ring, ring.

" I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU. You are so nice, why you not respond?"
Quite a remarkable text considering the man had only heard my voice on the cell phone saying "Who do you want to talk to?" and "What's you name?" When I understood that this man was not an acquaintance, I had hung up but my phone kept ringing and the text messages kept coming.

A neighbor saw my frustration and told me that that very thing had happened to her. She finally gave her phone to her brother who gave the man a solid scolding, which worked. I know of other friends who have had to change their SIM cards. That's what those people who don't want to talk to unknown people do. . but plenty of girls are quite willing. Calls here are about 2 cents a minute, and almost everyone has a cell phone, and everyone's talking.

Many families keep their girls strictly at home, except for school. Their scope of interaction with guys is very limited. More and more university students now have a few years of freedom from family rules, and they are forming friendships, going out in mixed sex groups to the river, restaurants, or New Market. But the average family whose girls do not have scope for further education are always well chaperoned if they do ever go out of their home. These phone conversations provide an escape that sometimes ends in tragic ways -- with the girl finding herself as the second wife to a jobless man when she thought she was forming a relationship with a rich engineer. Sometimes, after months of phone conversations, the man's family will propose marriage with the traditional gifts, and it's up to the girl's family to accept or not. I know of both situations -- and the number of these "missed-call marriages" is increasing.

Well back to my stalker, after a week of calls, we gave the number to Jacob's office manager who has the skill of threatening such callers with very graphic language -- "Do you want to be crippled for life?" -- sentences that Jacob is not very good at saying in a convincing manner! Then we found the "block caller" option, and now there is silence. Except . . the other day, when downtown, a girl started talking to me while we were crossing a busy road. Lots of people want to talk due to my being a foreigner, and when she asked for my number, I gave it to her. (How do you say no?). Now she is calling. During our second very awkward conversation where I was wondering what to say, she said she missed me. I asked her how you could miss someone you had only talked to for one minute! Weird. So I blocked her too. Sorry to appear so unfriendly, but there is a limit.