i’m not having fun now

I sleep well, very well, and quite late.  But suddenly ‘rest’ has become ‘boredom’.  I guess after 19 days full on, including (un)healthy dollops of stress, I can’t cope.  And with covid in the team, my plans to leave become slightly less concrete.

After as many ‘housekeeping’ tasks as I can manage. I finally crack – got to get out of here.  So I suggest to our PT, who now has an 8 or so week old puppy in her life, that we could take the dog for a walk, to the nearest bar (obvs).  Its only about half a mile away, maybe less, on the same stretch of straight, road as both the hospital and the Volunteer Village here where we live.  Tree-lined on one side, sugar cane and plantain fields on the other, with the odd house or business.  I’ve walked it maybe 30 or 40 times, and we have all cycled it plenty.  On the way back we run into a hospital worker cycling home from work, a little after 4 on Saturday afternoon.  We stop and chat for a minute… and then I feel a hand clamped around mine, which is holding my phone.  Another appears and we have a little argument, but then I see sense, its only a phone.  He grabs my friend’s phone too as he and his mate run back to their moto and speed off.

In hindsight it was complacency.  We know the country is volatile, but it wasn’t really affecting us (apart from beer and fuel) so why not?  I’ve been here 360 days as it happens, essentially a year, this has been my home, I thought I knew my ‘hood, middle of the afternoon, main road, people around…  But equally it could have been anywhere in London where these moto thieves roam. 

Anyway I’ll get a new phone, and they didn’t bother to pat me down, so I still have my credit card and cash…

We found our phones, sort of, though.  Whilst the battery lasted locator told us they were in the city, looks like the electrical goods section of the market.  But I don’t think we’ll go looking.