Robbed

Well, dear readers, today's lesson is that The Gate and walls and door locks and all the other security features around here are, in fact, more than status symbols and apparently serve a purpose after all.  

This morning Caleb woke up at 2:30 am for his 3 am council meeting.  He got out of bed and walked sleepily toward the living room, when he heard something/sensed something off.  As he walked into the living room, the lights were on (he remembered turning them off when he went to bed) and the front door (which he had closed, but not locked) was open.  With the lights on inside, he couldn't see anything in the dark outside.  He thought "weapon!" and rushed back into the bedroom to grab his gorilla staff/walking stick, and came back to the living room.  He turned off the interior lights, locked the front door, and looked out several windows to see if he could spot a threat.  After seeing nothing, he turned on the outdoor lights and spotted a man walking away from the house very slowly and casually.  This was quite unnerving until he had a hunch that it was Theo, our landscaper/security guard that lives on site.  Under closer inspection, he could see the man was only wearing boxers, so he stepped out and called for Theo, who replied.  The two of them had an awkward, language barrier game of charades.  Caleb figured that the sound he heard and the open door were not Theo, and that both of them were doing the same thing..."what was that?"

A little concerned, but safe enough, Caleb turned his attention back to getting connected for his meeting.  That ran until about 7 am, and when I got up to get the kids off to school and came out to the living room, Caleb told me about the weird middle-of-the-night experience, at which point I noticed that (yep) our TV was gone.  (Caleb hadn't noticed until then.)

Aftermath:  After looking around the room, we determined that nothing else was missing.  In fractured communication with Theo and Violeta, and clearer communication with our landlord Odette (who lives in Ireland most of the time but is from here and speaks Kinyarwanda, so was able to translate), we understand a few things: 1) we were dumb for not locking up; 2) the theory is that the thief/thieves jumped into our neighbors yard over a low point in their wall, and then into ours at a low point without razor wire between the two properties; and 3) the security camera at our front door was disconnected - apparently the last tenants here didn't like the invasion of privacy.  We apologized for #1 and promised to do better on that front, plans are in place to build up the wall to address #2, and there's a crew out front now re-installing the security cameras.  

Emotionally, Caleb and I have been on a bit of a ride today.  Definitely shaken and dumbstruck this morning... that icky feeling of knowing our home & safe space were invaded.  When I walked out of The Gate to bring Lexi to school, I had a moment of looking at our neighbors and thinking "Which one of you did this?"  But I immediately hated that thought and let it go.  It's quite possible (likely?) that the thief/thieves are people we've seen, maybe smiled and waved and Mwaramutse'd at.  But as we've been saying, the injustice of what we have next to so much not-having is so enormous and obvious, and my anger at the individual who (at fairly great effort and risk) took a valuable item from our (temporary) home feels misplaced.  We also know this is not unique to this place... and as Caleb pointed out, we've had a car stolen in San Francisco, our house robbed in Durham, and our car broken into in front of our house in safe little Louisville.  In retrospect, we were naïve in our belief that Rwanda was uniquely NOT prone to these types of property crimes.  We don't think the thief was here to hurt us, though we do feel a little less safe and will be more careful about locking up.  And then, we'll try to just keep doing what we've been doing... learning and connecting and all of that.  

Lexi was the only one of the three kids who noticed the missing TV this morning.  I just told her I didn't know where it was and needed to talk to Theo about it.  She went to a friend's house after school so we haven't really discussed yet with her.  Athena and Mazie seem ok.  Athena's response was, "We didn't really watch that TV a lot anyway."  Which is true... they're mostly on their own tiny screens at home. (But... we probably need to replace the owner's TV, since we didn't do our part by locking up.) So, we're going to be ok, I guess.

This is where the TV should be.  Front door is two feet to the right. Nintendo Switch unharmed. My most precious possession, Wingspan, is also safe.