Okay, first of all - before going any further - may I say that, incredibly weirdly, although I am opening this window on someone else's computer (naturally, since mine was stolen - see below), I didn't have to log in to get here. That is, I just put in the general, everyone's-blog website name, and it took me directly to my pages. Hmmmmmm. Magic? Looking at the layout of the page, I'm thinking this must be a Google site, and so the fact that I signed in on Gmail from this computer may explain it. Othewise - they're reading our minds!!!!
So - as many or all of you know from Facebook, I was robbed two nights ago. I was tired from a late-evening C-section of a woman who may have been bleeding out from placenta previa. It's hard to know for sure - her first two blood pressures when we got her into the OR were something like 57/28 and 58/30 - i.e., much lower and your heart stops, very consistent with heavy blood loss. Also, she was SWEATING, which is kind of a marker of "Oh shit!" in your body (people sweat when they're having heart attacks, for example). On the other hand, with pretty moderate interventions from me, she climbed over the next couple of minutes to a normal blood pressure, making me wonder if the first two reading were "artifact" - i.e., equipment-related. Don't know. All I do know is that, after a lot of "resuscitation" - three liters of fluid, half a liter of "colloid" (something meant to better stay in the bloodstream and not just go into tissues; roughly equivalent to 1.5 liters of fluid), and a unit of whole blood - she was stable at the end of the operation. And the baby lived, too! So it felt like a good outing, a successful night.
As usual, I got in bed with all my "devices" - computer for checking political news (can't stop!), IPad for reading book; phone was actually on the table being charged, but when I got up to pee around 2:30 I brought it into the bed, too (it's my morning alarm).
Then, about 5:00, I woke up to pee again (it's NOT prostate problems! I've ALWAYS had to do this!). I reached for my phone, to see what time it was - and couldn't feel it. Then I reached around for the computer and IPad. Couldn't feel them. Then I got out of bed and turned on the light. And did all that "This CAN'T be right!" stuff (looking under the bed, as if everything could have fallen there - looking under the pillow - looking around the room). Until I finally noticed that my bag was missing, too, along with the local cell phone they give us.
I still had the idea that, you know, maybe some of my colleagues were playing a TRICK on me (one had just gotten back from vacation and there was a lively party in her room all evening - perhaps they, you know, got up to some HIGH-JINKS!). But that idea didn't really have much conviction. And, ongoing resistance notwithstanding, I kind of had to concede that theft was the likely explanation when one of the TWO guards (um - I do have some question about why the guards didn't succeed in, you know - guarding), whom I had alerted to the theft, found my bag outside in the street, half-dumped-out, but with everything except an envelope of money (only $15) still in or around it.
Back inside, the guards had found a place where the razor wire that tops our compound wall had been pushed up to a height that would let someone slip through. I am in the first "tukul" (hut) you arrive at if you've entered the site that way. I've wondered if it might have been an inside job - I have never hidden my computer when walking around, and I've always slept with my door open for ventilation, which anyone who worked here and paid attention would have noticed. Also, no one else was robbed. But maybe it was just that they got to me first, and happened to get lucky.
In any case, it's amazingly brazen, isn't it? I am a deep sleeper, but what kind of person would come into someone's room, have a look around (I assume in the dark) to somehow figure out where things of interest were, then assume they would be able to lift my mosquito net, reach over me, pick up three electronic devices, grab my bag and local cell phone for good measure, all without waking me up? Whatever else I may wish to say about them, they do appear to be very good at their job. Oh - and very creepy, too.
Anyway, at this point, I was just grumpy and PISSED. Took a shower; went to the kitchen area and tried to read the one book I had left (which is contemporary political history in French - not exactly easy and relaxing reading for the stressed!). Waited for everyone to wake up, so I could inform the relevant parties.
Once I'd done that, we decided/I realized 1) that we would file a police report (unlikely they'd find anything, but worth a try); 2) MSF DOES have insurance (though someone told me tonight it may have a maximum of $500, ha, ha - if that is the case, I sure think they should tell us that before we come out here - but I have found that communication of the actual situation is not entirely their strong suit!); and 3) I would need to come home a couple of days early to replace all the stuff before leaving NY again (can't do it on line - variety of questions re: phone contracts, whether the Apple Care I bought for the new computer 6 months ago can just be applied to a replacement, etc.).
So we got all that rolling. The visit to the police, which we all had assumed might take a couple of hours, was amazingly quick (<10 minutes), although, since the police report was written in Arabic on what appeared to be a piece of previously used scrap paper, I am not sure it will be of much value in the insurance-filing process. When I finally went into work around 10:30, I discovered that my local colleague Nicola was just planning to do all the cases that day (he'd heard what happened). Very sweet - and, as it turned out, really important. I just went home and hung out and rested. And felt really weird - violated, vulnerable, wanting but unable to be weepy. I just didn't feel part of the normal world; I think having to do a normal, skilled task would have just been hard that day.
And since then - I've felt a bit like I've been going through the Five Stages of Grief, or whatever they are. Maybe not literally, but - there was definitely about 15 minutes of denial; there's been quite a bit of grumpy anger. Don't know about bargaining or the next one, but I can sort of see myself heading towards acceptance. As everyone keeps writing to me, nothing really important was touched, and, in that case (and maybe in worse cases, too?), the new situation just sooner or later becomes the new normal. Good thing we can do that, I guess.
(It doesn't hurt that the OB has been INCREDIBLY generous letting me use his computer, and, today, we realized that if I pretend to be in his "family," I can load all my books onto his Kindle, which he's not really using right now. So in fact not that much has changed! I'm sort of wondering if I should in fact NOT borrow his stuff, if I'm missing a chance to be "unconnected" and feel what that's like for a while. Not playing ball with fate?)
And people have been so nice. One of the snooty French people just came by at lunch and looked me in the eye and asked me how I was doing - made me feel very taken-care-of. And in the OR today, all the staff had heard about it, and so everyone asked me, and were very generous with their condolences. One guy was talking about how the situation in South Sudan makes this kind of thing happen more than it should; he said he had had a mattress and sheets stolen recently (which, in fact, is probably much more of an actual blow to him than losing all my stuff will be to me). I think it made me feel less - I don't know, dissed; like a sucker. His sharing that he'd been taken advantage of similarly. Seemed very sweet to me, a generous solidarity.
But the most recent chapter brings up other "questions." So, what do you think? This afternoon, I realized that one of the wonders of the world-spanning Apple (who's CEO just held some big Republican fundraiser, BTW) is that they now have all these security options that let you make anything that has been stolen essentially unusable, if and when the person tries to go on line with it. I already knew I had to shut down the phone (South Sudan in not on AT&T's international plan (imagine!), and the charges would mount up rather quickly), so I did that. But then there was the bigger question: Do I make all the devices as unusable as possible, or do I say "Eh - they're no use to me now anyway - let someone get some value out of them"?
I was a little surprised by my conclusion - actually, I was more surprised by how strongly I came to it. I shut 'em all down! Partly, but importantly, it's that I don't want to encourage this as a profitable activity. It sucked that it happened to me, and I'd rather not promote it's happening to somebody else. But I guess I also - lecturing well-off person alert! - don't think stealing is really a great way to get along in the world, and don't want to encourage it. And I also think encouraging it, by allowing the thief to profit from it, would be kind of insulting to the MILLIONS AND MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of people who don't steal. It is one of the things I've been most amazed, and impressed, and oddly humbled by, in all the work I've done all over the developing world. People almost NEVER steal from you. Again and again, early on in doing this kind of work, I'd misplace something, and, you know, tell the hotel front desk that I thought someone has stolen X or Y. They NEVER had. It was always me - I had misplaced it. I know, I know, some of it is that I am by definition a powerful person in most of these contexts, and so stealing from me may be perceived as dangerous, etc. But I truly think it is more than that. A friend of mine once accidentally left $400 in plain view in her hotel room in Burkina Faso. She lived in Senegal, and told me that, absolutely no question, 100%, in Senegal the money would have been gone (Senegal is known for being one of the more money/businessy oriented places in West Africa). The person might lose their job, etc. (or might not), but it would be worth it to get, what - 2 years' income? Well, there in Burkina, a MUCH poorer country (4 years' income?), the money was right there where she left it. I just think it has SOMETHING to do with dignity and honor. And I'd like to honor that, and not the lack of those things.
So - whoever has my devices will be able to watch my 5 movies over and over again, and look at my pictures, and read all my FASCINATING documents. But the minute they try to use any of the devices on a network, the devices will lock themselves up and display a message asking the person not to buy or use stolen goods, and to call MSF to return them.
And I feel just fine about it (though I'm sure some of it is the more Trumpian satisfaction of feeling that I've stuck it to the people who stuck it to me). What do you think? Would you have shut everything down, or said more, well, if I can't use it, let someone else, then? I'd really love to hear anyone's ideas about it.
So that's my story today. I had wanted to say something about how I'm beginning to feel better about the power/"colonialism" issues that had been bothering me (basically, some of it is just people learning to work together, with all the associated bumps; we're not always 100% "nice," but something good comes out of it anyway). But that seems kind of extraneous at this point. I'll leave it there - except to say that I am REALLY happy to be coming home in a little over a week. It's interesting to see what these jobs are like, and I do think I'll do them again. But the whole thing is not easy. I'm ready to be done, back in my world and among my peeps.
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