Who stole my cell phone? The security guard stole my cell phone. How did he steal the cell phone? By leveraging maximum stupidity.
This was all pieced together yesterday when the roomie (whose name is on the lease, and thus is the enforcer) was explaining to him that he may lose his job because something was stolen while he was working and that we can't help but think that he might be the culprit.
He got quietly indignant, asking us why he would jeopardize his job just to steal a simple telephone. That would be illogical! And dishonest! Between explanation points there were wounded silences. By the end I was wondering if I hadn't just lost the thing myself somewhere.
Roomie left it open-ended, saying she'd make a decision this week and call him before his next scheduled day of work. So he gave us his number. On a whim, she suggested I call Kencell and see what the last numbers the phone called were.
It turned out Sergeant Stupid Juice spent the morning after my phone disappeared receiving calls from my number. Probably trying to use up all the credit before I cancelled it.
Anyways, that started 24 hours of God removing possible sources of guilt from John's life. First the fired-on-my-behalf security guard makes a snackbag of himself, and then today the Chadian ministry of Chex Mix pretty much blocked my ability to do reporting there. I was going to delay going home (and eat $200 as a penalty for delaying my non-refundable flight) and I was going to do this story even though I'd make almost no money after expenses. All this I was prepared to do. But parachute into Chad under cover of darkness to evade the country's paranoid bureaucreacy? Thanks, no. Be going home to the woman now.
(I just noticed that people began commenting again sometime last week. Responses posted retroactively.)
