Memoirs of a Lagos City Hustler (LCH) - Part 3

Part 3.......

I recall 2002, I was writing WAEC and I brought my mum's 'GSM' to school, I was the trending topic for weeks. My mum bought the phone(motorola blue screen) for around 65,000 with an econet sim card(now airtel) on Loan, it was so expensive that she couldn't dare take it to work as they could someday slit her bag and steal the phone. I am a gadget freak and naturally my kinds are drawn regularly to the streets of ikeja where the infamous computer village is located.

I visit the village regularly to buy or sell phones and other gadgets. There were great and sad stories that are worth sharing from my experiences on these familiar internet worked streets of computer village. The funniest had to be that of myself and a cousin of mine(only rivalled by that of segun and his friend.....yes! The same stupid segun from my last post).

My cousin Dele had just collected his pocket money from his parents to head to his university in ekiti.I recall it was 25,000 naira exactly back in 2009. The reigning phones were the big nokias; e series,n-series,communicators and slide ups. He wanted one of the n-series which we both knew was going to go for nothing less than 40,000naira but he insisted I should follow him so I could help get him a better deal.
I felt reluctant, but I know how much Dele could nag and keep malice, so I did follow him. Like a trance, the first guy we saw at the entrance of the village brought out two N-series phones and asked us to come buy(like he knew exactly what we wanted).I told dele to ignore him and move on, he stopped to bargain and the guy said 30,000 was his last price...they haggled for over five minutes and the guy told us to enter a corner as policemen could be around. I tried to whisper to Dele that it might be stolen, it didn't just fall on deaf ears but his stupid big head too.

While in one of the corners,the guy asked if he had a small phone to add to his 25,000naira,dele hurriedly gave him his old sagem phone and began testing the phone and checking out the features,snapping himself and recording videos. Then the guy asked for dele to hand him the phone so he could remove his sim card, I told Dele that he should remove it himself but he snapped at me that I should let him do whatever before he changes his mind about the deal. Next he gave dele the phone and Dele's sim he had removed from the sagem back and dele gave him the money.

  

Then he asked us to leave in a hurry and make sure we weren't followed. We ran like fools,taking short and long cuts and finally got into a bus. I asked dele to at least buy me gala and viju for my efforts, stingy dele was eager to buy for me and couldn't stop bragging about his new phone and how much reputation he would get from it. Three bus stops from home in a crazy holdup, I asked him to put in his sim card into the phone so he wouldn't lose the sim card(sim retrieval were the hardest). He brought out the phone and as he opened the battery cover, we noticed this white looking substance stuffed in the phone's casing.....it was soft and upon sniffing it, we could not deny it was the unique smell of 'FUFU'......he just dropped the phone-ish and kept a straight face!!!.....we had been FUFUOOLED!!!

LCH is an exxergerated non-fiction story exclusive to mofolusade's blog. Every name or character is fictional and any resemblance to a real name or character is just mere coincidence.