A Thief in the Night

[Allow me to preface this post briefly by saying that usually, I prefer to sleep on the roof at our regional house. One, there aren’t enough beds inside for everyone so when all of us are there (like at Thanksgiving) its necessary. And two, it is SO MUCH cooler up on the roof than inside that stuffy house at night.]

Well after a delicious dinner and lots of lazing around the night before, I woke up on what was actually Thanksgiving morning to the sound of people talking. Grumbling to myself when I looked at my watch and saw it was only 7 AM, I reluctantly pulled out my earplugs to figure out what all the fuss was about.

So why was everyone chattering away on the rough at such an early hour? Apparently, during the night, someone had gotten onto our roof and stolen Jen’s shoes and her cell phone. [Jen is a sustainable agriculture volunteer from my stage.] At first she thought it might just be another volunteer messing with her, but then she noticed that the barbed wire along the ledge was bent upwards in a tell tale fashion. It would seem that while we were sleeping, a child crept across the rooftop of the house next to us, slid under the barbed wire and made off with Jen’s things, without a single one of the 10 or so of us who were up there noticing.

Well the whole time they are discussing this, I’m laying there gathering my things up and thinking to myself, “Man, poor Jen…that really blows.” It is of course at this point that I crawl out of my mosquito net and realize that my shoes are not where I left them. After a brief check of the area around my mattress it becomes clear…the little jerk made off with my shoes too!

It was also at this point that I remember feeling something grab at my feet during the night. In retrospect, it was probably the little kid accidentally hitting me as he snatched my shoes. Too bad I just rolled over and went back to sleep. Though on the plus side, it might have been my moving around that scared the kid off because he/she didn’t grab any of the shoes, phones, etc. belonging to people who were sleeping further away from the wall. Alas, it was too late for me to save my nice Teva flip-flops (or Jen’s even more expensive Chaco’s), wah wah.

And so, after buying a pair of flip-flops at the boutique, Jen and I trekked off to the local gendarme’s office. I wasn’t particularly inclined to bother with filing a report as I knew there was no way I was getting my shoes back, but Etienne (PC Senegal’s Safety and Security guru) insisted. So we explained to the gendarme that someone had stolen our shoes and Jen’s cell phone. He then of course asked us what kind of shoes they were, and when we explained that they were both flip-flops he looked at us like we’d lost our minds. You see the flip-flops that the Senegalese know (and that I was now wearing) cost about 500 CFA, or roughly $1. Why on earth were we bothering to make a report over losing something that cost only 500 CFA…heck, they charged me (illegally) even more than that just to file the report! So we explained to him that these were American flip-flops. “Dafa cher!” (They are expensive!)

Well after that (and probably realizing we weren’t going to go away until we got the paperwork we wanted), they took us seriously and we started to get somewhere. An hour and a half later we finally had what we needed to send to Etienne and we headed back to the house.

So yep, while all of you back in America spent your Thanksgiving morning’s preparing food or watching the parade, I spent mine at the police station. I suppose I can just add that to my list of Thanksgiving firsts this year…first one not in America, first one spent away from my family, first (and hopefully last!) spent at the gendarmerie. Ah, memories…

On the plus side though, the day certainly improved from there; and I got to talk with most of my extended family back in the States that evening!

[Also, in case you’re worried now…we’ve reinforced the barbed wire on the roof so hopefully people can’t sneak onto it anymore. And I haven’t slept on the roof since, though I’m not sure I can guarantee not to do it when the hot season comes.]