Stylish GSM Cell Phones
Posted on July 7, 2010GSM cell phones are the most widely used in the entire world. Estimates suggest that the common includes some 80% of all cell phones in use around the globe. And while GSM cell phones are a all-pervasive feature of 1st world countries, it is their existence in far less “civilized” areas that best demonstrates the reach and effect of modern communications.
Imagine Somalia: a large, desert country on the eastern horn of Africa which in the past 20 years has been wracked simply by civil war along with famine. Bombed out bullet riddled cities dot the barren landscape where for thousands of years, nomads have roamed the desert herding goats along with camels across hundreds of miles from pastures in the rainy season to market in the dry season. Even practical measures of distance here do not stick to the metric or imperial principles employed by the rest of the world.
Nomad calculate distance by units referred to as a Gedi: the distance a browsing herd animal can travel in a single day, which changes every season relying on the physical strength of each herd. Even working automobiles are hard to find here, let alone something sophisticated as a GSM cell phone. Yet the simple application of GSM cell phones, which we in the west have long taken for granted, has proven incredibly practical to this nomadic lifestyle.
For years, Somali herdsmen have followed an annual pattern. By the end of the year as soon as the dry season arrives, they migrate from the more fertile fields elsewhere in the country, across the desert, to coastal cities where they can promote their stock in the markets to traders from the Middle East and in other places. Keeping their animals in pens within the cities while they arrange a sale is incredibly costly, as they will have to continue to feed and water their herd with stores provided for by community merchants at obscene rates. They have no option. However, GSM cell phones have allowed them to forego this method.
A Somali nomad, a man wearing hand sewn clothes which he has probably worn for all of his life, carrying a staff in the traditional posture – horizontally over his shoulders, his arms resting atop – a person who sleeps on a mat of thatched grass beneath the stars, beside a fire he created by his own, can now merely make a phone call and prepare the sale of his herd in advance. Rather than lingering in the city for several days, expending what meager wealth he has on preserving his herd there, hoping his sale can recoup his losses and even turn a profit, he can now simply set up to have a buyer all set for him the minute he arrives. Such high technology might appear incredibly unnatural in Somalia, but it’s application is flawlessly suited to the needs of a nomad.
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