Mobaylii Koo Na Bilbiltii

13 April 2012

At 6:15 a.m. my ears are pierced with the ring of my cheap little cell phone. I stare sleepily as it wiggles and lights up demanding that I respond. Perturbed but curious I check the number to see if maybe my family is calling. +1259284--- no, I don’t recognize this number. A wrong number is especially annoying here because I don’t have the language skills to explain that I’m not the person they are trying to reach. Instead, if I answer they yell “hello” “hello” over and over again until I hang up. If I hang up or ignore the caller will ring me over, and over, and over, and over until they lose interest which can be a minimum of 6 phone calls. This is exactly what happened this morning. I didn’t recognize the number so I muted it and rolled over. After 4 callbacks I decided to press “answer” but not actually say anything or listen, just use up their minutes so they would be discouraged from calling back. I pressed “answer” and set the phone back down. After 3 minutes I noticed the caller had not hung-up. I put my ear to the receiver and heard eerie instrumental Ethiopian music on the other line. I listened for a while then hung up. We played this game over and over until my phone stopped ringing.

Often if someone wants to talk to you on the phone but they are too cheap to use their own minutes they will call you and hang up as soon as you answer. In theory this would entice someone to return the call in order to finish the conversation that hasn’t actually began. I understand the logic, and know that it is common in this culture, but frankly I find it quite annoying. Once at the bank someone was calling me in this manner and every time I reached in my purse to touch the phone the caller would hang up. It happened 5 times repeatedly and I got the feeling that someone was watching me.

Many phones have a feature called “fake call” where you can program your phone to call you at a certain time. From my experience here I would think this is most appropriate during a long, drawn-out coffee ceremony at your neighbor’s house or when a creeper is chatting you up and you want to escape. I have yet to use the “fake call” feature but I do find it amusing. If your phone doesn’t have a fake call setting you can just pretend you are receiving a call as I witnessed yesterday by a young man seeing me walk towards him on the street.

…Cell phone doesn’t ring, young man pulls it from his pocket and answers it swiftly as his friends snicker and play along…

“HELLO! baby. Where where are you?”

… brief silence as he pretends to listen to his imaginary girlfriend…

“I love you so much baby. Yes, you are my world.”

… drawn out pause as he tries to remember another phrase from an English romantic comedy movie…

“Yes I am going now to the market but I miss you. Baby I love you, come to meet me.”

Fun fact: In my county (known as a “woreda”) over 80% of people own cell phones but only around 65% have electricity in their homes. Cell phones are something of a new technology in Ethiopia and it is fun to see how people use them and become familiar. Most adults yell into the receiver no matter if they are in a loud room or alone in an open field. Being on the receiving end of this call is abrasive and frustrating. Cell phones also double as an mp3 player and many young people play their music of choice loud as they walk down the street or ride on a public bus. On such noisy trips, several volunteers, myself included, have worn headphones that were not connected to an mp3 player. This is a successful tactic to block some of the loud cell-phone music from harassing your ear drums and it also prevents people from making small talk with you when you are too exhausted to play the game of 10 questions. My fellow PCV Bree even goes as far to bob her head up and down, side to side to really convince people she can’t hear them and doesn’t want to be bothered.