Thieving Varmint

We have finally passed our 5-month mark in Mozambique. Some days, it seems like the longest 5 months in my life, and other days I can’t believe how fast it’s gone.  Lisa and I agree that we are much happier when we have so much to do that we don’t notice time passing. This past week, we were both at one of the upper classrooms of our school facilitating a REDES (an extracurricular group for girls) meeting. As usual, we were missing most of the girls because everyone seems to run about an hour late here. A small crowd of 9^th grade boys had gathered in our classroom (white people are oh-so-interesting to stare at), so I decided to try and share a visual riddle with them:

This riddle has only two rules:

1) Connect all 9 points using only 4 straight lines.

2) Your writing implement cannot leave the surface of the paper once you begin drawing your first line.

This has been my go-to riddle when I have some chalk and a bunch of students staring at me. I like it because it is easy to explain, and it occupies the students for at least 15 minutes as they try to come up with the solution. So all I need to do is draw 9 dots on the chalkboard, explain the rules, and then step back to watch them attempt to solve the puzzle over and over again. It inevitably leads to a herd of teenagers huddled around the chalkboard, staring and whispering to themselves as they puzzle it out. While they were working on that, Lisa and I talked to the one girl who was there on time for the REDES meeting. We talked about what projects we were going to do and why she wanted to be the president of the group. We walked around outside the classroom, hoping that the presence of azungu (white people) would draw in the other girls to the meeting. 

After about 20 minutes of wasting time, I tried to check the time on my phone to see if I needed to leave to give a class. To my dismay, I couldn’t find my phone, even though I was sure that I had brought it with me to the meeting. After searching around for about 5 minutes, I began to think that I may have been robbed. I shared this with Lisa and some of the other students. I held up Lisa’s phone (which is identical to mine) and asked if anyone had seen another phone of the same type. Nobody had, and I was a little upset with the thought that someone had stolen it. I tried calling it repeatedly from Lisa’s phone, but whoever had my phone was declining my calls. I became more and more sure that someone had taken it. Discouraged, I walked down to the lower set of classrooms and told our Pedagogical Director (our immediate superior at our school) that I think I was robbed of my phone. He seemed rather upset by this news, and he told me that he would see what he could do. I had to leave and go teach, but my mood was brought down a little.

The next morning, I went to the school early to go talk to the students before school started to ask for their help in finding my phone. When I got to the school, our Pedagogical Director (his name is Guilherme) asked me to sit down with him to talk. He said that he was troubled by the news that I had been robbed, so after I told him that, he gathered up the other teachers and started a collection to buy me a new phone. At this point, I felt compelled to stop him and thank him.

“That’s really nice, you didn’t have to do that. I can buy another phone,” I said.

“Wait, let me finish,” Guilherme continued, “Professors Leme and Peter were out looking for you phone last night. They came across a student on the street that said he thought he saw the phone in the hand of another student. They went to the house of the suspected student and confronted him in front of his family. After questioning him, he admitted to taking the phone. He gave it back.”

At this point, Guilherme unlocked his desk drawer and pulled out my phone. I was overjoyed.

“Thank you so much! I can’t believe you found it!” I exclaimed.

“There is one thing, though,” he said, “The thief thought we would be able to find his location if he left your SIM card in the phone, so he took it out of the phone and threw it into the river. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, SIM cards are cheap. I can replace it.”

“I want you to know that this was the chefe de turma of one of the 9^th grade classes. We are taking his crime very seriously. He has been expelled, and we showed him to everyone in 9^th and 10^th grade, and let them know that he is a thief and he cannot be trusted. We don’t want anyone thinking that they can steal from any of the teachers,” he finished.

So, the end result of this story is that I got my phone back, but I don’t have a phone number to call with. That will be easily remedied. I can buy a new SIM for the equivalent of 50 cents American. Plus, I learned that my teaching colleagues are more than willing to help me if I have any kind of problem.  I’d say that’s a win.