Many people love to claim that education is the key to success in life, but I would prefer to add that learning is the life itself. This is because education is always enclosed in specific time capsules while learning never seems to end.

Take the mobile telephone for example, a relatively new phenomenon in the lives of most Africans but laden with endless lessons for the users.

This ubiquitous gadget hasn’t been around the African continent for long and is therefore still much of an enigma to many who use it or those who observe others using it.

The typically slow African lifestyle seems too slow for ever advancing telephone technology. Stuff like Bluetooth, hands free, 3G all tend to complicate than ease the lives of some of us.

The mobile phone seems to have indeed re-energised life in the world generally and in Africa in particular. Unlike in the past where one had to write down all the telephone numbers or buy a big telephone directory, these days all we have to do is press the save button after entering the digits and the corresponding name.

However the process of saving a person’s telephone number may be the genesis of trouble. Often times when saving a person’s phone contact we are in such a hurry that we do not take time to cross check whether the numbers we have just entered are indeed the correct ones.

More so, it is always wise to immediately try calling that new entry so as to be sure that every thing has been done right. 

Entering the wrong digits usually leads to a situation that has become too common for some people like this writer to continue ignoring.

I am talking about the scenario of dialing the wrong number. And because that concept called "caller ID” we often complacently call people without even thinking twice of the consequences involved in an erroneous call.

There is a common tech adage that, "a wrong number is never busy.”

This implies that once you make an error when dialing a number then you are almost certain to hit your mistaken target! And I believe this is something that has happened to very many of us.

In fact if it hasn’t then probably you don’t own a phone or you do but it perennially has no airtime. It is a situation that is bound to cause enough frustration as well as disgust depending on the side of the phone line that you may be at.

How to dial a wrong number! Yes I know the heading above sounds so sarcastic but you need to keep reading to get your cerebral coordinates right. The fact that a telephone is an everyday gadget that left the category of a luxury long before a Tsunami could hit Indonesia, implies that we rarely think much when using it.

The cell hone is now second nature to most of us. It is for this same reason that we need to awaken ourselves the minute details of how this scenario comes about. If you are using the caller ID then it could be that you saved a wrong number in the first place. It could also be due to the fact that in your phone book there are two entries named ‘Sarah’ and one is your cousin while the other is a girl you have feelings for. So calling the wrong one can really strain the relationship you had with any of them.

A wrong number can also come about when we hurriedly press the ‘YES/OK’ button and end up calling the last dialed number even when it is not the person we intended to speak to at that particular time. Saving numbers anonymously or using nicknames is another quick way of getting to a wrong number especially if you have a part time memory.

When entering digit by digit or using a pay phone, one may dial a wrong number if he/she misses a digit or adds an extra digit by mistake. Sometimes the pay phone has hard buttons due to the dust and this may compel one to press harder and thus accidentally the same digit twice. My prayer is that if  since you have read up to this part you have learnt how not to dial a wrong number next time.

What to do when a wrong number has been dialed

Since the phenomenon of dialing a wrong number occurs to most of us we need to know what to do when it does happen. The expected etiquette from the person who has called is to humbly apologise and then hang up. You should then cross check the number that you had wrongly dialed.

Alternatively you can simply call up any of the close associates of the person that you originally intended to call and request them to furnish you with the correct number.
Arguing with the person at the other end of the line can only be rude and irritating.

And by the way if you choose to keep insisting then you are probably forgetting that the guy at the other end of the line has the ability to switch you off or maliciously put the away from the ear to let your credit run low. 

In case you are the one on the receiving end and you are certain that the person who has called you is indeed not known to you then you ought to have the courtesy to inform him/her that they could have dialed a wrong number. This is the logical thing to do and doing it politely will not cost you anything or hurt any one’s feelings.

When it all goes wrong

Dialing a wrong number is always bad enough for both parties involved. The caller is likely to be frustrated by not being able to communicate with the intended person while the receiver of the call may feel like the call was an interruption since it was not intended to them.

I recently talked to a few individuals in Kigali. I would ask each of them for their reaction in case they are alone in bed with their spouses and their spouse gets a call from someone of the opposite sex late in the night. Although the spouse is insisting that it is a wrong number the caller presses on with the conviction that he is sure of the number he dialed.

Henry who is a law student at UNILAK and resides in Kabeza assured me that such a situation will simply raise his suspicions over the wife. He added that he would use it as a hint to start taking a closer look at his wife’s adventures to see if she is or has been cheating on him.

According to him, the room for errors is there but that we need to remember that there is no smoke without fire!

A rather much older respondent from Nyacyonga, who preferred to remain anonymous, assured me that he would put such a matter to rest because he believes that any degree of suspicion between couples is like a river, you follow and you will find the sea.

By this he meant that suspecting her means he would eventually find out about her misdemeanors. He said at his age he had no time for such stress. 

As if to echo the old man, Amos of Karuruma asserted that mobiles phones are now the biggest source of marital tensions second only money itself.

He clarified that telephones are like small digital diary of our lives and so they have the capacity to reveal people’s secret lives at any opportunity.

Another gentleman residing in the hyperactive Nyamirambo suburb told me that he managed to reach an understanding with his wife where after 10:00pm they both switch off their phones.

He said they do this to keep the rest of the world out of their bed! According to him, the mobile phone was giving people an opportunity to intrude in their privacy even late in the night.

Wilber, who I later came to perceive as a very casual person, insisted that there would be no big deal if his fiancée received a call late in the night that was allegedly a case of dialing a wrong number.

Wilber insisted that sometimes those calls are from drunkards who after imbibing litres and litres of alcohol remember to call up their girlfriends or wives.

In case such a guy makes a mistake when dialing, he will not take no for an answer simply because at time the brain is way too vulnerable to tell right from wrong.

Another interesting response I got was from a 35 year old man working as a teacher at one of the secondary schools here in Kigali.

He chose to be a little philosophical by telling me that if he engulfed in such a tricky situation, he would simply play the fool and not ask any questions at that moment.

He claimed that asking at that very moment would bring problems and can spoil the mood for the night. He argued that it would be better to sleep over it and ask the following day or simply keep looking out for any other linkages to the mysterious phone call.

I posed the same question to a lady from Muhima called Evelyn and she said that if such a scenario occurred involving her lover, she would not be quick to react. She said, "It would really depend on how much I him.”

She clarified that it all fall back to the level of trust between the lovers. She advised that it would be better to wait and see if this event can be linked t any other.

She concluded by saying that these things [receiving missed calls] happy to all of us. And thus it ought to be handled with care because today it’s me, tomorrow it’s you.

The fact that missed calls are a common occurrence life does not seem to blur the fact that they could also be a source of relationship tensions.

Contact: ssenyonga@gmail.com