Living for Disco

I’ve found a new newspaper! This is fortunate, because the Namibian has been getting extremely dull lately; yesterday’s headline screamed “50c hike in milk prices!” I was underwhelmed.

It is, however, unfortunate, because it is a bi-monthly publication, so I have to wait two weeks before being regaled with news stories such as that of the poor Nigerian man living in Katutura, who can’t find his wife. This is because he woke up in the morgue after being pronounced dead and she ran away when he then turned up at their house, naked, in a taxi. The Namibian just isn’t providing this kind of need-to-know journalism any more.

The best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) news story in the latest issue of the paper is a letter from one of the inmates of Windhoek Central Prison, who is complaining about the systematic mistreatment of prisoners. Apparently, they are being subjected to having pepper spray enemas to make them pass any forbidden objects they may have secreted where the sun don’t shine – in this case, cellphones.

I know it’s not funny. I know it’s a significant abuse of human rights, but please – would a cellphone even work after it’s been inserted up your back passage and sat on for a while? I hate to say it but unless you put it inside a condom or something, the things that would get caught in the keypad don’t even bear thinking about. Also, phones here do tend to be somewhat bulky. Many of them have antennae. Can you imagine walking around normally, with a cellphone up your arse?

There are a number of second hand phone shops in Windhoek. I’ve had my cell stolen twice, and each time I have bought a new one, rather than rely on something second hand, and also because you don’t know where they’ve come from.

I am now sincerely happy about this decision.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Under African Skies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.