Just two days of no rain and This Lagos heat has become a nuisance. At every opportunity I get, I’m either taking a bath or looking for a pool to dive into, or errr grabbing a cold coke.

Okay, we all know that the coke part is probably most frequent. But can you blame me? It doesn’t even make sense how hot it is. The sad part is the ‘no light’ that came with it. Kainji Dam decided to pack up on us too. Maybe the heat got to it. Put all these together and you don’t even want me to start describing to you what it feels like to sleep at night. Yeah, don’t forget the mosquitoes too.

Anyway the reason for this post, some time ago, the heat was out in full force, leaving me with nowhere to hide. I was at my uncle’s and thankfully he stays near this hotel with a quiet pool. It doesn’t hurt either that the pool is right beside a bar where of course cold drinks are sold. I headed out instantly without even thinking twice, hoping the pool would be empty.

When I got there, there was just one pot bellied man sitting on a pool bed. That was okay. At least it wasn’t rowdy. I could spend my time soaking myself properly without wondering how many cups of ‘piss in a pool’ I’d have to drink with more people in it. I said hi to the guy and dived right in. about 10 minutes later, the pot bellied dude got a call. It was just he and I in the area and it was quiet enough so eavesdropping on his talk was pretty easy.

He started telling whoever was on the other line this crazy story, which was hilarious in Igbo. He had bought his wife a brand new Car and 2 weeks later, told her he needed to quickly go see a friend. He decided to take her new car saying he would be back in 30 minutes. He drove to a hotel and met the ‘friend’ who happened to be his mistress. According to him, he chilled with her for a bit then realized he wasn’t even in the mood to have sex after all so he told her he needed to rush back home. He wasn’t sure what happened to his horniness all of a sudden but the point is, he just had a bad feeling about being at the hotel so he wanted to head back home.

The girl agreed reluctantly and they headed back to the car. As soon as he opened the door, 3 guys ran up to him with a gun and forced him and the girl into the back seat, asking him if the car had any security. He told them it was deactivated, and then they drove off. He said the boys were in their teens and early twenties, about the same age as his date, and must have spent about 2 hours on the road driving to what seemed like nowhere. All the while, he just kept wondering why the hell it had to be madam’s new car.

As these all too familiar stories always end these days, the car suddenly stopped and the dude got dropped in the middle of nowhere, his phones were taken from him as well as his clothes. He was left with just his boxers and told to start running. He said; “Nna, oso mgbalu ehn, Ben Johnson ka n”amu olu.” (The way I ran ehn, Ben Johnson is still an apprentice). I laughed out at that point and he noticed I’d been listening. Dude smiled and continued talking.

He eventually got some villagers to help with clothes and a phone, after he found out he was somewhere near Badagry. He called his wife and told her what had just happened, leaving out of course the mistress bit. He chartered a taxi from there and got home safely, assuring his wife that he’d buy her a new car (stemmed of course from his guilty conscience) while his wife insisted that she didn’t care and was just grateful for her husband’s life.

Now he is caught in a dilemma. He feels the girl was a part of the robbery ring even though she later claimed to him that she was also dropped of a few miles after him in just her underwear too. According to him, she hasn’t asked him for money since then and he thinks it’s because of the cut she got from the sale of the stolen car. But he doesn’t want to pursue the case because then his wife would have to know who this girl is and why he’s hanging around criminals. Dilemma? I couldn’t stop laughing. How interesting is it that fate always has a way of playing tricks on us?

So, what would you do? Would you prosecute a suspected criminal at the risk of losing your marriage or let a suspect walk free with your hard earned property with the possibly that they could do it again?