Enough drama to last us a while June 7, 2008

This has been quite a week. It started out normally enough – I was quite obsessively busy with work, feeling that I was finally getting a grip on my responsibilities and busily adding items to my to-do list and coming home every evening after a day at Woodrows doing a bit more before winding down for the day. I was incredibly grateful that the Lord had pulled me together a bit and that I didn’t feel so overwhelmed by everything anymore! Then, about 4h30 on Thursday morning, my mom phoned to tell me that my grandmother had passed away. She was 87 and had had cancer of the lymph nodes for over 4 years, and most recently had been suffering terribly, so as far as she was concerned, I was very relieved. I did, however, very much want to be with my mom, as my sister has to leave for Italy on Monday evening and therefore can’t stay with her very long. Thus began two days of agonizing over the decision of going or not, especially as I couldn’t possibly get a flight in time to make it to the funeral, so then the question was whether it was “worthwhile” going down just for the opportunity to spend some good time with my mom, who will be all alone in the house from now on. I had already gone to the ATM and withdrawn a whole bunch of cash for the ticket, which I of course ended up not using straight away. Yesterday morning I got up with an awful cold to boot, so I was feeling quite discouraged at the blow my work momentum had taken, and still not one hundred percent certain whether I would just stay here, or maybe go down to SA later in the week.

On top of all this emotional turmoil, we got up to quite a shock this morning. It was sometime after 8h00 and I was looking for my wallet to give money to our Saturday guard (who has now more become our Saturday morning errand guy and doesn’t work all day). I couldn’t find my bag anywhere, which is usually slung over the back of the chair at my desk. Angie was even helping me look, and it just seemed ridiculous that I couldn’t see it anywhere. Finally she opened the door to the veranda and said “Here it is,” and it took us some seconds to realise that I hadn’t misplaced it there, happening to scatter its contents on the floor… someone had cut our screen, bent open some of the grates and crawled through this hole, came into my room and grabbed the bag. What an awful realisation! Negative: all those thousands of meticais were of course gone. And at first I freaked out and thought my bank card, credit card etc. were all gone too, because they were not in my wallet. And they took Allison’s phone from the table in the living room. Positive: they didn’t take anything else, not even perfume spray or my international driver’s license. And just this week I had taken my passport and ID out of my documents bag and put them in a drawer in my room, instead leaving just a certified copy of my passport. And nothing else was taken, not even my camera, slung over the other side of the same chair, or as much as a flashdisk. So it must have been a quick job done by hardly any light.

In spite of all the things to be thankful for, we were of course pretty upset and feeling, I believe the term usually used, “violated”. Thankfully the house was soon full of SIL people, someone to take Allison to the police station and others who put up some plywood to temporarily at least block the hole on the veranda screen, and others who just sat and talked with us and showed their support. Allison and Angie, who have been my pillars of strength since Thursday, praying with me and encouraging me and listening to me, were also kindness itself and completely willing to help absorb some of the financial loss, since they see it as “we had money stolen”, not “Salome had money stolen”. They are such a joy and blessing in my life! And we just praise the Lord that nothing happened to any of us and that the damage was limited.

We would all appreciate your prayers as we continue to deal with this situation – may the Lord’s Name be somehow glorified in all of this!