Brushing up to theft

Wow—so the last hour or so has been pretty intense. I was just sitting with Eric and Alan on the sofas in our living room and we were talking while I was eating dinner (they’d already eaten, while I was on the phone was Kristy), when we heard the door open behind us. I figured it was one of the Wheelers (the couple from BYU that’s here as interns and are living out back—he’s doing financial audits for Care For Life, and she’s doing data entry), but my back was the to the door and I couldn’t tell. Alan, who was on the sofa facing the door, looked up and didn’t look like he recognized whoever was there—he said, “Tudo bem?”, but the door shut quickly and he and Eric were running out back before I had really processed what was happening. It turns out it was a thief, who then scaled the wall (with broken glass on the top) to the neighbor’s yard while Alan yelled “Mbava!” (thief in local dialect). After hurting himself pretty badly on the glass, the thief made it into the neighbor’s yard, where the neighbor’s guard started fighting with him. Our guard on duty, Carlos, who had been out front, ran around at this point and scaled the wall after him (thankfully not hurting himself too badly). We mainly heard fighting at this point, and then the thief apparently started getting away before some people on the street stopped him. The Wheelers, Alan and I were still in the backyard, not really sure what to do, when Eric ran off to see what was happening, and ran back into the house for rags, as the thief had been caught and handcuffed by Carlos, but was apparently bleeding really bad. So I went out to where everyone was with the thief on the street, in front of the bread store next store, with more people gathering around by the second (as always happens around here). The next few minutes were very tense, as we were trying to get a hold of someone from Care For Life who could come and take the thief to the police station (we were finally able to get a hold of Solomon, who came), while Eric was trying to keep people from further hurting the thief. Theft is very, very socially discriminated against here, which in a sense is a good thing, except for that it also promotes a lot of vigilantism—lots of folks who were gathering around wanted to kill the thief. My heart went out to Eric, who was trying to defend him and keep people from further hurting him—one guy came up, said, “Listen, white, this country’s full of thieves,” and kicked the thief on the ground as hard as he could straight in the face, opening a huge wound on his forehead. We were lucky to keep Eric from starting a fight with the guy right there. Luckily, Solomon came before anything bad happened, and he and Carlos took the thief off to the police station. We’re now locked up inside, a bit jumpy, but safe behind really huge grates and locks. I hope this guy doesn’t have friends who come back later and jump Carlos for revenge, or anything like that. This is the first time this has happened since I’ve been here—it definitely makes you realize your own vulnerability and humanity a lot more.