Our first night in Capetown, South Africa, our contact reminded us as he left, “Don’t forget to close and lock all the windows at night, don’t want a baboon in the house.”
Fast forward three weeks.
I sat up in my top bunk to the sounds of the most horrified scream I had ever heard. It was the scream of someone terrified beyond all reason. My first thought was, Oh crap, someone opened a window to cool off the room, there must be a baboon in the house attacking someone! That thought process ended as quickly as it had come to the yell of “EVERYBODY GET UP!” I looked down at my teammate with alarmed eyes and someone in the room whispered, “Men in the house.” At once I slunk down off my bed and under another, shoved in with forgotten belongings and beach sand. My teammates hurdled out of the room in one swift movement.
I was alone.
Trying to control my rapid breathing, I listened to the screams for help. A mans voice boomed above all others. These noises led me to assume the worst and I began to prepare for the possibility of being stolen from my hiding place by anger strangers. Every muscle frozen, I waited and waited for the bedroom door to fly open. Eventually a man’s yell came from right outside my room, “I AM LEAVING!” SLAM. I peeked from my spot on the floor and saw I was still alone. After rolling from under the bed and running into the hall, I heard the harried, broken words of my teammates tumble through my brain. “A man…knife…hit him…stole the phone…still in the bathroom…someone needs to get our contact.” Two of us sprinted from our house, no shoes on our feet, down the dark rode to our contacts home. He quickly came to the door and followed us back. Our contact ran through the house and opened the bathroom door to find all that was left of our intruder was an article of clothing caught on the window during his escape.
I let out a deep breathe.
We collected into the living room and I tried to piece together what really happened as my teammates talked to the police.
A tall man had snuck in through the bathroom window, so small we didn’t think twice about leaving it open. He had come to steal from us. To hand off our belongings to another man waiting patiently in the front yard. Early rising teammates had found him in the bathroom. He escaped through that same window, taking our team leaders phone as his only reward.
The police left with a generic description and doubtful faces.
I finally looked down at my watch. 4:30AM. To restless to sleep, I stared at my fingers. Our night was over.
But I was wrong, it was far from over and God was about to visibly step on in to our morning.
Part 2————–>
