The eight of us who went to Togo for spring break are hanging out together on the beach, right outside our bungalow-hotel place, on its private beach area. Locals come and go from the beach area, no big deal. I'm relaxing. Bovard and Leslie decide to throw the frisbee around; I decide to get some action shots with my camera. Then I decide to join them in the water. I leave my camera on my sandals next to the 4 or 5 people who are still lounging in the sand.
I swim and toss the frisbee for a while. It's fun. I come back and put on my sandals. "Um, where's my camera?" I ask the rest the group.
"It's not there?" they respond. We look all around, but it is nowhere to be found.
"Well did anyone come up to you guys while we were in the water?" I ask.
"Oh yeah, there was this one guy who came and sat down and talked to us but we pretty much just ignored him because he was annoying," says Carolyn. Fair enough. I would have done the same thing. But clearly he took my camera.
"What was he wearing?" I ask Carolyn.
"What's that brand with the elephant? Ecko? Yes. He was wearing an Ecko shirt." So I go up to the hotel guys and tell them the scoop. They tell me that my friends are inattentive. Thanks guys, but what I really want is to file a police report.
"Oh no, we'll just go find him. He was the guy in the Ecko shirt, right? Yes, he's caused us trouble before," they say.
"What? No this guy came here like an hour ago. He's long gone."
"We'll find him." Fine. Whatever. I return to the beach, angry at myself for being so stupid as to leave my camera out in the open.
About 15 minutes later, the hotel guys come up to me. "Hey, could you and the person who saw the thief come over here?" So Carolyn and I head over to the hotel entrance. Commotion. What we see there is a man surrounded by a bunch of other guys, some of whom work at the hotel, others of which seem just to be random guys. They are basically all hitting the man who is clearly being accused of thievery.
"Give back the camera!" one of them shouts. *Punch*
"Yeah, go get it! These two saw you steal it!" shouts another. *Slap*
"Ok ok, I'll go get it!" the thief finally cries. Then the whole mob follows him out of the hotel. Carolyn and I are in a state of disbelief. Did they really just find the thief and hit him until he agreed to give the camera back?
We head back to the beach, and within 15 minutes the owner of the hotel proudly hands me back my camera, good as new. I am extremely pleased. The owner continues to explain to me that the guy who stole my camera does not represent Africa. What Africa is all about is community. "See those two guys walking over there?" he asks. "They are plain-clothed policemen. See the woman over there? She comes by here all the time selling snacks. In Africa, everyone knows everyone. And when something goes wrong with someone, it's everyone's problem."
I couldn't agree more.
Great story!
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