Sad times

I went over to Sohot this morning, upon hearing that they’d been broken into while we were gone.
Two days before we left, Jen’s key went missing. While frustrating, this wasn’t so extraordinary, as she’s already lost the key once or twice (or more?). Poor Cath (and her seemingly inexhaustible patience with her young roommate ;) ) searched up and down the villages but found nothing and had to resign to leaving Lopit with the key still at large. She put a padlock on the door, though, and felt that would stay any intruders.
But, as the story goes, Jen didn’t lose the key. Some boys stole the key while she wasn’t looking, then used it to open the door while we were gone. The little padlock Cath put on the door didn’t do much good; it slid right through the hole if you wiggled it just right.
Anyway, the boys rummaged the house and stole all the candy and all the pens. Those are typical little kid targets. Both Longija and Sohot have been broken into before (on less obnoxious, professional terms, however) and had their sweets taken. Actually, on Christmas, the kids took and ate a pie straight out of Jen’s oven. I will admit to finding that hilarious. Hehe. Sorry.
Ahem.
But this time isn’t so funny, as they also stole the girls’ boots (two nice pair), the sheets of Cath’s bed (brought special from home) and some other things. Worst of all, they fiddled with Jen’s solar panel stuff and may have broken it. That’s hundreds of dollars right there.
The girls seem much more calm than I would be. Our friend Deborah spared them the shock of finding their house a mess; she was checking on the place and the cats while they were gone, so she had a key and had everything swept, clean and fairly put back together when they got home.
Everyone knows who the boys are. As far as I can gather, one or more is still on the run—reported to be in some neighboring villages. Another, however, was caught and is being held (tied up?!?) at the witchdoctors house. Gulp. The thing about stealing in Lopit is, it’s a very stupid idea. They’ll probably be beaten really badly or worse. We’ll see how this all plays out.
We think Pastor Saba might have some of the stuff at his place, having recovered it, so we can hope for the best with that, though the solar panels would be nearly irreplaceable.
So pray for how this all goes down. And pray against discouragement in the girls.

In other, more exciting news, we got an ugly cat today. I say ugly because I’m a realist, not because I’m cruel. I’m sure I will come to love it, as it’s kittenness affords it some cuteness and I’ve already seen mice/rats scurrying around our house, so it’s pest-killing abilities will win the cat some favor. It’s sleeping now, and that’s also cute.
It’s name is Tiji (“teegee”—though that “t” is more like a g or a soft strange noise unrecognizable to our English tongues). That means, “Like this.” The people said it all the time when we first got here, mostly when we were doing laundry. We thought it was the word for scrubbing clothes. They’d hold the clothes up as they scrubbed and say “tiji tiji” again and again. Turns out, they were really just telling us we were scrubbing wrong. It’s become one of our favorite words to say. And now it’s our (ugly) cat.