I
got my first phone in 2005 from my mum. It was an LG flip phone. I loved it so
much that I was wearing it around on my neck everywhere. It wasn’t a camera
phone, but it had a lot of effizies (An English word invented in Nigeria
meaning ‘special effects’). You could set it such that everytime you flipped it
open you heard some beautiful sound. I used it for two or three years after
which it started to misbehave. So my mum got a Nokia torch phone for me instead
and I gave the old LG phone to my younger brother. In my house, we have a way
of pampering phones, that LG phone was wearing a jacket almost all the time it
was with me and by the time I had to let it go, it was still looking new except
for its issues.
My second phone—the torch
phone—though without special effects, was a blessing too and I pampered it
also. It did serve me well until I went to the NYSC orientation camp in Rivers
State. One day, I went out of my dormitory and I left it on the bed. It was gone
by the time I came back. No one owned up to taking it. I suspected two of the
ladies on nearby bunks, although we were all looking for the phone together. It
was painful as I had many precious contacts on it, some of which I could never
get again. I thought I would find the phone before the end of the camp, but the
thief’s heart was hardened, she refused to release it.
At the end of the
orientation camp, we all dispersed to our different places of primary
assignment, mine was in the state capital. We had to go to the NYSC office in
our local government areas as fresh otondos after camp. One of
the first few days after camp, on my way to my local NYSC office, I saw one of
my bunk neighbours on camp. We were glad to see again and we exchanged
pleasantries. It was a tough day at the office as there were a lot of people,
so it was tiring. Anyway, I finished what I went for and returned home. At
home, I had to rummage my bag in search for something when my hand touched a
flat object. I brought it out and it was my Glo SIM card, the one that was in
the stolen phone. Was I dreaming? How did the SIM card enter into a bag I
didn’t take with me to the orientation camp? I arrived at the NCCF family house
a night before I went to the orientation camp, so I took with me to the camp
only what I would need. Definitely, the thief saw me in town that day and
stylishly dropped the SIM card in my bag. So who was the thief? Then, I
remembered the lady I met in the bus (she was my chief suspect when the phone
was stolen).
All this while, I was still
phoneless. One evening, a brother gave me an old Nokia camera phone at the
family house. He told me I could use it till I could get another phone. I was
very grateful. Even though the phone was really old and had some issues, it was
an answer to my prayer. Sometimes later, another person gave me his old
Motorola phone, making two. The second phone too had a few hiccups, but I could
use it. Later, I was able to save three thousand five hundred naira (I served
when corpers were earning nine thousand seven hundred and seventy five naira)
and I gave it to three of my exco brothers who were going to the Computer
Village beside Oil Mill in Port Harcourt to get a good phone for me. (I was a
member of NCCF’s state executive council and we refer to ourselves as brothers
and sisters, hence the usage of ‘my brothers’). I reasoned they would be able
to buy better phones since they were guys. These three young men came back with
a nice looking phone, a Sony Ericson camera phone. I was glad. But my gladness
was short-lived because after three days, the phone started to act funny.
Afterwards, one of my exco sisters gave me another phone, that one too was not
wholesome. I had four phones in all, but all of them were not equal to
one. Sometimes I had to hit them hard to get what I wanted from
them.
We eventually passed out as
corpers and God gave me a job barely after two months of passing out. After a
while, I bought a blue Nokia camera phone, Express Music. I loved
this phone and I was satisfied with it. After using it for a while, friends
started pressing me to get a blackberry phone, but I wouldn’t. Blackberry
was in vogue then and it was like a class thing. I hated that, and by the way,
my Express Music was giving me everything I wanted. I remember telling a friend
then I would never buy a blackberry if I didn’t see the need for it. In
November 2011, pickpockets picked the phone from my backpack in Ibadan. I
bought another Express Music, same colour.
The following year on the
rig, I mistakenly left my precious phone in my coverall and sent it to the
laundry. I rushed down to the laundry room immediately I realised this. Gosh!
The coverall was already in the machine. The laundry man pulled it out and dug
out my phone from one of its pocket and he advised I dismember it and sun-dry
the components. I did that. I placed the components on one of the sills of my
work cabin. There was a puddle a few inches away on the floor, but it was safe
on the metallic sill. I went for lunch and I returned to a blank sill. My
colleagues didn’t pack it for me. I was afraid it was wind-blown into the sea.
A few days after, one of my colleagues heard an announcement made at the safety
meeting he attended about a phone found in a puddle. He made enquiries for me
about who it was with. Unfortunately, the person was on his time off. So I had
to wait till the person was back on the rig. When he returned, I was back in
town, so my Columbian colleague collected it for me, hoping to drop it at our
base in Port Harcourt before he would travel to Columbia for his time-off. He
forgot to drop the phone. The phone went to Columbia, came back after a month
and then I got my phone.
I had that phone till I
changed my mind about blackberries last year. I now have three phones and each
is equal to one phone in its own right. Lest I forget, two of them are wearing
armours and the one lacking looks well kept.
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