Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction
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Quartey’s first micro-business was Lawbase, a data storage facility for digitising and archiving thirty years of court cases and legal documents. So how did he move from dry-as-dust legal archiving to an online afterlife?
“I got commissioned to design a simple website for Fantasy Coffins,” Quartey says. “You know the sort of thing; Mercedes for businessmen, aeroplanes for travellers, hawks and eagles if you’re a big man, computers if you’re a geek. Beautiful things. They build them right sweet. Westerners put them in museums. It’s a way of keeping the memory alive, by surrounding the dead with the things they loved in life; the things that defined them. And that got me to thinking, maybe there are other ways of keeping memories alive? More alive? What if there was a place, online, where you could put all the photographs, and all the videos you shot on your phone, and the press clippings and the phone messages and the recordings and all the things your family did, so that when they die, they don’t fade away? They’re all there in one place, and you can go and look at them, and remember them, and even add to them?”
It’s become much more than that, with Quartey’s company adding new features, like the ability to buy online gifts and offerings to the departed, and donations of Teshie-dollars – virtual cash, and most recently, the feature that allows subscribers to design fantasy houses for the deceased.
“What can I say? I’m a businessman. I’m led by the market. The market is eight hundred and fifty thousand Teshie subscribers and growing every day. Those subscribers are buying the spirit-houses, the Teshie-dollars. I tell you this, every day we get comments and emails and phone calls and, yes, sometimes even old fashioned letters, with new ideas.”
In a rare display of inter-religious unity, both Christian pastors and Islamic imams have denounced Teshie as pagan and ungodly. Quartey is unimpressed.
“It’s no different from keeping photographs on the shelf, or a box of newspaper cuttings under the bed,” he says. “It’s not an afterlife. It’s a virtual environment. It’s Facebook for the dead. All I’ve done is recognise something about us as people that the established religions haven’t. We’re a country that honours our ancestors. I’ve just given them a way to do it.” He laughs. “But if that gets the clerics phoning each other, wait until they see what I want to do next.” He waits a moment for effect. “What if I give them voices?”
What? What are you saying? This I cannot believe – and I will not accept. Who do you think you are, storming round here this time of night? Can’t you see I’ve got work to do? Work that involves beer tins, and television? That’s you; that always was you, you always think that because I’m a student I never do a stroke of work. We just sit around in the sun drinking beer and staring at television and watching the country go to hell in a handcart. Well, just you look over here. Tell me, what you see? Yeah. That’s right. You don’t get to be an economist drinking beer and staring at television, and as for the watching the country go to hell in a handcart, it’s economists like me who’re going to bring it back to the way it used to be, when everyone looked up to us. You’re my brother but you make assumptions, Azumah, you make assumptions. I am not a parent abuser.
Moderate your tone. Calm down. Come out with me for coffee. There is a new place. It’s good. There are lots of good looking women. Yes, they’re students.
See, told you it was good. Now, let us be rational men here, brothers together. Listen to me. I am not putting words in our grandfather’s mouth. Let me say that again so there can be no doubt. It is not me making Felix Cofie sound off on the Teshie-net. I’m glad he’s doing it. I tell you this, things are bad if even the dead are complaining about them. You see, you don’t know the half of it, up there in the Maghrib. You see those people down in Independence Square on the news and the police throwing tear gas and going in with the sticks and the shields and the helmets and you think, what’s that about? I’ll tell you what it’s about. Corruption. That oil is ours, not Raymond Kufuor’s. And he and his cronies are using that oil, that money – our money – to build a big shiny tower to take them right out of reach. A whole generation is being shut out of power.
Oh they’re not so stupid as to close the whole internet down like those Arabs – the economy needs all those e-workers too much and it starts the Americans and the Europeans squawking like chickens – no, they’re subtle. You let through a little grumble here, a little gossip there, a little complain and a little gripe, but you hide all the big stuff. That’s the clever way to do it. I’ve been out, Azumah. I’ve been down to Independence Square. I’ve seen what it’s like. I’ve been chased. The cops charged us, the bastards. They didn’t beat me, thank the Lord, but they had this stuff they sprayed – no, it wasn’t tear gas, it was like a powder, but it didn’t burn like pepper spray. It got everywhere. We all looked like big white ghosts. I heard it’s some new thing they got from China – millions of tiny electronic chips each the size of a dust grain. They can track you, they can identify you. No, they don’t do anything like sling you in the back of the van. They’re clever; they just shut down your credit, they blacklist your name so you never get a good job, you never get access to money, you never get a loan to start a business, you never get your head out of Maamobi. Azumah, that’s much scarier. I’ve been showering. Twice a day, every day. I am the cleanest economist at Legon University.
And Dad’s protesting? He’s getting up on his stool and sounding off all these lamentations and lampoons? Hey hey. I wish it was me – that’s the way to do it. They may try and silence us, but you can’t threaten the dead. No, it’s not me. But I think I have an idea who it might be, someone a little physically closer, you know what I mean?
Yes yes yes. Again Felix Cofie finds it necessary to sit up and shake his stick. The impertinent dead? Is that what Justice Minister Kwame Charles Damoah called us? Mischief makers and anti-social elements? I will tell you who are the mischief-makers: Kwame Charles Damoah, Kofi Mensah, Raymond Kufuor, the men who each personally made a million cedis from the West Ga land sale. Our land, sold to the AMC-Shanghai Corporation. Food taken from the mouths of our own people so that the Chinese will have stable food prices. What about our own food prices? There. I have named you. I do not fear you. What will you do, take a dead man to court? And while I am at it, the holes of Kanda Highway must be fixed before the rains. These matters have not been attended to. Sort it out.
Yes, it’s me, Grace Ahulu again. How can a woman’s heart ache still, after she is dead? It aches because it sees rich men growing richer by selling all the things we have placed in their trust: our oil, our land – what will it be next, our people? Our future? Our children? I’ve seen how you treat our children, with your sticks and your dogs and your gas, like they are animals, or slaves. Hah! So that is what it is to be. Sell our young people! That’s an ache, that is. My aching heart killed me once, do not let it kill me again! Do you want to find out if ghosts have ghosts?
I name you, Kwame Charles Damoah. I name you Kofi Mensah. I name you before God and the whole congregation of the dead. I shame you, Raymond Kufuor. Shame on you, Development Minister James Anang.
I am Faith Anang, and I am dead, alas. Cancer the size of a football chewed out my bowel. We all die of something. But I am rising up my spirit house, and I am talking to you, James Anang, yes, you. I am talking to you from this grand and novelty spirit house with all its fine furniture and the French windows and the decking and infinity pool, which you bought for me. Tell me, where did this money come from? You can’t defy me, you rascal, not your own grandmother. Yes, your own grandmother! I know you. Here, all you protestors and students: here’s a thing only a grandmother would know. He’s away on a trade mission to Ivory Coast – checking out all the money he has stashed there. You want to protest? You want to make him listen? You can march around Independence Square until you are dizzy, but if you really want to hurt him, listen to his grandmother. The account is in the Banque Nationale Cote D’Ivoire, sort code 987645, account number 1097856432, Ibann number: cdi10
9785. You’re students, you know about computers. That is all I shall say.
(Television interview with Obo Quartey:
Ten O’clock News, May 27th, 2021)
John Tettey: Good Evening, Mr Quartey. The obvious question first: is the fact that you’re giving this interview from Northern Mali not an indication that you feel threatened by the Fourth Republic?
Obo Quartey: Not at all, John, not at all. We’ve been working on moving our server farm to Mali for some time.
John Tettey; Well, I’m just saying how it might seem to the average viewer seeing the CEO of Teshie dot org, which has been threatened with closure by the government, opening up a new headquarters in another country.
Obo Quartey: Teshie dot org has been a major investor in Sahel Solar, which has brought prosperity and employment to what is undeniably a poor country. Mali offers us stable and cost-effective electricity. Oil prices are simply too volatile, and from Teshie’s point of view, it’s not just economically but environmentally and politically foolish to tie ourselves to local oil. It was local oil that started the problem in the first place. You can’t sell off the sun.
John Tettey: Yes. So it is politically, environmentally and economically prudent, but is Teshie doing exactly what the protestors down in Independence Square accuse the government of doing, moving cash and assets out of the country?
Obo Quartey: John, our accounts are transparent. Anyone can go online to Companies House and look at them. It’s cheap solar, first and foremost. But, if that cheap solar happens to remove us from the jurisdiction of a government that doesn’t understand the nature of modern telecommunications and social media, that’s a benefit, isn’t it?
John Tettey: What do you say to Justice Minister Kwame Charles Damoah, who has called for the Mali Government to arrest and extradite you?
Obo Quartey: Well, I think he’ll be a long time waiting for the Malian justice system to do anything, even lubricated with some of his oil money. But I’m not in hiding. I’m overseeing a transfer to a new server farm.
John Tettey: So, nothing to do with the fact that your company has refused to hand over the identities of people posting lampoons and critical messages masquerading as dead relatives?
Obo Quartey: Not so much refused to hand over, John, as can’t. We don’t collect those details, we don’t have those details. We can’t hand over what we don’t have.
John Tettety: Oh come on, you expect me to believe that you don’t record log-ins or keep records of ISPs?
Obo Quartey: The Spirit Chat Channel was originally a stripped down IM system for families to keep in touch. We wanted it to be as useful and ubiquitous as possible so it could be accessed from computers, Smartphones, dumbphones – it was designed to work with everything, from anywhere. So, it’s become a vehicle for popular dissatisfaction with the government, but I’m not to blame them for that. If someone realised that speaking through the dead gives you anonymity, and also lends you a certain moral authority, yet again, I’m not responsible for that. If those same people start to think that maybe they should encrypt their postings on the Teshie network – we all need to improve our internet security these days – that’s the kind of computer-literate, savvy country we are. Certainly not Teshie dot org’s problem.
John Tettey: But the government is threatening to close you and freeze your assets.
Obo Quartey: Well, as you said, we are in a different jurisdiction here and we’ll have to see what the legal position is. For the government to try and close down Teshie it would have to erect a firewall that would impact the entire digital economy, not just ours. And I truly believe that, morally, it would be a foolish government that would further antagonise popular opinion by cutting people off from their ancestors and their family history.
John Tettey: So the protests and lampoons will continue?
Obo Quartey: Don’t ask me, ask the dead.
Tea? Yes. How are you? You look tired, Azumah. Have they been working you too hard up in Algeria? Hard people. Very serious, I hear. What was it you were working on? Remind me again. Oh yes, the solar power. Yes, that is hard work in a dry place. Tired you look, but wealthy.
Sorry about the sugar, yes, I forgot. I can’t take it without sugar. It doesn’t taste of anything.
Thank you for the money. Did any of the others thank you for it? No, I didn’t think so. You’ll have to forgive Ayii, I don’t think he even knows what you do, not really. Felix Cofie thanks you, the spirit house is looking lovely, it’s so him, all the football mementos, and I’ve added a few things myself; little things he and I would know.
Yes it’s me. You’re surprised. What surprises you, Azumah? That I’m writing the posts for Felix Cofie, that I am one of those terrible dangerous people who want to bring down the Fourth Republic, or that I know how to write a post and work the Teshie system at all? That last is easy – it’s the way these days. It’s the future of the nation – look at that Obo Quartey boy in his smart suit and his Mercedes. He came from just up the street, you know. I learnt down at the community centre. They have special classes. All my friends go, it’s the place to be. We type and have tea. I even have a little netbook, an old homeworker one. They sell them off very cheap.
Where do people get this idea that only the young care enough to change the world? I have eyes, I have ears, and when you get older, your skin grows thin and you can bear the suffering of others less. It scrapes you, rubs you raw. I saw the prices going up at Maxmart, I heard Akron Kufuor from Excelsior Taxis saying that more and more of his money was going on fuel. And I did some reading – we all did some reading, all the ladies in our little network, and we saw why the prices were going up and where the money was going to – who the money was going to – and we learned about what they call ‘resource curse’ and we thought, like a lot of other people, this is not our nation, this is not our people, this is not the way we are; we are better than this, we are better than oil. And it was an easy thing to do, to have this idea that I could pretend to be Felix Cofie, and give him a voice. We are full of stories of people being warned by spirits in the bush and ancestors in the special place in the house and I thought, now we can make this real. The dead really can warn and advise and nag.
And do you know, it’s fun. It’s fun to be your father. Because, do you know, I miss him. Can you believe that? I miss him every day. Oh, he would sit in his chair and say maybe three words a day and never pay attention to anything more interesting than how well or how badly FC Maamobi were doing, but I missed that. And I found I could give him a voice to say in death all the things he never could in life. And it made me remember why I loved him in the first place, what a big fine and loud man he once was, and how handsome. How good he was, how he cared. Life can drive that out of you.
Dangerous? No there is no danger. They will not come and break in my door with sticks. We would never stand for that around here. If they attack an old woman after they attack the dead, well, they are not far from a fall. And anyway, they won’t find me. No no no. There is a new security patch for Teshie, some clever boy wrote it. No, there are more things Felix Cofie needs to say.
That tea must be cold. Would you like a little warm-up?
(Obo Quartey on The Dead Net: Teshie.org,
social networking and social transformation.
TED talk, concluding section)
…In themselves, the technologies don’t effect social change. I don’t even particularly believe that they enable social change. Teshie.org didn’t offer anything radically new – none of the networking platforms do. There have only been two world-changing communications technologies. The first is the telegraph; the ability to send message by wire – and that’s 19th century. Switching and networking. The other is the ability to put that in your pocket and carry it around. What Teshie did was offer us the most appropriate means, and by that I mean the most culturally appropriate. Our small, well-mannered uprising of the dead would not have worked anywhere else… and they weren’t looking for revolutio
n. Just some admission of wrong-doing, maybe a resignation. That we got a revolution – yet again, credit to us, a bloodless one – I think is a combination of unique factors: strong family ties, Teshie.org giving a shape and a structure to those family ties and turning them into a strong weapon of shame. There are guilt cultures and there are shame cultures, we are still a shame culture – when the Development Minister’s own dead grandmother says she is ashamed of him, then that is the pebble that starts the landslide. To be realistic, we would never have been more than a biting fly if the government hadn’t threatened to close us down. Whaaaat? You’re going to cut me off from my ancestors? You don’t mess with families. That started the strikes, and it was the strikes that brought down not just Raymond Kufuor but the entire Fourth Republic.
Six months on, what we have now in Teshie is a built-in subversion network. When the Government went to the courts to get an order for us to disclose our subscribers, that led directly to somebody – not us, some kid in a neighbourhood data centre somewhere – writing a cheap, mobile compatible anonymizing app. Two hundred thousand downloads in forty-eight hours? I think that deserves some appreciation. Then when they tried to shut down the mobile networks, people built their own – and cheaper and better than the private ones. The micro-working companies are moving their servers off the big telecoms onto neighbourhood networks – they’re cheaper, better, and it means people can home-work now. Anonymizing, encryption and open wifi – we are now the world leaders in popular, secure communications networks. The dead will never be silenced.