On my second day, as I cleaned the floor in the living room as I was instructed, a ringing sound almost made me jump out of my skin. Kriiiiiiing, Kriiiiiing. It was not stopping. I checked where it was coming from. I saw a black gadget sitting on a table, and the sound was definitely coming from there. Could that be the telephone I had read about in school?
As I tried turning it over to inspect it, the handset fell off but the long spiral cord kept it attached. I panicked thinking I broke this unfamiliar gadget, but at least the ringing sound stopped. I lifted the handset off the floor and started inspecting it for damage. I faintly heard a voice repeatedly saying Hello. I put the phone to my ear and I heard my name called out repeatedly. I cautiously answered Harro, Harro. The voice said “Aria ninii” – “Talk its me” I was in a strange place and now there was a strange voice calling my name and asking me to talk to it. “niwe uuu?” My sister realized she needed to introduce herself, so she said her name. I was shocked because it did not sound like her at all. When she came home, she taught me how to answer the phone, how to talk to callers and write down a message.
That was quite an experience. Had it been my brothers, they would have known how to answer a telephone because they had seen it on Western movies. Me, I had never seen a movie or a TV show. In OlKalou, there was no Standard dialing phones. The very few places that had telephones, it was the operator assisted phones with funny numbers like 7Y2. I am sure there were people with such phones, but I had not visited any such places in my tender 11 years. Do you blame a girl for not knowing?
Today, as I whip out my iphone or Android or tablet, I often remember how far we have come, or speaking for myself, how far I have come since that day at my sisters house in the late 1970s.
