This past Sunday night I went over to Briana's house to watch a movie. I brought my backpack and my computer to watch the movie, my external cause thats where all my movies are, and my ipod also happened to be in my backpack along with the equivalent of 20 American dollars (not chump change here). The movie ended late so I decided to stay the night at Briana's. It also had been a long day so I fell asleep quickly and like a rock...
Around 11:50pm both Bri and myself woke up to a loud crash. I sleep like its permanent so I didn't exactly jump up. Briana asked me what the noise was and in my sleepy stupor I said, "it's probably just the rain and the wind." In my defense it was raining pretty hard that night.
Briana's new house in Manakara is two floors. After a few minutes she convinced me to go take a look downstairs. I was still half asleep so it took me a while to notice one of the windows was wide open and it had a gaping hole in the middle of it.
Instant panic set in.
I quickly realized that we left my computer and charger on the table after we finished the movie...
Gone.
I checked on the shelf near the kitchen where Briana keeps her smaller electronics like her Malagasy phone, iPod, speaker, chargers, etc.
Gone.
I saw a purse of Briana's on the ground near the wall where she hangs bags. It's the same place I had put my backpack earlier that night. It's also where Briana puts her purse containing her wallet, bank cards, ID and money.
Gone.
We went into another room to make sure our bikes were still there (note: it would have seemed impossible to fit bikes out this window to anyone who hadn't just woken up). Then we checked for our saddle bags which we use to carry things when we bike.
Bikes there. Bags gone.
This all took about 30 seconds and then I ran back to the broken window to see if I could see anything.
Nope.
Goosebumps the size of the biggest mole you've ever seen set in all over my body. I just couldn't move. I have never felt instant shock like that. I have been robbed before here in Peace Corps, but this felt much worse. This was in my town by forced entry. The previous time was on vacation in a hotel probably by a guard with a key. Both of them unfortunately happened in the middle of the night.
Briana and I started surveying items on the first floor of the house but we obviously weren't going to go running down the street in the middle of the night looking for someone with a shit load of electronics.
After taking an inventory we came up with the following list of stolen items:
-A 15" MacBook pro, charger and converter.
-2 iPods
-A phone
-A digital camera
-2 backpacks - one including all my lessons, teacher training materials and USBs.
-2 saddle bags
-Briana's purse and wallet
-A small speaker
-A few souvenir purses
These things combined for a grand total of about $2,000 or roughly 1/3 of a PCV's earnings for 2 years.
We decided to tell Briana's landlord (she lives next door) about an hour after the incident. They helped calm us down and remind us there was nothing we could do now but to wait to go to the Police in the morning. Needless to say, neither of us got much sleep after that.
I'm not going to try not to give too much of my personal opinion here because I don't know who reads this stuff (just a reminder that these are my opinions and not the opinion of Peace Corps), but after dealing with the authorities after my first burglary, I wasn't too pumped or encouraged to do it again. Unfortunately, we had lost too much not to go.
There are two authorities here: 1 is the police which serves all cities and major towns. The other is the Gendarmerie which serves in rural areas.
We went to both offices in Manakara.
First, at the Police station, we filled out reports and explained all the things we lost. Then, we asked for more specifics on how the Police go about finding things that are stolen. As opposed to answering the question, they said: "don't worry, we'll find it" or "don't be sad" and even "how many friends do you have in surrounding towns? You should call them and tell them to be on the lookout for people selling your stuff."
Sorry, I thought that was your job?
I asked one officer what they would do around Manakara to look for these items. He responded by saying, "well, you should look around in all the small electronic stores and the small shacks where people fix computers, phones, and things like that."
I thought, "wait me? I don't know the first thing about investigative work." Needless to say, we weren't quite pumped about our odds when we left the police station.
The Gendarmes was no better. We gave them our comprehensive list of lost items to the guy in charge. He dutifully slid it into the middle of a massive stack of papers, told us he would let us know if he heard anything, and said goodbye. Unsatisfied, we asked a few questions which were all met with lazy answers so we left.
Briana lost her Malagasy ID card and her bank card so we had to return to the Police station with passport photos and another piece of paper with the lost items. The purpose being that these completed papers would help her get replacement cards. We were expecting another disappointing string of empty promises, but we were actually surprised to hear about the stuff that had happened since we left.
The Police brought in a sort of "undercover investigator." I write this in quotes because he is not employed by the police and if you saw him you would know that this dude is definitely not some PI. Turns out he used to be a thief himself but recently changed sides and then was brought in by the Police to help them solve robbery and burglary cases. Well, this guy, we'll call him Bill (I've always wanted to pretend like I need to conceal someone's identity in a story), took down another list of all the stuff we lost and took off like a ghost. Sketchy doesn't come close to characterizing this dude.
We left to go back and get some lunch with the intention of returning to the police in the afternoon to question a carpenter (the only Malagasy person who had been in the house since Briana got it and the only one with the unique knowledge of the lesser security on the window that was broken into).
We ate lunch and then decided to get our afternoon going as it was full of more paperwork, interviews, and sending updates to Peace Corps. Briana went upstairs to grab a USB (both of mine were stolen in my backpack) to use to scan & send the police reports to Peace Corps. When she got upstairs she screamed, "oh my god!" My stomach just sunk.
"They took our externals!" she said.
The silver lining in all of this was that I had recently backed up everything on my computer and Briana still had all her pictures (despite her stolen camera) and everything else on her external. Now, it was all gone.
Briana went back downstairs to check to see if she moved the externals to her trunk at some point. When I heard her sobbing down there I knew she didn't find them. That was easily our lowest point of the day. Not only did we lose the externals but we realized these guys were only a few feet from us while we were sleeping and we had no idea.
We went back to the Police station and told them about the externals. They wouldn't even add it to their report because it meant more work for them. They just laughed at the idea that we could sleep through such a thing. Despite all their help we left and went to send some forms to Peace Corps before returning back to Briana's house. We intended to pack up some of her things to bring to my house or to a hotel for the night when Bill called and told us to meet him.
Again, sketchy doesn't even scratch the surface. Around 6:30pm we went to meet Bill in a public area. He told us he found a friend of the person who broke into Briana's house and they wanted 13,000 ariary (half for him and half for the friend) to go to the thief's house, get all of our stuff, and then he would call us with confirmation later that night.
We were ecstatic! Sketchy investigator Bill came through! 13,000Ar is about $5 so it was nothing in the scheme of what we had lost. We agreed that he would call us that night if he found anything. If not, we would meet him at the Police station in the morning to find out what happened.
He never called.
On Tuesday morning, Briana and I returned to the Police station. We were met by two of the same officers from the day before and one new guy. They asked us to write down everything we had lost. I started to get annoyed. Then, some guy with aviators walks in and starts asking for exact brand names of everything we lost cause he was the big fish investigator in the office and he would make everything alright. He started talking himself up and I snapped...
"Do you all not work together here? Why are we filling out a form about all the stuff we lost for the 3rd time?! You already have it all! If he's the big investigator why wasn't he told yesterday?!"
Briana shut me up by reminding me that if we piss them off they would simply dismiss us and not do anything to help (not that much was being done to this point). So, I finished yet another list and handed it off. We haven't heard from that guy since.
Not long after that the guy we had really been working with the day before showed up, but with no new information. We told him about our meeting with Bill the previous night and he was shocked. "Great," we thought. This dude has no idea that Bill had a lead which means Bill probably never had a lead.
He said he forgot to tell us the previous day that we should only pay Bill once he has everything and we have seen it. Unfortunately, the previous day he just told us that if Bill does his job, you need to pay him. We figured he was doing his job, so we paid him not wanting to pass up the opportunity to get all of our stuff back and went back to Briana's house.
We went to leave the Police station feeling depressed once again when Bill showed up. He walked in and told some story about why he didn't have our stuff and why he didn't have a phone and then said he knows who broke into our house. 2 men, one who lives right near Briana, were the culprits according to Bill. Naturally, we were taking everything he said with a grain of salt at this point. Instantly, the officer and Bill were best buds again solidified by a "good job" pat on the shoulder.
At this point our emotional capacity to endure was about zilch. We had just lost everything, the Police didn't really seem to care to help, Bill appeared to be the greatest con man/investigator Madagascar has ever seen, and on top of it all we remembered we gave up years of our lives to come here to help others, but we can't trust anyone to help us.
Bill said he was going to go to the home of one of the suspected crooks to see if he could get some kind of a confession from him and then call in the reinforcements. At this point Briana realized everything I just mentioned above and started to break down. Overwhelmed and crying, she told Bill that when he sees the crook to tell him that we are volunteers who have given up two years to come here and help people and we are not the people they should be stealing from. Bill and the cop started laughing. It was just another demonstration of how big of a heart Briana has and how little these people can care about our presence in Madagascar. It was an awful moment to be apart of.
At that point Briana decided she wasn't going to come back to the Police station again so she left and I agreed to return in the afternoon to see about any new developments. As of Wednesday morning (Madagascar time), Bill had not called back or returned to the Police station. The hot shot investigator didn't call and the officer we have been working with said there is nothing new to report.
In movies and TV shows you always hear that after 2-3 days if you haven't found the missing person or the stolen items you're probably never going to see them again. Well, the reality is sinking in.
Today was a bittersweet day. I woke up to an email that I was a finalist to interview for a job that I have been eyeing for nearly two years now. On the other hand, I realized that the interview is now two weeks away and I have nothing physical to show any of the companies I will be interviewing with: my resume is gone, my work from previous employers is gone and all videos I created from my University of Miami days and beyond are gone. I can't even get to work on creating these things again because I have no computer to do it on.
I keep telling myself to be happy. After all, it's just stuff. It can be replaced. But then I realize, it really can't.
I am grateful that both Briana and I are physically okay but this whole incident has made me sick - physically, I am exhausted from the past few days of constant police visits, paperwork and little sleep. Emotionally this has been a roller coaster unlike any I have experienced in Peace Corps. And mentally I have never been so angry at Malagasy people and the culture. On the other hand, I have also never been so happy about my expected close of service date which is coming so quickly. It's an awful way to think after an incredible journey, but this one stung. I am looking forward to my return home for a week and to see what may be next for me. After that, I hope I can come back with a clear head, rejuvenated and ready to finish out my service with the same motivation I've had for the past 2+ years.
No comments:
Post a Comment