It all started early last Thursday morning. I woke up to a conversation between Anna and Peyton in the living room. I heard bits and pieces like, “I’m going to KILL Christian!” and “they’re all gone” and “the backdoor is wide open.” I realized what was going on, and after Anna said, “I would call the police, but they stole my cell phone charger,” I emerged, cell phone charger in hand. After a brief inspection by the three of us, we found that we were missing 4 laptop computers, an additional computer monitor, wireless router, iPod touch, Amazon Kindle, a basket of random cords, an entire backpack which contained a camera, a rain jacket, and some checkbooks, and season 2 of 24. We ran outside and tried to communicate to Christian (our substitute guard, who is a little slow) that we had been robbed, but with his extremely limited English and mental capacity, he had no clue what was going on. We called Museveni, our much-loved day guard, to come interpret and Eric, our typical night guard, as well. We knew that we would need a legitimate interpreter to get to the bottom of things, so Bob called Bishop John’s son Andrew to help us communicate. In the meantime, upon further examination, we discovered Peyton’s Bible and journal lying in the grass and the basket of cords and the wireless router box in another corner of the yard.
Andrew showed up and could not get any information out of Christian and said we must call the police. The police came and Christian still claimed to have no idea what was going on. The investigation then commenced. We took the police on a walk through the house to show them where all of the missing items had been located and made them a list of everything that was missing. The police took pictures of each missing item. Then they went outside and got out a measuring tape to measure the distance from the front porch to where the basket of cords was found (after we re-placed the evidence). Sitting in a chair in the living room was a large rock that the thief was apparently going to use as a weapon should anyone have entered the living room during the incident. The police said that they could do nothing with it since we had touched it. We informed them that we had not touched it, so they asked for paper to remove it from the chair. Anna handed the police a paper bag for the evidence, but they still needed a sheet of paper with which to lift the rock. Andrew informed us that they would do nothing to the rock, but we were well aware of the fact that the police were just trying to appease the Muzungus by taking every precaution they could possibly think of.
Once the initial investigation was complete, the police took all three of our guards in for questioning. Anna and Griffin also went to the police station to file an official report of our theft. Peyton and Bob went to the bank to cancel Peyton’s checkbooks. The weekend came and went with much ado about gatekeeping. Several of us went to Kigali to pick Tom up from the airport, but Bob and Peyton stayed home to make sure the house was always occupied. We borrowed Sonrise Primary School’s guard for the weekend and hired a temporary guard for the week. We spent the whole weekend wondering about the status of our sweet, innocent day guard, Museveni. The rest of us returned Sunday evening and found Museveni back in action at the B2R house! Anna and I ran to hug him and apologize profusely for the trouble he was put through. Our poor, sweet, innocent Museveni spent two nights in prison but was released on Saturday with the mission to go find the missing laptops in town. After our reunion with Museveni, we settled back into the house and started the week like normal, minus laptops (which, I must say makes life as a teacher with no books for my classes as it is, much more difficult than it was already). While we still have a glimmer of hope that we will get our things back, we all realize that this is indeed Africa and the odds are not in our favor.
To be continued...
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