I met Allen the day I had my wallet stolen.

I’d ridden my bike to the Piazza to get some pictures developed and on the way back I followed a road that curved high above Addis. Below me was the massive complex of the new Sheraton Hotel and on impulse I turned down a steeply winding access road that would bring me past the front gates. The time would come when I’d have the nerve to turn my bike into the gates and explore the Sheraton, but on that day I was content simply to look and cycle past.

The road out front was still under construction and it was slow going. Ahead of me I spotted a foreigner, the first I’d seen in Addis since I’d arrived. He looked young, perhaps in his early twenties. As I came up even with him I made eye contact and slowed to a stop. We shook hands and introduced ourselves. His name was Allen and we walked along together talking.

Suddenly a large group of teenagers and young boys ran out onto the street towards us. Three of them moved in front of us and the rest ranged themselves around in a circle. I fielded the usual questions about where I was from and what I was doing in Addis. They admired the bike very much and lots of pairs of hands reached out to touch it. I didn’t see it, but Allen said later that several pairs of hands were roving around my rear pannier bag trying to find a way to dislodge it.

If I’d seen that I would have gotten out of there, but as it was I was trying to be friendly. The three at the front by this point were holding onto the handlebars firmly and holding me back. The biggest boy, standing in front on my left, suddenly started laughing and screaming at the top of his lungs and shaking his head from side to side. The other boys around started yelling and shouting with him. I felt myself being pushed and jostled from behind.

I stared at the large boy in amazement. He seemed to have gone completely insane. He took a firmer grip on the handlebars and started jerking them around savagely. He lifted a foot, braced himself and starting slamming his heel into my thigh as hard as he could do it. Again and again he kicked me while jerking and thrashing and screaming. There was so much confusion I didn’t know how to respond, but I thought that if this was their idea of a joke it had gone on long enough. I reached down and grabbed the kid’s ankle and held onto it. I felt a hard punch from behind. Then another. I let go and suddenly they vanished. It was just Allen and me and the bike all by ourselves in the middle of the road.

We gaped at each other in amazement not believing what had just happened. We tried to make sense out of it, but neither of us could. Allen was more mystified than I was. I at least had had experiences of similar craziness every time I’d ridden my bike around Addis. Allen had always been on foot and though he’d experienced the usual verbal insults and constant shouting of ‘you you’ and ‘ferenji’ he hadn’t experienced anything quite so physical before.

Still jabbering about what had happened we started to look for a place where we could sit, have a drink, and continue talking. As we approached this little sidewalk cafe I suddenly broke out into a loud laugh and turned to Allen with a smile. I’d solved the mystery of the attack. I felt so sure of my solution to the mystery that I didn’t even need to check for confirmation.

“They stole my wallet,” I said matter of factly.

Then I allowed myself to check and sure enough my right rear pocket was empty. A sense of relief and amusement washed over me.

Allen was surprised that I took it so calmly. But I wasn’t calm at all. I thought about it for a second and realized that I was actually happy, perhaps the first person in history to be happy at having his pocket picked.

I tried to explain to Allen why I was feeling such relief. It was the senselessness of the incident that had been bothering me. Those boys had struck me as totally insane. Their behaviour was right off the chart for anything I could imagine, especially the behaviour of the boy in front, the one who had had a fit and starting kicking me. His jerking and thrashing and bloodcurdling screams and laughter had been completely deranged and yet there was an intelligence about him. I knew that I was going to puzzle over the incident for months. I also knew that I would end up telling the story in the future again and again and each time I would be struggling to explain it. It was the strangest of all the strange things that had occurred as I rode my bike around Addis and I felt instinctively that it was the key. If I could explain this incident then everything else would fall into place.

The discovery that my wallet had been stolen made the explanation simple. The entire incident was a carefully choreographed scene designed to distract me, confuse me, and allow the pickpocket to get close enough to lift my wallet without my noticing. The boy in front who had acted so strangely was the diversion. I particularly admired the use of psychology. The boy in front had really seized my attention. He’d done it not with kicking me or pushing me. That would have gotten my attention initially, but it would probably have put me on my guard. He’d done it with his strange behaviour and the bizarre laughter. There was something so grotesque and outlandish about his performance that it drew all my attention suddenly and completely. I was totally focussed on him. He’d engaged my entire mind with his antics and I was left totally open to the pickpocket.

There was a particular story going around, a part of the Ethiopian urban legend, that illustrated this same basic psychological technique. The story goes that a foreigner was parking his car at the side of the road at night when an Ethiopian came up and tried to light his cigarette on the car’s headlights. The foreigner was so astonished at this bizarre behaviour that he came forward to watch and left his car door open. The Ethiopian continued to hold his cigarette against the headlight and puffed away so dramatically that it held the foreigner’s attention. Meanwhile the puffer’s accomplices were behind the foreigner and cleaning the car out of its contents.

I’d heard this story several times from different people and tended to dismiss it. Who could suppose a foreigner to be so dumb as to actually believe an Ethiopian would try to light a cigarette on a headlight? But who would believe a foreigner could be so naive and innocent as to allow a large group of strangers to grab his bicycle, dance around him howling and screaming and not suspect that something was up?

Allen and I sat down at a table out on the sidewalk. I ordered a Sprite and just as the words left my mouth I laughed again. I realized I didn’t have any money. I had to ask Allen to pay for my drink.

Tags: bike, Ethiopia Bike Trip, Sheraton Hotel