Technology will mortgage Kenya’s soul

By OYUNGA PALA

Recently, I came upon a development report that blandly claimed the "African’s lack of modernity was his inability to adapt to modern practices". What rubbish.

The poor aid worker assigned to the task probably googled the text and then copied and pasted bits. He was also too busy partying in Nairobi and getting ‘massaged’ in Kileleshwa to fact check.

Truth is in most urban and rural communities in Kenya, one finds folks engaged in all manner of tactile manipulation with their mobile phones. Most can no longer stand still without fiddling or fidgeting in anticipation.

Addiction

These rather pronounced twitches point to addiction to modern gadgets. Clearly, we are more modern than that development would ever imagine. The mobile is now like an appendage we voluntarily and happily use for bleeping our GPS coordinates (uko wapi?).

I have watched folks go hysterical when there is ‘no signal’. In Kenya speak, ‘no signal’ could mean anything — from, yes! I have a phone but my battery was not charged, I had no credit, I didn’t want to talk to you, there really was no signal or, sorry! I was in shagz. No signal!

Unfortunately, the shagz excuses do not work anymore. I know folks in the village who specialise in spare batteries and will even deliver a new sim card — all by boda boda. If there is a footpath, they will get to you.

I have watched many a young person in ill-fitting clothing pretend to be in full conversation with themselves. When a phone rings, I have watched slumbering folk in the park pounce and become suddenly agile, talking big money and how grand it is at the Acacia.

That is why I pray that no strange disease associated to phones ever emerges. This technology is too new to wipe us out.

Walking sticks

It’s frightening because all these years we are yet to learn that petroleum tankers explode.

Still, it’s amazing how so quickly mobile phones became like walking sticks. In techno speak, before dot.com, many a Kenyan had not used a telephone. Telephones were mostly found in important government offices, high-end tourist hotels and "Big" companies. Country folk would whisper in awe about their relative in Nairobi with ‘a telephone in the bedroom’.

The gizmo was for emergencies. Long distance calls were expensive and referred to as ‘trunk calls’ and children only answered if there were no grown ups around.

Not any more. I recently found it most amusing watching my nine-year-old nephew and his new ‘Okia’.

Asked to call his dad, he pulled out his mobile, muttered, tapped the unit, put it to his ear, took it off and solemnly declared, "He’s mteja — no signal"

His dad was in a garage, approximately 20 metres away. It obviously had not occurred to Okia 4G to simply walk to the garage and summon his dad as requested. That, folks, is how much we have regressed — all due to a hand held device.

Google

But had I brought that to his attention, he would probably have dismissed me as his cheesy, only-good-for-outings uncle.

The brat with his infamous Okia believes in Google. Has no interest in sport. He even googles ‘what?" He has become terrific at transcribing text — a lost art since the typewriter.

That, from a nine-year-old, alarmingly indicates our quick evolution from human to being.

The young have sold out their eyes and solemnly swear, "but I saw it on TV!" "But I read it on Google!" For them, if it does not beep or thump, it is not human.

If these half-wit keypad thumping shortsighted kids are the next generation, then we truly have lost the Signal.

Our future has "No Signal". So what happens when we get real technology and start talking "real time"? For real?