I have nothing against Nigeria

I have never been to Nigeria. I have never met an actual Nigerian, although I think one of the marathoners who blew past BT and I a few weeks ago was from Nigeria; he didn't stop to chat.

Unfortunately, we have been plagued repeatedly over the past several weeks with a wrong number caller. In the wee hours of the morning (1-3am usually). By someone for whom English is not an easy language. It really has not been lovely. There have also been daylight hours calls. During one of these daytime calls, the gentleman introduced himself as X from Nigeria, thus my assertions on my lack of ill will or experience with citizens from Nigeria. Apparently X wants to talk to Mary. He believes Mary is here. Mary is not here. There does not seem to be any way I can convince him (in any language I have tried) that Mary is not here, nor will she ever be because we do not know her.

Sadly, X keeps calling. We got a reprieve for a couple of weeks and thought we'd finally gotten through to him. Up to this time, we had been dreading going to sleep and had eventually been turning off most of the ringers on most of our phones so that when he began his nightly rituals (5-10 calls within minutes or hours in each night), we could turn the bedside phone off. And then the calls began again. This time, X insisted that Mary was here as usual, but also asked who I was and why I didn't want to talk to him. He wanted me to give him our addresses (snail and email) and he repeatedly insisted that he'd gotten my number and picture (!) out of a magazine.

This seems a bit too crazy for my usual life. In sleep deprived despiration, I contacted the phone company to see if there was a way to discern his number and block it (caller id doesn't convey all the digits in international calls and from one convoluted voicemail he left, we know there are more numbers in his number than caller id shares with us--sadly, we didn't save that number) and was told that if, I could get the phone number from him the next time he calls, I could pay $5 a month for selective call blocking. I don't want to ask this persistent Nigerian for his phone number, lest he believe on any level that Mary is here and will call him. And I really don't want to pay money for the privilege of blocking his calls (especially since in looking at caller id, there seem to be 2 numbers he calls from and the $5 is per number blocked). And the only alternative is to change our phone number which I REALLY don't want to do.

I tell you this crazy story only in part to give you a chuckle at my expense. I am also hoping that someone who reads my blog knows of a way other than the feeble and costly ways put forth by the phone company to make the Nigerians leave us alone. Help? Really, I could use a good night's sleep.

[Now I know someone will undoubtedly suggest we just leave our ringers off entirely at night until X gets the hint definitively. Well, I'm generally too neurotic for that. What if there were a family or congregational emergency that someone needed to reach us in the wee hours? It is for this neurosis' sake that I can't follow this potential counsel]

Edited to add: The Nigerians have called again. I called Embarq (our local phone co) and was told that even if I wanted to pay them the call blocking fee, it wouldn't work because selective call blocking is only available for local numbers. Great. So at night we turn off all phones and if you have an after hours emergency and know me well enough to have my cell phone number, call that. Oh the joys of modern technology.