My mobile phone rings, waking me up from my reverie. “Hallo Odysseus!”, “Hallo!”, “Can you hear me?”, “Yes I can hear”, I reply, “but who is on the line?” The connection is bad so I know it’s not a call from Germany. “It’s your cousin Emeka, please call me back!” and the line goes dead. Just as I had guessed, it’s a call from Nigeria.

I guess I should explain. Calls from Nigeria have a peculiar character. The connection is mostly poor which makes the caller generally inaudible. This in turn makes the reciever of the call to speak louder and in most cases shout in an effort to be heard. The shouting of course does not make the connection better, however I guess this is just a natural human reaction to the poor connection. The resultant effect is the typical Nigerian or African shouting into his mobile phone as commonly seen on the streets of any European city. Weiterlesen →