Electronic Oasis

Water is gold in the Afar Triangle of Ethiopia. No surprise. It’s in one of the hottest deserts in the world. Walking for three days recently near the western scarp of the Rift Valley, Ahmed Alema Hessan and I found one smear of muddy rainwater to ease our camels’ thirst. But we stumbled across a new type of waterhole a day later—a coveted oasis of electrons.

As oases go, it would never draw adventure tourists, much less inspire the verse of caravan poets, but the electronic waterhole at Dalifagi is the real story in sub-Saharan Africa. Nine hundred million people. A headlong sprint into the digital age that leaps over a century of analog technology. Exploding aspirations. Consequences unknown. In Ethiopia, the government is aggressively expanding its state-run mobile network. Last year, cell use ballooned by an astonishing 30 percent, to more than 17 million subscribers.

Mulukan Ayalu, 23, an Ethiopian government technician maintains the tiny power plant at Dalifagi. As well master of the electronic oasis, he recharges nomad cell phones for a few cents. On Mondays—market day—trail-worn Afar pastoralists line up at his office door with the folds of their sarong-like shirts laden with dead cell phones of faraway neighbors. 

Customers who drop off their phones for recharging are given a handmade token. The numbers now rise into the hundreds. Some purveyors of scarce electrons on Africa’s information frontier get even more creative. In the nearby Afar town of Asaita, one local entrepreneur has jigsawed together a Frankensteinish apparatus that quick-charges clients’ phones in minutes.

At night, when the power is on, the residents of Dalifagi engage in a new cultural practice that didn’t diffuse from Manhattan—the power dinner, with cell phones clamped to ears. When two Afars meet in the desert, they often conduct a dagu, a formal exchange of news with a lengthy call-and-response greeting. “Now we dagu, dagu, dagu all the time on the phone,” says camel guide Ahmed Alema Hessan.

Dial “N” for nomad. Survival tools, old and new, hang from Afar youths’ belts near the Awash River in desolate and sometimes hostile badlands of northeastern Ethiopia: a jile, or traditional dagger, a Kalashnikov rifle to fend off livestock raids, a mobile phone. The immense saltscapes that straddle the borders of Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea weren’t even mapped until the 1920s. For centuries, the martial Afar pastoralists who ruled the area resisted all incursions by the outside world. Today, though, they embrace the information revolution with a vengeance. “It has given them power,” says Mulukan Ayalu. “They can call different goat traders. They can choose their selling prices.”

Afar Triangle - 阿法尔三角
scarp - 陡坡
Rift Valley - 裂谷
smear - 污点
stumble - 偶遇，蹒跚
covet - 渴望
oasis - (pl.) oases 
verse - 诗歌
caravan - 沙漠商队
headlong - 头向前的，疾速的
sprint - 冲刺
leap - 飞奔，跳过，剧变
analog - 类似的，（电脑）模拟的
explode - 爆发，激发
aspiration - 强烈的愿望
subscriber - （电话）加入者，（报纸）订阅者
nomad - 游牧民；游牧民的
pastoralist - 畜牧家
fold - 衣服褶子
sarong - 纱笼
lade - 装货
token - 证据，印记，（地铁用的）代币
purveyor - 承办商
frontier - 边境
entrepreneur - 中介，企业家
jigsaw - 使相互交错
apparatus - 器具，装置
client - 顾客
engage - 从事
diffuse - 普及，扩散
clamp - 夹紧，固定
lengthy - 长时间的，（演讲）冗长的
desolate - 土地荒芜的
hostile - 敌国的
dagger - 短剑，短刀
rifle - 来复枪
fend off - 挡开，避开
raid - 奇袭，空袭    air raid
immense - 巨大的
straddle - 跨坐，叉开腿
martial - 好战的
resist - 抵抗
incursion - （突然）侵犯，袭击
vengeance - 复仇，报复