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Thursday, August 09, 2012

The day my phone was kidnapped

So yesterday I was riding the bus back home from work as usual and my commute was going as usual. That until we hit a VERY large pothole (which while rare does happen) and everyone on the bus was just upward and forward... luckily I didn't hit my head or anything. Unluckily for me my phone fell out of my pocket and I didn't realize it until after I got off the bus. Well I tried contacting the bus company (there is many many many different bus companies) but I knew which bus I got on, at what time and where. But, of course they were closed. They are only open until 4:30pm apparently.

So I decided to go for plan B and call my phone which was still on the bus. Finally someone answered. I was really excited! At first I assumed it was the bus driver but it was not. It was just some random passenger. Here is where I made a mistake. I started talking to him in Spanish and he knew right away by my accent and not so perfect Spanish that I was a gringo (White guy) and he automatically assumed I was full of cash.

He told me I could come to his place of work the next day and give him the equivalent of 50 dollars and he would give me my phone back!  Well I just bought this phone two weeks ago and I paid basically 60 dollars for it. So there was no way I was paying him that much! Over the phone he then said I could pay him 25 dollars (but by this time I had him talking to my Colombian roommate) He gave directions to his work place to my roommate and the next day I took my wonderful girlfriend and after a long time of trying to navigate using his very confusing directions we found his place.

I was slightly worried about being robbed so I brought basically nothing with me and made sure we took a taxi so we had a witness.  Our taxi driver was really cool about the whole thing. Well I had no intention of paying this jerk 25 dollars USD to get my own phone back! He was taking advantage of me but two could play at that game..... I pretended I didn't speak any Spanish and offered him the US equivalent of 10 dollars lol. I shouldn't have even paid that but he did give me my phone back without any problems.

The only problem was my phone is pre paid and he used a lot of my credit talking to his freakin friends or whoever. Just like anywhere else in this world there is good people and there is bad people but the biggest downside to living in any third world country is that the locals automatically assume if you are white and a foreign you are just made of money when in fact that is not true at all. Sure I probably make more money than that guy but I am no millionaire.

Well I am no worse for the wear and I have my phone back with all my contacts and everything so from now on I am NOT keeping my phone in my pocket. I owe a big thanks to my beautiful girlfriend Viviana who really helped me out with all this mess. Yall take care,Tyler

1 comment:

  1. Hahaha this is so typical for Colombia. Whereas a Mexican would simply have robbed the phone and sold it to a friend, the entrepreneurial Colombian tries to make money off of it. This is the attitude I see in everyone from the friendly guys who work in my building to the girls I met when I was dating.

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