Robbed

So I'm telling a story that should have been told a week and a half ago, but wasn't. But it's just too good to let it pass by. Yes, it's long. But it demands to be written.

Soooo one bright Friday morning, I woke up to go to language lessons as usual, but not quite as usual. Because that day was special. That day Natalie, Ally, and I were leaving straight from language lessons to go on a road trip to Jinja for some much anticipated girl time. We had the whole weekend ahead of us, and it was going to be grand. As I had packed that morning, I intentionally packed my DSLR camera and determined that I was going to be better about taking pictures of the group of us. After lessons, as Natalie pulled up to Margaret's place, she realized that the distribution point for Operation Christmas Child was just up the street, and workers from her children's home, Lulwanda Children's Home, was collecting boxes just then! When she asked me if she could borrow my camera I pulled it out of my bag in the trunk and handed it over. She ran back to the distribution point and got all of her photos. When she returned and we all piled in the car, we commented about what a God thing it was for her to pick me up there, and that the distribution point just happened to be up the street, and so and so forth.

After praying over our trip, we had a wonderful drive sharing life stories and enjoying each others' company. We reached Jinja a couple of hours later and went straight to The Keep, a favorite restaurant of local muzungus and ours too. We decided to leave the car parked at the The Keep after lunch while we did some knick knack shopping down the street.

When we got back to the car, we found that we had been robbed. Theives had broken the lock of the driver side door and stolen everything out of the back seat of the car. That included Natalie's laptop, Ally's makeup bag, my camera, and my purse which had my phone, Bible, digital voice recorder, keys, drivers license, and debit card. They had left all of the big bags in the trunk, but got all of the smaller things from the back seat. You know, the smaller but expensive things. Stunned, we tried to take inventory of what was gone, and tried to figure out what to do next. A nice guy from the Keep went to go ask the local piki men if they had seen anything, which they had not. Then our Sidekick hopped into the car with us to take us to the police station to file a report.

Of course, all of us have watched way too many crime shows, and scenes from CSI, NCIS, Castle, and White Collar were constantly flashing through our minds. So it's rather amazing that when Nat's phone started ringing with a call from my stolen phone, none of us shouted for a trace on the number. Instead Nat shoved the phone at me exclaiming, "You're calling me!" and we then shoved the phone at Sidekick yelling, "this is the stolen phone calling!!! this is the phone which was stolen calling!!!!" He grabbed the phone to talk to The Suspect. As they talked away in Luganda, the three of us looked at each other, hopes soaring, writing the happy ending of all good TV shows in our heads. When Sidekick got off the phone, he told us that the Suspect said he found a blue bag (my purse) with this SIM card in it, so he was trying to track the owner to return the bag. If we could drive 10 kilometers outside of Jinja, he would return the bag.

Enter the Investigator. The local police investigator discouraged us from going, saying that this is a common stunt of thugs like this. In an effort to 'make the fool of us' they would lead us on a wild goose chase around town from one location to the next until they were tired of us. But we couldn't be dissuaded. We after all were well trained in the finer art of property recovery by Kate Beckett herself (cf Castle). Or at least we wouldn't know for sure unless we tried, so Nat, Ally, Sidekick, Investigator, and I piled into Nat's car for the search for Suspect.


To be continued.....