For the most part, coming home this time was amazingly easy.  However, 2 things continued to surprise and paralyze me for the whole time I was home: technology and choices.

On the first, there is no warning about the little ways in which technology, its adoption and new uses has advanced over a year and a half.  I came back to a prolific use of blackberries, to hands-free car phones that by voice recognition will dial a phone number and play the call over the car’s speakers, to real-time text messaging that can be displayed on a screen at the front of a room during a speech and more impressively during an AGM, to mp3 players combined with your phone that serve as mini-computers and promise to soon take over banking services.  These changes are likely not surprising to you, but to me it was an indication of how much technology had changed and the impact it has on our daily life.  These changes are gradual, they are not discussed in normal conversation and with the exception of the iPhone rarely make the news.

Technology puzzled me and made me feel a bit like my grandparents starting at some new gadget that miraculously works… but you’re just not sure how.

Choice, on the other hand, paralyzed me.  Did I want sushi or pasta or pizza or burritos or salmon?  Did I want to go out for dinner or stay in?  Did I want a cappuccino or a latte or an espresso or an Americano?  Or perhaps I fancied a tea of an equally impressive selection?  And would I like that to stay or go, tall or grande?

That’s not to say that I was unable to make choices; it just took me far longer than usual and generally left my friends exasperated.  Usually, I opted for a “I’ll have what she’s having” trusting that since I hadn’t had any of this in a year and that my friends have good taste, I’d enjoy whatever I got.

I like choices.  They inform the market; they permit us to have exactly what we want when we want it.  I think choices are generally good.  But I did wonder at the limit.  At what point does choice become overwhelming and ceases to help us find what we want and actually steer us in a different direction?  A latte rather than a cappuccino is not likely to do any lasting damage and even if you get a scone to go along with it you can walk it off.  But what about financial choices?  (Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein has something to say on this matter.  Worth reading.)

Mostly what got to me though was the stark difference between the levels of choice on sometimes rather trivial things that we take for granted (and even complain about) in Canada and that often lack of choices that I experienced in Malawi, Zambia and Ghana.  When you have mangoes, it’s because they are in season; same as oranges, tomatoes, guavas, peaches, potatoes, onions, etc.  For milk, you can have powdered milk or fresh/frozen milk.  You have the choice between Very Hot, Hot, Garlic, Ginger and Curry Masala Nali sauce (or none), but it’s all still Nali.

And my favorite contrast: Music!  More accurately, our acceptance and habits around it.  In Canada, everyone walks around plugged into their ipod/mp3 player/phone.  On a bus, everyone minds their own business, listening to their own music, swapping songs regularly to keep entertained and to fit their mood.  In Malawi (like Kenya, Zambia and Ghana) what you hear is what you get.  If your mini-bus decides to play Lucius Banda, then you’ll all be listening to Lucius Banda.  If it’s a particularly good song and a bus full of women, most of them will start singing along.  If your big coach decides to play N’Sync and Celine Dion music videos for 2 hours then you watch Celine Dion (and discover your secret love of her beautiful voice).

Neither is right nor wrong.  As soon as I got back to Canada, I plugged in just like everyone else and enjoyed ordering a grande-soy-latte-to-go-please.  But it is worth recognizing the degree of choices we have, our fortune to have them and a bit more patience with people who are not used to this degree of convenience.