Our Man in Geneva Wins a Million Euros

Abstract

Our man is the consular officer at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Zimbabwe to the United Nations office in Geneva, which also serves as the country’s embassy to Switzerland. At fifty-five and in his first foreign posting, he is a latecomer to the Internet and all its glories. “Baba, get e-mail,” his children said back in Harare. There was no need, he always said. Too expensive, too set in his ways. In Geneva, the connection comes with his telephone line. Night after night finds him enmeshed in the World Wide Web, scrolling through e-mails spun in places he has never been, e-mails that are woven into his life and leave him blinking before his computer screen. He types slowly, with two fingers, his tongue between his teeth. “Like a policeman typing a report on a burglary,” his wife teases him, “at the Charge Office in Harare.” See how easy communicating becomes, says his daughter, Susan, in England. Don’t forget to send the installment for the next semester. She follows the sentence with several bouncing bald, yellow, bodiless cartoon heads that open their mouths in toothless smiles as they wink at him. Baba, I need money, is the echo from his son, Robert, in Canada. Improve your credit rating, says Frederick Turk.