Lost and Found

LOST AND FOUND

            It was bound to happen sometime. We are foreigners living in a foreign land. We are older whites who stand out in a country that was never really colonized by Europeans. And while we dress modestly and use public transportation, we probably fit the bill as people who look relatively prosperous.

            So while most people in Botswana have treated us with great respect and warmth, it was never likely that this would extend to 100% of the people. After the wedding of our host family sister in Kanye, it was time for us to head back home to Goodhope. We stood in a queue of people at a bus stop, waiting to board for Lobatse, where in turn we would hop onto a combi for Goodhope. Each of us was wearing our backpack, which is pretty much part of the uniform for Peace Corps volunteers worldwide.  Since the bus was taking its time to come, Stephanie put down her heavy backpack and leaned it against her legs. She opened a zipped pocket of her backpack to check her cellphone for text messages, and then returned it. About ten minutes later, she unzipped the pocket to check again for messages; but her cell phone, and her wallet stored next to it--compete with cash, credit cards and ID’s --were missing.

            After a few minutes of panic, we tried to reconstruct what had happened. In the queue directly behind us there had been two young men. I recall that they had been sitting on their haunches, at about the level of the backpack. They had since disappeared. We mentioned what had happened to others in the queue, but no one had seen anything. I went over to a woman who operated a nearby tuck shop (a corrugated metal kiosk selling miscellaneous items). I said that a legodu (thief) had stolen my wife’s cellphone and wallet. She asked me for a description. I didn’t have much more to tell her other than that they likely were two young men. She suggested I call the police. She made some comment about the lack of morals of the younger generation.

            I walked back to Stephanie just as the bus for Lobatse was arriving. We decided not to go to the Kanye police, but rather to hightail it to Lobatse, where our bank had a branch. Stephanie wanted to freeze her ATM card as soon as possible. We had each just received a direct deposit of our monthly paycheck (less than $300 apiece), and we need every thebe (cent) of it to make ends meet.

            It was not a pleasant bus ride. We went over how much cash was in the wallet, which credit cards were missing, and how to buy a new cellphone with a new SIM card while keeping the same telephone number. I am an expert at the phone number retention process, since I have lost two cell phones here in Botswana, and am now onto my third.

            As soon as we got to the Lobatse bus rank, we took a taxi up to our bank, Standard Chartered. The branch had just closed, but a helpful clerk showed Stephanie how to call customer service from a dedicated phone banking line outdoors. Stephanie did so, and her ATM card was instantly frozen, with no recent activity appearing on the card. We were still a bit shell shocked. We decided to buy some food at the grocery store (using my ATM card) and head back to Goodhope.

            Then the most amazing thing happened. I heard my cell phone ringing in my backpack. I barely got to answer it on time. On the line was a local Peace Corps staffer, on duty over the weekend. She asked me: “Is Stephanie all right?” I said that yes, she was, but that her wallet and cell phone had just been stolen. The staffer was concerned because she had tried to call Stephanie repeatedly, without success. She said that someone had called from Kanye to report finding Stephanie’s wallet. He had examined its contents and noticed the Peace Corps Botswana ID, which has an emergency number printed on it. This person called the number and got the staffer on duty. Truly a good Samaritan.

            The Peace Corps staffer wanted to know where we were. I explained that we had gone to Lobatse to report the stolen ATM card. She told us that we should go report the matter to the police, and that we could work together on retrieving the wallet. So, Stephanie and I trudged with our grocery bags through downtown Lobatse, across the railroad tracks, to the large brick police station.

            Police stations around the world over look basically the same. We walked through the front door to an oversized lobby. A polite officer at the reception desk asked what we wanted, and we explained. She pointed us to a corridor and to a room used for making police reports. We walked down the hall and into a room dominated by a large metal conference room table. There were three uniformed police officers seated on one side; about two or three people making various reports on the other. The walls of the room were a dirty yellow. There were “wanted” posters of criminals on the lam pinned to a bulletin board.

            Almost immediately, someone asked to help us. Stephanie explained about the theft in Kanye, and about the call to Peace Corps that the wallet had been recovered. The three officers seemed interested in the story. One noted that we should have reported the crime to the Kanye police, that they would have jurisdiction over this matter. We mentioned that we do not have transport (i.e. we do not have our own car), so getting to and from Kanye and our home in Goodhope is not a simple matter. Shortly thereafter, the sergeant in the room said that he would take down the information and call Peace Corps. He summoned Stephanie to a booking room across the hall, and I waited in the conference room with our grocery bags and the other people making reports.

            As I was cooling my heels, I paid attention to a rather drunken middle-aged man making his police report. He was speaking rather animatedly to a police officer. In turn, the police officer seemed skeptical about the man’s story. Since I was seated in a chair along the back wall of the room, I had a perfect view of the man from the rear. He was wearing a dress shirt, blue jeans and – one shoe. After a few minutes of back and forth, an officer led the man through a side door into another booking room.

            I was then left in the room with one officer. After a moment of silence, I said: “O rwele setlhako sengwe fela” (He was wearing one shoe only). The police officer told me that the man had borrowed money earlier in the month from a street lender. The loan had come due at the end of the month, when most Batswana (and all Peace Corps volunteers) get paid. Seeing that he had spend his paycheck on drink, the lender decided to take some collateral for his loan, i.e. a single shoe. The borrower needed to take a combi home to his village, and felt that the appropriation of one of his shoes was not only humiliating but also illegal (it probably exceeded the legal bounds of consumer credit transactions, but I am not licensed to practice law in Botswana). I do not know how the Lobatse police decided to handle this matter, but I am sure that Legal Assistance back in Manchester would have been a good advocate for the man.

            After all that excitement, I decided to check on how Stephanie was progressing with her police report. The sergeant had called the Peace Corps staffer, the person who reported the missing wallet, and the Kanye Police. It turned out that children in Kanye had found the wallet but not the cell phone. They then approached the nearest adult with a phone, and he is the one who called Peace Corps. But the caller did not take possession of the wallet, so it remained with the children. Luckily, he thought he knew where the children lived. But then again, he had no transport (i.e. no car) to get himself there.

            To cut to the chase: after a couple of days, Kanye Police retrieved the wallet from the children, after they had provided transport to the adult who had made the report with his phone. Kanye Police then brought Stephanie’s wallet to the Lobatse Police, and Stephanie picked it up there several days later. The Lobatse police sergeant who had taken her report was off duty that day, but he drove to work to make sure that Stephanie ended up getting her wallet back. The cash was gone (the equivalent of about $40), but all of the credit and ID cards were intact. The phone never got recovered, and Stephanie had to go through a long process to retain her cell phone number, requiring yet another police report.

            What is the moral of this story? There are bad people everywhere, and there are good people everywhere. We got tangled up with a few bad people that day, but then again many more good people helped us. And no matter how bad things get – there are always people (like the borrower short a shoe) who are worse off than we are.