| Candid talk:How mobile junk saved my Kwashiorkor-ill wallet | Send to a friend |
| Saturday, 21 January 2012 19:04 |
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By Peter Muthamia In the past, I have ranted in this third-rate column that mobile phones are devil’s latest inventions, falling in the same category of slot machines and other gambling paraphernalia. I have argued that besides causing a serious rift between me and my one-and-only Bisho Ntongo, they send me to a financial abyss. Mobile phone companies are ripping me off by enticing me to make even when I don’t need to the point where I feel that I should sue them for it. With their many stupid offers, like sending ten text messages to earn 100 free text messages, I feel that they take me for a drooling moron. For once, just imagine me, a “busy” son of the rat and roach-infested Uswaz wearing my fingers to the bone on the mobile phone rather than computer keyboard? Why don’t they understand that making a call is a lot easier than wasting time writing SMS? Mobile phones are also guilty of another offence; when Bisho Ntongo demands to know my whereabouts and I cheat that I am at Shirima’s Bar only for some stupid touts at a bus stop to betray my whereabouts by hollering in the background something like this: “Tegeta Bunju Kariakoo”. But every cloud has a silver lining as they say. The same accursed mobile phones have their good side. If you have a funky one like a Blackberry, people take you to be an affluent man or woman. If however you have a junk like I do, one that has lifted off some backyard Chinese factory, you can be sure that Tatu the barmaid won’t touch you with a 10-metre pole. Last week, my mobile junk, its condition notwithstanding bailed me out of what could have turned out to be an embarrassment. I had been at Mzee Shirima’s joint happily sloshing myself with frothy drinks from Ilala. As you know, my wallet has been suffering serious bouts of kwashiorkor and allied diseases. At the same time, my throat felt like a parched portion on Sahara Desert in need of being irrigated. In fact, it seared like an oven dying to be wetted. That is how I found myself at Mzee Shirima’s joint even though the gap between me and poverty was a paltry 2,000 bob that lined my wallet. In Bongo, barmaids always ask for cash first before they serve you with a beer. At Mzee Shirima’s I am a well known patron and therefore, Tatu my favourite barmaid never bothers to ask for cash. I had been guzzling beer for some time and was wondering how I was going to pay for it. Indeed, I was praying earnestly that my drinking chum, Dr Winchinslauss Rwegoshora (PhD, MA, BA) would pop into the bar and help me out. He didn’t. As I mulled on that, an idea popped up in my mind. I had to get out of there – and fast. A tried and tested method of shooting out the bar is “beep” Bisho Ntongo who will certainly call me back. I will leave a half-drunk bottle and walk out shouting on the phone and disappear. That is what I did. ENDS/edited Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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