I guess I should be used to this, but I’m just not. We were robbed while I was gone. Twice. We had cash stolen from our bedroom (from a hidden safe). The thief knew exactly where the safe was (only one of our workers knew the location) and they pried it open, destroying much of the paperwork and cash inside. They took some of the cash, put the rest back inside and disturbed nothing else in the room. We know it wasn’t a common thief because they left a customer’s iPhone on the desk, which fetches $500 in country and is an easy sell. There was no sign of searching for the safe, there were no intruders on the compound and only one of our house staff was in the house at the time of the theft. Jen took the safe to the police for fingerprinting (wrapped in a plastic bag) and the police gave her a hard time, asking for money for “processing the prints” and telling her it was impossible to get prints because she shouldn’t have “touched the safe” (!) Later, the police accepted a bribe and let the suspect out on bond.
I’m taking other items to directly to the lab in Kampala and in the capable hands of an associate in the lab, who will find the thief’s prints. We’re adamant about the prints because the suspect insists she wasn’t involved despite the fact that her family can’t even see another scenario.
All told, about $1000 was stolen. We aren’t keeping cash in the house anymore.
The second theft happened in our leather workshop. One of the leather workers decided to make some things for himself and tried to sneak them off the compound. Our guard found the items in a bag search. It wasn’t a loss of money, but a complete loss of trust. The leather workshop will now be operated less “freely” and we will have to change how we operate. Workers will now buy all of their materials (leather, dye, thread, hardware) and we move (much sooner than we’d like) closer to a model that mirrors what they will face when they’re on their own. Additionally, we are removing all the blades from the shop (where the leather is stored) and we will have a supervised “cutting day” when all materials will be cut.
It’s frustrating to have to live in such constant suspicion. There are officially no areas of our life here untouched by theft.
As frustrating as it is, we try to rise above it. Theft sucks, and thieves suck worse. But we all suck in some ways. None of us is perfect, and this world is just plain messed up because it’s like satan’s playground (seriously.. we see evidence of this every single day). So we try to have compassion and we walk a fine line between being pushovers and psychopaths. In this particular case, the cash thief is headed for years of jail time once those prints come back. Today will end up being her last chance to come clean about what happened and agree to pay the money back. Either way her reputation will be damaged, but the jail time is her choice at this point.
She has a clear path to freedom, and that makes her lucky. Clear paths to freedom are so hard to come by.
