During this year’s Expo, I faced the wrath of pickpockets. I had carefully stashed away my smart Samsung phone deep in my pocket. Yes; I had finally migrated from old handsets and was now a proud owner of a WhatsApp enabled gadget. But during the Expo, I mercilessly surrendered to petty thieves who sneaked their fingers into my pocket and run away with my precious phone! I had not lost a phone in the past – apart from one crazy evening when I had visited a hot bar in town and ended up losing my phone to an innocent looking chic. That was about six years ago. Six years ago, on one hot evening, friends invited me for several rounds of booze. They were at this popular bar doing justice to chicken wings and Amstels. The previous night had seen us guzzle more liters of booze than we could handle when we fluked someone’s graduation party. That meant that my head was feeling as heavy as a rock. The hangover stuck to me until around 4pm when I struggled to get out of bed. As I was preparing myself for a sound rest at home, my phone rang. It was my buddies who had convened at the rowdy pub. They told me that they had found a cure for hangover. “Hey Diaspoman, come for the cure man! Don’t you know that a hangover can only be cured by an ice cold Amstel?” He he he, how right they were! So I jumped on a boda-boda and headed to town. It was raining but it did not matter. I hurried off to join them. They were in a great mood as they crushed chicken after chicken. I do not know where they had obtained all this cash, but I did not care. I just joined in and clobbered as many as possible. As we continued to enjoy the drinks, our group started to increase in numbers. No! Not fellow guys! Instead it was the strikingly beautiful ladies that joined us at our table. Apparently as the booze climbed into our heads, our eyes started to convince us that any passerby who was dressed in a skirt had to join us. So we pulled more chairs and ordered for more drinks for our new acquaintances. In the process we began to get quite close and personal. We started to ask each other questions such as; “Will you marry me?” Anyways, we drank on for many more hours. The place was abuzz at midnight. The lady who was seated next to me continued to cajole me throughout the evening. She then asked me for a “beep”. For those who do not know what a “beep” means let me clarify a bit. A beep refers to a very short telephone usage. Whenever someone asks you for a beep, it means he or she is borrowing a phone from you in order to place a telephone call with a view of alerting someone to call back. So when this chick requested me for a beep, I found myself pulling my expensive Nokia phone from my pocket. I gave it to her and told her “Please feel free. Call anywhere you want — even Canada!” But the truth of the matter is that I was on Per second billing otherwise known as PSB. And I think the balance on my phone was about Rwf200 only. I then gave her the phone and since the environment at the pub was noisy with music blasting out of the loudspeakers, she had to get out in order to make her calls. The moment she walked out of the pub was the moment I said goodbye and farewell to my new handset. I waited and waited but my chick never returned. By the time I realised that I had been duped, it was too late. We tried to quiz the other remaining ladies but it was of no use. The girls were total strangers amongst themselves. In fact each one thought we had come with the others “We do not know that person at all!” I was cooked! I felt like a real chump…
