Lost Property 3

The 5^th December started well. A ex-class mate whose daughter had been missing for 6 weeks in southern Nigeria had been found. It was Christmas come early and a giant sigh of relief escaped from us all. I had been pleasantly surprised by the number of people (562)  who had shared the Missing Poster on Facebook. Many also expressed their joy that she had been found. These are people who have never met the 12 year old before. They have never heard her voice or laugh. That is the beauty of our shared humanity. We can relate and send out prayers and good wishes to strangers, and we have the ability to rejoice for others, who we may never meet in this lifetime. I have not even seen my colleague for 31 years.

But I see my young son daily and the two year old made his presence felt by flinging one of his tiny cars across the room. It landed on my laptop screen and shattered it. Now I have no I phone and no laptop!

Ha!!!!

Sunday the 9 th of December saw me on MC duties at the Mansag (Medical Association of Nigerians Across Great Britain) Christmas party. During a spare moment with one of my GP colleagues I began to moan about my lost phone, and the first question was about insurance. I said I had none.

‘What about your Bank Account?’ he asked. The question triggered something in my brain. The next day I found out that not only was I insured for lost telephones, all my household were covered under the same umbrella.

In no time all the insurance claims had been done with the corresponding paper work. I had gone to my network provider to collect a new SIM card and rang customer service to disable the lost phone. If the claim was successful, I would be paying £100 on the insurance excess (Not sure what that means), but it was still worth getting a new phone. I did feel that this Insurance company had trust issues when I read the following on the claim form:

We need to see something that tells us that the items you’re claiming for belongs to you and confirms the make, model, memory size, colour and IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity ) number of your mobile phone.

Problems really expose you. One and most important is I don’t read the small print and when I do I forget.

I am one of those that scrolls to the bottom and clicks the I Accept icon every time. Time to change? I do not think so.

My saving grace is that I tell my problems to people who I consider to have a bit of sense. You know the type who would commiserate with you, laugh at the ironies, but end the conversation with, ‘have you thought of…?’

Telling your woes to people who just say ‘Pele, Pele’ (Not the Brazillian legend), is a waste of time.

It is simple, if you will not read the small print and pontificate on every detail, then you must be humble, be a good judging of human character and be able to take action without having all the information available to you. I find that creative people find the routine things of life ‘boring’, hence the high number of them that get ripped off by accountants and managers. We are what we are. Socrates says know thyself and Sunbola says shine ya eyes.

It is impossible to eat your cake and have it. One cannot be visionary and sweat the small stuff, and one cannot have everything planned out to perfection and expect to creatively spring the unexpected. One has to accept one’s limitations and if reading eight to twenty paged contracts are totally unpalatable, then one must humble oneself and do what the clever friends say or hint at.

Still without an I phone and a Laptop, I find myself on the 12^th of December 2018, twenty two years since the loss of my father. He never owned an I phone or laptop during his life, so I am sure he must be wondering what the fuss is. May his soul continue to rest in peace. I am now rocking my Nokia telephone and my I pod for Facebook; which I access only when at home enjoying Wifi. I have been loaned a laptop by  my wife who has two laptops and I find myself struggling with this fall from grace. Landlord Laptop ‘flexing’ to Tenant laptop living.

William Shakespeare had no Laptop and see what he wrote. Maybe God is working something great in my life.Its the Twelfth Night after all in The  Winter tale of December. Finger’s crossed for All’s well that ends well.

13^th December; I jumped into the car and gave my broken laptop to the repairer. He wondered why I was still repairing a broken screen in an old Hp when I could have gotten a younger model long ago. He obviously knows nothing about loyalty and the attachment a writer develops to the tools of his trade. He didn’t actually say anything but I read his mind. I paid the fee in full and I went back home.

I sat at my table I brought out all my forms and I  rang the insurance company, armed with Policy Numbers, Claim Numbers, and Numbers 28 verse 8 How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? (Desperate times, spiritual measures please).

A happy voice took all my details and asked me questions like it was a Visa interview to gain entrance into the Federal Reserve of America. After lengthy security questions he said he couldn’t see my claim on the system and and blamed the high volume postage traffic of the ‘Christmas season’. I wondered if he was really at the office in front of a Desktop and not sat on the toilet working from home. It would have been impolite to ask.

17 th December; I got a phone call from a nice sounding lady. The insurance company had received my claim and wanted to go over some details. Just for security, a few questions….I was taken aback that the contents of my breakfast plate were not asked for.

‘When last did you see your phone?’

‘When last did your use it?’

‘Where was the phone when last seen?’ on and on she went like a Sherlock Holmes’ descendant.

Then came the joker, ‘The EE letter you kindly sent showed that the phone was last used on the third of December. You lost it on the first?’ Silence. I hadn’t read that letter. The letter that started thus:

Dear Wilson Orhiunu,

This is a confirmation of the date of the supply or connection, blacklisting and last usuage of your device

And ended

Date last used: 03 december 2018

Time last used: 15:19:06

Congratulations, your claim has been accepted.

I just knew there was a catch when strangers congratulate you. Then it came up that reconditioned phones are involved!

Now who wants to share phones with strangers? The argument started.

‘Well Doctor it is written in the terms and conditions’

Ha! Do I know where the mouths of the previous owners have been?

Talk of quality assurance gave me no assurance. Neither did the talk of a twelve month guarantee.

Why pay £100 for a second hand phone when I can buy the second hand phone myself?

‘Well, if you had read the terms and conditions…’

My alarm went off by 6am on the 18 th of Demcember but I couldn’t get out of bed. The run the night before was exhilarating but come morning, the above 50 tax must be pain. No pain no gain. A high profile lost his job due to a run of losses on the pitch and I said, ‘Ehen? Over £20 Million in compensation. Is that a sack? There would be someone in Lagos sacked today and he would be owed four month’s wages.

A text message came in that my phone will be delivered by 1.57pm and in ten minutes I got a call that my laptop was ready for collecting. I drove in the rain to pick up the laptop and on the way home branched at the EE store to arrange for my Sim only contract. By the time I got home the phone had been delivered and was charging.

Lost Property 2

Lost property 2

Once something is missing and you have checked everywhere for it, and there is nothing else to do, you wait. And wait. And wait. This ushers one into that limbo land of expectation. You hear stories of people who did not wait in vain and were blessed with good news. You try as much as possible to avoid the stories that end badly; the lost but never found stories.

Some people tell you bluntly that, ‘by now, if you haven’t heard anything, you will not hear anything' (looking at their watches as they speak). Others make facial expressions that tell you they think all hope is lost but their lips say hopeful things.

One waits and recalls that ‘last seen’ scene in the mind. My phone got left behind on the train by 11pm on the 1^st of December in Northampton as I travelled to Birmingham. I rang the Customer Services number by 11:19am on the 3^rd of December and was greeted by a friendly voice who took my phone number (Nokia) and promised to get back if he ‘heard anything’. He asked a description of the phone, and I said it was a Black I phone 7 in a Black protective case. The case contained my Reading ID Card for the National Archives library and my name and picture were on the card.

As soon as I put the phone down I had officially joined the group called ‘waiting for good news’. Wisdom dictates that one gets on with life and if the call came, then it came. What happened next surprised me. I made sure the ringer was on and the battery fully charged and began to look at the phone waiting for it to ring. I got on with work and suddenly I heard a vibration and jumped. It was the I phone 7 that used to be on vibrate mode. This Nokia just rang when it had something to tell me. I checked and there was no missed call. Auditory hallucinations don come o!

16:05 hours  I was on the phone again to customer services. ‘Let me check..’ I waited in anticipation for one or two minutes then the voice said,’I am sorry..’

I asked when a member of staff might have had access to the train after 11pm on the night of the 1^st of December. He said he did not know. It depends on which depot the train went to. It might have gone to the depot in Northampton to be cleaned or might have gone to Bletchley or London. If a passenger didn’t take the phone when I alighted in Northampton (unlikely anyway as I was the last to leave) then it would be members of staff that would see the phone first. There was a procedure for logging left items and since this particular carriage could be anywhere in the country, it may take time. What if the phone is under a seat? Who would find it then?

Whatever the situation, I knew that whoever saw the phone would open it up and see my ID, see my face, then make a decision. Hand it over or keep it. I started to conjure up curses on any potential thief.

Things like a double torsion of the testicles leading to gangrene and a rotten scrotum, fractures in all limbs, leprosy, penury and hard ship, I could have gone all day but I recalled that Jesus was crucified between two thieves and he did not judge them. To cheer myself I started fantasying about meeting my black I phone again. Peaches and Herbs had a slow jam we loved in the school days called Reunited.

I was a fool to ever leave your side
Me minus you is such a lonely ride
The breakup we had has made me lonesome and sad
I realize I love you 'cause I want you bad, hey, hey

Reunited, and it feels so good
Reunited 'cause we understood
There's one perfect fit
And, sugar, this one is it
We both are so excited 'cause we're reunited, hey, hey

Didn’t they sing it so well? As I finished that song in my jukebox mind Robert Flack and Donny Hathaway started all the way from 1979

Seems we've weathered
Hard times we've been through
In silence I've waited
I missed you (I missed you too)

'Cause you, you and I back together again
Got the world in a spin
You, you and I back together again
Got the world in a spin

Na so craze dey start o! Waiting for that reunion; wishing and hoping that there would be a meeting up again. I am praying for that tiny machine to be back in my pocket.  I am yearning for it to vibrate away as the notifications pour in.

One can see Bob Marley’s point; nobody wants to wait in vain for anything. Not even the death penalty (some are on death row for ten years and they still kill them. Ha!!!). I have been asked how long I would hold out for before I get a new phone. I don’t even know.

Loss is part of life. Christmas is coming, and maybe I need a Christmas present. My own is easy; this waiting for news about a phone. Some are waiting for news of survival of loved ones in the battle front or in hospitals. Some have family members who have gone missing.  I pray all the people with serious issues get their prayers answered. My own is a small matter.

Lost Property

Some losses scar for life. The pain might be glossed over quickly with a replacement but underneath, the scar eats away at the heart. A new car or job can be conjured up after a loss but that new habit of perpetually watching over one’s shoulders says it all; there is now a fear of a new lightning strike.

Not all losses are the same. There are losses with or without insurance. An insured ship could sink and the owners recoup their money from a begrudging insurance firm. The lives lost at sea are also covered by insurance. The families of the bereaved however only get cash payment though as insurance companies, who claim to insure life, are unable to raise the dead.

Most people no matter their age can tell you everything about what they have lost in life (obvious exceptions being those who have lost their memories). The best jokes are usually about losses and misfortune. That is just how the world goes around. A movie will never win an Oscar without the loss of lives, love or property being written into the script. If loss does not happen then the threat of loss was extremely great setting the stage for the hero who saves the day. A successful life is one that has bits of good fortune occurring in between the losses and the failures.

As Christmas approaches the mind goes to a young Joseph in the Bible losing his trust in his beloved Mary after she tells him a wonderfully mystical story about how she came to lose her period. If he thought that was bad, what was to come was even worse. They both lost this same son aged twelve years old when he was ‘forgotten’ in Jerusalem during a pilgrimage. They had to rush back and endure the looks of the people who they asked about a boy they left behind. Those stern looks that ask what kind of parent forgets their child? They found him three days later.

 They later lost the son to crucifixion at a later day, again for three days.

Some losses need divine intervention to rectify. Maybe all losses need some form of help to endure. I have met many old people who have lamented various losses in their lives and the lamentations of the elderly starts with their lost youth and strength. Next is their spouse and maybe children who have moved away.

People of all ages mourn the loss of a childhood spent in hardship; this one seems to follow people to the grave. Not knowing who the parents were is also a life- long problem for some. Parent’s dying in childhood or ‘disappearing’ means the child grows up wondering what it might have been like. There is nothing human beings have not lost; jobs, looks, height, singing voices and even the ground under their feet (earthquakes happen).

A guy once told me of how he caught his girlfriend with another man in a compromising position and ended the relationship. He soon acquired a new flame but his obsession with knowing where she was at every minute was wrecking the relationship. He had lost the ability to trust in a relationship.

So why all this Losing My Virginity talk like Richard Branson?

Ok, mek I talk true, my I phone 7 loss yesterday and e dey pain mi. No insurance sef.

On the 6^th December 2016 at precisely 12:28 hours I bought my beloved ‘chassis’ I phone 7 and was delirious with the great expectations of gratuitous selfies. It was Black and proud with a birthweight of 32G. Everyone around me knew about the purchase which had increased my family size to two (I- pod as first born).  It didn’t take long for people to start asking when the next child was due (Apple Watch) but I told them I was into family planning and had adopted a Sekonda for the time being.

I lost my beloved phone last night on the train. The London North Western line 21:28 hour’s service from Euston to Birmingham caused the problem. We got to Northampton and they announced that the train was to be split; the front four carriages were going to Birmingham while the last eight were to remain in Northampton. It made sense, because the passengers were few and there was no need to take twelve carriages down when four would have done.

I left the train and soon found out I had picked up the charger but left the phone behind. I rushed back but the doors to the last eight carriages had been shut and the train was about to move on. I rushed back to the front four carriages and that was when the mourning and lamenting started. How could this be? Perhaps I was too relaxed reading the newspapers and listening to my I pod. What if I didn’t come out to London for Tedxeuston? If only I had been more careful. Then I remembered that my car was in a multi-story car park in Birmingham and the car park ticket was in a compartment in my I phone’s protective covering. One by one different painful lashes of information began to knock on the door of my consciousness. No WhatsApp groups, no contacts, and my selfies from Tedxeuston all gone. Then I recalled all the pictures of slides I took in four different conferences.

I began to wonder if one can be called a human being without a phone in one’s possession. It was as if an essential organ such as the liver had been stolen. At New Street Station I collected the telephone number of Network Rail’s Customer Services and walked in the cold to the Car Park feeling despondent. Then I recalled what it was that took me to London in the first place. The 9^th edition ofTedxEuston; themed Dream Weavers. It was an opportunity to get inspired to keep weaving those dreams and ideas into reality. One of the speakers was MKO and Kudirat Abiola’s daughter, Hafsat Abiola-Costello, a human and civil rights campaigner.  She articulated the burden of responsibility on our shoulders to work for a better Nigeria. If I cannot cope with a lost phone is it Nigeria’s problems I will tackle? I had to repackage my spine and remind myself that Naija no dey come last.

It was tedious getting my car out and I had to stand around pressing buzzers and chatting with the car park night staff that were not even on site.

The story had to be re-told at home and the questions followed. Going on I cloud to find the phone yielded nothing. I woke up this morning and rang customer services and there had been no sightings of my phone.

The wake keeping was officially on. I started to tell all that my phone was gone. I got no comfort, just questions to which my answer of ‘No’ attracted strange looks.

‘Insured?’

‘Backed up on I cloud?’

‘Rang to block the phone?’

‘Heard anything positive form the train station?’

The mood threatened to dip but I heard an angel in my ear.

‘Wilson, man up and cheer up. You have used your money’s worth out of that poor phone. People had houses that contained phones burnt to the ground in the Californian fires. Stop mourning and go and type an obituary in memory of your I phone 7 (Legbegbe)’.

The Hunger Triology 3. Nothing Else

Nothing Else

I have XYZ and nothing else

A clean white plate and nothing else

The raging appetite so wonderous

The redundant cutlery so omnious

I dreamt of frothing okra embedded with dried fish

But I swallow spit as the sun rises

Healthy appetite and infirm pockets

Weighs out my hope

So many certificates

But nothing else

Cutlery arrayed for battle

But nothing else

Pots and pans for show

It’s a museum in a far away land

I am spiritual

I fast and pray but break the fasting

With salty tears.

I have water to water my hands

But nothing else

I have an empty stomach

But nothing else

I am blessed with teeth

But nothing else to show

I could crunch bone to powder

Then wash down with Gulder

A sense of smell so heightened

I smell hot dodo frying in distant streets

Great Talent for eating

But nothing else to show

The Hunger Triology 2. Empty Vessel

Empty Vessel

The machine is alive

But its tanks are empty

We drove for three hours

And passed an ocean of plants

Yet the government says there is no food

To power my machine

So how does grass grow?

Where food cannot grow

The brains all stopped working

Fine solar panels in dark caves

The creativity is starving

Generator of ideas without the diesel

No fuel no movement

No food no development

Mosquitoes say I’m edible

But I’m an empty vessel

The starving too have ideas

It is all about the food.

The hungry have big stomachs

That pine for food and drink

With trillions of seed around

The pot is an empty vessel

With some much desire for milk

The stomach stays an empty vessel

The Hunger Triology 1. Fridge Vacancy

Fridge Vacancy

A position to fill

But no one seems interested

A white clean office

Air-conditioned and well lit

In coming trays are empty

In anticipation of goodness.

The month has finally ended

But the vacancy remains

I peep through the doors

To embrace that vacant expression

Of emptiness and want

Its  penury’s storefront

My fridge my mirror

My reflection, my life

In a world of a trillion fruits

Not one has occupied mine

No eggs no bread

No milk or butter to spread

White supremacy? White everywhere

A rainbow coloured fridge

WTo douse this hunger monotomy

It is not a fridge but a morgue

The vacant enclave is

Death kept fresh, kept cold

Christmas Food

Christmas Food

In my childhood years, Christmas did not come quietly; not in the middle of an Oil Boom. There were trips to the tailors for Christmas clothes, shoes were bought, tried and then locked away because ‘they are for Christmas’.

Items of food and drink began to show up which we gazed at like that twinkling star that lead wise men to Bethlehem. Cartons of Star lager stacked in the corner surrounded by crates of Coca Cola and Fanta.  These were rows of bottles in wooden crates standing in corners.  No one went too close because they were for Christmas. We harboured wicked thoughts in our young minds about what we were going to do to those drinks. In the crates a missing bottle was obvious but come Christmas, when the migration to the fridge started, nobody could be accurate about Coke bottles census figures and that is when the drinking frenzy went into over drive.

Great expectations gripped Lagos then, as white envelopes flooded the letter boxes (well, we didn’t have a letter box. The post man put the letters between coils of cables at the electric meter) and once opened the cards were arranged on a string that went from one end of the room to the other.

With time another string was needed and we ended up with a giant X on the ceiling. Once in a while someone forgot and switched on the ceiling fan; and the cards hit the ceiling. We just couldn’t wait for Christmas. That was the day you wore new clothes right down to underwear and socks. Complete with a plastic sun glasses and the swag was on fire.

The obligatory trip to Kingsway Stores to see Father Christmas brought us plastic pistols helping to distract from the wait for the big day. Money soon began to flood the pocket as adults grew generous as if the Harmatan air had brought some ‘good will to all men’ with it.

We had chewing gums, Goody-goody, Trebor  Refreshers and Tom Tom all day long. It was a feasting season in December. There was spare change for night action; fireworks. Every night it went Bang Bang Bang as mini explosions lit the night up. Rockets flew up and exploded into numerous diamonds and there was always the smell of festive stew in the air.

When the school finally closed for the merry holidays, a good report card secured extra rewards. One played and ate all day.

The visitors soon began to arrive and like it was in the seventies, you entertained them very well. White Horse Whisky, Cartons of Star lager and crates of ‘minerals’ were how people entertained. Music blared from the radiogram (O come all ye faithful) and a visit could soon turn into a party. With few people owning phones you never knew who was coming and it was not unusual to have three families arrive unannounced. The Christmas decorations where now up. No Christmas tree showed up in our house but there were glittering bits all over the place. We had colourful paper Bells that opened up, bright red pictures of white Santa and many images of animals in the snow (a bit confusing for us as there was no snow in Lagos).

Rice and stew very plenty was the norm. Christmas rice was enchanted and the dodo divine. The moin moin came in its original leaves and one unpeeled the botanical package with anticipation. Once delivered the moin moin was incised through the centre to find out if Father Christmas had ordained a boiled egg or corned beef in the centre. That -one child one piece of meat - ordinance was thrown out of the window. The only limitation to our eating was the size of our stomachs.

Some family friends had a carol service for the children and we all went there to sing and then eat. The party Jollof rice made us undergo growth spurts. The street hawkers did brisk business. Those were the days a driver called an orange seller and she put down her tray and gave a performance of dexterity in peeling the fruit. The question at the end of the task always amazed me.

‘How make I cut am?’

The options were to slice it across its equator or to carve out a cone at the North Pole. As one of the equatorial disposition, I never could understand those who choose a North Pole cone as it meant they had to squeeze out the juice in the South Pole right past the equator north wards to the open cone at the summit.

The kids gathered around the driver (on minimum wage) with begging eyes and the spirit of Christmas pulls his heart strings into buying oranges for us all. With senior siblings on holiday there were more people to pester when the ice cream van came along. Any hawker got called. Mangoes, Coconut, corn, Paw paw, Agbalumo and the Guguru and epa sellers who also put up a show as they threw up groundnuts in the air and blew away its skin.

Soon the bleating of goats and rams could be heard in the mornings as Christmas was coming. The chicken population in the neighbourhood rose astronomically. Like wicked Herod killed all the babies at the first Christmas, Lagosians slaughtered all the animals on Christmas Eve.

Honourable mention must be made of one Jollof rice I ate at new Estate Baptist church in the run up to one Christmas. It was a carol service followed by Christmas cheer. I believe I am what I am today  because of the jollof, dodo and moin moin that tasted like Angel Gabriel had flown by with some heavenly Maggi sauce to sprinkle over the pot (see me salivating here o!). It was truly

Joy to the world, the Jollof has come.

Bottled drinks in crates had an aura in my childhood. You knew they were coming because they rattled and like the dogs in Pavlov’s experiments we salivated and lost concentration on item six as item seven on the programme was imminent.

You swallowed spit as you sang - O little town of Bethlehem- for that Jollof smell travels faster than the speed of light. You feel it in your soul. If you came first; that first term of school,  you told everyone for you did not know who will ‘dash you Christmas money’.

Those were heady times when you visited people with full stomachs and still had the intestinal fortitude to squeeze in more food.

The stars of December with Jollof Rice, Moin Moin, all Nigerian soups, stew, all meat and fish, more stew, Ukodo and Eshia with dry fish and freshly boiled yams. And to have all these dishes being cooked simultaneously was one of the joys of being alive then. The frying of meat was also good as you could take a piece from the already prepared heap without anyone noticing. Like all families we had myths of Christmas that have been told through the years.

Like the time when mum brought home a frozen Turkey as hand luggage from London as she was landing back in Lagos on Christmas Eve .  But the biggest story was that of the Turkey my father brought home that became part of the family. It knew us and played with us when we fed it. It was a tragic day when it faced execution on that Christmas Eve. Just like Ikemefuna cried to Okonkwo that faithful night when things fell apart, so did our Turkey. ‘My Father, My father’ it screamed looking at the family conjuring up further images of a fearful young Elisha crying as Elijah ascended to heaven. The last words the Turkey heard before the brutal beheading was ‘Father for what? In this Lagos?’

I was moved to my soul and lowered my young head in quiet prayer. ‘May your flesh rest in peace on my plate of jollof rice come Christmas day’.

Halleluyah! My prayers were answered