#MasenoDays: Shoe Thief

The earliest memory I have of being robbed is back when I was in around class 6, a bunch of thieves broke into our house late at night and proceeded to clean our sitting room of all electronics. Being the heavy sleeper that I am, the story was only retold to me in the morning after the damage had already been done.
The reason why I remember this is because I had borrowed a cassette from a friend which happen to vanish with our VCR. Now of course trying to explaining theft to a fellow 12 year old was purely a waste of time because we ended up having to negotiate with the parents and paying for the stolen tape. Not that I’m saying cassettes were cheap back then but who makes someone pay for something that stolen from them? Where is the neighborliness in that?

Anyway that’s not why I’m writing this article. In high school, we used to have very weird characters if I can call them that, robbers of the night (and day on occasion) . The first time I was stolen from, I was in 1^st form, still green and oblivious to the dangers the world held. What fascinated me was the manner in which I was robbed, see back then I had the habit of wearing my school shorts (yes, we wore shorts) under my pajamas. That night as per usual I put my keys in my short pockets under my pj’s and into dream land I went. Now as earlier explained I am quite the sleeper, so at some point in the night apparently I had a conversation with my quarter master (title for someone who sleeps on the lower bank bed) and handed him my keys to take who knows what. I never found those keys and my money that was well placed in a corner of my box, gone with the wind.

I only realized I hand been robbed when the teacher on duty diligently took it upon himself to help me alleviate myself from deep slumber with the stroke of the cane. I had slept in and the administration really frowned upon that, I woke up in a frantic fright as would anyone when you feel a stick make contact with your body. The first thing I saw was my open box, a quick check would prove my fears, I had been cleaned out of all my cash and with that an induction into high school. 

Through the years I learnt ways of hiding my money more strategically but there were things you couldn’t hide, it just wouldn’t make sense, like shoes for example. This brings me to my story of the shoe thief, it was towards the end of second term, about a week or so and I had woken up at some wee hour of the morning (around 3am). I was just coming back from the dark caves (that’s what I used to call those abominations we had for toilets) and as I slipped into my bed I saw a shadowy figure follow me in. At first I didn’t understand his agenda but it soon became clear as he came over and bent down where I had put my shoes. Lucky for me he grabbed my bunk-mate's shoes and not mine, we promptly gave chase and were able to catch him before he got to the dark caves. 

This is where things got interesting, the perpetrator was able to break free and he decided to take to his heels. He ran behind a house named olang’ and tried to make his way to the lower parts of the school. What happened next is the clincher for me, the guy following him didn’t see the thief duck under some clothing lines and he ended up running straight into them. His body flew about a meter high in a horizontal position before he hit the ground only for him to resume the chase. 

We eventually caught the thief and what happened to him… I guess that’s classified but you can let your imagination run wild. But it just makes you realize that not everyone has it easy and sometimes you have to do what you have to do to survive. Just SayinG