BAKU, Nov 22 (IPS) – Driving home is eventful. Our Bolt driver is a careful driver—a bright, half-moon provides a happy ending to an evening of song and good food. Our last night as an IPS team at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
A brief friendly spat over who will hold the most scraps is settled, and my phone slides off my lap and onto the floor. You forgot.
An hour later, I’m back in the room, checking my phone. My backpack is split; jacket pockets checked, rechecked, rechecked. It’s just gone.
“Call 112,” my colleague Umar Manzoor Shah WhatsApp me. I know he is awake as he has to write an essay the next day, so we begged him to leave his work and join us for dinner. WhatsApp web is still working on my computer. “Call the landline in your room.”
I do, and then I realize I’ve called 911. I tell the very kind woman on the line that my phone is lost—it’s not an emergency, just a lost phone.
“We can help you,” he insists, and a few minutes later (and by this time it’s close to midnight), I knock on my door. I did what I consider to be unthinkable in South Africa and opened it to find three smiling young men there.
I explain over the phone – I explain that it can be on the Bolt or the shuttle from The Grand to Polo Residences. What it looks like, my name, my number, every possible detail.
Every time I feel a little embarrassed because it’s a phone, not a real emergency, and the only loss is that it will disturb, and I would have lost the lovely video of the amazing artist from Kasa Masa where we had dinner with mine. his colleagues singing the theme song from Titanic. Video uploads via wi-fi only.
A group of men leave with promises that I will have my phone tomorrow. I am impressed by their concern, but mostly I find it amazing the interest shown in this lost phone, something that is rarely seen at home.
I made some tea, turned on my computer, and decided to try to track my phone. iPhones are easily traceable, so I look online for ‘how to’, check ‘find my devices’, and voilà—there’s their last trace at The Grand.
I call the emergency services again and say I found it, and a few minutes later my three young men show up again.
We check its location again, and it’s back in town, this time at Bolt. We trap it online, as it makes a lot of noise. Someone answered—they called him on my phone. They video call him—he shows me my phone—and I point to it with its colorful cover.
The men laugh and joke—they’ll be back in half an hour with my phone. It came, they came. And so it is healed.
No one is more surprised than me—this service is a true bolt from the blue. I don’t expect another one, but life may surprise me until the next blue moon in 2037.
IPS UN Bureau Report
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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