From Blue to Red

Here in Africa cell phones are big business. Our town doesn’t have a single land-line, and people love to communicate, but everyone seems to have a cell phone, or at least access to one. Mozambique has two main service providers, MCel and Vodacom. We, like most Mozambicans, use both since we never know when one will suddenly check out for an extended period of time. It just involves switching the different SIM cards in and out, the same thing we have to do when we visit neighboring countries. No one here has contracts, you just pay as you go, buying little phone vouchers from the omnipresent street vendors. Each company vies desperately for each little 60 cent phone credit purchase we make, so their advertising is one of the few commercial presences in our lives. Our town doesn’t have any adds for Coca Cola, or Nike, or McDonalds; the two large billboards here are both for cell service. An even more popular advertising gimmick is sponsoring local paint jobs. About half of our little stores are painted gold and green for Mcel, and the other half navy blue for Vodacom, or at least they were until last month when Voda decided to switch from blue to red. The move means repainting thousands of little shops around the country, including 3 in our town, but obviously they love the attention. It’s rare to go a day without seeing at least a couple of our students sporting Mcel or Voda promotional t-shirts or caps. At least the competition seems to keep prices accessible, especially for text messages and cell phone based internet, which is the service we use the most, and how many of the blogs on this site have been sent.