The first week...

Have been robbed. Mugged. The words I never thought I would type. The words I managed to avoid for an entire year, traveling with all my worldly good on my back. Textbook. Woman. Walking alone. At night. Carrying a bag. Stepped off the bus into the darkness of my neighbourhood, turned the corner and saw crowds. Took small comfort in the fact there were others around and just then, two men, one in a red shirt approached saying “shhhh….” and reaching out. I was anything but. I screamed. And screamed. I struggled. They knocked me down, I held on. I grabbed at the one, hit him in the crotch. He swung at me. They walked away. I screamed some more and followed them, pointing, yelling that they’d attacked. I caught up and they turned and swiped at me with a knife. I guess I’d missed that the first time they swung at me. I screamed and then I was surrounded. I was hoping they would be surrounded. That a crowd would form, encircle them, force them to give my bag back, come to my rescue. I couldn’t even get the words out to explain what had happened. I couldn’t understand what was being said to me.

It’s all replaceable. My camera. My portable phone, bought five days prior at the cost of $100. My memory card that could hold 600 photos. My bidon. My MEC bag, seemingly indestructible. I had 1,000 CFA – about $2.50 – in my wallet. My credit card and debit card, which they will just throw away. Liberian money. My press pass.

I have another credit card, two in fact. I had just taken $200 out and left it at home. I have 80 or so American dollars. I need money on Monday to buy my ticket and get my visas. But a new debit card will have to be ordered. My brain just isn’t functioning well enough to know how to do that right now.

But my camera. The travesty is my camera. I don’t know what to do without my camera.

The rest is replaceable. And I suppose the camera is too.

This is not the way I envisioned starting. I haven’t even started already I’m down. I’m out an $800 camera. And a $100 phone. But it’s replaceable. It’s all replaceable.

The worst part, the absolute worst part? I come home to a dark and empty house. Two days of trying to get a key and still not able to actually put my hands on it. Finbarr’s got one and despite repeated promises, despite repeated attempts to remind him to hand it back to Lauren, who would deliver it to me, it was all for naught. So I sat on the bench with the fruit seller who practically lives there and he consoled me. He is sweet and I may have to marry him. We’re both single and of a certain vintage. Another customer came along, sat down, asked why I would take the bus. I agree. Why did I take the bus? It was light when it came and dark by the time it reached my destination. But for 1,500 CFA – more than I had in my wallet – I could have just taken a stupid taxi.

Oh, of all the regrets.

So, the worst part. Lauren arrives. I’m sitting on the bench. She backs the car into the driveway. Doesn’t so much as pop her head out the gate to say, “Sorry, were you waiting long?” Goes into the house. I follow. She brushes past on her way out, talking to the dogs. On her way back in, I say: “My bag was snatched tonight.”

“Bummer.”

Not so much as a glance in my direction, not so much as a moment’s hesitation in her walk. Just “bummer.”

Back to the car for another load. “Can I help?” I ask, feeling ridiculous. I’ve just been robbed, for pity’s sake. Would it kill her to stop for five seconds and ask me if I’m alright.

“Nope, I got it.”

She comes back with a second load. “Did you lose your passport?” No. “Your identity card?” No, just my press pass. “Your Senegalese press association card?” No, my Toronto Star ID. “Oh, okay then. What about your credit card?”

I’m holding my credit card in my hand, my spare, the one with the CIBC stolen/lost number on it. I am thinking she will offer her cell phone.

“There’s a telecentre around the corner. Why didn’t you go there and report it already? They could use it on the Internet.”

Gee, Lauren, maybe because all of my f’ing money was stolen while walking home.

So I take 5,000 CFA and go there. I blubber in the booth to the uncaring guy from Visa – mental note: they need sensitivity training – and he puts me on hold to connect me to an unmanned line for debit card replacement.

I give up.

I go home. And I pack. I can’t stay here. I can’t stay in a place that makes me feel so patently unwelcome and unwanted. Any normal person would have asked what happened. Any normal person might have stopped, given me a hug, asked if I was okay, offered me a stiff drink. Not Lauren.

So, good-bye. My heart can’t take it anymore. My head can’t take it anymore. What is wrong with this woman? It saved me a few dollars to stay here for a week, but in essence it cost me my camera. I shouldn’t have been on the bus after dark and it’s textbook in the sense that I was 10 minutes from home and I took the risk and lived to regret it. But enough is enough.

Woke up at the usual time on Sunday morning, after listening to Lauren’s dinner party and the thumping base of her accompanying music until well after 3 a.m. I asked on my way to the bathroom if she was going to be around for the next little while, as I needed to use the Internet and the telecentre. She said Finbarr had dropped off a key and that I best leave the house, since the guy had come to spray for bugs and no one could be inside the house for at least a half hour afterward.

I came back an hour and a half later – having sat at the Internet café with tears streaming down my face – and grabbed all my things, wrote Lauren a hasty note saying “Thanks for the daiquiris, the bed and the fan. Hope to one day repay all the kindnesses you’ve shown me.” I dropped the key in the laundry room, grabbed a cab and headed for Rose’s place up near the airport. It felt like such a huge relief to get out of the house and I have to confess that the whole time the guys were negotiating for a cab, I was holding my breath for fear Lauren would pull up and catch me in the act of escaping. It felt so satisfying to leave and know that she has no idea where I am or how to reach me. Now, this is a small community so obviously she’ll know soon enough that I stayed on ML’s couch and moved in with Rose. But it made me feel good to know that for at least a day she would have no idea whether I grabbed a cab for the airport or where I ended up.

I also have to confess that for a few hours I thought about how wonderful it would be if the story of Karen’s mad flight from Lauren’s made the rounds and Lauren was revealed for the bitch that she is. But that’s just fancy.

Anyway, I arrived at Rose’s and it was like a completely different place. The streets are wide and sandy and the people are a lot more laid back, the houses are mostly new and big, there seems to be fewer people roaming around. We sat around for a bit and ate chocolate and I rehashed the attack scene and we called Lauren a few obscene names and then packed ourselves up and headed for the beach. It was exactly what I needed. A nice lunch with good conversation and then a dip in the ocean. Just bobbing along in the water, the waves pushing and pulling, the sun beating down, the cliff in the distance with the lighthouse. It was really heavenly and reminded me why I had chosen Dakar in the first place.

We visited Rose’s new apartment, which is really very beautiful, in a totally chilled out neighbourhood up by the airport. It’s down a dirt path off a main road, with a gorgeous view of the sea, a rooftop terrace that’s huge and a little balcony in front. It really is a seriously great find. She’s paying about $850 a month in rent – plus water, electricity and sundry other miscellaneous costs.

Then we went back to her place to have showers and get ready to go down to ML’s place, where I spent the night on the couch. She seems like a lovely girl and it’s really a shame that she’ll be gone before I get back. Maybe if I swing through Joburg I can avail myself of her couch again. Her boyfriend is in town and we had a good chat in the morning. I tried to be coy with ML about what happened with Lauren, partly because I don’t think it does anybody any good for me to go around ruining her rep with my little tale of woe, but I thought, if it gets to her through Eric then I’m in the clear, right?

Spent today running around, doing stuff that really should have been done last week, like book my ticket. I’m officially off to Liberia and then to Ghana on Tuesday. Feels like I’ve been here a month already, yet I’m only just getting started. Of all the strange things, someone called the travel agency and asked about lost documents, turns out someone found my stuff thrown away in the garbage and called to see if I’d like to collect them. I’m going to get them tomorrow and try to sort out the police report and maybe finally get my debit card replaced before the week’s end.

I met up with Rose again and we moved officially into her new place, which is just so wonderful. It’s really been like night and day to be in her presence versus to be around Lauren. Her Senegalese friend Gabby came by and hung out and her "little brother" Stephen, who’s just so cute, came by and had dinner with us. They seem really great and I can’t wait to hang out with them some more. In some ways it’s really sad to leave, but at least I know I have one amazing friend and a circle of Senegalese acquaintances waiting for me when I return.