It is with a heavy heart I write you today. If on Sunday when we departed Lagos together, anyone had told me we would not return together, I would have labelled the person a liar — an agent of Prophet T.C. Jeremiah of the In the Name of Our Father fame. You really disappoint me seriously, and my heart still aches, days after! How could you have allowed anyone to separate us? Just how?
For the two years or so that we were together, I gave you my best. I did my best possible for your beauty to remain unblemished. For a long time, I did not even remove the factory-fitted nylon at your backside. I did all these to protect you and make you feel loved. So many people, especially girls in my office (whose names I will not mention) wanted you. Day in, day out, they longed for you. Even when I told them that even if we were to go our separate ways, Pempo would willingly have you, they did not relent. One of them even told me you were too big for Pempo.
I still asked myself how you slipped away from me without me knowing. Had I offended you that you chose to disgrace me abroad? I remember clearly that you were with me at the Dubai International Airport, where I charged your battery a bit before I went to look for a comfortable chair to sleep on. I continued charging you in the plane, which took us to Guangzhou.
I also remember putting on your power button when we landed at Guangzhou. A message came in from my big egbon, Bash, asking me to send my Whatsapp number because he wanted to send me a story for use in The Nation. He had discussed this with me some days back and I assumed I would be able to handle it from China. I did not reply the message and was planning to use the airport’s wireless to send a Whatsapp message to Bash. Unknown to me that was the last I would see of you.
You were in my hand as we waited for the aircraft’s door to be flung open for passengers to come down. You were with me as a group of Chinese women dashed for their loads even when the plane was still taxing. You were with me when a male Emirate air host rushed to get them to sit down. You were with me as the women made a hell of noise. Soon, the door was opened and we all rushed out. I thought you were still with me. We made our way to the Immigration point. I assumed you were still with me.
As we got to the automated finger print section, I decided to go and ease myself in the adjacent washroom. It was when I came back that I realised that what I was holding was my passport and not you. I also realised that you were nowhere in my pockets. I searched my hand luggage and you were nowhere to be found. I raised alarm. My colleagues asked me to check my bag. I told them you were not there. One of us called the number with his phone and a female voice picked it up. She could not speak English. And because we were in China, we assumed she must be speaking Mandarin. We got our host, Robin Liu, to speak with her, but Robin could make no sense out of what she was saying. After trying again and again, Robin declared that the person was speaking nonsense. Of course, anything other than English and Mandarin would sound like nonsense to Robin.
By this time, my mood had changed. I had planned so many things around you. With you I had planned to keep abreast of developments in Nigeria. I had planned to use WhatsApp; I had planned to use Instagram; and I had planned to use Facebook. To be eligible to receive my calls for free, I had loaded my MTN line with no less than N10,000 airtime. With this I expected to receive my important calls from Nigeria free. I had enjoyed this service in the United Kingdom and United States and was looking forward to being home abroad in Shenzhen, the technological hub of China — if you like, call it China’s Silicon Valley.
After Robin’s initial failures, we decided to conclude Immigration procedures, pick our luggage and look for an Information Desk to see if anyone reported seeing a phone. We also wanted to see if we could see an Emirates Airline office to make enquiries. At the Information Desk, we could not be helped as no one had reported seeing a phone. We decided to call the number again and here we discovered that the ‘nonsense’ Robin was complaining about was actually Arabic. Thanks to Bala Abdulkadir of Business Day, who then felt we should have asked the airline’s crew when they passed through us. By now, it was late. It was past 11pm Chinese time. We dropped Robin’s number with the Information Desk and expected good news the following day. We headed for Shenzhen, which was not less than two hours away by bus.
Throughout the journey I was not myself. I thought of the WhatsApp messages I would have missed. I thought of phone calls. I thought of so many things I had built around you, including keeping in touch with family and friends. I wanted to be home abroad and I expected you to make that happen.
By the following day, I lost the hope of ever finding you. We got someone who could speak Arabic to talk to the person holding you after obviously finding you on the plane’s seat where I ignorantly left you, but your battery was probably gone and no communication could take place.
To make matters worse I could not access my mail because you were the password. The two lines on you were the backup phone numbers and my Gmail was also another backup, which I could not access because Google and Facebook do not work in China. When I eventually accessed the mail, over 100 messages were waiting for me. Some important; many not!
My final take: How did we become so much attached to gadgets, especially phones? Our fathers and fathers’ fathers lived their lives without Smart phones and life was not difficult for them. Their kids went to schools in far way lands, even abroad, and there was no phone to crosscheck if they got there in one piece and life did not end. In those days, they had to wait for letters or telegrams. Now, we feel like fishes outside the water without our phones. You need to see the way I was moody almost through the trip to appreciate what I am talking about. For goodness sakes, nothing happened to Pempo or Toluwanimi!
Lest I forget Robin later placated me with a Huawei phone. Can it really replace you, my darling Samsung S8? Only time will tell.
Leave a Reply