My Ex-Phones’ Relationships

How would you feel if you lost your phone or your phone got spoilt beyond repair? Worse than being dumped right? No? Well, I treat my phones the same way I treat a partner. I was genuinely writing about my phones but every scenario seemed to reflect on men who have been in my life; EXES. Instead, of writing separate stories, let’s make things easier for the writer and you the reader.

Find the text, Phone, replace it with a man.

Coming from a low economic class, luxuries like phones weren’t things I ever even thought of asking my parents to put in their budget. I remember one of my late classmates’ Ivy was talking about reaching the Facebook friends limit when we were in form 1. I was never in people’s business but when I replay that conversation, it makes me think about the things I could have done with money instead of investing in a phone eg. pay rent at home or my reduce the big school fee balance.

I got my first phone in form three when going to Canada. I never used it. I was relying on the teacher’s pocket money donated by other students. How was I supposed to know that Safaricom doesn’t operate in a country 10 hours away from my own? It was a grey kabambe (buttons) phone that looked better than my dad’s in appearance. When I was back in Kenya, my mom was busy feeding me before I could go back to school. I have no idea why she thought I would go to starve in School. No one starves in State House girls but boy I starved in Canada. Most of the meals that people were happy about were Macdonald’s medium-sized fries and burgers which weren’t my cup of tea. Anyway, I have no idea what happened to that phone during come holidays. I didn’t even care to know.

The second one was a touch screen that wasn’t as touchy. One had to be very clever in how you used it. This was immediately after finishing high school. I have no idea where it came from since I never asked for it. Was it to check for my results? Up to date, I cannot remember who gave me the phone, but it died as mysteriously as it came to my life.

At the time, I was in a long-distance relationship that needed a phone. The someone, I started communicating with my former classmates whom I was never very close to. This was using a brown kabambe inherited from my then boyfriend’s bigger sister to him to me to my brother then back to him. In between there, he bought me my first proper touch. I had remembered the make just now but it just…Oh yeah, Samsung. Do you remember those small and handy Samsung touch screens?

It was about to die when I got some help money and bought a white techno phone that was still in the country at the time at about 6000 or less. I went for space and a camera. It saved me a lot of printing money during my university years. It started hanging I guess and finally died. Honestly, I am not sure what happened to my first phone…wait I had bought another phone, bonoko blackberry using my hard-earned money in Luthuli avenue which turned out to be fake making way for the Samsung. Now I see what happened. Maybe he thought I needed a smartphone but wasn’t saying.

This was because, when I texted people, they wouldn’t reply. That I when I discovered something called WhatsApp that made people clas people according to how your phone could have it. Facebook wasn’t an issue since I was already using a browser and some of the kabambe phones could access Facebook.

After the white techno phone, I never bothered anyone but mom gave me some money to buy a second-hand Huawei phone that got pickpocketed in town. I wasn’t bothered about being out of contact but mom was and bought another. It had a fucked charging system. Oh, men, these hanging phone and always need a fix have really developed my patience.

I don’t where I got some 10k to buy a nice techno phone with a nice camera that eventually started hanging after staying with it for a very long time then gave it to some who still owes me money. I hope he gets rich to just throw the 5k my way, I need it. This was after I bought a nice Huawei phone that didn’t last a week: Pickpocketed. Now, this incidence made me sad and stressed. If it wasn’t for the oppo a3s that I got later, I wouldn’t be here.

I had fallen in love with the size, the font, the features….it was just a 10k phone but was carefully selected. I got attached. My heart was broken. Honestly, I don’t know.

My first oppo was really nice. I loved the front camera. I was not ready to sell it but I wanted a bigger space and a bigger Ram for a project I wanted to do. Buying a phone was cheaper than buying a camera. I gave it to my brother who lost it again like the other three phones that I bought or gave him before that I have left out. I have just realized that I do not remember how they look like but they were my sweat and blood. One was red, the other black or grey, no idea.

Alongside my current phone, I bought two Nokia phones, kabambes, that I have been admiring. I am sure if you are Kenyan, you know what I am talking about. it is a backup phone in case this one dumps me.

If I lost my phone today, the reason for the absence of a long face is not that I have an excellent backup but because I am not attached to it. Photos are in my Google account, No music, Nothing essentially special about apart from;

  • Buying wifi using the faiba app on my phone
  • Apps login
  • Youtube.

Of which, I can hack away into using my sisters to get wifi and still use my computer except for the youtube part. My sound drivers are still holding a grudge. In short, one thing that can really disorient me is taking my books and my specs, I will fall into depression. I can live without a phone.

Photo Credit : Zebby photography- Community service in Kajiado (FGM Rehab) I was holding the phone that was hanging for the kind of stuff I was doing with the phone but a good phone that “a smiling friend” went with. This is exaclty an intepretation of the man that was in my life at that time.

This text has not been rerwritten. Feel free to mention mistakes

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