All that arsenic and antimony and lead and other toxins
leaching into the ground. So deciding what to do with Joe’s old phone, I
pondered the alternatives.
Recycling seemed the obvious bet. The new European
directive on electronic waste, charming called the WEEE directive, is big on
ensuring that the materials get recycled, but much of this seems to be
carried out illegally and dangerously in China and India. In any case, even
if we couldn’t prolong Joe’s life, why not prolong the life of his phone?
Find someone else who wants it. I set out to explore the options.
The mobile phone industry has begun take-back schemes.
In the UK, the main one is called Fonebak. It claimed to have processed 6
million phones by the end of 2006, of which around two-thirds were re-used
and a third sent for recycling. But I read an independent study which said
that these schemes were “fragmented and poorly organised” and many of the
recycled phones were exported to untraceable companies. I wanted to be
certain where Joe’s phone went.
Then I spotted a sign at a shop in Sussex promising to
collect old phones, and send them for re-sale in Africa. Their agent,
Phones For Africa, turned out to be a small enterprise, collecting around 60
phones a month and run by a photographer in Dar es Salaam, the capital of
Tanzania. Paul Joynson-Hicks was the nephew of the chairman of shop, called
Cookshop. This was the chance I had been looking for. I already had a trip
planned to East Africa. And everyone along the line seemed keen to help me
hand on Joe’s phone in person to a new owner.
I gave the phone to Carly in Cookshop’s Chichester
store. She had heard all about my scheme, and everything worked like
clockwork. Paul was a bit vague about how the phone got to Dar. Import
duty is a bit of an issue, I gathered. But two months later, on a hot and
dusty Saturday afternoon, I found myself standing at a tiny kiosk in a
litter-strewn slum street in inner-city Dar, briefly reacquainted with Joe’s
phone.
Paul introduced me to Nasser, his technical wizard, who
had checked and refurbished the phone. It almost looked like new. Then my
buyer showed up. And that was when I had a bit of a surprise. Ally got out
his cash and handed over 40,000 Tanzanian shillings. That was the
equivalent of £17. But, two years before, Joe had bought the phone new for
only £10. Paul smiled when I asked about this later. “That’s the going
rate here,” he said. “Actually I marked the price down a bit to make sure
you got a sale.” He said the locals like slightly bashed reconditioned
phones because they know they are not counterfeit - unlike some on sale in
shops down the street.
There wasn’t exactly a roaring trade at the kiosk that
day. A recent spate of power cuts made it increasingly difficult for people
to recharge their phones. So I didn’t quibble. The deal was done. Ally, a
student of similar age to Joe, was unaware of how market forces had played
out in his case. But he said the phone was cheap. And he was happy to be
the second of four adult brothers in his family to get a phone. His father,
a preacher, had given him the money. Then, he headed off for evening prayers
at the local mosque.
So my buyer was happy. And, in the end, my qualms about
the price were mollified by the discovery of what happened to the money
raised by the sale. The next night, Paul took me to a workshop behind his
studio on the city’s outskirts. It was dark because the power was out
again. In the gloom, he called over Justin. It took a while. Justin had
no legs, only a couple of stumps. But he did have a blowtorch.
Justin, it turned out, was one of a team of 25 polio
victims that Paul had recruited over a couple of years, mostly from a nearby
traffic island favoured by beggars. The profits from selling phones like
Joe’s went into training them as welders, and buying equipment. Paul - a
gangling, amiable guy able to win over industrialists as well as beggars –
purloined scrap metal and surplus stock from local traders, and the team was
turning out a constant stream of rather fetching metal sculptures that sold
in local art stores, on the internet and through direct commissions.
Wildlife sculptures are the big sellers. The Wonder
Welders catalogue (check it at
www.wonderwelders.org)
includes dragonflies and gazelles, crabs and turtles, rabbits and giraffes,
crocodiles and chameleons, antelopes and aardvarks. Once, the welders made
a life-size metal rhino to a detailed spec drawn up by a local zoologist.
More modestly, I brought home a small warthog made of nails, a spring, a
couple of links from a bicycle chain and some copper wire for its bushy
tail. It is sitting on my desk as I type this -- a strange swap for Joe's
phone.
In the back streets of Dar this hive of activity was
hugely impressive. So I was happy. Joe would have been pleased that his
phone got a new life. A student got a reconditioned phone at less than Dar
shop prices. Polio victims are getting off the streets and into creative
jobs that are the envy of their fully-limbed mates. Some of Dar’s growing
piles of scrap metal get recycled. And I get to smile at that warthog and
think of Joe.
