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The Thief that Didn't Get AwayThe Break-in Our kitchen is separated from the main part of our house. While we were in Ndjamena, a thief broke in to our kitchen. He slit the screen -- bad news for bugs -- then found he couldn't get in without prying off the bars we have across all our windows -- to keep out thieves. After that, he had to break some glass panes and then crawl in over the sink.
He took a bunch of stuff and piled it carelessly into a sack. He put
glasses on the bottom and food stuff from the pantry, some booklets that
I left to give as prizes for the Sunday School kids, our kitchen wall
clock and on top of that he put the iron. Oh I forgot to say that in
with the food, were two raw eggs. He had his pockets full of a bunch of
our silverware (though he was nice and left us half). Some of the
glasses broke -- and of course, so did the eggs. Kakani, our neighbor's oldest daughter was sitting in front of her house when he had gone by and into our yard. An hour later, he came out with a loaded sack over his back. He said God gave him all this stuff. It came on a boat from Nigeria that was at the waterfront, he said. Kakani said that that was good, and he went on his way. She (as well as everyone else in town) knows that he is a major thief. When he had gone from there, Kakani tried to find the first person who could check out the matter. A relative of our house worker was passing by and they called him to go investigate if something was stolen at Pastor's house or our house. At Pastor's house he found Pelagie and they both ran to our house and Voila, the screen door had been broken open. Jean ran out to get the thief with Pelagie right behind. They called for different people to come -- Sila, Tamaya (a policeman friend), and Kakani and troop.
Since Kakani hadn't let on, our thief didn't suspect anything so he
didn't run and hide. He was also drunk, so they were able to catch up
with him.
With hollering and excitement going on, I'm sure the whole region came
out to look. Sila was giving him a piece of her mind; she slapped him
hard several times. When he fell to the ground, that is when they heard
all the silverware clanking in his pockets. Under his long robe, he had
packets of cookies (which are now crumbs after all the beating he got)
and other stuff. Tamaya was there and he kicked him hard lots of times;
Evariste showed up and threatened to break both legs the next time.
Apparently, this guy steals so much and breaks out of prison so often,
that they don't even try to keep him in any more. But what do you expect
when the local prison is made of mud brick and you can dig yourself out
with a spoon??? They say the best thing to do to him when he gets caught
is hurt him real bad....
When we got home, we found all our stuff still in the sack -- eggs and
all. But the bars had been reinstalled in the window and most of the
mess was cleaned up. |
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