I'm not so sure I should publish this post, but many people have asked about it and this seems to be the easiest way to describe it.
14 April 2012
At around 2.15 AM this morning Luke and I were held up and robbed.
(Even though months have passed since this incident actually occurred, I am battling to get the courage to write about this experience that truly shattered my naivety and sense of security.)
Surfacing from a deep sleep, my mind registered the sound of people talking as they entered the house and stomped along the wooden floors. These must be the visitors that the owner was expecting to arrive earlier today I sleepily mused. I opened my eyes and began sitting up as two figures roughly opened the creaking door to Luke and my room, which caused them to notice our presence in the room more quickly. They started shouting to each other as one flicked the light switch on and I blindly tried to make sense of the situation in the glare.
“Lie down! Go to sleep!” They yelled as they roughly pushed us both back onto our beds. Go to sleep. I.e. close your eyes so that you won’t be able to identify them. The one who did all the talking (there were two of them, Xhosa speaking and from the location), he whispered that phrase in my ear often. Go to sleep. The quiet one was more terrifying though, and kept his hand thrust in his pants pocket. When he reached my bed, he snatched my phone from next to my head (I had been sleeping with it under my pillow and it had slipped out) and I had to fight back an urge through half opened eyes to grab it back. It was mine! Our bags were next to our bed, in full view. We had not thought that we needed to hide our things away. Luke’s camera bag was opened and his camera taken, as well as his phone. My handbag was emptied and my camera taken. They took the cash from our wallets (a substantial amount meant to tide us over until we could get back into res) but they left our bank cards and IDs – how kind. They chucked out Luke’s clothes from his bag and put their stolen merchandise in the bag. Luke’s laptop was added to the pile. They weren’t satisfied yet. They began shouting at Luke, pushing him roughly, asking him what else we had, to not lie otherwise they’d stab us. “Do you want me to fucking stab you huh? Do you want to die?” They pulled Luke from the top bunk, holding him by his collar, shaking him, forcing him to walk out the room. “Where are the keys to the gate?” They wanted the cars. They didn't believe Luke that we did not know where the keys were. They shoved him out to the Bantam, wanting him to drive them to the location. I was left in the room, a sniveling shaking, useless being. I should have done something then. I should have found a weapon. I should have run out into the road screaming for help. Instead I stayed put in shock, praying with all my heart that they wouldn't hurt Luke, wishing that they would just leave. They shoved Luke back into the bedroom after they had made him tell them where my laptop was. They took that too. The next thing I knew they were yanking me up by my neck, telling me to get up, to keep my eyes closed. Go to sleep, do you want me to fucking stab you. Grunted into my ear constantly as I stumbled down steep stairs, my eyes barely open, my neck in his grip. They took us back out to the Bantam. They wanted Luke to drive them to the location. Luke calmly repeated again and again, “I don’t know where the keys are, I’m sorry, I don’t know, please just leave us alone, we won’t phone the police.” Eventually they took us back up the stairs (Don’t fucking open your eyes), to our room. Forcing us to lie face down on a bed. Face by my face, Go to sleep. “Don’t fucking well call the police. We’ll kill you. We’ll come back for you.” Heavy footsteps on the wooden floorboards. Trying my hardest to swallow my scream, to stop shaking. Hearing Luke whisper “Don’t make a sound Vanessa, don’t do anything stupid.” The silence stretching as we waited, hardly daring to breathe.
After an age, Luke slid off the bed to see that they had truly gone. They had. Not ten minutes after they had left, the only other inhabitant of the Backpackers arrived home from a grad party; an Argentinian who was living there semi-permanently. The girls who dropped him off kindly phoned the police for us. The dazed and inebriated Argentinian gave us the code to the Backpackers phone, shrugged his shoulders at our predicament, stated “This is Africa” as if it were his mantra, and went to bed. Phoning my dad was a bad idea. He began shouting at me, yelling: “Now what?” By the time I had hung up the phone in tears, a small group of the police had arrived. It was now about 3.30 AM. They noted the damage and took Luke’s statement. So how did two thugs get passed the electric fence and code system that had lulled us into a false sense of security? They had crow barred the pedestrian gate until the coded lock broke. Then they had attempted to break in the window before kicking in the door, again breaking the coded lock with brute force. The full extent of our loss became apparent when the police left us, awaiting 6.00 AM when the fingerprinting experts would come in. The bastards had taken our car keys – and the spares were sitting eleven hours away in Hilton with my family. The holiday work I had so meticulously done had been on my laptop that was taken. The exam I had been preparing that work for was on Monday. It was now Saturday. Luke’s camera which we had begged, worked, scrimped and saved for over two years for was gone. All the photos from our epic holiday, from which we had been on such a high, gone. Luke’s new laptop, my new laptop, the means to do our work, all my life’s photos, gone. Our cell phones, our only connection to our family so far from us, gone. In total, it all came to about R 25 000 of stolen equipment, and a lifetime of effort.
Too terrified to go back to sleep, I made tea for the two of us as we sat shivering in the lounge waiting for the police to come back. Although Luke had handled the situation calmly while it was happening, the shock took him now, and nausea took root. Thank you Lord that they hadn't been able to make him take them to the location. Thank you Lord that they barely noticed me, that they didn't rape me. It could have been worse. But when you have been through such an invasion of yourself mentally, you find it difficult not to accept that you got off relatively easy. To this day, I need to make sure that every door and window that surrounds me is well and truly locked, and there is barely a night that goes by that I don’t lie for hours thinking about all the things I could have done differently, all the ways I could have hurt them, what it would feel like to stab someone, to feel skin and meat give way to the slithering edge of a hefty kitchen knife, to hear the crack of a skull connecting with a pan, how would I have to hit a person’s temple to knock them senseless… If there had been but one other person with us, another guy, if the Argentinian guy had been there and not at a party…things could have been so different.
At 6.00 AM the police took fingerprints. My mom phoned the Backpackers phone to inform me that my dad was on his way to Grahamstown. He had left as soon as I had phoned. As frustrated and guilty as I felt about my dad driving all the way here, it made me feel better knowing that the person I trusted the most in the world would be here to help me deal with this. He was bringing my sister and her husband’s laptops for Luke and me to use in the meantime for our academics, and two old phones, one of which was a Nokia 3310 – still in perfect working condition. I can’t believe how indestructible those machines are! Luke and I mooched around the Backpackers for the day, with no way to go anywhere and nowhere to go. The owner kept offering me free cool drinks to ease her guilt at our situation, but she didn't feel guilty enough to give us back the money we had paid for the night. I used the Backpackers computer to redo my whole pre-practical exam preparation. I managed it in record time, and looking back I still have no clue how I managed to achieve that. My dad arrived in the late afternoon, having had eleven hours to stew in his frustration. Our reunion consisted of a lot of panicked and stressed out accusations and defensive comments. When he dropped me off at Smuts (Luke’s res) I was in tears again. Luke had driven in convoy behind us (Dad had brought our spare keys down) and was entirely bewildered by all this. However, amongst all the shouting Dad and I had shared a sweet short hug that said all the words we could never say, I love you and I’m so glad you’re okay. Then he turned his car around and began to make his way back home. He refused to stay in Grahamstown any longer. A crushing, depressing, damaging low made stronger in comparison to the two week high I had been on.
So ended my April holiday.
