There will be no pictures in this post, as the ones that are still too alive in my head should never be seen by anyone else.  I am writing this to cleanse myself of the images and the terror that accompanies them.  I’m writing this to journal the details of this event and to figure out what I need to learn from it.  It’s for me, not for you. Please try to remember that fact as you read this post, as I am not intending to be dramatic or to entertain you, although it may read that way.  No one is more aware than I that it reads like an episode of Law and Order. But it is all true. I’m simply transferring exactly, verbatim, what I lived, out of my head  and onto this page.

In the dark, early morning hours of Wed, Dec. 4th, around 4:30am, a black African man broke into the apartment that I rented.  I was asleep in my bed when I heard the floor outside the bedroom door creak loudly, something I had discovered myself whenever I stepped on that spot.  Through my groggy sleepy haze,  I turned to see his long dark arm extend to open my bedroom door and come in.  I asked him what he wanted – I thought I was in a dream.  He told me, in a smooth, calm voice with a South African accent, that he was going to rob me.  He came toward the bed and took my pocketbook off the nightstand.  He dumped its contents on the bed and grabbed for the cash that fell out.  I said, “Take the cash. Take it and go”.  He picked up my computer that lay beside me on the bed and started to search the dark room with his eyes. I asked, “Why are you doing this?” He answered, “I am poor.”  He said,  “I am going to kill you.” He didn’t appear to have a weapon, but I wasn’t going to challenge him. “Where’s your phone,” he said.  My phone?  My phone?  I repeated these words as I tried to process his, and watched him make his way around the bed to the other night table and grab my phone. Then he looked at me. I pulled the covers up tightly to my neck, as I was naked and frozen under them.  He said, “I want sex” and he looked at my neck and ripped off my two necklaces with one swift tug.  I was terrified. Somehow my voice was calm. “No no no no no no no. I know you’re not a bad man.  You’re not a bad man.  You can’t do this.  You need to leave.”  And he repeated what I said. “I’m not a bad man.  No, I’m not a bad man”.  He slowly backed up from me and started opening all of the closet doors and looked through all of my clothes.  “What else do you have? What’s in here?”  He grabbed my sneakers and handfuls of clothes and threw them on the floor.  He spotted the safe behind the hanging clothes, and said, “Open this”.  ” I can’t, it’s the owners’.  I don’t live here.  I don’t have the key”.  He considered what I said, and moved on. Then he spotted my large rolled duffle on the floor.  I had been keeping it locked since the incident with the housekeeper. He threw it on the bed, ordered me to open it as he tugged on it hard and broke the lock with ease.  Inside, he found more treasure.  My camera, my medicines, my earphones, my jewelry, my safari bag with all my new clothes and equipment, and more, until he had dug to the bottom and emptied every last item.  “You need to go. You need to go.  Just go. Go now…” I was pleading and repeating. He said he needed a bag, picked up my backpack, and stuffed it full with all of the things I have worked on for the past 3 months, every detail of this trip perfectly laid out, all dumped into his newly acquired backpack. “You have to go!  I’m going to hit the alarm!” I started to make it look like I was going to get up although we probably both knew I wouldn’t. He said there was no alarm, I said there was and I moved my leg out from  under the covers as if to put it on the floor.  In the same calm voice he softly said, “I’m going to go.  Don’t move.  I’m going.”  I watched him turn and walk out of the bedroom and listened as he creaked the floor on his way out.  Then I heard a thump.  And then silence.  I listened to that silence for a few minutes before I quietly got up, grabbed my robe off the door, and thought what to do next.  I wanted to see if he was really gone, so I peaked my head out of the bedroom and looked into the living room and beyond to the front door.  The key that I used to lock the door from the inside and left dangling in the lock was gone. Nothing looked touched in the living room.  I moved on to the kitchen and then saw the kitchen window wide open. I pulled the window closed at the same time as I realized I probably shouldn’t touch anything.  I was sure he was gone and I needed help.

The bedroom has full sliding glass doors that open onto a huge balcony that is shared with the apartment next door.  I ran to that door, slid it open, and banged on the neighbor’s glass doors, not knowing which of the two rooms was their bedroom or living room.  Within a few seconds, a man moved the curtains and looked at me.  “Help me, please… I, I….I need help.”  He opened the door and he and his girlfriend pulled me in and I started to tell them that I was robbed and what happened.  They immediately called the police and Nicky and Bryan. I didn’t have my phone anymore so I was without any way to contact anyone.  I was lost without my phone, although I wasn’t clear on who to call anyway.  I didn’t want to upset my family or friends, and I always operate strategically in times like these… well, not that I’ve ever been through anything remotely near to this, but I always think about the effect my call has on that person. What can they do?  They’re all oceans away.  I allowed this couple to help me.  They offered me something to drink, I accepted water.  I used their bathroom and washed my face and hands.  I asked the man if he would come into the apartment with me so I could throw some clothes on before the police got there.  All the time, thinking, Oh my God.  I’m alive. I’ve been robbed.  That image.  That man.  His voice.  Oh my God.  I’m alive.  Oh my God.

We went in through the same door I had come through, into my bedroom, and I quickly grabbed some clothes off the floor and ran into the bathroom to put them on while the man stood waiting. He ventured into the apartment to see what the rest of it looked like.  I told him nothing looked out of place in the living room.  I followed him into the kitchen and showed him the window and told him I had pulled it closed, but there was a long horizontal window above it that was open which is how we realized he had gotten in.  That window is always open a crack – I can’t even reach it.  He must have used some kind of tool to pry it open all the way, and then reached down to unlock and open the window below.

The darkness had started to lift as it was now 5am, and we heard some cars outside.  No sirens, no lights.  I looked over the balcony to see 2 cars that I actually questioned if they were police cars. They looked sort of like old beat up Ford Fusions.  A few officers were slowly getting out of their cars and milling around.  I went and sat down on the chair in the living room and watched them come into the apartment, introduce themselves, and start their questioning.

What color was he?  Black. How black?  Ummm.  I don’t know how to answer that.  Was he light black or dark black?  Dark.  What was he wearing?  Umm…again, it was dark. I think a dark T shirt. And dark pants.  What did his face look like?  Clean. Fine.  Nice.  Nice?  Ugh, this was hard.  I don’t remember any defining details about his face, no facial hair, no marks.  I more remembered his voice, because he talked to me the whole time.  I don’t think I really looked much at his face.  I didn’t want to see him.  Oddly, they never asked me his age.  He was probably in his early twenties.  And the questions continued.  I had to make a list of all the items that were stolen, but I couldn’t touch anything in the bedroom to see what was gone because the crime scene had to be photographed and the detectives had to do their thing and the fingerprints had to be lifted.  The officers explained that this was a serious crime and was being dealt with on a higher level than a regular robbery.  I don’t know what they meant, and honestly had a hard time understanding their accents.

Nicky and Bryan had come in during the questioning and they were extremely concerned and upset.  They hugged me, they apologized, they felt responsible, they couldn’t imagine how this could have happened.  The apartment is on the 3rd floor, it has a very secure locked gate in front and the entire perimeter is fenced with barbed wire.  Nothing like this had ever happened there before.  The police did a quick perimeter search and couldn’t find a break in the wire where he could have gotten in.  Bryan is extremely knowledgeable about computers and technology, and instantly knew he could track my iPhone through the “findmyiphone” app, and within minutes he had gotten the exact location up on his phone and showed the officers.  He wanted to get this guy and was completely on it.  The officers weren’t nearly as interested in running out the door as he was, saying they couldn’t leave the scene but would radio out to other units to track the robber.  So Bryan and a few of the officers went off to hunt this guy down.

In the meantime, I was making the list, answering more questions, and Nicky was helping me do what was necessary, such as canceling credit cards, calling the US embassy, canceling the Peninsula Tour I was supposed to be taking that day.  She was amazing.  Bryan was checking in with us periodically that they had tracked him to an area that is all slums but that my phone had been turned off so they were surrounding this area and going in after him and checking through all the shacks. Eventually, he came back with the head detective, frustrated and empty handed.  The detective assured me she would stay on it and do her best.  Really? How nice.

I was lost.  I had no phone.  No contact with MY world.  I didn’t want to be in the apartment.  I told Nicky and Bryan how I felt, and Nicky immediately said they were going to stay with me, sleep in the second bedroom, and she wouldn’t leave my side.  And  I knew she meant it. I could never allow them to give up their lives and babysit me.  That’s crazy.  I decided I wanted to move to a hotel, where I would feel more secure and have people around me.  Nicky made some calls and got me a room in a nice, not too expensive hotel in Bantry Bay, and thought we should go and have a look to make sure I was comfortable.  She said she would drive around all day to different hotels checking them out until I felt safe.

So off we went.  The hotel turned out to be fine, so we dropped off what was left of my belongings and ventured on to the Vodacom store to get a sim card for a phone she was loaning me. We dropped Bryan at his office where he had a laptop he wanted to loan me as well.  It’s Bryan’s computer I’m typing on right now.

By 1:30, I was back in the hotel where I stayed for the rest of the day.  I felt paralyzed.  Shocked.  Immobile.  But I knew I needed to pick up and go forward.  I knew I didn’t want to get on a plane and go home.  I just didn’t know how I was going to feel safe going out again.  I had been so brave about everything on this trip.  I never felt afraid.  Before I left home, people would ask me how I was feeling about it, was I nervous?  No, I never felt nervous.  Excited, but not nervous.  This intruder had stolen my stuff, but I couldn’t allow him to steal my sense of brevity, adventure, and opportunity.  I had to talk myself through this and convince myself that I was ok.  I was alive.  I was lucky.

That was Wednesday.  Today is Saturday.  I have already begun to heal.  Thursday, I dragged myself out of bed around 11am and went to Camps Bay Beach.  The beach is always my go-to place where I feel the most peaceful.  I allowed myself to feel.  Anger, Confusion, Loss.  Did I miss something?  Was I too trusting? I don’t think so….I question it, but I don’t think so.  I was aware on Wednesday that all I cared about was my life.  Nothing else mattered.  The list the officers wanted me to make felt petty and I didn’t want to focus so much on those things that were material.  I was alive.  But by Wed night, when I didn’t have a working phone, and the computer I tried to use didn’t have my files on it,  I started to get angry and upset about what was taken from me.  I had spent months planning this trip, countless hours of research, comparison shopping, frugal purchasing, with details that would blow your mind.  I had nothing else to do but plan, and I did, to the very best of my ability. All that precious time had been robbed from me, and I was angry about that.  I had purchased a year’s worth of medication, which was now gone, along with all my anti-malaria medication, water-sterilizing pen, insect repellents for skin and clothes, cipro, anti-nausea, anti-diarreah, blah…blah…blah.  How was I going to get my medication here??? They don’t even have it here, and insurance isn’t gonna pay twice for it, and my pharmacy can’t send it from home bc it will get stolen and…and….how will I get the files that were on my computer?  How would I travel the world without a camera??  I didn’t even have sneakers anymore so I couldn’t hike Table Mountain as planned.  I don’t have a car here so I have to take cabs everywhere and it’s a pain in the ass thinking about how to go about replenishing what I lost.  Instead of enjoying the sights of Cape Town, my time is being spent running around from place to place shopping and searching for the things I need.  And then there are the things I don’t need that were stolen from me that won’t be replaced. My earphones that I splurged on for my many long flights,  jewelry, my safari clothes, head lamp, steri-pen, first aid kit, and so on.

By Thursday night, I was exhausted from the frantic gathering I was doing, and got back to the hotel around 9:30 where I walked into the almost empty bar.  One of the two guys at the bar noticed me as I saddled up on a stool and asked if I wanted to try his specialty drink. Was he buying?  Yes, of course!  So we started chatting…I asked if he was staying at the hotel, and was he was there for business or vacation.  He said…he owns the hotel. Get out, as Elaine would say.  No really, he does.  He said he and his friends are going clubbing and I should come.  Yeah….I probably should.  Because this is the kind of adventure I was looking for, and I had had the worst couple of days of my life, and yeah….why the fuck not.  I told him I had to run upstairs to change into more appropriate clothes, and he said he would wait.  On my way past the reception desk, I asked the girl who the guy was – she said he owns the hotel.  Ok, just checkin.  Really, I’m not stupid.  I’m not too trusting.  Really.

So this 49-year old went to Shimmy’s – the hottest, premier nightclub in Cape Town”s V&A Waterfront – with the owner of the hotel, and his gorgeous friends, which included Percy Montgomery, aka Monte, one of the most famous South African rugby players (google him), and had a crazy, free,  fun night of dancing, drinking, VIP treatment and people watching (seriously, I’ve never seen such beautiful people in my life), and began to heal and put my life back in order.

I don’t know what the lesson is from all of this yet, but I’m looking hard for it.