Greetings!
When I visited Lagos for the very first time, due to what I had heard people say about it—especially the rough, mafia-like, and "I don't care" attitude—I expected to be treated roughly, especially considering the fact that I was a newbie in the city. I could easily be detected as such because of how I was asking questions for directions.
On the first day I got into the streets, heading to where I was going for a job training, I ran out of cash. I stopped by a POS stand to withdraw some money, which I planned to use to get dinner, as I was almost at the street where I was residing. I used my ATM card on the POS machine, but it declined, though my account was debited. Naturally, I expected the man at the stand to get angry when I asked him how we were going to resolve the issue because I couldn’t just let my ₦5,000 debit go like that in case I didn’t get a refund. To my very own surprise, this man handed me the ₦5,000 in cash and told me to come back the next day to refund the money if I was refunded by the bank. He also said that if I didn’t get a reserve, I should come and let him know.
I was stunned.
"Oga, I’m a new person here oo! Have you seen me even once? What makes you think I would come back and not run away with your money?"
Out of curiosity, I asked him and was all ears, waiting for his reply.
"I don't know either; I just have the conviction that you can't run away with someone's money," he responded with a smile on his face.
That afternoon, I was beyond shocked. I saw a side of Lagos that I never thought existed.
The money was reversed later that night, and the following day, I stopped at his POS stand to properly refund the money.
That was one experience where I was treated nicely in a place I never expected.
The situation where I was treated badly, even when I expected to be treated well:
There was a day I mistakenly forgot my 120W charger outside at night, and it was picked up by my neighbors. Initially, I didn’t know it was picked up by my neighbor's girlfriend. I searched for the charger the following day, but I didn’t find it, so I concluded it was lost.
Later that week, I put on my generator, and as usual, my neighbors came to charge their phones. To my surprise, I saw my charger being used to charge one of their phones. I was shocked and wanted to react angrily, but then I remembered that they hadn’t directly stolen it from me. I calmed down, reasoning that if they had actually stolen it, they wouldn’t use it so openly to charge phones in my house, knowing that I always put on the generator for the compound.
I approached the guy politely and told him how I lost the charger. Since we were guys, we had a mature conversation. He agreed to tell his girlfriend—who, according to him, had the charger—and assured me that if she admitted to picking it up outside, he would return it to me.
However, they snubbed me and kept quiet as though nothing had happened. They even had the audacity to keep bringing the charger to my house to charge their phones. Meanwhile, the mark I had placed on the charger—my initials, “K,” written in a funny way—was clearly visible.
I was surprised and disappointed. I never expected that from people I was living with in the same compound.
Eventually, they gave the charger back after I requested it for the third time because it was a "follow-come" charger, not something I could just let go of like that.
Thanks for reading.
Images are mine
