Very Private Cell Phone Conversations In Public And The Surest "Migration Ticket To The West"

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Anybody who crisscrosses from the West and comes back to Africa frequently cannot help but notice the huge difference in culture, but more so the rapid rate at which Africans are catching up and falling over themselves to ape a culture that they don't quite understand.

I was in a crowded Cyber Café in the city the other day, when a young attractive lady (too young to in my opinion, to be having this sort of conversation) received an International call from a man who must have been her boyfriend. It was obvious that she was rather uncomfortable after the opening Ahhhs and Ohhhhhs and "I've missed yous". After that the conversation went on very stiffly, It went something like this;

I would like that too…

Me too…

Same here…

I also need it…

Even me

You see the way our current generation thinks is very differently from the more conservative older generation closer to the age of their parents.

But at some point the girl just got totally frustrated and something must have snapped up there somewhere deep inside that pretty head and she decided that she didn't care what the rest of us in the place thought. She unleashed it all.

"…You know when you're in love with somebody and you miss them, it gets so lonely, especially at night." she said in her heavy accent (will not dare mention which tribal accent).

"I think about you all night and imagine that I was in your arms."

The older people around could not help but exchange furtive glances. The young girl stepped up the game.

"If you have made love to any other woman, I'll kill you..(loud laughter)."

At this point a man stood up from his computer with pained expression on his face. I will never know whether he had finished his business or cut it short in protest. I went on working on my Kumekucha post for the day, 3 work stations away from the young lass while totally being entertained by the rest of the conversation which consisted mostly of loud laugher (sounded more like a high pitched shriek to me.)

It struck me how this kind of "escape plan" is on the increase all across Africa. In Dar-es-salaam about two years ago I met these two young men at a cyber carefully crafting an email to a lonely woman somewhere in a far off country and it struck me how eager one of the men was to get married as soon as possible (which is unlike men anywhere in the world but was obviously for the convenience of leaving the country to settle in that far off land with a woman they most likely did not love).

I have also met many women of all ages in Cybers across several African capitals trying hard to connect with "their ticket" out of the poverty and hopelessness of Africa).

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