Phone Thief

Try as I might to avoid it, a pessimistic attitude towards strangers has crept over me in the last month or so. After being asked by people I don't know for everything from money and pens to shoes and the clothes off my back, I've gotten a bit cynical about engaging in conversation with people on the street. Often it is the same conversation every time, sometimes in Kinyarwanda, sometimes in English, sometimes in French:

Stranger:"Good Morning." (Even at 4pm).

Me: "Good Afternoon, Mwiriwe."

Stranger: "How are you?"

Me: "I am fine, how are you?"

Stranger: "Fine thank you. Where are you coming from?"

Me: "I am coming from Rwaza."

Stranger: "You are going where?"

Me: "I am going to Musanze. Where are you going?"

Stranger: "Me, I am going to Musanze also…You are coming from where?"

Me: "I am coming from Rwaza."

Stranger: "No, no, no, what country?"

Me: "I am from the United States."

Stranger: "The ewnited tates?"

Me: "America."

Stranger: "Ah, America…"

3 minutes of silence

Stranger: "How can you help me?"

Me: "How can I help you?"

Stranger: "Yes, how can you help me?"

Me: "I don't know how I can help you."

Stranger: "But I want to speak English very, very well and I want to go to America. What can you do?"

Sometimes I can change the subject and talk about school, but most of the time I have to walk awkwardly with the petitioner walking in step next to me in silence, sometimes trying again to get something from me. Almost always they ask for my phone number. At first I thought it would be good to stay in contact with one or two people and try and make friends with them. But befriending at random turned out to be a mistake. I still get an occasional phone call at 4:30 in the morning from someone I gave my number to in January and haven't talked to since.

After 7 months of going through this same conversation, or a slight variation of it, several times whenever I leave the school, my inclination towards politeness has diminished. It's easiest to give one word responses, avoid eye contact, and walk faster. But with the rising of my irritation at these encounters, I've also realized that in some ways, you can't blame people for trying. Usually it's only the less educated people who ask me for English lessons, or money. And, really they're just trying to help themselves. So, when I started out for town last Sunday morning, I prepared myself to be patient and engage with people who tried to talk with me.

The walk was a long one (two hours) and by the end, the sun and exercise had me sweaty and tired out. By the time I made it to the main road, I had chatted with a few kids and one or two adults. But at the main road, I picked up a follower. When he saw me coming, he left his position of leaning against a building and started walking the same way I was, walking faster when I met up with him so our strides would match. At first everything was fine. I found out that he was an electrician and was taking some classes somewhere about something and that he had been taking them for some amount of time. But then he started asking me for things. When he asked for my phone number it took a bit of resisting to get him to drop the issue.

As soon as this man gave up and parted from me, another one pushing a bike came to take his place. The conversation was almost identical. Eventually he turned off the road to go to his friend's house, but within 5 minutes, someone else had matched paces with me to try to chat me up for some favors. This pattern continued, me getting less and less patient with every new encounter. Eventually I made it to town, had some breakfast and then went to church. The service was in English and many of the people there were used to interacting with foreigners, so I wasn't a big novelty there. I left in a good mood and newly motivated to be friendly to whatever other co-walkers might be passing my way that day.

After lunch, I made my way to Caritas, an artist co-op which teaches crafting skills to street kids and helps pay for their school fees. I was going to buy some cards to write some letters. On my way there, a young boy started chatting with me. After asking for money and a pen with a negative response, he started answering my questions about what he was doing and how old he was and where he went to school. He was very talkative and cheerful and told me that his name was Dieudonne ("God gives" in French). A teenage girl had joined us, listening to the conversation, and I started to enjoy the company. When I turned off to go to the co-op they waved goodbye and smiled. After buying my cards I turned towards the street. I was going to go to the hotel across the street and use the internet before heading back up the mountain. As I exited through the gate, Dieudonne bounded up to me and pointed across the street to the hotel. "You are going over there?" he asked. "Yes," I replied. And the next thing I knew he had taken off in the other direction.

"That's odd," I thought. "I wonder why he asked me that and also why he didn't keep walking when I went in to Caritas." But I didn't think much of it. About 40 minutes later, as I was packing up my computer at the hotel, I reached in my bag for my cellphone. It wasn't in the pocket where I usually keep it, so I pulled out everything from my bag to figure out where I had absent-mindedly put it. But it wasn't there. It didn't take long for me to realize that it had been stolen. I had a friend call it and found that the number was unavailable. Now Dieudonne's strange comment made sense. He had been turning my attention to the hotel so that the girl could grab my phone from my bag.

I was furious. All day I had been battling with myself to show some respect to people. I had been really nice to Dieudonne. I spoke with him in Kinyarwanda. I told him about my job and America and had asked him about his school and what subjects he enjoyed. I had done everything I could to convey to him that I was a Muzungu living a (semi) Rwandan life among Rwandan people, not a rich tourist coming to take photos of the poor hungry African kids and the gorillas. I was even dressed like a Rwandan woman on Sunday (button-up shirt and dressy skirt). I didn't even really care about the phone. It cost me less than $20 and I had another one with all of my numbers on it (one for town, and one for the mountain).

I was wishing I could meet up with Dieudonne and give him a tongue lashing. I imagined it in my head. Something about having respect for yourself and others, maybe another bit about how if you don't want people to treat you like a beggar and thief, then you shouldn't act like one. I remembered the time a few weeks before, when a taxi driver in Kigali refused to give us the correct change. My friend Mitesh had very solemnly told him he should be ashamed of himself and that he should perform his job with integrity and honor. It was brilliant. Pure act of WWJD if you ask me. Got us our money back too. I saw myself having a conversation like this with Dieudonne. After which he would hang his head and give me my phone back. Then I would give it back to him under the condition that he never steal again. And thus I would have saved a child from a life of thievery and crime. But unfortunately, I probably will never see Dieudonne again. Also he probably is not exactly destined for a life of crime, just an occasional pick-pocketing when it's an easy job.

On the moto ride back home, I remembered something from when I was a kid, when I would get in a fight with my brother or sister. "MOOOOMMM!!!!" we'd scream as we ran down the stairs to stand before Mom's judgment. Usually she'd just say: "I don't want to hear it. Go sit on the bench."

"The Bench" was a wooden bench in the entryway which held winter hats and gloves and scarves in the seat. We knew the drill. We had to sit on it with our current enemy and either talk about the fight or sit in silence until we got to the point where we could give each other a hug. It didn't matter who was in the wrong. Every plea of "But Mom, it's not fair, she started it!!" was met with the response "Life's not fair, figure it out."

I thought about Dieudonne. It's hard to tell from the way he looked, but probably at least one of his family members has died in his lifetime. It's also possible that he won't ever get a full education. Maybe there are some days he doesn't get enough to eat. Dieudonne probably already knows that life isn't fair. And like everyone else, he's just trying to figure it out.