Like Anticipating a Root Canal - Part I

There’s been a spate of burglaries in my neighborhood since mid-January. The culprits still haven’t been caught after more than 20 incidents. I’ve been living in the caravan, still, but it’s been in an area called Pine Valley for almost a year, so no longer in the park. Granted, there is minimal security there but it has been safe…up until recently. The downside to the caravan is there’s virtually no way to make it more secure. Besides, since it has no plumbing I have to walk between the house and the caravan every night. So if danger is lurking in the darkness I could have an unpleasant run-in with it.

Now that I’ve got you scared or worried…here’s what happened. Where the caravan is, there’s a house with four single women living in it. It’s maybe 40 yards/meters from the caravan. There’s also a 1-bedroom house on the same lot with one single woman living in it who owns a very large and scary-looking but gentle dog. His name is Roscoe. The woman in the 1-bedroom has a boyfriend who lives about 1km away from us. His house was burglarized at the very beginning of Feb. Our lot has a gate, but it just slides open and closed (no motorized remote control) and no way to lock it. After his break-in we put a chain and padlock on the gate. It was better than nothing. The fence is a simple chain-link with no razor wire on it. In contrast, nearly every house in Mbabane has a fence/wall with razor wire at the top, and some have it along the bottom too. A few properties in Pine Valley have this but many don’t, hence the recent crime wave.

The house had no burglar bars or gates on it. It has wooden front and back doors and a sliding patio door. The patio door simply locked by a latch, no additional bars or locks… I know.

Normally, at least one lady is home in the 4-person house every night. One in particular had recently taken to sleeping with her light on at night.

One Saturday night all 4 women were out, plus Roscoe’s owner. The night-light lady had even gone to a friend’s earlier that day and was spending the night. Hence, her light was never turned on (cue doom music). I was the only one home.

After taking a shower around 10:30PM I retired to the caravan to go to bed. I turned the light off around midnight after reading and went to sleep. A little while later, Roscoe’s owner came home. She was playing loud music in her car. Then she was on her porch talking on her phone really loud. I got up and opened the door to see where she was and why she was being so rude at such an hour. I didn’t see her so I closed the door and went back to bed.

That was 12:30. Shortly thereafter, others returned home. The noise level fluctuated but didn’t die down. I was getting really annoyed. Were these people drunk, or what? I lay there trying to ignore it all. Finally after 1:30AM, two women from the house came to the caravan and told me they had been robbed. “You’re joking!” I replied. Not joking. So I got up and they told me how they found the house in a tell-tale state with their belongings all over the floor in a mess.

Close to 3:30AM the cops arrived to take reports. They had broken in through the patio, didn’t even need to do damage to get in. They used candles and matches to see in the dark, which they had also done at other break-ins. They ate and drank alcohol, which they had also done at other break-ins. They stole electronics, jewelry, and cash totaling about $9,000. Chi-ching! They picked a good spot. And they had definitely been watching us and waiting for their opportunity.

Even more eerie was my discovery in the morning of a nearly empty bottle of gin, which belonged to one of the ladies in the house, along with a candle and matchbox right next to the caravan. Someone had been keeping an eye on me while the others stole stuff in the house. So I called friends in Mbabane and made arrangements to stay with them until further notice. I’m not trying to be a hero!

I took my valuables and a few other things to stay for a couple of days to figure things out. One of the women from the house came with me. Another went and stayed with one of her friends. The other two, who had lost the most, stayed in the house. The owner soon started installing burglar bars on the house.

By the way, Roscoe is the hero in all this. He must’ve barked at the guys when they first entered the property. I didn’t take notice because he and other dogs had been barking nearly every night that week. In hindsight they were probably barking at these guys who were watching us and awaiting their opportunity to strike.

Roscoe’s a scaredy-cat and who knows if these guys threatened him, so he took off to find his owner (Lassie!!). He had never been to the boyfriend’s house before, nor had he been walked that far in that direction, but he found her. She knew something was wrong since her dog was there. So she put him in the car and came home. She was purposely being noisy because she suspected trouble. We are certain her arrival disturbed their progress because we found the backpack from one lady who stays in one end of the house in the doorway of the bedroom of another at the other end of the house, and the 2^nd lady’s memory stick was in the backpack. So two women would’ve lost a lot more if the guys had not been interrupted.

And thank goodness I stayed in the caravan, or else who knows what could’ve happened.

To be continued…