The Tragic Loss Of A Cellphone

How does one lose their cell phone? I will tell you…

On Friday, my groupmates and I decided to take a trip to Dzita (pronounced Jeeta) for a bit of R and R after a long week. Dzita has a wonderful little hotel resort called ‘Meet me There’ on a lagoon in front of the ocean. It was founded as an NGO, and they reinvest all of their profits into the community. They come complete with a bar, lounge chairs, a diving platform, and a monkey (yes, a monkey).

So, after a nice afternoon in Dzita we were getting ready to head home to Atorkor so we could make it in time for dinner. We piled six of us into a small cab on the way there and then we got the cab drivers number so we could just have him bring us home as well. We easily could have caught a tro tro home, or another cab instead, but we liked this guy so we wanted to give him our business again. In addition to that, his car seemed as if it was about to fall apart… and we all seem to have a bit of a soft spot so we gave him a bit of sympathy business.

Well we called our driver about thirty minutes before we needed to leave so he could make his way over. In the meantime, a large group of locals from Keta showed up to ‘Meet me There,’ they were on their way home from a funeral (funerals are a huge deal here). Somehow we got some of them to start taking tots with us (shots). I was a spectator in these activities, but it was hilarious. Funeral goers are good partiers, and some of the men were definitely able to throw down. PJ and Eric were able to make the shots ‘on us’ as they only cost about 15 cents each.

These were very lively and drunk people. They had us walk out to the street with them and were attempting to get us to crawl into the back of their pickup truck so they could take us with them. In the midst of this chaotic exchange complicated by a language barrier, an old man was also trying to find out where we were living so he could come back tomorrow and take me out to dinner or something…

Despite all the chaos, we managed to escape their grasp and wish them well as they went on their way. I did not escape without a kiss on the cheek from this unnamed old Ghanaian man, and Sammie barely escaped the very forceful and strong hold of a Ghanaian woman that would have really enjoyed taking her home.

After this whole exchange we were laughing at the thought of what the result might be of them over consuming as opposed to us over consuming. We can imagine the possibility of one of us waking up after a crazy night in the states and wondering ‘Oooh no, how many people did I decide to treat to a drink last night…?’ Whereas their norm would be something more like waking up in the morning with Yavoo’s on their floor and thinking, ‘SHOOT! We hijacked some Yavoos again guys…”

Moving on…

Our cab driver finally arrived and we piled into the car for our trip home. We ended up finding out that the cab drivers name was Oscar. Now, there are a lot of speed bumps that one must drive over in order to get from Dzita to Atorkor. Poor Oscar’s car, run down and weighed down by 6 crazy yavoos, could barely make it over these speed bumps without dying. Our crew seemed to think it would be helpful to cheer Oscar on over every speed bump. So here we were, driving through a village, chanting “OSCAR! OSCAR! OSCAR! WHOOOOO!!!!” Over every speed bump. We reduced ourselves into a state of hysterical laughter at this, a completely contagious and hysterical laughter. Eric was in the front seat with Karin on his lap, his head falling backward with every laugh attack. Alex was on my left and every time she saw Eric laugh she started up again, because he was such a sight. Meanwhile I was laughing at Sammie, who was on my right and fighting not to snort every time she laughed. I can still see the image of her holding up her hand in the air and waving it up and down exclaiming “I just can’t stop!” I am not sure what PJ was doing in the midst of this. Probably had the window down so the wind could blow through his long Yavoo hair…

Just as our attacks were dying down we hit the bad part of the road, one that just a few week ago was completely blocked off due to the sand that was washed over it during a storm. There was another car driving on the road coming from the other direction, and they obviously did not understand that they should be the ones yielding for us. Thus we were pushed sideways into a ditch of sand, and poor Oscars car was stuck.

No problem! Out jump the Yavoos to push out the car! And the Yavoos save the day. We must be a strong bunch… the car was out in less than 30 seconds. But here is where things start to go downhill… somewhere in the middle of this getting out of the car and getting back in it Samantha’s purse fell sideways and a bunch of stuff came out.

Here starts the sad story of our little Nokia phone. When we were getting out of the taxi back in Atorkor we collected everything we saw that had fallen onto the floor of the cab. I checked the side I was on, and Sammie checked hers. Unfortunately, it was dark outside and we could have easily not seen something that was underneath a seat. We went in to dinner, and about 30 minutes later realized there was no Nokia.

We tried calling the cab driver, but to no avail. As Felix (our local friend) says, once a phone is forgotten in a cab it is gone forever. Thus the fate of Nokia. Gone forever.

Good-bye Nokia, you treated us well…..