Do you want to contact Tom? Ok, you can check him in H 141
if it’s not time for class and he is not in the computer lab. Are you
surprised? Cool. Now tell me, how else would you like to reach him? What! His
phone number? Ooh, you might be right to some extent. I will give you his phone
number. It is something similar to 07029463XX. But how the hell do you think
this is going to be helpful to you? Call him! Through his phone number? You
must be very funny! Maybe you should call him through his room-mate if at all
he has one. Because how do you expect to call somebody who only bears a sim
card? Yes, I understand that he had a phone, but that was in the past. And am
convinced that it is for the same reason that your surprise was, “But he had a
phone!”
No, it never got lost! How would that be possible? Of course
Mokuah Tom Edward liked and hence took great care of his phone. Earphones were
almost becoming part and parcel of him; always listening to music stored in his
phone’s memory card – particularly the Bongo type music.
I guess that little did Tom know that one day his handset
would be rendered useless! Not by anything tangible, but something worth
mentioning. It is the initiative action by the Communication Council of Kenya
to put to a halt the use of counterfeit (or rather) fake mobile phones that
caused our dear class-mate this disgrace!
Despite being a Media Practitioner, Tom never seemed to
believe a word of it when a group of Agak, Wambua and I were trying to convince
him that the switch-off exercise would be real, just a day before the reality convinced
him. Maybe his apparent strong opposition would otherwise be termed as ‘wishful
thinking’ that ‘Moi University si Kenya’ so the CCK would hardly find a way to cross
boarders and eventually reach his device.
Today, ‘Invalid sim’ and ‘Battery low” are the only two
indications that can display on his device’s screen without any trouble. What
happened?
His double-sim card’s handset was among the first 100 mobile phones to be done away with on 1st October, 2012!
Was it fake? That goes without saying.
However, the Kisii-speaking guy is not the only victim that
I intended to mention. I have not even told you about the approach by our class
representative, Okumu Mala Brian, to borrow from me, one of my Nokia originals
just to briefly insert his sim card and wait for any probable message that was
supposed to be delivered to him! Yes, this is a true story. It happened in the
evening of Tuesday 2nd, a few hours before the kick-off time of UEFA
Champions League group stage match between Manchester United and CFR Cluj,
where the former won 2-1. I had no otherwise but to risk my phone into the
leader’s sometimes careless hands. I did this while trying to hide my sarcastic
laughter lest he realize my ‘arrogant’ behavior of laughing at a desperate class
representative - someone who has the power of even giving an order to a
lecturer to reduce my exam marks by half as a result of misbehaving!
So far, the two are the only reported CCK victim cases from
our Media class, among hundreds of thousands of other Kenyans.
