If your cellphone breaks in remote northern Namibia, your best hope rests in the decapitated flatbed of a long-dead Toyota pickup, not far from the only tarred road in the dusty town of Opuwo.On the flatbed sits an aluminum-sided shack, identified by a hand-painted sign: Okau Cell Part & Repair Shop. Inside you’ll see a generator, a car battery, a smattering of dusty pink phone jackets, and a dozen different chargers hanging like sausage in a butcher shop. This is where Jack Nendongo works his magic.”I do all repairs,” he says, watching three women in traditional Himba tribal garb – thick beaded necklaces over bare breasts and animal-skin skirts – walk by. “People here, they must have their cellphones.”He doesn’t just fix phones, he explains. For less than a dollar he charges them – a much needed service in a region where more villages have cellphones than electricity.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0115/p20s01-woaf.html