Yesterday: Lovely morning of meditation, reading, long walk north along the dirt roads with Carolen and Milo the dog. Met Wind and the kids at Baja Beans and sat in the shade of the mango grove eating gorgeous baked goods and frittatas and sipping coffee. We moseyed back to the compound and I let myself into my room, thought I'd check email before heading to the beach.
The first thing I noticed was that my bedside drawer was open. Then I scanned the room for my laptop.The black cord was not plugged in. The bed was unmade, so Cheppie had not been there.
My phone is not on the counter. The screen is pushed open, the window is ajar. We've been ripped off.
Before I had a chance to panic, I thought, "It's all in the cloud." I would only lose the 785 pictures that I hadn't yet backed up to PhotoStream. Shit. It doesn't matter. I turn - my drawers are all open. I rummage through my lingerie and find my wallet where I'd hidden it, and my passport. Okay then. I can still get home.
I walk out to my balcony. Wind is walking out of the restaurant looking alarmed. "I was ripped off," I say calmly.
"Yeah, they got our phones."
Somehow, when I left for the walk two hours before, after meditating, it hadn't occurred to me to recheck all the window latches and hide my laptop and phone out of view. Now I was already letting them go. They were gone.
Long and insane story short...Grayson (9) and I went to get the police in the nearby town (no phones). The police station in Pescadero was closed (Sunday?), but Gray directed me to picked up Feffo and his sister Brenda at the billiard hall, who were able to reach their auntie Carmen who knows the police in Todos Santos, and they came right away. They helped Wind catch five teenage kids from La Paz that were camping on the beach and who had been robbing people all morning. The police arrested them and miraculously recovered all of our stuff.
The amazing thing for me is that I did not get upset during any of this. I truly thought, Oh well. That stuff is gone. And when they caught the kids and I saw my laptop and iphone get stuffed into a duffel bag and leave with the Mexican police, I still thought, Oh well. I've already said good-bye to those things.
Today was all about observing the grinding wheels of justice in Mexico (with little attachment to the outcome - none of us wanted the kids to go to jail). The Todos Santos concrete block "police station" did not exactly inspire confidence...A funeral service calendar dangled on a string from a curtain rod, advertising "Servicios 24 horas per dia 365 dias per ano." Just to give you an idea. Rusty Soviet-era filing cabinets that looked like they hadn't been opened in decades. A dusty bouquet of artificial flowers buried among files and boxes in total disarray. A decorative owl next to a ski mask. An oxygen tank. A stainless steel sink leaning against the window.
Police officials slowly took down our statements, all separately, typing them in ALL CAPS. After hours of amusedly watching the busy officials hunt and peck onto the ancient keyboard to get all the stories exactly right, I realized they were just talking to each other telling our story the way they interpreted it, in first person as though they'd been there themselves. I thought I'd get up. I asked where the bathroom was. "No sirve." (Doesn't work.) So I held it.
I let Grayson sit on my lap and we played goofy games, Carolen and Wind and Amelia (11) and I quietly smiling at the absurdity of it all. I finished a book and read an entire New Yorker. I stayed amused the entire time. Maybe a little bored at times, but mostly amazed. I tried not to think, "This is how I'm spending my last day in Mexico."
The officials kept at it with admirable diligence for, no lie, three hours, so five hours in total including the wait outside, and finally we heard the squeal of the tractor-feed printer churning out our statements in carbon triplicate on official looking dot-matrix letterhead. The wheels of justice were in fact turning, they were just a little gummed up by the carbon triplicates. Then they had us sign every single page (each carbon copy so three times per seven page statement times maybe three each- my hand was actually aching - more signatures than a mortgage). Who knows where those files went?
And here I am, less than 48 hours later writing on my laptop, Skyping, listening to Devendra Banhart on Spotify.
Me and Amelia, glad to be back in Cerritos.
"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings." - Elizabeth Gilbert
