A festive full of strangers
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Friday January 9, 2015 16:21
It is Christmas 1988 and everyone is gathered in the homestead. The monotonous buzz of excited chatter filters through from the kitchen as the women catch up, gossip and laugh while preparing a feast. Some boast about their perfect marriages and what their husbands have done, while others moan about their awful spouses.
Outside, men from different generations are seated by the fire at the kgotla deep in discussion about the rains, ploughing, government policies, community issues and good old days. The younger men keenly observe their elders, taking the conversational cue from them and never attempting to lead discussions. The fireside chats are, after all, a time-honoured tradition with unwritten but unyielding rules.
“Kana ke fa mothaka yole a nyemela ka madi re sena go mo adima maloba,” says one elder.
“Owaii, a ga o itse gore ole ke motho wa bojalwa le monate? Gatwe o ko Africa Borwa onwa tsatsi le letsatsi. Gape, o na le mosadi le bana bangwe gone kwa,” adds another elder.
In the homestead, under the stars and in the sands, children chase each other in one of any variation of ‘catch me if you can’ games, their screams of joy piercing the night sky and evoking angry reprisals from the adults.
It is Christmas 2014 and everyone is gathered in the homestead. Gone is the camaraderie, the laughter of womenfolk chatting around the pots, and the men grumbling by the fireside.
An eerie silence has enveloped this Christmas and the only sound is a soft, but persistent tapping of fingers on keyboards.
Welcome to the Christmas of social media, now replaced by time spent with necks craned on cellphone and tablet screens updating, liking, tweeting, sharing with everyone except those who are physically present around them.
Rather than celebrating with the family, Christmas is shared online via messages and pictures on Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others.
The plaintive pleas for conversation from immediate family members is a white noise drowned out by the tapping of a new post to the ‘real’ family – the online community.
And not only the visiting urbanites are to blame. The rural folk who previously would eagerly welcome their city cousins also have the smartphones, also have the network and also have the social media.
It is Christmas online.
I must confess that this festive season when I visited my mother, my two sisters and I spent most of our time online. I do however remember having a short conversation with my mother when I arrived.
Later, a message reported on my phone and there, it was a Whatsapp from a friend. We chatted until midnight, whereupon I switched to Facebook where most of my friends were updating pictures of the activities in their own home villages. Unsurprisingly, my two sisters were also glued to their phones. We even went to the extent of chatting online even though we were seated next to each other. All the time, my mother went in and out of the house, but after a few days, she could not bear it anymore.
“What is with you and your phones? Who are you talking to? Leave those phones and help me with house chores. I am really upset. I was happy you came, but this is worse than when you were not here. Tlogelang difoune tseo bo mma le nna ke bolawa ke bodutu kana.
“Le batla go mpolaisa bodutu jaana.”
My other sister, still in tertiary, tried but failed to put her phone down. I then realised that I had been neglecting my family and my son. I had gone home to leave the city behind and catch up on home life, but instead wasted the valuable time on social networks instead of interacting with my family as I had planned.
I tried my best to give my mother attention since she had a lot to discuss. However, as hard as I tried to put the phone down, I would suddenly find it in my hands and myself back online.
At that point, I would realise that my mother was again bored and I would have to return to the real world.
My cold comfort was the mountain of evidence that I was not the only sufferer of this problem. When we visited my cousins, we would engage in a brief chat, before they too focused on their phones, posting photos, status updates and chats with other friends. Those who did not have smartphones were left to watch television.
A colleague also shared his dilemma.
“Over Christmas, I visited my grandparents and the extended family at our village and I realised that everyone was glued to their phone. We chatted for a while when we arrived, but after that everyone went back to his or her phone.
“Even when we were together we kept on updating and posting on social media,” says Dumisani Ncube. According to Ncube, it is almost impossible to resist the allure of social media.
“I took pictures, updated my Facebook profile and checked my friends’ timelines to see what they had been up to,” he says.
For her part, Motlalepula Wabomo, tried and failed to make conversation with the family during a festive visit to Mahalapye.
“I was with my cousins, aunts, uncles and other extended family members,” she says. “Even if you tried to make a conversation with people, you would end up giving up and going back online as people engaged in little or no formal conversation.
“Le ko maitisong o ne e re o ntse o bo o bona motho a tobetsa phone mme a nwa. Ke neke ipotsa gore ke eng motho a sa nne ko lwapeng a tla go re bora ko maitisong. Batho bane ba a bine ba nnetse go tobetsa megala ya bone.”
In a paper published online, psychologist John Grohol says the allure of social media over daily conversations is part of an addition known as Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).
“Teens and adults text while driving, because the possibility of a social connection is more important than their own lives (and the lives of others). “They interrupt one call to take another, even when they do not know who’s on the other line. “They check their Twitter stream while on a date, because something more interesting or entertaining just might be happening,” he explains.
“It’s not ‘interruption,’ it’s connection. But wait a minute… it’s not really ‘connection’ either. It’s the potential for simply a different connection. It may be better, it may be worse. We just don’t know until we check.”
“We are so connected with one another through our Twitter streams and Foursquare check-ins, through our Facebook and LinkedIn updates, that we can’t just be alone anymore.
“The fear of missing out on something more fun, on a social date that might just happen on the spur of the moment — is so intense, even when we’ve decided to disconnect, we still connect just once more, just to make sure.”
According to Grohol, FOMO has another, more sinister aspect where the desire to find out something better going on, leads to fake personas on social media.
“I say, ‘fake’ because we often present only the best side of our lives on social networking sites. After all, who wants to be ‘friends’ with someone who’s always posting depressing status updates and who seems to be doing nothing interesting in their lives?” Grohol says.
The reality, the psychologist says, is that there are few things so truly important in life they cannot wait. “I would understand it if one was the President, as they would have a legitimate reason to check their texts during dinner.”