Thief!

My friend Chantal, drinking sorghum beer before a wedding

Last week, as I walked down the main road of Kigali, a man grabbed my arm. At this point in my Peace Corps experience I’m pretty unfazed by street harassment, but this guy grabbed my arm hard. I turned and pushed him away, giving him a piece of my mind in a mix of English and Kinyarwanda. As he crossed the street, I realized my phone was gone. 

“HEY! That man has my phone! Stop him!” I screamed in Kinyarwanda. The man standing next to me looked concerned, and ran after the first. As I watched them both run, I realized the second man was the one who had taken my phone.

I walked in the direction the men had run, not exactly sure what I could do. As I turned the corner and looked around helplessly, another man approached me.

“Did someone just steal from you?” he asked. I explained to him what had just happened. “Yes! I saw the men running. My friends and I, we are the taxi drivers here, we will find your phone.” I thanked him, gave him the contact information for the Peace Corps Safety and Security Officer and headed back to the Peace Corps Office.

When I arrived at the office an hour later, the Security Officer saw me and immediately said “Alma! I’m so sorry about your phone!”. Surprised and confused about how she already knew, I started to explain what had happened. “I know, I know! Richard, the taxi driver, he called me. He has your phone!” she told me.

Back downtown, I met up with Richard and thanked him a million times. He and the other taxi drivers had tracked down my phone, which had already been sold off, and then found the thieves, who had kept my SIM card, and gotten that back from them too. “There are a lot of thieves downtown, and we business people don’t like it. You are a nice umuzungu, you speak Kinyarwanda! They cannot steal from you! We just want peace in the city, we are all happy to help.”

So my little Nokia phone and I are reunited again. No amount of Peace Corps evacuations, latrine falls, or thefts can keep us apart … I think it’s true love.