New (Used) Phone, So Call Me!

I have a phone again!!! It’s the same number as before: 0723 686 455. If you’re dialing internationally, Kenya’s country code is 254 and you probably don’t need to dial the “0” at the beginning of the number. This is a used phone which Tonny, my co-worker, found for me. Seems the teenagers here, like elsewhere, want to buy the newest, sleekest styles every six months. So this phone, a Motorola, is relatively new and cost 3,000 shillings, or about $40 USD.

Nearly everyone in Kenya has a cell phone (or mobiles, as they’re called here). Landlines are expensive and unreliable. But cellular systems in Kenya are top-notch, allowing folks to text message inexpensively (a text message can cost anywhere from 2.5 to 10 shillings, depending on its length—that’s about 4 to 12 cents per message). Plus, landline phones here typically cannot dial cell numbers. So folks need cell phones to communicate with other cell phones. Even at TICH, there are less than 10 phones jacks through our PABX system. This means each department has one phone shared by the entire group. The phones cannot dial internationally. In the US, we’re used to having our own phone on our desk. Here, that’s just not going to happen. So people use cell phones for personal and business purposes.

Another difference between the Kenyan phone system and those in the US is that everything is pre-paid. There are little, one-person shelters painted bright, spring green all over town. One sits just outside our gate at TICH. They dot the slums and downtown. From these little shelters, people buy credit for their Safaricom or Celtel phone lines. These are either scratch cards, where scratching off the coating reveals a PIN Code, or they’re simply cash register receipts with the PIN code printed on it. Credit comes in denominations of 100, 200, 500 or 1000 shillings. Plus, most major stores in town and every little “general store” along the roadside sells scratch cards and credit. You dial “141” on your phone and a female voice politely asks you to enter the PIN code. After a second, the credit is confirmed and you hang up. Then you’ll receive a text message from some satellite somewhere giving you the new balance on your phone. No monthly bills to pay.

I’m cheap. My philosophy is to text message at all times!!! I can go a week or more on 100 shillings. But the minute a call is placed, yikes! It’s about 24 shillings per minute for a local call, so the credit is eaten up very quickly. Oh, and it doesn’t cost anything to receive a call, only to place the call. So I’m a rather passive phone person, waiting for folks to call me and only using the phone to text messaging (I am a volunteer, after all!). Okay, enough about phones in Kenya. Call me!