DannyScript

It’d been quite a while since I’d felt that embarrassed…

I was at Lapaz, by a MoMo Stand.

I assume most Ghanaians know exactly what MoMo is, but just in case you’re reading this from Spain or Indianapolis, MoMo is a shorthand for “Mobile Money”— a quick and convenient way to withdraw some of your hard-earned cash—needing only your phone, a registered MoMo account, and some valid National ID.

MoMo Stands are like mini-banks operated in Kiosks (or cage-like structures).

This older woman was by the stand before I got there: the operator asked for her account number—which she did give—and a minute later she was giving details of her National ID—not too many details, just her Voter’s ID number, which she rattled off-head.

As I watched her call out her ID number without referring the ID card, I felt a pang of embarrassment.

You see, to finish my transaction, I was going to do what I typically did anytime I went to withdraw MoMo: when asked for ID card, I’d just conveniently open a scanned copy of my Voter’s ID card, show or read it out to the operator, and be done with it.

This time, I felt ashamed at the thought of doing that—I had just witnessed a woman, probably in her late fifties, rattle out her Voter’s ID number that she had committed to memory, and here I was, a young so-called Software Engineer, about to check my phone to get a 10-digit ID number I had never bothered to memorize.

Right there and then, I glanced at the number on my phone, and memorized it before it got to my turn.

No, I wasn’t going down so easily!

I told myself:

“When I get home, I’m going to take out every National ID card I own, and memorize them along with any account number I had written down”—I can’t have my brain keep on being this lazy.

To the woman who reminded me my brain was capable of memorizing a 10-digit number, thank you—you have “embarrassed” me back to sense!