July 14th, 2006- Drama Galore!

¨Today is just a good day in disguise¨ --Paul Venghaus

On Tuesday night, my house was robbed. This came a night after my neighbor’s house was robbed of every single belonging while the inhabitants were sleeping at only 10:30pm. I was definitely awake during that time and didn’t hear a thing. I asked my host mom how it was possible that nobody on our block saw or heard anything suspicious, and she said that even if they had, it wasn’t a good idea to try to intervene because the robbers more than likely had knives or guns. I knew that our house had been burglarized two times in the past, and that our neighborhood had a peppered reputation, and I also thought that it was slightly unsettling how my family, in addition to three padlocks, would push all of the living room furniture up against the door before we turned in each night. However, it never occurred to me to report these occurrences to my Peace Corps staff because I thought there was no sense in getting paranoid about what seemed to be the inevitable. I had come to terms with most likely being robbed in Peru, but I certainly wasn’t expecting it to happen in my home stay. I thought maybe it would occur on my way home from training one day, or maybe during a visit to Lima. Just in case though, I locked my bedroom door pretty religiously, even while I was inside of the room. Somehow, on Tuesday night, I either forgot to do that, or the intruder got hold of my bedroom key, because he/she definitely came through my bedroom door without a forced entry and nearly scared the living daylights out of me.

That night I was already having trouble sleeping as was, because I had stayed home from training to sleep all day because I was sick, and therefore, I could not get any rest throughout the night. At around 2am, I finally started dozing off until I was awoken by an abnormally bright light shining through my bedroom window. Before I could figure out why this annoyance was occurring, someone walked furtively into my room, ventured straight over to my desk, and began going through my compartmentalized bag that was holding all of my valuables. I was wrapped in my covers, facing the wall in the opposite direction, and praying to all things holy that the person, whoever it was, would spare me my life. He/she spent about 3 minutes going through my stuff, turning my digital camera on, and moving things around (creating quite the ruckus, if I do say so myself. After all, I was trying to sleep, and he/she was presumably trying NOT to wake me up, a detail that good criminals are heedful of). I kept thinking to myself, “Sheesh, what an amateur, does this person actually believe that he/she is not waking me up?”) After experimenting a bit with my belongings, he came to the end of my bed and slowly pulled my sleeping bag off of my body. For the first time since coming to Peru, I was not inside my sleeping bag because I had a fever and was trying to stay cool. This is when I started freaking out a bit, because there was a little too much contact for comfort between me and this starkly mad thief. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I urinated a little bit on myself. As soon as my sleeping bag was completely off of me, the dogs outside started barking (good job guarding the house when the thief was breaking and entering, guys), and a baby in my house started crying), so the thief freaked out and left my room. I sat up slowly, only to see that he had left a pile with my camera, my laptop, and my sleeping bag, so I figured that he was definitely coming back for those goodies. I stayed still in my bed for the next hour, scared out of my mind, waiting until I heard no movement downstairs, and then I ran to my host parents bedroom and did a horrific job explaining to them in Spanish what had just happened. We investigated the house, and found that the only thing that was missing was my wallet with my money, credit cards, and identification, which meant that the person had been watching me for a while, knew exactly which room I was in, and where I kept my valuables. We have no clue how he got in, because none of our doors or windows were ajar. We are thinking that he may have climbed through the roof, which has a part that is exposed to the outside, but honestly, that would make the thief comparable to spider man, or some superhero of that agile sort. A little bit alarming, to say the least.

On Wednesday, I spent half of the day in the police station, filing an official report and trying to wrap my brain around what had occurred. The Peace Corps staff was amazing in their support and in how quickly they issued a response to the situation. Our security specialist immediately came in from Lima and helped me to translate the specifics of the robbery, and to boot, he brought me caramels, which clearly indicates that he knows the way to my heart. We spent the better half of the day making light of the situation, so when the severity of the situation did finally hit me, I was in jovial spirits. In addition to the Peace Corps staff, my friends here have been quite possibly the best support system I could ever dream of, and I don’t really know what I would do without them here with me. Even the police officers were fairly friendly. I was laughing (inside) quite a bit, because we went to investigate the “crime scene” and I was standing on the curb waiting for a police car to come around, only to realize that when something happens here, you need to give the police officer a ride in your car. Hmmmm…what sense does that make? “Officer, I am being held at gunpoint, but let me go get the car and bring it around for you.” Weird. Then, we get to my house, and the officer nearly blows me away by telling me that they have a fingerprinting machine at the office, and that they were going to run my belongings for prints. After telling me that, he just stared at me for a bit, before I said, “Awesome, I hope you catch the guy.” His response, after he almost contaminated the evidence by grabbing it with his bare hands, was loosely, “I guess I should bag this, do you have a bag I could use?” It looks like this whole fingerprinting procedure is fine-tuned and effective. As if I wasn’t getting enough of a kick out of all of this, we accompanied the officer back to the station so he could slowly type up the report on the biggest and loudest typewriter I have ever seen. “You say your name is Winny Book, right?” Surrrrree, that’ll work, officer.

Needless to say, I was moved out of that house immediately, and am now residing up the mountain in a neighborhood called “Buenos Aires.” I now live with a young mother named Sarah, and her two kids, Jessica (19 years old) and Jonathan (16 years old). Sarah’s husband is a miner who is very rarely in town, and Sarah runs a little tienda out of the house that happens to sell my favorite beer and chocolate. Great. That should really help to reinforce my healthy lifestyle that I adopted a couple of days ago. Sarah and her family seem a lot less formal than my last family, and I feel considerably more safe and welcomed here. I even have a queen sized bed! No toilet seat or hot water though- you can only hope for so much here in Peru. The unfortunate thing about my move is that I am taking the place of another volunteer, who decided to leave the Peace Corps today. She was quite possibly the sweetest girl out of our group of 37, and I was incredibly sad to see her go. It seems as though she is confident in her decision though, and we all know that she will make quite the impact wherever she ends up. (Sabra- come and visit us. We will miss you, and so will Peru!!)