Saturday 10th Dec

More packing this morning. (Wow, you could make my blog into a film it's so exciting).
This afternoon Dora and I went into town to buy Christmas presents for the guys in SA. I hope they like tea and coffee, because that's pretty much all you can get here, and I couldn't fit 20 gorillas in my suitcase.

As we were walking through town, someone stole my purse. I’ve been telling people I was mugged, but in hindsight it's not very true. We were at the traffic lights when two guys came up behind me. The one on my left shoved me really hard to get my attention, so immediately I looked to my right to see what was going on. Sure enough, a guy had reached into my bag and grabbed my purse. 'Not on my watch', I thought to myself. I spun round and took the guy on my left to the floor, punching him in the stomach. And I pushed the guy on my right into an oncoming SUV. He fell down and dropped my purse on the floor. I reached over, reclaimed my purse and kept walking. Dora looked at me and said, 'I think you've dropped your vaseline', and that was that. Carl would be proud. I still maintain that Rwanda is an incredible safe country. The guys didn't try to hurt me, and I was confident that they weren't armed. I’ve been here for three months and this is the first crime I’ve experienced. For a capital city in a developing country, that's exceptionally good. And in all fairness, my bag was open and my purse was visible, so I can't really complain.


In the evening Dora and I went out for dinner, and then Jash joined us for a film. We watched RED with Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman, and it was really good. As we watched, we ate ginger cake with dark chocolate sauce. All in all, a very nice evening.

When I got home, I sat down and thought about what had happened. I felt bad about my part in the whole thing. A lot of the guys I work with here have lived on the street at some point, and the reality of life there is hard. The guys that went after my purse were probably just trying to survive. Maybe they were hungry. And had someone stolen something from Jesus, I don't think he would have tackled them to the ground or pushed them into an oncoming donkey. I’m no Jean Val Jean.