For you are like my aunt

A few hot and sticky weeks ago I had to run into the office for some reason or other ; the reasons were so many those days between pointless meetings for work that never went anywhere, passport, visa, passport sized photos and where’s-my-pay that I really can’t remember. I parked as usual outside the office and ran up. I doubt I was more than 25 minutes.

The very next day I noticed that I couldn’t find my underwater MP3 player (and if you haven’t got one of these and you enjoy swimming I urge you to transform your swimming experience right now. You can find them on Amazon). I thought about it and decided it must have been taken from my car at the supermarket. Then I reached for my sunglasses in my bag as I walked unfulfilled away from the pool. Not there! A while later I came to the realization that my i-pod (a present from my lovely man) was nowhere to be found either. Oh I was annoyed (after the tears had passed).

For the next week I fruitlessly pursued the supermarket as the site of the crime until a chance remark from the lovely parking ticket man by the office made me widen my search. “Don’t park on that street my sister, they are thieves there”. At which point the part of my brain that makes connections finally jumped into life. “Oh Mr Ticket Man” I said, “would you know anything about things being taken from my car”. The horror and outrage on his face at the thought that I had been robbed was almost comical.

Two days later he assured me he knew who the thieves were. They held the handle on the passenger door of my car as I locked it up which meant it remained open and they were free to go about their thieving ways once I was gone. He told me he could get my glasses back. The others, well, “they have been sold”. He proceeded to ring the thief, hold a long conversation in Swahili and then tell me mischievously, “he will bring them tomorrow because I said that you work in my uncle’s office. My uncle is a policeman”. I, needless to state, do not work with the police.

I was skeptical about what would show up if anything and in what kind of state but, in a lesson to all Doubting Thomas’s, my ticket man brought me my glasses in almost pristine condition the next time I saw him. I thanked him profusely (they are prescription, polarized and not cheap) to which he said “Do not worry. I wanted to help you for you are like my aunt” and off he walked down the street with nary a request for cash or favours. Because I’m like family apparently. Even with my white face.