Facebook, Instagram, and all else
Before the colonization by Facebook and its side-shoots, we had e mail. And that was a great boon. I was working in various African countries where a reliable water supply was a wonder, during the years 1983 to 1998., leave alone communication systems. Mail did not go anywhere much in any direction in the little towns, far away from civilisation, that I was posted to.
From Makeni, in the north of Sierra Leone, I travelled to Freetown once every three months or so. I would go to the local telephone house and book a call to England. At the counter I would be given a slip of paper with the number, which denoted my place in the queue. Then you sat on a bench and waited until you were given access to the one telephone available. I was in S'lone for five great years. When my ex-husband got lung cancer, and died, the office was informed by phone and had to sent messages to me by hand of a driver.
The next posting was to Uganda. There was a phone-line in my house on the campus of the Kyambogo Teacher Training College, in Kampala. Letters still disappeared into cyberspace, but, once in a way, the phone worked. This was now 1988 to 1994.
The British Council, my employers, felt sorry for us 'advisers' and persuaded a reluctant British High Commission to let us use the diplomatic bag. To a limited degree. No frivolities, only essential family mail. I was once told off roundly by some deputy god in the High Commission, for getting some Maths exam papers sent out to me, to tutor my daughter, who had come down on holiday, just before her G C S E exams.
In Zambia, during 1994 - 1996, I could use the Wi-fi in the office. But none was available at home. E mails were still flashes of sunlight in the atmosphere. They hadn't quite downloaded.
It was in Malawi, in 1996, that a V S O friend set up my computer with a primitive version of e mail. It rarely worked. Things got slowly better and communication with my children in Laindon became much easier.
Looking back, I managed without any undue sense of deprivation. On my visits to the U K , I started hearing about Facebook. I was not interested, but my family in India had adopted it with enthusiasm. They persuaded me to join, and now, the whole clan could communicate, gossip, commiserate, fall out...
WhatsApp was a similar step for similar reasons. In both cases, I began to enjoy the freedom to hold forth on all things familial or political.
And then, the worm slowly turned. Social Media became a scourge, like a pestilence of ancient times. It attacked without discrimination, destroying the self-confidence of countless young people, who had the usual teen problems such as a changing body and hormones to contend with. Depression in the young became as common as acne.
If I could stop the rancour, make Twitter, Facebook. Instagram... disappear overnight, I would. I rarely post on Facebook. If I do it is generally about my garden, or things about my pets. I wouldn't miss FB if it went. As for Twitter, in my case, it is just an involuntary twitch.
E mail would be more than enough for my needs. I wouldn't have to be constantly looking over my shoulder with that.
