Not only was I deprived of television in my early years, but we also did not have a telephone.
It is not always that parents are able to provide everything for their offspring.
Some parents provide the bare essentials, such as shelter and food. Other parents provide the more expensive things in life, such as bicycles and a second pair of shoes.
Yet there are those who buy stuff for their kids only during the eating of Christmas.
Like other kids, I loved all things sweet. I also loved condensed milk and whenever I was caught sucking on a tin of the stuff, I would vow that the day I earned my first salary, I would show up in front of my mother, dressed in a suit and sporting a tie, happily downing a few cans of condensed milk.
Like every child, I wanted the nice things in life. For the most part I got what was affordable. By today’s standards, it wasn’t a lot. I think at the peak of my childhood, I owned a single pair of shoes and two pairs of underpants which had to be worn for school and church, respectively.
For play time, after school and church, the underpants had to be washed and take a rest.
If you think I had it tough, wait to hear what the other boys had to go through. They went to school barefooted and their bums showed through their tattered khaki pants.
My main gripe was that we didn’t have television. I had other things which many boys did not.
For instance, I owned a football and had the power to decide the game was over if my team was losing. If the other boys wanted to continue with the game then they had to let us score. Even better for them, they had to let me score a hat trick and celebrate in majestic style.
However, when television came, we were not in the batch of families who had the guts to sign onto the steep hire-purchase terms. I console myself with the fact that by the time we got television, all sets were colour. My friends whose parents bit the bullet and signed the hire-purchase contract had to contend with a black and white set.
Because my parents lacked the guts to sign the contract , I would watch at other people’s homes, either from the street, through the window or the door left slightly ajar.
But over and above television, there was also the telephone. Very few families had a telephone. I am not talking about the sleek and hi-tech telephones of today on which you can leave voice messages.
Back then a telephone was a clunky and ugly gadget that is now seen only in museums. Only the well off families had one. In that era of fixed line telephones, people were more disciplined. When you told someone you would call them at a certain time, they would be waiting by the telephone at the stated time.
Like I said, many of us did not have telephones in our homes. Whenever we visited homes with a telephone we would marvel when the kids answered the thing. They seemed to be comfortable with the English word with which every telephone call was answered.
We would be envious and wish some day they would allow us to answer the phone at their homes. That never happened.
The kids whose parents owned the telephone always hogged the instrument. That said, their only role was to answer the phone and call a parent. Much as we envied them, the kids could never place any calls because the gadget was always locked.
When playing outside, we would imagine we were speaking to each other on the phone. We would design rudimentary telephones made from discarded cans and holler to each other pretending we were on the phone.
Such was our love for the telephone. The near neighbors of homes with telephones were slightly favored. If they were good neighbors and showed enough deference to the owners, they could receive their calls and messages from relatives who had bad news about a death or illness.
On some occasions, they too would be allowed to use the telephone to communicate with their relatives in other parts of the country. It was remarkable how people who were on occasion allowed use of the telephone by well off neighbors would prance around as if they owned it. They would boast to starry-eyed friends about how they were adept at using the phone.
The fixed line telephone was a status symbol. It also placed pressure on a lot of town dwellers who would be asked upon returning to the village for Christmas if they had ever spoken on the phone.
This was the second most popular question after being asked if it was true that the people in town ate rice and bread every week.
These questions were understandable because back then most people ate bread only at Christmas. As for rice most likely it was eaten once in two years.
The telephone was held in similar awe. In homes that had telephones, the moment the instrument rang, it was not promptly answered. It would be allowed to ring for a long time in order to make sure that everybody knew that particular home was blessed with a telephone.
People who lived in town but did not own a telephone were under immense pressure. They had to justify to their country bumpkin cousins why they did not own a telephone.
In response to pressure, the poor urban dwellers who did not own telephones would go to the photographic studio and pose with a telephone held to their ear.
Sometimes, especially the female town dwellers, would pose for photos lying on an imaginary beach drawn on the wall of the studio, draped in a towel and speaking on the phone. The photos would be shown off to friends and relatives.
My all time favorite is of the photo studio that had an artificial ostrich, and where people would pose astride the bird and pretending to speak on the phone. My dream back then was to get a job, visit that studio, get on an ostrich and speak on the phone as a few snapshots were taken.
I dreamt of showing off those photos to those kids who never allowed us to answer the phone in their homes when we were children!
