Nakuru Robbery

We were thrown quite a curve ball last weekend.  Jim went on an all-guys three day, two night trip a few hours away, while I stayed here at RVA with Faith and Joel.  It's never a good thing when, on the third morning, another wife calls you and the first thing she says is "Everyone is okay, but..."

Here is Jim's careful recollection of the story.

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A few weeks ago, I was invited on a photo safari to Nakuru National Park.  I was really excited about going when I first heard about it and the details, as I began to learn them, made the trip sound sweeter and sweeter.  To begin, I’d not yet seen ANY wild Kenyan mammals except Baboons, Colobus and Syke’s monkeys, and this park is the best place in Kenya to see Rhinoceros, Rothschild’s Giraffe and Leopard, in addition to many other animals.  Not only that, but we were going to focus on taking pictures.  I began to envision enlargement-quality wall-hangers.  The deal was sweetened when I found out that one of the men from Rift Valley Academy had been planning this photo safari for quite some time with a couple of his friends from Canada who were professional wildlife photographers; we were getting to tag along for three days of their trip.

We planned to stay in a small guesthouse – an old farmhouse – on the park property.  It was cheap, and we’d be ideally positioned for early morning and late evening game drives.  When we got there late last Thursday afternoon we had a wonderful time.  One of the first animals we spotted was a Black Rhino (critically endangered) after being inside the park for maybe twenty minutes.  We got great photos.  The next day was even better – over 20 white rhinos, another black rhino, 12 lions, hyena, flamingos… many, many animals.  That second night, as we pulled into the farmhouse gate, we marveled at an enormous herd of Cape buffalo.  They are Africa’s most temperamental and dangerous large mammals.   I was grateful for the fence surrounding the farmhouse yard, and we were obviously careful to close the gate behind us!

After supper, I began deleting photos like mad, as I was running out of storage space for all these beautiful pictures.  I was really picky and deleted everything I wouldn’t be willing to pay for an enlargement of; I ended up with about 600 pictures.

We went to bed at around 9:30, ready for a 5:30 early-morning photo-shoot for our last morning in the park.  I carefully arranged the things I’d need in the morning around my bed so that I’d be ready to go when the time came.  I hadn’t slept much at all the night before, and I was dead-tired.  As always, morning came far too soon.

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I awake to headlamps shining in my eyes.  “Is it time for our drive?” I ask.

No reply.  As I ask again, it hits me.  The men with the headlamps are whispering in Swahili!  There are three with headlamps, and I see movement elsewhere in the room – no telling exactly how many intruders there might be.

As if to make perfectly clear to me the situation and my position in it, the three lamps look at me.  The knobby heads of three rungus, cocked and ready, appear in the glaring light just beyond my blue mosquito net. Not much protection there. 

The rungu is a traditional Maasai warrior’s hunting or war club, usually just under two feet in length and carefully carved from dense acacia wood.  With a narrow handle and a curve carved into it just before the business end – a rounded, heavy ball about the size of a doorknob – it is a crude but intimidating weapon.

I try to see more clearly.  The rungu above my head flinches, threatening.

A harsh whisper.  “Where is da money?”

I say the first thing that comes into my mind. “We don’t have any money!”  I try to speak calmly, but hope to wake the others.  There are three of us in the room – all teachers at RVA.  Brian who’s been here in Kenya for 13 years, and John who’s been at RVA for 11 years.  The words come out only as loud as normal conversation but edgy, emphatic.  Too much? Too loud? Too soft?

On the opposite side of the room Brian wakes groggily.  “Is it time to get up?”

One rungu remains above my head.  Again I say the first thing that comes to mind.

“They’re going through our stuff!”

All three headlamps snap to attention.  All three shine into my eyes.  The other rungus reappear, hovering over my bed.  Swahili whispers intensify.  John is moving now.  All eyes are on me for an instant.  Brian lunges out of bed shouting.

“Thieves!  Thieves!”

A mad rush for the door.  Feet rushing in the darkness. They are all fleeing. John and I join in the chase.  Brian pursues men out the back door.  John and I follow a man through the living room and out the front door.  He throws a pair of pants at us, probably to slow us down.  Afraid of thorns, John and I return for our shoes before giving chase, but mine are gone; nothing is where I left it.  John’s shoes are gone too.  I find my sandals and rush out.  The whole thing has taken only a few seconds. 

The other four men in our group and two caretakers who were asleep in other rooms and outbuildings join in the search for thieves or things they have dropped.  John’s pants are found by the front door, his cash and car keys still in them.  Brian’s camera bag, passport and empty wallet are by the back door.  The robbers are long gone, the gate wide open.  After a quick search of the yard we return to the house.  There we discover the refrigerator and gas canister are gone too.  A couple of men venture down the road in a vehicle to search for the thieves, the rest of us begin to investigate. 

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Within a few minutes, a truckload of Kenya Wildlife Service Guards arrived, followed by another, then a couple more trucks loaded with Kenya police.  Their response was amazing.  We pieced together quite a bit of what must have happened.

At about 1:00 AM, the regular KWS night patrol woke the caretaker because the gate was open.  The caretaker wasn’t sure why it is open, but they don’t immediately see anything of concern and don’t investigate further after closing the gate.

At about 3:00 AM, John woke and went to use the bathroom.  He noticed that the security light outside the bathroom window was out.  We later found the bulb, unscrewed and lying beneath a bush.

At around 3:45AM I was awakened and things got crazy. 

We couldn’t figure out how they’d gotten into the house.  The doors were wide open, but we were sure they’d been bolted from the inside before we went to bed.  It took us quite a while to find where they’d used bolt-cutters to cut the window bars in the living room on the opposite side of the house.  They had to cut in five places, and even then, it was a VERY skinny man who made it through to let his buddies in.  We’re pretty sure they must have come for the refrigerator and gas canister.  They had obviously started before 1:00 AM.  That’s why the gate was open.  After successfully removing those from the park through a hole they’d cut in the electric fence (the entire park is surrounded by one) over 600 yards from the farmhouse they were apparently emboldened to come back and take another look.  After having a little picnic outside the gate with the contents of the refrigerator, they came in and began to rummage through our things.

I lost quite a bit of stuff: My passport, our camera set-up that was a wonderful gift from my parents (and sadly the beautiful photos I’d taken), my hiking boots, a cell phone, watch, pocketknife, and a good chunk of cash I had carefully hidden in three different places and had planned to use for a run to the butcher’s after our Safari.  They found all of it.  Thankfully, they removed my glasses from the camera bag before they absconded with it – also my GPS.  I think the removal of the GPS must have been an accident.

The search for missing items was massive.  Kenya Wildlife Service used a couple of sniffing dogs, and there were tons of officers on foot.  When we noticed a small plane flying overhead just after dawn and asked about it, the head of KWS for Nakuru National Park replied, “We are trying to spot the refrigerator.” 

A few items did turn up:  a very expensive flash that John was borrowing, two tripod mounts, a bag of microwave popcorn, John’s glasses (found a hundred yards away from the farmhouse in waist-high grass), Brian’s swimming trunks and a pair of his dirty underwear. 

Looking back a couple of things strike me:

God is Good:

So many things could have gone much worse.  Suppose I had said something that translated from English more easily than, “They’re going through our stuff.”  Suppose their attention hadn’t been mostly on me when Brian began his charge.  Suppose the rungu, which gave Brian a nasty bruise on his hip, had actually found its mark.  Suppose they had gone first into the professionals’ room next door, where well over 60,000 dollars of camera and computer equipment was.  At our orientation school in Machakos we were told that waking during a robbery in progress is one of the most dangerous scenarios we might face.  God’s hand in the words spoken and actions taken were almost immediately evident to us.

Kenyans Are Desperate For A Future:

Poverty is everywhere.  These men probably live in one of Nakuru’s slums.  They’ll probably sell the full-sized refrigerator/freezer for around 120 dollars, the half-full gas cylinder for 100.  My 15 year-old watch for four or five.  The camera and lenses for maybe ten dollars.  Different priorities are found here.  People are poor.  We have really been blessed.  These thieves felt they had nothing to lose.  They were so desperate they cut through an electric fence to enter a game park – some of the most heavily patrolled areas in Kenya - walked through an area in which only a couple of hours earlier we had seen an enormous herd of buffalo bedding down for the night and in which we had that morning photographed 7 lions, in order to steal a refrigerator and some cooking fuel.  People Need Hope.  People need a Savior. (Jeremiah 29:11)