The Purse Incident (this is a long one)

My school program director came out to see me last weekend. She is flying through five or six African countries in two weeks, which I think is crazy, but if anyone can do it, it is she. It is funny that she came out on a weekend, because as it happened the organization I work for is not open during that time, and closes at 1:30pm on Fridays, the time her flight landed in Antananarivo. Not only that, but everyone in my unit is out of town, working on a roll-out with our consortium partners for the implementation of a new program targeting issues of food insecurity in the eastern and southern part of the country. All of this meant that she flew all the way here, and was only able to hang out with me. Not that I’m bad company, but her time here might have been a bit more productive had my organization been open.

Anyway, she was stuck with me all weekend, so Friday and Saturday were spent going around town talking about my work, how I’m doing, and all those good things social workers talk about to make sure others are dealing with situations as they should, and see how they can help if they’re not. We ate good food, then rented a taxi for a couple of hours on Saturday and went to a beautiful artisans’ market. We bought a few things (Malagasy people are very skilled at wood carving, and I expect to go back to that market and bring back tons of things), and stopped several times on the way back to take pictures, one time stopping at a house where the family makes brooms to sell on the side of the road; there were tons of kids running around, and we took beautiful pictures. Had more good food for dinner then parted ways so she could rest and I could hang out with a few people my roommate has introduced me to.

Sundays are a true rest day for Malagasy people. It’s a day spent at church and with family, and very few people open for business. We got up late, and seeing how I have no family here, and I don’t go to church, we decided to go for a late breakfast at a cute restaurant that just opened on the grounds of the city’s train station. After eating we took a taxi, and stopped by the nearby market called “Anakelly” (hopefully I am not butchering that) to buy some fruit and take pictures. Most of the stalls were closed, and people selling were lined up along the main street (Rue de l’Independence), so we headed that way. We’d bought a few things and were standing around trying to convince a little girl and boy that we did not need to buy plastic bags or limes, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a pretty fidgety guy coming towards us. I thought he was coming over to sell something or beg for some money, but instead he quickly yanked the purse I had hanging around my neck right off, and took off running. I was shocked, although I’d heard the reports on the rise of theft in the city, I’ve traveled in several countries before with nothing of the sort happening to me, so it was very unexpected when it happened.

A lady selling fruit tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the guy as he ran towards the deserted web of market stalls, and I noticed another guy running after him, later concluding they were probably together, as he never came back. All I managed to do was throw a pretty annoying scream as the guy yanked the purse off, but I literally stood there thinking that running is not my forte, and even if I caught him I didn’t know if there were other people with him, or if he had a weapon. I was happy later on when my program director told me the same thing went through her head, and I knew not going after the guy was the right decision. I was a bit shaken, but as I always do, I started rationalizing the guy’s actions: Unless he is a sociopath, which I highly doubt, no one chooses to commit crimes because they like it. He was dirty, and jittery, probably homeless, hungry, nervous, or high, or a combination of those choices, and here come the two “vaza” (as they call foreigners here) looking all clean and happy and entitled, and buying whatever they want; the perfect targets for a robbery. In most societies being known as a criminal is something shameful, and I bet it is no different here, so the guy is probably an outcast, with little possibilities to get a job. He stole to eat, or get high, or, as I like to imagine, to feed a hungry family with little kids like the ones I see on the streets here every day, hands extended out (even babies hardly a year old do it), inhaling all the fumes from passing cars, waiting for a few coins to be dropped into their hands to get something to eat.

I was not mad at the guy. There were no tears, no what ifs, no tantrums, just the realization that this is something that could, and does, happen to people every day, many of whom are living from paycheck-to-paycheck and loose their money to thieves and have nothing else to pay their bills or feed their families, and many of whom get hurt in the process. That is not my case, and so getting angry for me represented a mourning of things that really don’t have the significant value of other things: life, taking care of loved ones, etc.

Now, I’m not a saint. This was a complete violation of me as a person, as a visitor to this country, as someone who came here to work for free to try to help people prevent falling into the situation that guy found himself in when he made the decision to rob me; but I do also realize that that profession is probably not that guy’s childhood dream, but something he does to survive, as wrong as it is, and not trying to defend his actions. Plus, after I realized I had also lost my apartment keys I have to admit I was a bit sour, but by then I’d had about 5 beers, and was more concerned about not getting completely wasted in front of my program director, than I was with how I would get into my apartment (my roommate happened to had left that same morning for Ambubambe, located in southern part of Madagascar, on a work trip for the next five weeks).

We spent the rest of the day trying to contact people from my office (cell phone and phone numbers were also in my purse), calling my bank in the states, not being able to get through to the bank in the states, and then having to get a hold of my parents through skype to have them do it (and of course having to explain to them how I lost the card, that I was ok, that no, the guy had not broken into my apartment, that I was safe, etc, etc).

My program director was leaving the country that night, so since I couldn’t get into my apartment, and couldn’t get a hold of my work supervisor, I stayed in my program director’s hotel room for the night, then walked myself to the office wearing the same tank top, sandals, and skirt from the day before to get everything solved.

As I was in the office, I received an email from the US embassy in Antananarivo saying a couple of their guards had found a kid playing with a purse and thinking it was unusual checked the purse to find that it was mine, and had my drivers license and credit card still inside (needles to say, the cell phone, digital camera, apartment keys and money were not found). While the lock to my apartment door was being changed, one of the drivers at the office took me to the embassy to get the items recovered, and then to the police station to report what happened, which was another adventure.

The driver was told by the two police officers behind the counter (in Malagasy of course) that he had to go to the store and buy three blank sheets of paper, one to write what happened and the other two to then go to the building next door and make two copies of he statement written. After this was all done, the two guards had to recheck what had been written by asking me what happened (one of the guards being particularly interested in knowing if I’d been at the market by myself or with a boyfriend; the boyfriend part being the point of interest). After that, the paper was given to another person in the office to be typed up (yes, with a type writer!), then that type-written copy, and our three hand-written and photocopied copies were stamped and handed back to the guards who proceeded to hand-write all the information onto another pre-typed piece of paper, where I also had to provide them with my date of birth, place of birth and my parents’ names and whether or not they were still alive or were deceased. After a couple of minutes of me asking why the hell they needed that information if they didn’t even know where the Dominican Republic was located and my parents did not live in this country, I gave up and gave them the information they wanted, which they wrote onto the paper, and then proceeded to hand-write onto a notebook (I’m not even making this shit up!). The pre-typed sheet of paper was given to me (I don’t know what they did with the remaining two million copies), and I was told I had to carry that paper so that if I saw someone on the street with my things I could stop them and demand that they accompany me to the nearest police station to testify how they came into possession of the items (yeah right I’m gonna do that shit! And what are the damned odds that I will randomly stumble upon someone on the street using my shit?).

However, notwithstanding the fact that I had just spent 2 hours seeing the same information being written and re-written and re-typed and photocopied over and over again, I was told that I had to come back to give a face-to-face statement to someone else in the office on Wednesday morning (the guy was already gone for the day…it was 3:30pm), because that day’s statement was not the formal one (WTF!). Screw that crap! That appointment was at 8am today, and it is now 2pm, so I obviously did not make it to that! What’s the point?!

The only thing that’s made me angry is people’s reaction to what happened to me. Every Malagasy who asks me what happened then says, “oh, you need to be more careful;” WTF! The purse was ON me, not on the ground, not on a chair, ON me, he YANKED it OFF my body. I keep wondering how it is I’m supposed to be more careful. I think I will ask the next person who makes that comment what it means to be “more careful” in Madagascar. What do you guys think it means? I think I might start carrying a condom in my purse.