Subtitle: How We Got Mugged at Gunpoint

 

This is a post I have been really needing to write, wanting to write, and dreading to write. Now that the traumatic event is a few weekends behind us, and I am sitting at a peaceful lodge in front of a watering hole watching families of elephants and herds of impalas and waterbucks and tons of birds, it feels like a good moment to reflect.

The Saturday began like most others in Kenya, with a safari. My friend Emily was in Nairobi beginning her month long African vacation and Bill’s colleague Andreas was in town from the San Francisco office, so we decided to book a day trip to Lake Nakuru and Naivasha. The safari car picked us up from our place at 6:30am and after a three hour drive, with a stop along the Rift Valley to take a picture of the view, we were there! Just as we enter the park, a brave baboon jumps on our van and is hanging into the open roof! He placed his “very soft” hand on Emily’s shoulder, we turned around and freaked out! He just wanted food and was clearly not afraid of people. Andreas had the Kenya travel book in his hands and used it to bang on the car next the baboon. He jumped off but another jumped on! Andreas used the book again, and we were safe. Up until 12 hours later, that was the scariest part of the day.

Throughout the drive we see a rhino with a baby rhino, lots of water buffalo, pelicans, flamingos, giraffes, zebras, and lots of antelopes. On the way home we stop at Lake Naivasha to take a motor-canoe ride and see tons of hippos! That was great fun, especially negotiating the price of the boat ride to half of what was quoted. That felt good. As we head back towards Nairobi, we start planning our Sunday. We decide on hiking Mount Longonot, so Bill and Andreas get dropped at the grocery store to get snacks, and Emily and I get dropped at a restaurant around the corner from where we live to get a table.

Bill and Andreas take a taxi from the supermarket to the restaurant and we enjoy a delicious Italian meal together. It was a Saturday night, and all the other guests were dressed nicely and looked freshly showered.  We looked tired and worn out because we were – an early morning and a long day in the sun will do that to you. We finish up and are ready to call it a night.

We leave the restaurant at 10:35pm and instead of beginning our 1 minute walk home, we wait outside of the security gate on the street because we are waiting for Andreas’ taxi, and it is so much easier at night to find your driver if they can see you waiting. The restaurant is at the bottom of an apartment building which – like all apartment buildings in Nairobi – has a security gate and guards to let cars and pedestrians in. Inside the gate is the parking lot for the building and outside the gate is just a regular street. We were waiting 2 feet in front of the gate, underneath a rare street light. The four of us muzungus, with all our stuff from the day, not paying attention to what’s around us, delirious from a long day and delicious meal, were sitting ducks.

I am standing on the right, Bill to my left, then Andreas and Emily, in a little semi circle facing part of the street. Three armed men walk up from behind us and the first guy in the front says to us “give me your bag or I’ll shoot”. I look to where he was gesturing with his head, and in his right hand, he his very clearly holding a gun down by his side. All three of them were. Without saying anything, I slide my backpack off my left shoulder and start moving to my right, to get inside the security gate. Luckily it was a cold night so I was wearing a jacket and I had my phone and wallet in my pocket, and my passport in Bill’s pocket, and not in the bag I just gave to the gunmen. I start moving swiftly to the inside of the gate, and one of them calls out “don’t run or I’ll shoot”. And while I don’t remember this part, I was reminded after the event that I called back “I’m not running!”. That was either brave or very stupid. But now I am inside the gate, and I see no guards anywhere. They were not in their normal post just past the gate in the little kiosk. Bill however thinks it is a good idea to go inside the gate and follows me. He is holding out the two bags of groceries in front of him, like he is offering it to the gunmen, so they don’t notice his backpack. He is now inside the gate as well, and we disappear behind the guard kiosk for a second (I was going to hide, but then realized that might be bad, backing myself into a dark corner) and Bill takes his backpack off with his work computer in it and hides it in the dark corner. We come back out from the dark, still inside the gate to see that two of the gunmen have followed us in, past the security gate. I mean, what is the point of a security gate? Anyway, I show my hands open down at my sides to indicate to them that they have taken everything from me and I distinctly remember making an terrified yet annoyed face and shaking my head slightly. Bill is now bringing the grocery bags to one of the guys. He takes the loaf of bread out to show what is in there and to suggest they really don’t need this, but the guy gestures to Bill to put it down. I thought he was gesturing like he was going to lift his gun (he didn’t) so I yell out “NO!” while Bill calmly puts the grocery bags down near the guy and backs away. The guy takes the bags and the two go back out of the gate to meet up with their third guy. Meanwhile, the third guy has taken Emily’s bag which has all her traveling documents and a nice camera (though she luckily downloaded all the photos to her phone during dinner), among other things. She too, luckily, had her phone and wallet in her pocket. He has now moved on to Andreas, who literally had everything taken from him. His phone, wallet, backpack with his work laptop, and then if that wasn’t enough, the guy grabbed his hat off his head and tore his glasses off his face. The gunman then said to give him his wedding ring, to which Andreas said “No”. At that point the two gunmen come out of the gate and meet the third guy. They disappear back into the darkness but I don’t know where they went. I only remember Emily yelling after them, “Just give me back my passport” and I am like “Emily, get inside the gate!” The four of us reunite inside the gate, and that’s when the security guards conveniently show up. Some people we have told this story to think they were in on it. Bill remains unconvinced.

We walk the 20 feet back to the restaurant, where diners are peacefully enjoying their meals, unaware of what just happened in the past 1 minute. Our waiters call the police, bring us water, and do what they can to help us and calm us down. Emily and I are literally shaking, fending off tears, and when someone drops a tray with a loud bang, we jump. Two plain clothes officers show up and ask us to write down everything that was taken. They immediately track Andreas’s phone, and the CCTV shows the three gunmen getting into a white car that a 4th person was driving. Things seem promising. After about another hour with the police on site, and the restaurant closing up around us, and us cancelling all of our credit cards, the officers say we can go to the station tomorrow to get a police report. I use my very limited Swahili to tell them “Hapana Kesha. Leo. Sasa Leo” which translates to “No tomorrow. Today. Now (or what’s up) today” They argue back, but they see it is futile after I keep saying “Leo”. They pile us into the back of their military truck – the only things we have are Bill’s backpack, whatever was left in pockets, and the loaf of bread Bill took out to show what is in the bags. I remember holding Bill’s hand, feeling so thankful we were together, feeling guilty that I put Emily in danger during her visit, and feeling just how badly I needed to hug my mom.

At the police station we meet a real crack squad. They ask us to repeat everything we already wrote down, so the guy behind the desk can write it down in another book. We offer to write it because of time and efficiency, but those words don’t exactly compute in Kenya, or really any bureaucratic office anywhere in the world. We get a little piece of paper with a case number, which was the date and the number “2”, as well as the name and phone number of the lead detective on the case. An hour after we arrive at the police station, we are finally ready to go home. We call a cab, drop Andreas where he is staying –  though there were talks of a sleepover because we were all scared to go to sleep – and told him we will pick him up in the morning. Clearly we were not going hiking Mount Longonot but have to make tons of phone calls and prep for new passports, documents, etc.

The next day we spend at the apartment helping Emily and Andreas call embassies, credit card companies, and family. We keep replaying the last night’s events. We all agree it could have been so much, much worse. They could have been pointing the guns instead of just holding them down on their sides, they could have fired their guns instead of just threatening to, and we could have chosen to walk home into the dark in the direction they came from with no where to go. We decided that it could have happened anywhere in the world and that we were lucky. Sure they made away with like 5 grand worth of stuff, but we were ok. Shaken but alive to write this blog post. 

Emily and I go to the embassy at 6:30am on Monday and by 1pm, she had her emergency passport. I remember being in the waiting room at the US Embassy and looking around at the American building standards (ADA accessible elements, signage at the appropriate heights with braille, clean and detailed construction, etc.) and thinking “I can’t wait until I am back in America.” It was a weird thought for me, because I am ashamed to be American with our current political state and very not proud of America right now, but something about that waiting room was strangely comforting. It felt like a small slice of home.

In the coming days, things got easier and we began changing our habits. We will always get dropped off and picked up inside of our gate, we will never wait outside, and we will never walk at night. We often would walk home from where we were mugged because we would play soccer near there on Monday nights. But now we are not going to play soccer anymore. I don’t even feel comfortable walking there during the day which is unfortunate because that is our local vegetable and grocery shopping point. It feels unfair that we have to change our behavior because of other bad people (welcome to being a woman in general). It feels like the bad guys won.

But I know that they didn’t. The lead detective called us on Monday evening with some updates. The four guys hijacked the getaway car. They found the stolen car with the owners locked in the trunk. These guys really weren’t messing around, and clearly had a plan to do some serious damage that night. The police also found Emily’s passport and her BoA credit card. They also found the guys and since one of them shot at the police, the police shot back and killed at least one of them. The stakes really are high for muggers: the police know they are armed and so the police shoot as a default. It is scary to have validation that the guns they showed us were real, and I honestly don’t know how I feel about one of them being killed – I don’t know if I will ever know how I feel about it.

A week later, my family came to visit. I told them this story in person, and then I hugged my mom for a very long time.