Ngahura Thimu Ndeenda (I'll Telephone When I Want): Cuba, Cell Phones and Imperialism

The Yahoo! Headlines that invade my consciousness every time I log off my email account are often annoying. The patronizing reports about Asia, pessimistic ones about Africa and gooey ones about US - from Hollywood fashion to the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are, frankly speaking, often irrelevant and an assault on my soul and sanity. But occasionally I get to see an amusing headline. This time it happens to be the American media's celebration of Raul Castro's government legalization of the use of cell phones by ordinary Cubans.

According to a news report written by Associated Press that is doing the rounds on the internet, it appears that until now, cell phone use was restricted to high ranking officials of the Cuban government and to foreigners. I say "appears," because the background to the new rule may have been oversimplified by the American media from which I got the information. As a rule, I don't trust anything on Cuba written in English because the few documents I have attempted to read about the country or Fidel Castro were by people with a diabolical (read Americanized) distaste for Castro or by someone trying to appease the American audience by showing that Castro and Cuba are not as bad as Americans might think. I would like to read someone who says that Castro may or may not be as bad as Americans think, but Cuba has no apologies to make, since America does not have the moral authority to judge other governments given the mayhem it has inflicted on minorities within its borders and on countries worldwide. That said, my comments about what I call the "cell phone development" are written and should be read with a pinch of salt.

An important reason why the headline is amusing is because the reports about this "development" in the mainstream media make a futile attempt to hide the smug hope that infiltration of this miniscule technology is a significant step in the imperialization of a stubborn Cuba. Their self-assurance affirms the truth of Thomas Sankara's assertion that one need only look at the food on their plates to see imperialism, or that "to overturn the regime in Burkina Faso you don't need to bring in heavily armed mercenaries. You just need to forbid the importation of champagne, lipstick and nail polish."

Watching the media pretend that it is not excited by the removal of cell phone restrictions, even though the headlines alone are proof of that excitement, reminds one of a child with sugar all over her mouth try to innocently deny that she had dipped her fingers in the sugar bowl. And so the sneaky statements such as the fact that the liberalization of the cell phone economy is not a radical change should not fool readers; the cell phone use is set to spread in Cuba and the American media is "loving it."

But while the transparency of the American media is amusing, the hoo-ha about cell phones should send a red flag to those concerned about cultural integrity. I don't know why the Cuban government had set restrictions on the first place, but if one of them was that cell phones are socially and economically destabilizing, I would sympathize them. An appropriate illustration of my sentiments can be found in the play Ngaahika ndeenda (I'll marry when I want) by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii.

The play that got the two writers into trouble with the Kenya government is centered on Kiguunda and his wife Wangeci, who own a piece of land coveted by Western investors for building a factory. Kioi, the puppet of these Westerners, knows that the two will not sell the land if the proposition is made directly. But he manages to snatch the land out of Kiguunda and Wangeci's possession by insisting that his son can only marry their daughter Gathoni through a Christian ceremony. The catch is that Christian weddings cost money, and so when Kiguunda and Wangeci use their land to secure funding to finance the wedding, they eventually land exactly where the Western investors what them.

The groundwork to the eventual dispossession of land is laid by Kioi and his wife Njeeribethi who, on a visit to Kiguunda and Wangeci's home, inform their hosts that they are living in sin because their wedding was not ceremonized in the church. Astounded, Wangeci points out that Ngai (God) had blessed them with children, essentially hinting that since children are a blessing from Ngai, then the marriage must have been blessed as well. Meanwhile, Kiguunda is understandably upset at the fact that his fulfillment of the wedding rituals - which are quite elaborate in Gikuyu traditions - has been trivialized.

The potency of this conversation is unavoidable. Kioi and Njeeribethi essentially play the role of the serpent in the Garden of Eden who got Adam and Eve to break their covenant with God by asking the simple question: "Did God really say...?" In the same manner, the couple begins to pave the path to the tragic end of Kiguunda and Wangeci by metaphorically asking if the latter couple was really married. As soon as the seed of doubt is planted, the rest, as they say, is history.

Cell phones could arguably play the same role as the Christian wedding in Ngaahika Ndeenda. Apart from the significant amount of money they consume, which as the media reports indicate, could be out of the reach of the majority of Cubans, the cell phone introduces a set of dynamics into human relationships that have the potential to destabilize a society and make it vulnerable to exploitation. That is why the benefits of the cell phone listed in the well circulated report on Cuba by the Associated Press are largely unconvincing. Take a look:

Cubans likely will use cell phones the same way people in other countries do, to stay in contact with their families and acquaintances when out of their home or office, especially in a place where public phones are scarce and often don't work. Cell phones will make it easier to make and keep appointments, rather than having to return home simply to change a meeting time. Cubans who already have cell phones often give them to their teenagers for security when they go out in the evenings.

The Associate Press is conveniently careful not to mention the social maladies and changes that each of the "benefits" of cell phones redresses. But before even dealing with those changes, one must of course note the patronizing assumption that Cubans need to live or are already living an American lifestyle, or until now have been unable to keep in touch with family or acquaintances, to keep appointments or to go out in the evenings out of fear for the safety. How would Cuba have developed the strong jazz and salsa tradition that Americans like to make documentaries about, if going out was so dangerous? Has it occurred to Associated Press and like-minded people that maybe Cuban teenagers are more responsible than what Americans may be used to, or that the Cuban evening social scene may not be as predatory as the Westernized one?

Which brings me to the social upheavals symbolized by cell phones. Keeping in touch using technology is no substitute for human presence and interaction. Emails and telephones have in fact reduced people's social skills, decency and courtesy. On a visit to Penn State a few years ago, rapper Chuck D made an interesting but troubling observation: young people spend hours talking on the cell phone but amazingly have nothing to say when they see each other. I have heard anecdotes in Kenya of children who communicate with their parents by cell phone during the week because the parents leave for work early and return home late, while the children are taken to school by the driver and are asleep by the time the parents get home. And if we are developing such anti-social tendencies, is it any wonder that crime is on the rise? Or that children shoot each other as if they were playing a video game? Or that American leaders can invade a country in the name of freedom, display the Iraqi deaths and casualties in the news, but Americans are so blasé that none of the presidential candidates want to speak of the immorality of the American colonialism and of a definitive troop withdrawal?

I am not dismissing the emotional and psychological benefit of being able to keep in touch with one's family across borders and oceans. But I also wonder if we would make radical decisions such as moving to another continent as easily, if we knew that we would not be able to see friends and family again. In any case, I am nostalgic for cards and handwritten letters, and sometimes I wonder if children are going to lose their ability to write due to being accustomed to keyboards.

I am not convinced that cell phones improve keeping appointments because when I was young (that was before the proliferation of cell phones), a promise of an appointment was as good as a debt. And if someone didn't show up, we knew that the circumstances were unavoidable or that the person simply dint assign much importance to that appointment in the first place. These days, we can easily make or break appointments by a one-minute call, which essentially means that we may not be taking appointments as seriously as we should. And frankly speaking, I am skeptical about the seriousness of people who make 5 to six appointments per day across different sections of the town, unless they are working in the Post Office or another courier service.

Some may counter that cell phones are a good way of averting danger, for example in Kenya in January and February this year when irruptions of violence were sometimes not anticipated. But the reverse argument also applies, since radios and text messages were largely responsible for the amount of hatred and lies that fueled the violence. At the height of the violence, Gen. Lazarus Sumbeiywo pointed out that Kenyans needed to take heed of the destruction that technology can bring, for by the time people find out the truth, a lie transmitted through a text message may have already brought havoc. In other words, technology may have made movement of people, goods and information faster, but truth, sobriety and sanity still run at the same pace since the beginning of time.

As for cell phones aiding teenagers' security: need I point out the obvious - that the world has become less safe for children and teenagers? Even though cell phones are a commendable tool for a teenager who may be faced with immediate danger, they still do not provide a substitute for an honest conversation about why adults - especially men - have turned into predators of the young. They also obscure the fact that many adults, from the record companies, to Hollywood and the porn industry, are making tons of money by having young people display their bodies for voyeuristic pleasure of sick adults who should be working and embracing realities of the world (not TV shows), rather than feasting on potato chips and distorted fantasies diffused through the TV or computer screens.

Technology has, in many instances, undermined the acquisition of skills that take time and repeated practice to acquire - from social skills, to instincts and decisions about safety, to music, reading, handicrafts and art, and with them, the patience required to accomplish long-term tasks that are painfully tedious before they are finally completed. With the increase in computer-generated music and with few Kenyans schools no longer offering programs in music, I wouldn't be surprised if the proportion of players of music instruments (African or Western) in the general population decreases rather than increases. Some young people are said to dismiss experience and counsel and spend their time whining that the company in which they have been working for one year has not promoted them to CEO to replace the aging 55 year old.

Increase in accessibility to media technology also coincides with a morally and intellectually lazier public which substitutes entire messages and contexts with one-liners, with Rev. Jeremiah Wright's career being the latest casualty of this phenomenon. There is a powerful dehumanization and desocialization taking place in form of the fragmentation of information and people's lives, and it is no wonder that sustaining a united platform to resist imperialism is becoming more difficult.

The imperialist implications of this sociopathy are too many to count. A society in which human skills and values are reduced to instant formulas is culturally, economically and politically hooked on the West. It no longer has the discipline to examine its own problems, patience to negotiate with its adversaries, or the diligence to distinguish widely diffused and instantaneous lies from historically founded truth. No wonder the Kenyan media runs to the American ambassador for commentary on the bickering of greedy politicians when the presence of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans living in camps screams the truth at us, which is that our economic growth should not be directly proportional to our social deterioration.

At the individual level, we have become less tolerant of each others weaknesses' and are headed in the direction of the Western world in which people are so scared of physical contact or with each other, or physicality in general, that they compensate for this anomaly through perverted and simulated sexual relations with partners of multiple ages, species or manufacturer's labels.

Frantz Fanon warned us of these pathologies in Black Skin, White Masks. In his last book The Wretched of the Earth, he left us with this warning: "Leave Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet they murder men everywhere they find them...Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration." He lamented: "When I search for Man in the technique and style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man and an avalanche of murders." Fanon insisted that the true achievements of humanity are not to be found in technology but in the "brains and muscles" of human beings engaged in a healthy dialogue with reality, rather than with the mimicry of reality provided by empty words. The true measurement of human progress is not technology but in our ability to make the world socially just and morally relevant.

That said, I wish Cubans best of luck with the cell phones. They may have a better experience than Kenya where cell phones were a major factor in the spread of hatred and lies that led to killings and maiming of over a thousand people, and where people are now running after the Safaricom gravy train. If Cubans emerge from this victorious, it may be due to the fact that Cuba under Castro fasted from fooling around with Western trinkets and found time took time to ask who they were and what they wanted to be in the world, and even found time to support and participate in the struggles of oppressed peoples in other countries. Kenya, on the other hand, spent the first decades of independence narcissistically imitating America, pleasing Britain and remaining politically aloof to the troubles of neighboring countries but economically glued to them because of the dollars of humanitarian organizations basedin Nairobi.

Cuba may therefore have better luck at using cell phones to the service of humanity, rather than many other countries where cell phones share with imperialism the effect of whittling away at values and skills that are intrinsic to humanity. Therefore, calling whenever one wants may actually have as many benefits as disadvantages, just as black powder was used for fireworks to celebrate festivals or for the production of guns and killing machines.