South Africa has the world’s highest murder rate — 50 murders per day.

SHHHHIIIITTTT.

Actually, this is super real right now as me and the old lady are stranded in a partially functioning VW bus with dubious locks.
At an abandoned gas station.
In a city with one of the highest rates of unemployment and incredible illiteracy.

SSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTT.

But this is a story for another time. I have to stay to some kind of narrative timeline here and I wanted to talk about crime and killing people and all that mushy stuff.

Shoot to Kill

Different kind of shot, same result.

Crime here is so bad that South African police have a sort-of unofficial “Shoot to Kill” policy. This is easy to situation to sensationalize and soapbox over, so fuck that. Let’s just say that the criminal procedures code prevented police from using deadly force except when necessary. But you get this: “When criminals are cornered, they take out guns. They don’t warn, they kill, and many police have died as a result of that.” So they decided to push through legislation in the opposite direction.

Put more bluntly, “Shoot the bastards.” (Both quotes SA Deputy Police Minister).

So by now you’ve heard about our camera getting stolen.

You’ve also probably read about Laurene getting pickpocketed and losing her phone on the trolley. In an unrelated incident, she was followed by two men when she was walking around town in the middle of the day. Luckily she had the street smarts to first, glare at them so they knew she knew they were following her, and second, to lose them by ducking into a store on a side street. Peering out the store window, she could see them walking from store to store, clearly searching for something or someone (three guesses which tall blonde they were looking for).

I’m sure you’ve read Ryan’s post about buying a knife (Jasmine) within his first seven hours of arriving in Quito. What you don’t know is that Jasmine was the first of three knives Ryan has bought- he also bought a butterfly knife he named Sacagawea, and yesterday bought a massive Rambo-meets-Indiana-Jones hunting knife he refers to as Tomahawk. It’s probably safe to say that the knives are more for fun than protection, but I’m going for full disclosure here.

Ryan practicing with Sacagawea

When Freddie moved in to our apartment, he found a can of pepper spray in his room – and it was nearly empty. I already mentioned that our neighbors had Laurene and Freddie over for a “safety talk” and also told us where to find the nearest store that sells pepper spray concealed in a pen.

Last Saturday in separate but related incidents, our field producer Evan and I were both hassled by teenage punks on our own street. We compared stories and it sounds like it was the same two kids who approached us individually – again in the middle of the day – and intimidatingly asked for money as one stood in front blocking our path and the other hovered behind, boxing us in. I was literally 50 steps away from our apartment when the first kid grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let go until I screamed fiercely at him to stop. He let go, surprised at my outburst, and they disappeared down the street. Fortunately, I was fine but I couldn’t believe I had just been harassed outside my own apartment.

Our daytime security guard Luis

One of Ryan’s friends who has been here for nearly a year told us how someone slit the bottom of her purse with a razor blade and stole her wallet on the trolley. We heard another story of a woman coming home to her apartment where everything had been stolen – the thieves had removed the front door and cleared her apartment of all her furniture and belongings. Imagine coming home to your apartment and finding it stripped bare of every last thing.

Not being able to walk outside after dark takes its toll. Not being able to take our laptops to a local coffee shop without worrying that someone will rob us is definitely something we could live without.

We’re not your green, scared travelers who hear about a State Department warning and think, Oh no, Mexico’s dangerous – I shouldn’t go there. On the contrary, members of our team have spent plenty of time in Mexico, India, Senegal, Central America, and Southeast Asia. We’re not ones to let statistics and horror stories stop us from exploring all the amazing things – Andean mountain villages, cloud forests, the Amazon, the Galapagos – that Ecuador has to offer.

So yes, Ecuador is amazing and beautiful, but when they said it was dangerous, they weren’t kidding.

But then again, if we let that stop us, we would be missing a lot more than our wallets.

So yes, Baños was a wonderful getaway and we soaked up the scenery, soaked in the hot springs, and then got soaked on the river.

Little did we know our luck was about to change.

On our way back from Baños, we split up and took two different buses. Laurene and Freddie needed to get back to Quito to work/find work the next day so they left after lunch. But I didn’t have any pressing engagements (let’s be honest, no job prospects in sight) so I was contemplating traveling further south for a few days. After much deliberation, I ended up going back to Quito, so I took an afternoon bus with Evan, our field producer and cameraman.

We were seated in the last row of the bus on the right hand side. On the left side of the bus there was one additional row of seats further back that were directly across from the bathroom. Our bags were under our seats, and our seats backed up against the bathroom.

The 4-hour bus ride had lulled me to sleep and by the time I woke up about 30 minutes from Quito, our camera was missing. We searched frantically all around us, on the top shelf of the bus and under our neighbor’s seats. They noticed us panicking and one young couple offered to help: the girl went to talk to the bus driver, who called the police. (more…)