Issue 21: I am trying to hold on to things I can control

Yesterday around 7:30pm, I was robbed at Anthony and my phone was stolen from me.

Photo by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash

Yesterday around 7:30pm, I was robbed at Anthony and my phone was stolen from me. 

I will tell you how this happened and no, this is not one of those creative fiction pieces that starts out with a punchline. It’s not one of those annoying LinkedIn posts with catchy first lines like “You got a job!” and then concludes with something stupid and annoying like, “This will be your portion before the year runs.” Really? You’re doing this on LinkedIn really? Can you carry your drama out of here please? Some of us are trying to get new jobs. Sorry, I digress. What I am saying is this: this is not one of those posts. This is real.

If you believe in fate and all those things, then the story starts at 10am. I jump on a call with my friend, Stephanie and a potential employer. We talk one or two and end it there. It’s a quick one hour call that ends in a positive agreement and we all part ways. After this, I put on some clothes and take a keke to Computer Village where my ex-colleagues are getting some gadgets. I say hi to them briefly and then ask if I should take a ride to Ilupeju or take public transport. Now the question is: Why am I going to Ilupeju?

Timi had invited me to a hangout and I promised to be there. My plan for Saturday was simple: 

• Wake up

• Have the work call 

• Go to Computer Village

• Go to Ilupeju

• Return home with my iPhone 13 Pro and two kidneys intact.  

At Computer Village, my ex-colleagues recommend that I take Uber. I check and the price is N4000. Fair. I plan to not spend more than N10, 000 on this entire Ilupeju adventure. I order a ride and soon find myself with five other chill souls at Timi’s place. We all laugh and play together. I cook yam and they make egg sauce so we eat. We play games and answer questions from Table Top. It was a lovely experience. As we round off the day around 6pm, we took some sweet red wine from a clear and original Four Cousins bottle, everyone double checking to be sure they are not drinking from the brothers instead. 

After some light drinking, people start leaving. I am never the first to leave hangouts or events or any such thing. If we ever go out together, I am that annoying friend who still doesn’t want to go home even though it’s 3am and there is literally no one else at the location. I don’t care really. I’m not going home to anything; it’s not like I have cats waiting for me at home. 

So while others go home, I wait. When it’s 7pm, I decide to leave Timi’s place. Uber says N5700. Again, for December, this is a fair price. But then again, the Ogbomoso boy in me thinks: But I only need to take a 400 naira bus to Ojota and then a 200 naira keke from there to my house. That’s 600 naira. Why do I have to pay 5700? Well, too much Plan, Save and Invest. 

I tell Timi I’ll take public transport so we walk out and they bid me farewell as I walk towards Ikorodu road and cross to the other side. 

When we tell this story years from now, we will say that this was the first point of error: my decision to take public transport. That was my first mistake. 

On Ikorodu road, I flag down a Danfo bus and enter. I never enter Danfo buses. I decided early last year to never take Danfo buses and to sit at home if I can’t afford an Uber. I only take public transport within Ikeja because of the tricycles and small buses, which are still bearable. It’s a personal principle of mine: don’t take Danfo buses. Yesterday around 7pm, I climb into a Danfo bus. In this series of unfortunate events, that was the second mistake I made. 

The journey started good. We stop briefly to pick up a woman who says she is going to Ojota to take Ibadan bus; she comes in with two traveling bags. Our driver warned that they are fighting at Anthony, something about a riot and that we should hide our phones. I hold my phone and put it in my bag, my headset hanging on my neck. As we approach Anthony, we see that there is indeed chaos. There’s some smoke, a lot of people and some nonsense going on. At this point, I should have asked to drop and turn back to order my ride but did I? No, I did not. Mistake number three. 

Soon, we are too close to the chaos, and the driver asks that we all leave the bus. He says in Yoruba, “Come down come down! If they see passengers in my bus they will stop me. Leave your bag, come down and meet me in front!” He is shouting, screaming, while he asks us to come down. He is also not stopping the bus so people start coming down in a rush. We are about seven in total and some people even leave their bags on the seat since they would meet him in front. I hold my phone and try to come down [I was seated beside the driver]. As I come down, the driver looks at me and it all happens in a flash. Looking at me, he hits my wrist with a punch and I stagger. My wrist opens up and my phone falls to the seat. As I try to pick it up, he drives off with maddening speed. The Ibadan woman at the back was still trying to carry her bag when the driver drives off and with her hand still in the bus, she is scratched badly and there is blood on the floor. 

For a second, we are all in the denial stage and we watch the bus in hope that the driver is indeed waiting for us in front and has not really driven away with people’s possessions in his bus. But we all know the truth. We know that this is Lagos. We know that we have been played, that our driver saw the chaos at Anthony and decided to take advantage of it. We watch as the bus that was supposed to meet us in front drives off, climbs the bridge and disappears into the darkness. In that moment, I am confronted with the reality of loss. I just bought this phone back in April for about N600,000 and now I’ve been robbed of it. 

We stand on the road for about thirty minutes, all of us living in denial. The Ibadan woman, bleeding but not paying attention to it because you can fix a bleeding hand but two travel bags? Gone. The girl beside me who also left her bag in the bus stands beside me asking if I have cash to give her so she can take another bus. I reach into my pocket and bring out a thousand naira note and give her. The Ibadan woman is asking where she is. 

“We are at Anthony ma.”

“Is he really coming back?”

“No, ma. He’s not really coming back.”

I know it seems stupid of her to ask that question but really, I understand how the mind can grow fickle in the face of loss. So in such moments, it’s okay to ask stupid questions. 

Standing by Ikorodu Road, I am so confused I don’t even know what to do. Do I enter another bus and go home? Or do I return to Ilupeju? Do I go to Yeni’s house or just enter a restaurant and sit. Eventually, I decide to return to Ilupeju. I am too afraid to enter another yellow bus so around 8pm two days to Christmas, I am trekking from Anthony to Ilupeju back to my friend’s place. 

I am still in shock that I have actually been robbed, that somewhere in the heart of Apapa, there is a man figuring out how to unlock my iPhone or, hopefully not, scrolling through my gallery or negotiating with somebody at Computer Village on the worth of my iPhone 13 Pro. I am still trying to process the fact that on a random trip back to my house in Oregun, I was robbed and now I have to find hundreds of thousands from anywhere to get a new phone. I am devastated. 

If you ask me how I am right now? I would tell you I don’t know. I know I am devastated but I don’t know anything else. I know I need to get a new phone but how and when? I don’t know. What I hate most about all this is that this has put me in a financial mess I did not plan for. 

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When I woke up this morning, I noticed I had a wound at the back of my hand. Throughout yesterday, I had no idea I was bruised. It took me sleeping and waking up to figure that out? What other emotional and psychological damage have I suffered that I’m yet to figure out? I am yet to find out. It would have been better if this phone got missing. The issue is, someone took it from me. It was stolen. I was robbed. A man saw something of mine and stole it. That’s staggering.

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I am writing this because I’m trying to hold on to something. Yesterday, the missus asks how I’m this calm and I explain that this is who I am. This is how I process things. The whole world can be crashing all around me but I’m trying to stay calm. I’m trying to hold on to my inner peace because that’s what I can control. Because in the end, that’s all I can control. I am trying to hold onto things I can control because if I don’t, my entire existence is going to crumble. 

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Thanks to Mmesoma Anaka, Toyosi Light, Moremi Onipede, Simi Jentry and Oyindrop for reading drafts of this.