The last time I posted to this blog I wasn't the happiest of campers for obvious reasons. Well, today I am going to continue the story. However, today I am in a much better mood the reason being that I am currently sitting on a padded chair in front of my parents' computer with a cold drink and a very low chance of getting burglarized in the next 5 days. A bunch of little things that have combined to put a very large smile on my face.
So...back to the story of the devastating weekend that continued into a devastating week and a half.
Bill's real name is Jean Freddy. I thought it was kind of cool to conceal the identity of an "undercover cop" because I wanted to have some fun while retelling a nightmare.
Well, Jean Freddy is the lowest of the low when it comes to possessing any degree of humanity. I'm sure you're all sitting there saying, "well, I coulda told you that" or "doesn't surprise me in the slightest," but I remind you that we were in an incredibly desperate situation and we were clinging to any possibility of finding our stuff. But, as the saying goes, "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me." The police and Jean Freddy fooled us a couple times.
The last time I posted here Jean Freddy had left the police station hunting down a possible suspect. The next day I wrote the blog post, but still had not heard a word from him. The day after writing the blog post I returned to the police station to speak to the officer we had been working with the most. It was three o'clock in the afternoon and he was completely wasted. He could barely stand, he was spitting all over me as he spoke (there's say it don't spray it and then there's the maid of the mist, this dude was definitely the maid to my mist), and he could not make eye contact. Just that was enough to bum me right out, but he kept talking.
"Have you heard from Jean Freddy yet?" I asked.
"Yeah, we have him," he responded like it was common knowledge. "You can go talk to him yourself. He's in one of the cells in the station."
Oh boy...What now? I thought.
"He's here? In a cell? Why?"
"He got caught last night trying to break into another house on the south side of town," he said with a twisted grin on his face.
God dammit. You have got to be kidding me! So let me just get up to speed here...you're wasted, he's in jail, Ernest (hotshot investigator) doesn't respond to calls or texts and we still have nothing? Saawwweeeet.
After this, the police officer, whose name is Fleury, says that Jean Freddy duped us all. Ya don't say?He went on to say that Jean Freddy never had any leads at any point. I reminded Fleury that not two days ago he assured us Jean Freddy's criminal days were over and that he has been very helpful with police investigations. He couldn't even find the words to respond in his drunken stupor.
At that point I was scared to ask my next question, but I thought I'd just see what he had to say...
"What exactly is being done now to try to find our things now?"
"We have friends all over."
"Right, as in police?"
"No, no, not Police," he laughed. "Just friends. And you should really call your friends around Manakara to see if they have seen your computer."
"Yeah, they know, but that's only four people and two of them are not here. Where are these friends of yours and how are they qualified to look for this stuff?"
"I just have a lot of friends around Manakara. Everyone is looking for your things."
He then went into this 15-minute drunken diatribe about how this isn't the United States and how we (Briana and I) were being unreasonable thinking our things could be found so quickly. I'll be honest, he has a good point. In the States, some forensic investigator would probably take a finger print on the broken window or in the house and the thief would be identified in a few days. People, and particularly Americans, want results.
My apologies, Fleury. On the other hand, the forensic investigators probably wouldn't be able to do their job very well if they were hammered.
.....................
Fast forward a couple days when three new volunteers have arrived in Manakara before they went to the town they will be living in for the next two years. It's sort of tradition to take them out for dinner and a few drinks when they get into town.
After we left dinner, we were walking down the street to go to a karaoke bar. I walked in last and noticed a rather sketchy-looking Malagasy man walking behind us wearing a purse (or as Zach Galifiniakis would call it, a satchel). I turned to go into the karaoke bar and then did a double take to satchel guy and noticed he was wearing one of Briana's souvenir purses!
My mouth dropped. I grabbed him by the shoulders and walked him into the karaoke bar and had Briana confirm that it was, in fact, her bag. We explained the situation to the bar owner and all of us took the short walk over to the police station together.
The guy, whose name is Setra (which means violent or dangerous in English), claimed that he found the purse on the ground the morning after the house was broken into. He maintained that he didn't break in and never saw anyone. He also confessed that he picked up two other purses of Briana's and gave one to his girlfriend and sold the other one. He also said that he knew us and where Briana lives (which isn't that crazy considering there are not too many white people in Manakara). He also said his uncle lives across the street from Briana. Nevertheless, we had no idea who he was.
He was told he would sleep in the Police station that night and we would be back in the morning to discuss this all with Fleury. I felt incredibly guilty being the reason this guy found himself incarcerated for a night, but I didn't know what else to do.
The next morning we went to his house with Fleury to look around to see if anything was there. It felt highly unethical and weird to be on the front lines of the investigation, yet there we were, the accusers, standing in his bedroom with the police, his parents, and other members of his family all looking on. Before we started looking around his bed to see if he had stashed anything there, his parents begged and pleaded with Briana and I which made things even more weird. We asked them about Setra and when the point of his girlfriend and the other bags came up, they said he had no girlfriend. Then we asked where exactly their family lives in Manakara. They said they have no family anywhere near Manakara. It was getting fishier by the minute.
A quick look around his bed and we found an eye mask of Briana's. Not a big find, but the kicker was that at the time of the break-in, the eye mask wasn't in any of the bags that Setra claimed to have found on the road. It was in another bag. We made all of the inconsistencies known to everyone in the room and the father proceeded to scold Setra in front of the family, saying that he is destroying himself and destroying the family. It was another awful moment to have caused, let alone witness.
We walked a few blocks to another bar where Setra said he sold a small souvenir women's wallet that Briana bought to bring home. At this point, Setra's mom claimed that he found those things only a few days ago and not the morning after we were burglarized. However, when we arrived at this other bar and identified the stolen and resold item, the owner of the bar claimed Setra had, in fact, sold it to them on the morning after the break-in.
The day before I left Manakara to come back to the States, Briana, Setra and myself all made separate statements to a prosecutor. I actually had to pay for Setra's transportation to the courthouse because the Police refused. It felt like the government was laughing at me.
The case is supposedly going to trial now, but in the end it is our word against his. There is no other evidence to go on. Some moments I think for sure he did it and other moments I think maybe he really did just see the stuff on the road and has no idea. Either way, you cannot convict a guy based on a few bags and no hard evidence. Setra is not scared by this whole thing because even if he did steal it, the stuff is long gone by now. The trial is supposed to continue upon my return to Madagascar next week.
Unfortunately, all these events have had an even bigger impact than just our stuff being lost. As I mentioned in the last post, both Briana and I lost our piece of mind. Unfortunately, Briana wasn't feeling any more comfortable as the days went on. This past week she made the decision to revoke her 6-month extension and close her service with the rest of her group.
You can't be effective when you don't trust anyone around you and whoever stole our things permanently ruined that for her. You couldn't begin to imagine how difficult of a decision that was for her, but she is undoubtedly making the best and healthiest decision for herself. It is a tough end to two great years.
No comments:
Post a Comment