CSI: Mozambique

It’s the rainy season. Days filled with hot sticky heat but in the distance you can hear the booms of thunder gradually coming closer. Eventually the sky opens up and the rain pours, filling buckets with clear water and cooling off the air.

Tuesday was exactly one of these days, it cooled off and I began looking forward to getting a good night sleep. By 8pm, I was showered and in bed reading, Nunu went out to turn on the generator and as the fans kicked on I was in my happy (cool) place. We asked our guard Bouanassa to shut the generator off at midnight and fell to sleep.

The night was just as any other, a noise prompted me to ask Nunu if he locked the door and when he said yes, I was right back to sleep.

Until I heard Bounassa talking outside, I don’t even know what he said. I looked at my watch, it was only 10pm, I thought to myself, “He isn’t supposed to shut the generator off till midnight.” That’s when Nunu frantically said, “My motorcycle was stolen!”

What! Wait! How? It was sitting on our front porch. Where was the guard? Where was the dog? How did I not hear anything?

Nunu rushed outside, cellphone in hand and he and Bounassa were off. I felt helpless. Honestly I wanted to call 911, but that doesn’t exist here. So I got dressed and put on shoes. I went into the front yard to try to see where Nunu had gone and I shut off the generator, so I could hear if Nunu called for me. I grabbed Molly’s leash and while she apparently isn’t much of a guard dog, she makes me feel safe.

Nunu comes back, no sign of anyone. He is really mad, wondering how a motorcycle could have got passed our guard. We both really like Bounassa but you can’t help but wonder was he involved, motorcycles don’t just disappear. That’s when Nunu goes back to the porch and looks for the tire tracks. He finds them and they lead to the back of our house, not the front. He realizes that someone cut a hole in our fence (chicken wire that we installed to keep our beautiful view and ocean breezes). He goes around our fence and he and Bounassa take off in that direction.

The fence from outside the yard.

I go back in the house with Molly and I walk in circles in our living room, praying, freaking out, praying, I should lock the door, more prayers, I need to do something. I pick up my phone and start typing a message asking some friends to pray with me and as I lift my finger to hit send, the screen on my phone changes… it’s Nunu calling, he found the bike!!!!

But he doesn’t have the keys and with the bike in it’s locked position it’s really hard to move. He asks me to get the neighbors guard (our neighbor is out of town) to bring him the keys as he doesn’t want to leave the bike. I walk toward the neighbors screaming “Guard! Excuse me! Guard” in Portuguese. The only response is two dogs barking and growling at me. We have some friends, Jonas and Erica, who just moved about 200 feet up the road and so I ask Nunu if I should go to them, knowing he is thinking of my safety first. He says I should. I realize Molly is in the house and my best bet for passing the dogs at night is to have her.

I lock the house and Molly and I make our way down the road. I’m calling our friends cellphones as I run in my hot pink PJ’s, while making kissy noises at the growling dogs (I hope someone got a good laugh)… they don’t answer their phones. As I get to the house, their guard is gone and so I’m left shouting for their help.

I hear the deep sleep in their voices as they try to figure out who is calling their names and just what is going on. Now the three of us are on our way to find Nunu in the bush behind our house.

Nunu tells me which way to go and we are blindly going by the light of our cell phones. He says he can hear me getting closer and we keep shining our lights toward each other. Eventually I can hear him clearly without the phone.

Nunu and Bounassa had tracked the tire marks of the bike for about half a mile, maybe longer. And found it sort of hidden behind a bush. I told Nunu that I have a new nickname for him… CSI =)

We have no clue who did this or how many. At the very least 3 to 4 people because they had to lift the bike up over a fence that is a little over 3 feet tall and the only damage was to one of the handle bars, I’m guessing from the impact as they tried to throw it over the fence.

The creepy part of it all is knowing that we were watched. The night before we didn’t run the generator, no doubt in my mind the generator made a great cover for the noise. They knew our routine.

As with so many things here, I hate that we have to go through it but we do learn. We will be meeting with our guards later today talking about how important it is to not get into such a fixed routine. We will have to put up a better fence, one without our beautiful view and we will need to get some dogs that bark! Lastly a block fence will need to be moved up on our priority list.

Thanks to all of you who regularly pray for us, we so appreciate and feel your prayers!

Motorcycle in it's new nightly home, our living room.

Fence two days ago. They had to lift the bike up over the bamboo part!