Zane's not the only one who can catch a rat...

Yesterday afternoon, I went looking for my cell phone. Though I don't get very many calls, I carry my cell phone around with me everywhere - I guess it's just the possibility of communicating with someone "out there" (ie, off the compound!) which keeps me going. So I normally have at least one of my phones with me (um, er, don't ask just how many phones I have - believe me, they each serve their own purpose because there are 4 networks here, none of which work consistently...). Yesterday afternoon, someone who used to live here and work with us came back to visit. She flew through Entebbe, where my dear friend Grace lives with her daughter and menagerie of creatures, including a hedgehog, imported from where I live.

Anyways, Grace sent me a great little care package - a Montanan t-shirt, a can of popcorn, some marshmellows and some chocolate! Mmmm... an amazing little care package, that's for sure. But I digress... so I was looking for my phone so that I could send her a text message to say "thanks!" for the goodies. But I couldn't find my phone anywhere. A little voice in the back of my head told me to keep looking for it. I knew that I wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything until I found that silly phone (and no, I couldn't use one of my other phones to text her, because the other networks don't work to send international texts during the day!).

So I looked everywhere - high and low. I dumped everything out of my purse/bag, searched my desk drawer (where I was dismayed to find evidence of yet another rat infestation), I looked everywhere in my house. I also went to each of the offices that I had been in earlier in the day, to see if I had left it in one of those offices. Nothing. So I took one of my other phones (see, one of the advantages to having more than one phone!) and started calling the lost phone - thinking the ringing would lead me to its location.

It rang several times, and I went to several different buildings on the compound, but I didn't hear it ringing anywhere.

Finally, someone answered my phone! At first, I thought it must be one of the guys who works on the compound, and he had found the phone somewhere and was answering it for me. But turns out, the guy who answered my phone told me to meet him in the market, where he would discuss giving my phone back to me! I couldn't believe it! I was really quite shocked and flabbergasted and didn't quite know what to say. Thankfully, one of the guys who works with us, here, Dominic, happened to be walking by, so I grabbed him and had him talk to the guy who had my phone.

They talked for a few minutes, and still, the guy was telling us that we had to come to the market and he would discuss the terms of getting the phone back. I think he must have thought I would come on my own and pay him something to get my phone back.

Little did he know, I work with a bunch of guys who treat me like their daughter. My posse here looks out for me, I tell you. About 10 of the guys who were still around today (this was just after the office closed for the day) called a meeting, to try to figure out what in the world was going on and how this guy had gotten my phone.

After a few minutes' discussion, we figured out that someone had come into the office (obviously while I had popped out for something) and was asking around for some money (seems his wife had died a little while ago, and it's quite a normal thing for people to ask friends and co-workers to help with the funeral expenses). He was known by one of translation teams, so he had first been in their office, and then I guess he figured he would come to the office that I share with Jackie and Peter. Jackie and I weren't there, and Peter didn't have anything to give him... but he did see my cell phone on my desk! It could only have been this particular guy, as we had no other visitors or "outside" people come to the compound all afternoon.

While we were discussing this, Dominic tried calling my phone again. And again, the thief answered. This time, he pretended to be the police and said that he was at the police station, and had been arrested, so we shoudl go immediately to the police station and pick up the phone.

So immediately, I jumped in the truck, thinking that Dominic and Isaac (our staff who knew the guy best) would come with me, and the rest would go their own ways and get home, and out of the rain that had started to fall. But instead, three of them jumped in the cab of the truck, and four of them climbed in the box! So off we went, the white girl and her posse, gone to catch a rat.

However, once we got to the police station and the phone wasn't there, they realized that the thief who had been answering the phone was just telling tales, and he wasn't actually arrested.

Fortunately, the guys who knew him also knew where he lives - in fact, he's one of their neighbors! So we all got back in the truck and off we went to this guy's house! Now already, I'm raise quite a crowd - a white girl with a crew of men (and most of these guys are not small guys, either!) marching through the neighborhood, weaving between the mud huts and through people's yards. I don't think too many white folks have visited that neighborhood!

Then we really caused a stir when my posse stormed into the guy's grass hut! They found him right there in his hut, negotiating with someone who wanted to buy my phone, which he held in his hand!

Dominc dragged him out of the hut, and I think he wanted to beat him up a bit (unfortunately, that's just a normal way to deal with conflict here - lots of violence and beating). But the rest of us put an end to that before it began. But there was still lots and lots of shouting! Anyways, he was caught red-handed, and all the guys knew obviously that it was my phone he had in his hand. He was still slightly drunk, I think. My crew asked me what I wanted to do with him - if I wanted to take him to the police or anything. I decided not to get in the middle of all that. I figured that him having been made a spectacle of in his neighborhood was probably enough punishment! I learned this morning, though, that his neighbors had actually beaten him this morning - seems he has been causing other trouble in the area, as well, so they finally gave him a beating.

There is quite a lot of shame here in stealing, and it seems especially if you steal from a guest in your home or even a guest in your country. I just couldn't believe that he would steal from a place where he knew people, nor could I believe he actually answered the phone repeatedly when I called! He was not a very smart thief! And yet, it all worked out amazingly well, because if we had been 5 minutes later in coming, the phone would have been sold to the other guy, and there's no way I would have gotten it back.

Now my phone is really not very expensive - I only have cheap phones - but it would have been such an incredible inconvenience to have to go downtown to cancel the SIM card (the number), to get a new one, to find all the phone numbers again in my contact list, and to figure out what to do about getting a new phone... I just don't have time to deal with all that at the moment!

I also learned a couple of things. First, don't mindlessly leave things laying around! This is the first thing that's ever gone missing like that from the offices, but I don't want it to happen again!

But secondly, I learned that when I have a problem, these guys who work here are really going to look out for me. They all banded together to figure out what to do. They jumped in the truck, in the pouring rain (and believe me, Africans do NOT like to be out in the rain!) to come with me to sort this issue out. As we were getting in the truck, I expressed my surprise at how they were all coming with me - and one of them replied, "Of course we're all coming - we're family". That really meant a lot to me. I always knew these guys are good guys and like to be helpful. But to have them all band together like that around me, and to do what they could do help me was really special. I feel very protected - which is rather important when you live in a place like this! I know, without a doubt, that if I have any trouble anywhere, I just need to call one of these guys and they will do everything they can to help me out.

So I'm thankful for this little problem that I had with the "rat" yesterday because of the good lessons I learned.

(by the way, credit for the title of this post goes to one of our visiting consultants... you know I can't come up with creative titles on my own :) ).