Nigerian Love Note

A couple months ago, I attended a World Bank conference in Cotonou. After a coffee break, it was announced that somebody had had a phone go missing. I didn’t think much of it, but when I later looked in my bag, I saw that my iPod and pocket video camera were missing. I reported it to the facility manager, who couldn’t have cared less, and wrote my electronic toys off as lost (I was particularly annoyed because I had just received that iPod from the US two days before).

The next day, while walking into the building for the second day of the conference, my colleague Simplice spotted a teenage kid who had been sitting behind us in the conference room the previous room. Simplice had suspected him as he obviously looked out of place among a bunch of middle-aged guys in suits. He gave us a “bonjour” as we walked by looking at him suspiciously.

At the morning coffee break, there was the kid, helping himself to sandwiches and a Coke. Simplice walked up to him and asked who he was and what he was doing there. The kid said he was just attending the conference because he was interested in the topic. Everybody was a bit suspicious that this teenager was that interested in the mid-term review of the World Bank Malaria Booster Program in Benin. To his credit, the kid played it cool and stuck with his story for a couple of hours. Finally, after calling the police, he broke down and admitted that he had stolen the phones and my iPod and video camera. Unfortunately, he had already sold everything the previous day. With that, the cop loaded him into a car and they went searching the streets for the people who had bought the stolen items. I cynically laughed at their futile attempt to find these random guys somewhere on the streets of Cotonou, but was impressed that they were at least making an effort.

At lunch I walked out of the conference room just in time to see the cop coming in leading two guys by the arm into a side room. They had bought the two stolen phones (which were recovered) and were now being interrogated by an ever-growing group of people. One of the guys was a young Beninese and the other was a Nigerian man that didn’t speak any French. Both were visibly very nervous. As the group of observers got larger, the interrogating turned into heckling and threatening, taking turns abusing the Nigerian in English and the Beninese in French. As the heckling escalated – people started telling them that they were going to go to prison and would get their fingers chopped off – the guys were becoming more and more panicked. At this point, the Beninese kid started sobbing uncontrollably and raised his hands in prayer with pleas to God for help. The Nigerian is talking non-stop to anyone that will listen to him. The crowd from the conference is enjoying the whole scene immensely and the more the kid cries, the harder they laugh. I was starting to feel really bad for these poor guys – I mean all they really did was buy a phone. I wanted to go give the kid a hug and tell him nobody was going to cut his fingers off. Mob justice is alive and well in Africa.

Then all of a sudden the cop walks in triumphantly with two new guys in tow and raises up my iPod and camera in victory. I’m shocked. I never thought in a million years I would ever see them again. The new guys are another Beninese and a Nigerian. Instead of handing me my things, the cop pulls me, the purchasers, and the kid who stole the stuff into a back room. I’m sure this will be the request for payment for services rendered. But, instead he explains that they found the stolen items, hands them back to me, and explains that they will deal with the thieves and I can go. I’m not sure what he had in store for those involved, but I imagine it involves them paying him to let them go.

Months later, I was looking through the videos on my camera and found some random Nigerian guy talking up at me. Before having his new purchase rudely taken from him, the guy who had bought my camera had recorded a love note to a girl (that he had never met). I was so touched, I just had to share it.