there are numerous kids that hang out around our house. we give them drinks of water and they laugh at our attempts at marshallese. its a symbiotic relationship. one of the boys we were the closest to was Kan. he was in 5th grade at assumption elementary. he is really outgoing and often helpful. sometimes bridget would wash his uniform and we would help him with his homework around our kitchen table.
two weeks ago mike noticed some of his money was missing. then, last saturday evening, i came home from church to drop off my guitar before going to a fijian baptism party (if you ever get an invite to one, go. fijians know how to have a good time) and i noticed that the lights in our bedrooms were on. curious. the next morning shannon noticed that she was missing some money as well, not all of it, but half of her stash was gone. sunday afternoon, the lights all mysteriously turned on of their own accord again and the rest of her money was gone.
the pieces started to come together. our roof/cieling are still in the state of (dis)repair that they have been since late november and a panel of the cieling in the roof was broken. a chair that didn't used to be there was found under it, dusted with bits of wood which was curious because shannon had just swept the porch. hmmm. fr. rich had seen kan after someone broke in eating an apple and was pleased and surprised that he had made such a healthy snack choice. we had just gone grocery shopping. hmmmmmm. then kan started walking around with a new bike and new clothes, including a oversized black gangsta shirt with a huge sequined dollar bill sign. hmmmmmmmmm. then there was the realization that before someone broke in, kan was asking all of us where everyone was. hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
we set a trap for him, telling him that we were all going to church monday evening while fr. rich hid in our bathroom. he didn't show, but the next day, he did. bridget saw the light go on from far away and ran to the house, catching him on his way out. we got our man.
there was an ensuing mess with meetings and consequences that i wasn't a big part of because thankfully, nothing of mine disappeared. i figure i only have two things anyone would want to steal, my ipod and my guitar. the guitar never would have made it out the ceiling and i keep my ipod camouflaged. so while it didn't effect me in that way, it did in others.
just the idea that we considered kan a friend and trusted him and that he would betray that just hurts. that he would sit at our table talking with us, knowing that he was going to come in and rifle through our belongings when we were gone feels so bad. on a different level it sucks because at least part of why we're here is to serve. it makes it much harder to do that and to openly embrace this place and people when things like this happen. by no means has this soured me on the people of the marshall islands, it just makes it a little more difficult to be welcoming to the kids that frequent our porch. my friend Jeremy, who lived in intentional community in the Camden House once told me something to the effect that making the oppressed your neighbors and living in community with them is easy until your neighbors start breaking into your house. what is most foul about this situation is not that kan stole from us, but that he would steal; that we live in a world that makes children into thieves.
