myth: cell phones are everywhere in Africa

Above: the view from the one place in my community that has cell phone reception (3 bars)

I keep hearing development consultants and several academics claim that "cell phones are everywhere in Africa" and that they will revolutionize development, business and social relationships. That's fine...but 2 people in the community where I live own cell phones (they are both men who have opportunities to leave the community on many occasions). At times they make the 5km walk from their homes into the footpath leading to the manioc field next to the abandoned house where 3 bars of reception can be achieved (all elsewhere is a dead zone), that is when the district tower that provides this reception (MCel) isn't down. They mostly wait to see if they received any messages or send a 'beep' to key contacts outside of the community with the expectation that the person they beep will call them back, since these 2 men often don't have the money to spend on buying more credit (just enough once every 3 months to keep their cards active). These men ask me for "credito" when I go to Maganja all of the time, and I've helped them out once or twice, but providing this support on a more frequent basis is beyond my budget.

I recently finished up a day of survey work and my translators had already headed back to my house for food. I decided that I would try to access reception, since I had a bicycle [correction: I said that these POS bicycles were Chinese in an earlier post. These HERO bicycles are from India...now that I am an owner of 2 of them I am up close and personal with their 'charming' failings on a daily basis]. At the time I hadn't heard about the cut fiber optic cable that shut down all of communciations in northern Mozambique so this was my 4th futile attempt to connect. On my way back down the footpath I realized that the sunset was gorgeous. I snapped a few photos and ended up being invited to dinner by one of the families that lives in the area. We ate massa de mandioca with a 'caril' made of squash. This family doesn't own a phone, but they find it hilarious that I, the 2 nurses who live at the hospital down the road, the school teachers and the 2 men I mentioned earlier occasionally walk past their house to wave their cell phones in the air, cursing the disappearance of the one site of reception...an activity that is beyond this household's budget and sense of necessity.