Foresight entirely lacking
Hi everyone:The e-mail and phones (in my office AND neighborhood) have been down for roughly a week now, most of the time, and in a stunning display of meticulous planning, the government decided to re-number all telephone lines and do something technical with all servers etc., and not tell anyone about it until it actually happened, this past Saturday. How do you know your new phone number? You hear from people who heard from people that it was happening (in my case, Friday night) and that you can buy some guide somewhere on Saturday, once you are already stripped of all means of communications. It turns out this guide is being sold by newsboys for 50 cents and is entirely in Amharic; not super helpful for me. Your new prefixes are different depending on whether it's a land line, a cell line, what the initial two digits were, etc. I lucked out in finding an internet cafe that was 1) open on a Sunday and 2) functioning, and just wanted to let everyone know not to expect to hear from me for a while, which is probably more upsetting for me than it is for you.
The best part is, no one here is surprised or even that frustrated that suddenly no one can call anyone or receive calls or reach anyone in any way whatsoever. Hey, you might run into them on the street, right??? ARGH. The American in me is screaming on the inside at this utterly preventable, massively illogical inconvenience, but outwardly I have to bite my tongue when people laugh at me and say "Welcome to Africa."
posted by Margot @ 5:46 AM
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