Last week I did something that I have always said I’d never do, after years of dissing morons with blackberry’s I got one myself. Although I only did it for the functional aspect as my job requires me to respond quickly to emails and texts but I cannot deny there was an element of vanity in me.

I attended a meeting and waited for the perfect moment to unleash my new secret weapon in my fight for social acceptability. Just as the meeting was getting serious I said "Man! I don’t know how to work this new Blackberry of mine.” I whipped it on the table and waited for the applause.

Nobody was impressed and the disdain was palpable "Man, that’s the old model I can’t even touch that thing.” As he looked at it with the disgust reserved for lepers and swine-flu sufferers.

I was crushed, this is not what the advert says, it promised me that people would accept me now that I have this clunky piece of plastic. I guess I was lucky, my parent always told me that I was handsome, clever, tall, strong and from a good family so I have never been materialistic.

I remember going on a date in Kigali and the girl cringed when I took out my phone, I assured her that my previous phone was much more expensive.

When I worked as a supply manager in a hospital in UK my Blackberry ruled my life, I had to respond to all manner of request almost 24 hours a day. "No toilet paper in ward 3C” or "Rose Cottage in 4B” that was code for a dead body to be removed, you could have a birthday party in one cubicle and a dead body in the next, the trick was to remove that dead body without disturbing the party.

That is what a blackberry means to me – total communication and lack of privacy. Then I come to Rwanda and they are just a tool for posing.

If you notice the ones who really love their blackberry also love other material goods, you can’t just buy the phone you buy into the lifestyle. You cannot drive an old Toyota Hilux and whip out a BB, now I need to buy a new car. You cannot live in a modest bachelor pad and have a BB, so I have to get a new house.

You cannot have a BB and date an ugly chick, so whoever I date has to fit my new BB lifestyle. Vanity is such hard work, it literally takes up all your time, most guys do it so effortlessly but if I knew the work that goes into posing I would have gotten a "whiteberry” – those cheap white karasharamye phones from China.

I remember meeting one guy with the BB package, the car, the girl, the house, the phone and the pride. He qualifies to be classified as a dwarf, and yet he towers over me when he walks in the room, women just fall in his lap and they even lean down to hear what he says.

My parents might have lied to me, maybe I am not that handsome, maybe I am not that clever, and maybe I am not from such a good family. Maybe water can cure hunger, but when you think about it they were right, material goods will never make up for character.

I laughed at the dwarf with the BB, maybe if he put it on his head it makes him look taller. All those girls he gets are as fake as him and you don’t want that in life. Rwandans are the most insecure and materialistic people at times, I was joining them until a family illness reminded me of what is important.

Ends