Dear Diary,
So there we were, one day into the elections Internet blackout, and Gen Z was walking around Kampala like extras in a post-apocalyptic film. You would think the sun had stopped rising. Meanwhile, us millennials? We were thriving like cockroaches after a nuclear shower. Cue the scene: Election week, and boom, Internet vanishes faster than your motivation on a Monday morning. For five glorious days, Uganda became a time capsule, and the young ones got their first taste of ‘The Golden Age of Actually Having to Use Your Brain.’
My Gen Alpha daughter asked with the existential dread of someone who had just discovered mortality, ‘Mama, what is an SMS?’ An SMS, my dear child, was a 160-character masterpiece. We were minimalists. We said ‘c u l8r’ and people understood. We did not need emojis, we had emoticons made from punctuation marks – :). ‘What will we do without Internet?’ she wailed, like someone had unplugged her oxygen supply. Child, in the ’80s and ’90s, we did not have Internet. No Netflix. No YouTube tutorials on how to breathe properly. We did not have smartphones.
We understood typing ‘S’ by pressing 7 four times, and treated Nokia Snake like Olympic trials. Landlines were for people who worked in ministries. If someone wanted you urgently, they sent a child to your house shouting your government name across the village. We did not have ChatGPT. We memorised notes and passed exams by prayer. We did not Google things. We asked Uncle Charles who ‘knew everything’ (he did not!). Song lyrics? We invented those and sang loudly with our chests. If your rich neighbour had a TV, you watched through their window like a respectful village raccoon. We would stand outside like devoted disciples, waiting for Inspector Derrick.
Here is what this blackout reminded me: You cannot hurt a millennial. We survived Y2K panic (spoiler: nothing happened). We have degrees we do not use. Our music is 95 percent throwback jams. New music just does not hit the same! We have unresolved trust issues, and hobbies that involve suffering. Jogging at 5am. Marriage. We do pain recreationally. So when the Internet went dark and Gen Z had meltdowns about missing TikTok trends, us millennials just shrugged. While Gen Alpha wandered like zombies trying to figure out how to switch on the shower in a smart house, we stocked up on Uganda Waragi because you do not spend on Gold Reserve when staring down five days of nothing but drinking. We are strategic.
Economical. Because we have budgeted for apocalypses before. How did we know what was happening? We would find out eventually. News travelled through aunties, the original algorithm, faster and more accurate than any trending page.
Riots? Please. We went through boarding school where strikes were mandatory extracurricular activities. If you ‘foxed’ (stayed behind while everyone else protested), you were automatically first on the list of ring leaders when the headmaster came looking for names.
We need Millennials 2.0. where we come back and teach these children the old ways. How to navigate without GPS (ask for directions like a human). How to stay without scrolling (just sit there). How to take a photo and not immediately post it (revolutionary concept called experiencing the moment!) Five days without Internet, and this country had a collective identity crisis. Meanwhile, millennials were out here reading old John Grisham Novels. Enjoying the smell of actual books. With pages made of paper. The Internet came back. Gen Z exhaled.
Gen Alpha resumed their YouTube Kids. And us millennials? We just smiled knowingly, battle-hardened warriors. Buffering builds character! At the end of the day, we are the generation that bridged two worlds. We used Nokia 3310 yet know how to clear our browser history. We are fluent in both cursive and emojis. We are the last generation that had a childhood without screens and an adulthood drowning in them. With the Internet back-ish, we are back to pretending we understand what ‘rizz’ means.