Surviving the Loss of a Phone: Five Notes
1.
In August of this year, I lost my phone in a near-death experience. It happened at 9.00 p.m. on a Sunday.
I was coming home. Not far from my house, there’s an alleyway off the main road. It’s flanked by an orphanage and an Interim Joint Matriculation Board center.
I’d almost walked past the alleyway when a man materialized from the bend ahead. He was walking in the opposite direction, heading towards the main road. I paid no attention to him; it didn’t occur to me that he had something up his sleeves.
That night, the alleyway was floodlit; light bulbs from either building and the houses in front were shining.
I was almost home, so I brought out my phone and put my earpiece in my ears to listen to the songs I’d downloaded earlier.
I noticed that the man started walking as if the road had become too narrow and he had to walk on the side I was walking. Before I knew what was happening, he’d yanked away my phone from my hand.
His audacity was unexpected, his speed lightning-fast. I went, “Whaaat?!” and then turned to demand an explanation for the rude behaviour. The next thing I saw was a long knife, its blade aimed at my chest. I didn’t see when he pulled the knife from its scabbard.
In a split second, stories of people stabbed to death, because they struggled with phone snatchers, flew into in my head and vied for prominence.
I took off. It was a matter of death and life, so I ran, galvanized by an inexplicable surge in adrenaline. I ran, knowing the attacker was right behind me with a knife.
I stubbed my toe and fell. My backpack flew about me. When I looked back, the attacker was already on the pillion of a motorbike, and it was already zooming to the main road. He and the bike man were most likely in cahoots. If the bike man had been waiting for the attacker at the junction when I walked past, I didn’t notice him.
All of this happened in two minutes. Or maybe a little more than that. One minute, I was face to face with a knife blade, and the next, I was staring at a speeding motorbike. The attacker sat triumphantly on its pillion, holding my phone like a trophy.
I stood up from the ground. There were bruises on my knees and other parts of my body. My right big toe hurt so much I thought it was broken. There was so much blood under my toenail. It oozed onto the toe and trickled to my shoe. I couldn’t walk properly; I limped home.
I thought about an assessment I was scheduled to write the next day. I thought about the many things I’d lost in the phone and the many things I used the phone for. I thought about my morning devotion and my Bible-reading plans.
Mother was praying when I got home. I didn’t want her to know what had happened, but perhaps there was something about my footsteps that made her hurriedly conclude her prayer and ask what was wrong.
I stalled.
She came out of her room. She saw the blood and saw that I limped.
“I was attacked, and I’ve lost my phone,” I told her.
“You see why I always tell you to come back home on time?” she started.
I knew she’d say that. I knew she’d launch into a tirade about how we don’t listen to her anymore.
“It’s happened already, ma. There’s nothing I can do about it now.”
The blood didn’t stop seeping from my toe, so she resorted to emergency first aid. She pressed the toe with a rag dipped in hot water. It stanched the blood a bit.
I couldn’t sleep. A throbbing pain in the injured toe kept me awake until Mother pressed it with a rag soaked with hot water again.
2.
I couldn’t walk well the next day.
When I went to the MTN office to welcome back my SIM, I boarded a motorbike, even though it wasn’t far from my house. When I went to my friend’s house to use his PC and phone to write the assessment, I boarded a bike, too.
3.
I had no phone, and I felt shut out of the world.
I needed a phone, badly. I needed to keep checking my emails, keep track of job applications, apply for more jobs, and stay active on WhatsApp.
I made do with a feature phone someone gave me to use pending when I’d get another phone. This meant that I was offline on all social media platforms. I borrowed other people’s phones to check my emails.
Two months later, I got a phone. It was a hand-me-down from my sister, but better than the one that was stolen.
I now had a phone, but I still pined over the songs and videos and books and everything I’d lost on the stolen phone.
That wasn’t the problem, anyway. The files were gone; there was nothing I could do about them. Whether I wanted to keep pining over them or move on, it was my bowl of fufu.
This was the problem: I started having a taste of trauma. When a stranger approached me, my heart would skip a beat, and, instinctively, I’d put my phone in my pocket. When someone walked behind me, it felt creepy. I’d hurry up and walk ahead of them or slow down to let them walk past. When a passerby didn’t give me enough space while passing, it felt like they’d reach out and yank away my phone. I resorted to keeping my phone in my pocket. If it was in my hand, I quickly put it in my pocket whenever someone approached.
Once, near a bridge at Zuba, a boy, tall and scruffy, walked hurriedly behind me. My heartbeat tripled when I noticed his frenzied steps.
It was getting dark. Motorists and pedestrians were in an unsynchronized frenzy. I wanted to get to the junction where I’d board a motorcycle to my destination. The boy, when he saw that I was watching him closely, slowed down. He finally caught up with me and walked past me without as much as glancing at me.
One evening, on my way out, I greeted a woman on my street. She was sitting under a tree. When she saw that my phone was in my hand, she said, “Please, put your phone in your pocket and never bring it out until you come back home.” I thanked her and told her I would do just that.
I knew why she said that. Mother must have told some women in the neighborhood about the phone incident, and so the woman was scared for me. She thought I should be extra careful.
I was—I’m still—careful, but maybe it will take some time for my heart stop to missing beats when a stranger approaches or walks behind me.
4.
The day after I lost my phone, I didn’t get any OTP. I didn’t get it the next day. Or the day after that. The robber, apparently, wasn’t interested in hacking my social media accounts or accessing my mobile banking apps. Nothing happened to them. I changed the passwords of my email accounts. I logged in to Facebook to inform my friends that I’d lost my phone and would not be active on social media for a while.
I used a feature phone for calls, so I remained inactive on social media until I got another phone.
I missed WhatsApp particularly. I missed posting 30-second CCM videos, random thoughts, and, occasionally, memes. I missed the interaction there.
I thought that, certainly, my absence would be felt and a deluge of calls would flow in every day. I was so wrong. Only a few people reached out. I was astounded. I was offended. To me, it meant that I was not missed. Not even the people I thought mattered.
When I got another phone, I didn’t download the WhatsApp app immediately. I was not bothered. When I finally downloaded it, I was okay with being a ghost on the app. I uploaded statuses less regularly. I turned off my read receipts. I didn’t care who viewed or didn’t view my status, and I didn’t want to be seen viewing anyone’s status. No one saw me when I was online, except, of course, when I updated a status.
It’s been more than two months now, and I have not uploaded a display picture. I don’t know when I’ll do that.
At first, I was angry, but the anger dissipated, and I began to enjoy the privacy and quietness I had on WhatsApp. I think I prefer this low-key life on the app to the previous one.
5.
I escaped being stabbed in August. That’s one thing I’ll always be thankful to God for. Certainly, there were many things God saved me from that I had no idea about. There were many victories God gave me this year, too, some of which I may not know. For all of them, I remain grateful.
