Eric is dead and buried

There was a time, practically prehistoric, called nineteen ninety-nine, when there were only two kinds of mobile phone in Kampala. Both were big, ugly and practically useless in the sense that you couldn’t do anything with them but make phone calls.

There was the Nokia something that looked like a rubber brick and the Ericssonn 68something, for people with taste.

I called mine Eric and bought him a little pleather pocket that had a belt clip attached. I used to carry him about strapped to my hip. The arrangement affected my gait in a particular manner, and because of Eric, I lost my adolescent bounce.

Eric served me well and was loyal, unlike the phones of my peers which were often perfidious enough to get stolen. No one messed with Eric, though and by the time I retired him, he was bruised, battered and beat up but was working perfectly.

I replaced him in with a phone which had a vibrating alert. That was state-of-the-art back then.

I would not say this was the first sniff in what was to become a habit of phone promiscuity, but I did change phones regularly after that, with the things growing smaller and a little bit more sophisticated with every purchase. Nothing too flamboyant. All I was looking for was size and functionality. Vibrating alert was superseded by, successively, an organiser, convenient sms (folders, message rules, storage and the indispensable t9 dictionary), size of screen… then, a year ago, we plateaud.

Because 2005 is when they stopped making phones more useful to started making them more fancy-schmancy.

I’m sorry. I don’t do schmancy. I am Ernest Bazanye Sempebwa III: I don’t do schmancy.

I remember almost collapsing in a shaking fit of rage when the innocent girl at the MTN store, who, really not knowing what she was doing, suggested that I pay another 20k and take the model with the camera.

“…get… that… thing… out… of… MY FUCKING SIGHT NOW!!!” I exploded. The poor girl ran screaming out of the store all the way to Phillip Besimire’s office. I am told she was transferred to the shipping department in South Africa. She refuses to go back to customer relations and sales.

It is not that I am proud of what I did, but, you know, I am the press. I know what a real camera looks like. What is she trying to sell me that toy for?

So I had settled on a Siemens something or the other, and was not likely to be upgrading any time soon.

But then Phillip, Eric and Rita went and put the internet on phones. Banange. Awo simu neefuuka simu.

Since that happened I have had four phones. Each time I try to buy the least ostentation I can possibly be burdened with while staying on the net. The first thing could only surf this arid, featureless, sparsely-inhabited nowhere called “the mobile web”. The second did a bit better, but could not do blogspot. The third got blogspot, but not comments. The current cellphone is on point, but it does not get nahright.com, and is weak on pictures. However, it is satisfactory for now, netwise. It is satisfactory on that front. It is other fronts we need to worry about.

The thing has an mp3 player.

Oh, shit.

You see, I love my music. I really love my music. I developed permanent olfactory damage because of taking my walkman everywhere—including class, and on one occassion, church. I am the type of guy who knows the lyrics to entire albums and can hum along perfectly to every guitar and saxophone solo. I am the sort of guy who will run into the gents with my radio when Angel plays that new song that I like because I do not want to be interrupted until it is over. I am the sort of insufferable geek who can (not that I will, but I can) list all my favourite musicians’ discographies in order. I am the kind of person who cries tears—okay, let's not get carried away... I still own cassettes from like Contex Sounds. I am the kind of guy who knows what Contex Sounds is. There are men and women all over Kampala who are unable to reproduce sexually because they didn’t return my CDs and I had to lay a curse on them. I love my music. Have you ever heard me use the word love before? That is how serious I am.

And now I have a phone with an mp3 player on it. Trouble ahead.


Oh, and about yesterday, and sucka-free week, think but this, and all is mended. That's Tupelo Honey, by Cassandra Wilson.