The number of cell phones in use across the globe will eclipse the total human population of the Earth next year. This is probably good news for Awad Omran, expert camel handler, master chef of one ingredient (ful or fava beans, the staple of Sudan), and the Out of Eden Walk’s token pastoralist. Awad is hard on cell phones. He treats them more or less like any other tool — say, like a camel picketing stake, or like the five-pound hammer used to drive it into ground. He could use a spare.
The latest accident occurred in Ummlajj, a fishing port on the Red Sea of Saudi Arabia. Awad dropped his cell while he was wading in the surf. (He was chatting with his camel-herding brother Othman in Sudan.) The walk’s Arabic interpreter, Ali al Harbi, was nearby, also wading and talking on his cell. He swung his arms about in a listless way, offering a few distracted suggestions about where to search. I may have been on my phone, too. But at least I was on dry land. And I did manage to snap a picture.
Awad found his phone. He set it in the sun to dry. Miraculously, it still worked. But after a few days, the sound began to get crackly. Maybe it was the salt.
“You need to wash it with soap,” Ali joked.
One way to thwart the NSA? Awad cleans his signal.
Paul Salopek
This Awad did during one of our noontime lunch stops. He removed the battery. He threw the handset into a camel bucket foaming with Tide detergent. And he scrubbed it, much as he would a camel harness, using his own tooth brush. The sound quality cleaned up. But his contact log vanished. The cell had been brainwashed.
The phone is a Nokia X2 made in India. It cost about $45.
Digital Postcard: These micro-stories about the walk are designed to add narrative context to the project’s Twitter feed between Nov. 15 and Dec. 1. Ethan Zuckerman and Nate Matias at the MIT Center for Civic Media are curating @outofedenwalk during this time to test how to engage the public in storytelling using this medium.
