Paper Clip

Every once in a while something happens that really "blows my mind" and makes me aware once again how different our world is than that of an average Kenyan.

Students at our schools aren't allowed to have phones. Now that there is only one more week remaining in the term, girls are wanting to call their parents to inform them when they will be coming home. Many of them are also requesting transport money. They will need to be riding a bus or a matatu home. There is a wonderful thing here called MPESA. It is a tranfer of money over the phone. A person goes to a MPESA booth anywhere. They indicate a phone number that they want the money sent to, pay the money and a small fee. The receiver then gets a text message (here they are called an SMS) that tells them the amount of money they are to receive. You take your phone to a MPESA booth and pick up the money. It is so easy to do.

Phones here are pay as you go. It costs money to make phone calls, but not to receive them. If you want to talk to someone, don't have money to make a call or don't want to pay for the call, you flash them. That means you dial their number and let it ring once or twice, but don't allow enough time for them to answer. They can see who flashed and if they want, they will call you back paying for the call.

The girls and I have worked out a system when they need to call home: once they have my approval to make a call, they line up to flash their parents during tea time, lunch, or breaks. About four or five girls flash and then we wait to see if anyone calls back. It works pretty well.

This afternoon the girls were lined up to try to call. I had taken a book with me in case I had time to get to Literature Club. It is a thick book with about 300 pages. While waiting the girls all wanted to take a look at my book. You have to realize that they pretty much only see textbooks. It is a novelty to see a novel that is so big. But that's not what amazed me.

I had used a paper clip to mark my place in the book. As they were looking at it and passing the book around, one of the girls said, "This is nini (what)? Mrs. Sitati was talking about it in Business Studies the other day." They had never seen a paper clip before and couldn't even name it! They wanted to know what it is used for and how it worked. After checking the page number in the book, I took it off so they could look at it. When they finished, I told one of the girls to go ahead and put it back in the book. They couldn't do it. They didn't know how!

Something as simple and ordinary as a paper clip.