Talented Fingers

Lagos is famous for a lot of things, most of it being some really bad stuff like bad road, stealing, terrible traffic because of it’s overpopulation and so on but today, we will be talking about the pickpockets. You know, those guys that are so quick with their hands that I’ve even decided to rename them and call them talented fingers, that’s how good some of them are.

_{Photo by Henry Becker}

Well I’ve basically lived all of my life in Lagos and I probably would still be there typing this right now if it wasn’t for the fact that I decided to go school at a completely different state. Anyways, throughout my stay in Lagos, I never really had an encounter with the people with talented fingers because I always made sure to be careful, or at least that was what I thought.

I finally fell victim to this guys one Friday evening when I was about to board a commercial vehicle to church for vigil. Anytime I remember this event, I find it funny that it happened to me when I was on my way to go worship God.

I had gotten ready for the vigil and had gone to wait for a bus at the bus-stop. For some reason, my dad just doesn’t like driving at night so we all had to get into a commercial bus to get to church.

The time was some minutes past seven or thereabout and I and my elder brother were the first to leave home for church and we had left early because we knew there was going to be a lot of people at the bus-stop due to the fact that it was a weekend and a lot of people would be returning home from work, even those people who only came home once a week.

When we got to the bus-stop,we met lots of crowd like we expected and began to wait for any bus that we see in other to rush in. It was literally a case of survival of the fittest. While we waited, I had my phone in my pocket with my earpiece plugged into it while listening to some cool Nigerian music.

I was moving to the rhythm of the song when I sighted a bus coming from afar, one look at my bro and he immediately understood the assignment so we waited patiently. We waited until the bus was close enough because diving in, we and a couple of others. After a bit of struggle, we finally got ourselves a seat but just as the bus moved, I realized my song was no longer playing. One touch at my pocket and I realized what had just happened, the people with the talented fingers had chosen me as a prey and they had struck without me knowing.

It was a sad event but I learnt a very important lesson, never leave something valuable in your pocket while struggling to get into a commercial bus because not everyone there wants to get into the bus with you, they’re just looking for people to rob.