the average Zimbabwean mindset: we are simply fun loving people! (Yeah, I know, we beat the living daylights out of each other during the elections…and during controversial soccer matches…but come on, who doesn’t?) We love fun and we love to be entertained, and we have cunningly recognized that having digital television broadcasts into our homes facilitates the satisfaction of this need.

Satellite dishes, coupled with free to air decoders, bring a host of channels into the Zimbabwean household. The most watched are probably the South African SABC Channels, and maybe news channels such as the Skynews. The favorite used to be a certain South African e-t.v, well known for its wrestling matches and late night blue movies (See, sex and violence really sell!). That was before the channel’s signal became encrypted into the DSTV elite family of pay channels. But that is only one channel lost…so far. The bottom line: a bunch of channels providing practically free entertainment. ‘Practically’ means that you still have to pay for the dish, the LNB and decoder, of course, but after forking out about $100, you get digital entertainment for life!

It sounds like a good deal, and a brief look at the other options might go a long way in explaining why it could be the best for most people:-

• Second option: You watch the Zimbabwean terrestrial channel ZTV, and if you are lucky enough to be living in the country’s capital, the newly launched ZTV2 as well. Granted, it is very educative. I mean, now I know what, where and exactly when to plant my winter crop next year, as well as the pesticide I can protect my plants with - and that’s only from watching prime time television!

• Third option: You go the DSTV way where you get (**!) channels at (**!) $US in monthly subscriptions (This is not an advertorial; visit the Multichoice website or your local friendly dealer for information). These are real US dollars we are talking about, and these are real monthly payments for a populace that doesn’t even believe in insurance premiums. However, you do get digital ZTV thrown in as an extra. HD coming soon.

• Fourth option: Sell the TV.

On weighing the three options, it doesn’t need an engineer (we don’t have rocket scientists in Zimbabwe) to understand why the average Zimbabwean will choose to go illegal. You might need a specialist of some sort though, to explain exactly why it is illegal to be watching especially the SABC Channels in Zimbabwe, or any other place outside of South Africa for that matter. Simply put, the theory for the satellite dish mania that has hit this country, particularly Sakubva, is that Zimbabwe is an entertainment loving, albeit entertainment starved, nation which has discovered a loophole in digital broadcast arena enabling it to get...um...entertained.