In the normal course of things, my life here in The Gambia chugs along pleasantly, as people’s lives tend to do when not disturbed by outside agencies. Last Friday though, things suddenly took off in a dramatic fashion (somewhat akin to the toad I nearly trod on outside my door the night before).
Having spent the last few weekends in my country retreat, I decided the time had come for a sortie into the land of pub-cooked food and 24 hour electricity.
I arrived at Greg’s around 5pm and found the little chap not looking his usual cheeky self, but rather, having the appearance of a man who’s just discovered (the hard way!) that termites have eaten through the slats in his bed.
It transpired that this dejection was not due to insect damage disturbing his nocturnal tranquillity, but was down to the unwonted and unwanted appearance of strange people in his house at 5 o’clock that morning, and the subsequent absence of his speakers, external hard-drive with all his photos, music and other miscellaneous files, and laptop power supply.
The story goes that, Nadia (who is temporarily residing at Greg Villas) woke to find a strange man in her room, rifling through her belongings. Now Nadia is not unused to finding strange men in her room, but it is usually by prior arrangement and the fact that she had made no such arrangements in this case rather shook her.
Nadia turned on her torch but then was forced to watch, too scared to move, as the man carefully finished his search and sauntered out of the room with 2 mobile phones and her most exotic lipstick.
After waiting a decent length of time, Nadia raised the alarm and it was discovered that entry had been gained by means of forcing the bars on the hall window with a crowbar. Greg, Sukey and Nadia were all a little upset at the thought of a man or men patrolling their corridors armed with a crowbar whilst they slept, and duly summoned the police. The usual procedures were waded through and at some point in the afternoon the happy trio were allowed to continue with their everyday routines as best they could.
Bars were welded back into window frames and, apart from no-one being able to sleep that night, normal service was resumed.
On Saturday night, the four of us in the house tucked ourselves in and prepared for a decently refreshing period of unconsciousness. Unfortunately, the wily burglars had other ideas and around 4 am I was woken by a very gentle tapping on my door. Unsure as to whether I had dreamt this sound I continued to pretend to myself that I was still asleep. A few seconds later however, the sound was repeated and I sat up in bed, wondering what could be causing such a disturbance. After a further repeat of the noise I was able to ascertain (by the simple means of saying loudly, “What is it?”) that it was indeed Nadia tapping on my door.
Struggling manfully to wrap myself in a towel, I opened the door to see what was the cause of Nadia’s concern.
“I think I heard something!” she whispered in explanation.
Together we checked the windows in the hall and then went into the living room where we quickly observed that the metal-framed French windows had been subjected to an attack and, although the lock still held, the lower half of one was bent to out to create a gap of about 18 inches at the bottom. It didn’t look as though anyone had managed to gain entry, as the internal flyscreen was still intact, but, had Nadia not disturbed them, it was obvious that the naughty men would have been in the house once more in a matter of minutes.
Switching rapidly into idiotic hero mode, I dashed back to my bedroom, threw on a somewhat uncoordinated outfit and wrapped my towel around my forearm to ward off crowbar blows. I then ransacked the kitchen drawers until I located a suitable nasty-looking knife and raced outside to confront the villains.
Much to my relief, it appeared said miscreants had had an appointment elsewhere and had departed the scene. I ran out into the street and but was unable to spot any lurkers in shadows and so returned to check the house.
Nadia was in the yard by then, and together we performed a perimeter sweep, establishing that no attempts had been made on any other doors or windows. It was at this point that Nadia informed me that when she’d heard the noise of someone trying to jemmy their way through the house’s external defences, she’d begun shouting at the top of her voice and they’d left some time before I’d even awoken.
Suddenly, we heard the sound of breaking glass a few houses away and, imagining that the burglars had moved on to greener (and quieter) pastures, where honest thieves could ply their trade without inconsiderate interruptions by outspoken Italians, I despatched Nadia to call for the police whilst I, once more, launched myself into the street to see what might transpire.
After half-an-hour’s fruitless stalking of the back alleys, I made my way back to Greg’s, arriving shortly before a police pick-up loaded to the gunwales with hairy coppers. These stout defenders of Right scattered themselves into the night but, apart from the rather amusing stopping and searching of a minibus of early-shift workers, no positive action resulted, and our heroes loaded themselves back into their vehicle and withdrew. Later that morning we learned that the breaking glass was not in fact our friends the house-breakers, but our other friends the ‘we’re having a domestic and hurling things at each other’ crockery-breakers in a compound a little behind Greg’s.
VSO personnel came and made encouraging noises later in the morning, promising a temporary night-watchman and a review of the house’s defences. The French-windows were welded back into shape and extra padlocks added.
That night, in the hope of a surprise return visit by the thwarted thieves, I got up and sat in the dark with the watchman for a couple of hours at around the time the break-ins had happened. Unfortunately nobody came-a-calling and I had to retire empty handed. The police believe that the burglars are probably local (it’s a bit of a dodgy area) and if so, I’m sure they’d realised the watchman was there.
At the time of writing, no further excitement has occurred at Greg and Sukey’s little Shangri-La.
It does seem a smidge on the harsh side though that, in addition to the loss of their possessions, neither of them has had a decent night’s slumber since the last attempted break-in, and they have had to have extra bars welded to windows, extra staples for padlocks welded onto the gates and they are now waiting for barbed wire to be strung over all stretches of wall not already protected by rather vicious metal spikes. I do so hope the burglars are proud of themselves for giving people the excuse to live as though they were in prison, and I trust they spent the hundred Dalasis they made from the sale of Greg’s property wisely.
