Over the years I’ve been accused by friends of being many things – some true and others false. But as I once said, what may not be true today may well come to pass tomorrow or next year, and so I won’t expend too much energy on denial. That is unless it’s an indictment about something really serious such as murder, crimes against humanity and such like.
The allegations that I won’t protest too much, lest I become like Shakespeare’s infamous lady, are fairly harmless. They include complaints levelled against me of being ‘cheap’.
Here I must say I mean cheap in the sense that I would rather see if I could get something fixed before I gave up and threw it away.
For instance I have this mobile phone (at the risk of being accused probably not incorrectly of product placement, I will say it is a Blackberry Z10) that I have owned for just about a year and a half.
Now, while I understand the concept of built in obsolescence – even though I don’t like it – it just seemed to me to be a terrible waste of money to chuck the phone when it started showing signs of narcolepsy.
I like the phone and because I can be somewhat change resistant, despite astrologers trying to convince me all these years of my skills of adaptability, the idea of having to get a new and most probably different type of phone felt burdensome.
When I lived in Nairobi, this sort of cheap behaviour led me to find all sorts of technical wizards in the most unlikely of places. For a pittance, when compared to the price of buying a new one, these folk could do all sorts of things with phones, watches and other devices that I had become accustomed to, and was loath to get rid of.
So when my poor Z10 started switching itself off and then coming back to life at will and beginning to cause me irritation, I reverted to type and tried to find a fundi in cape Town who could cure it.
In doing this I forgot for a moment that SA doesn’t do mitumba like Kenya does, aspiring as they do for world-class status. As a result, most of the mobile phone shops I went to advised me to get rid of my otherwise perfectly good phone and buy a replacement.
Eventually my narcoleptic phone became a serious issue as far as work and staying in touch were concerned, and I was forced to get a new phone, but I was not going to give up so easily on the Z10.
On my last trip to Nairobi I took it with me in the hope that I would find my old technician pal. And sure enough there he was in his stall at the Westlands Market. I explained the problem to him and within an hour he had sorted it out, and I could once again be those obnoxious people with two mobile phones – one with my SA line and the other with my Kenyan sim-card.
Everything was hunky dory until I got back to South Africa. What my Westlands phone guru forgot to mention was that if I switched off the phone, as you should when complying with certain airline regulations, it might return to its narcoleptic ways.
Sure enough the phone also lapsed into its old ways and any other person might have felt forced into submission, but not Mr Cheap. I renewed my hunt for a ‘fundi’ in Cape Town and was rewarded when I stumbled across a shop run by a fellow expatriate or migrant, whichever you prefer.
It would cost a little more than in Nairobi but my phone would be fixed, or so I hoped. As I write, the fellow has been working on my phone for about a week with no result. I am finally beginning to see the wisdom of the much clichéd phrase, "cheap is expensive" and will give up on the Z10.
But no worries, I still have a backup phone to use on my travels, my trusty 2011 Bonga Points Huawei.
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